Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Homeschool moms often find that writing is one of the hardest subjects to teach. Mike Farris and his guest Kathy Weitz tackle this topic on today's Home School Heartbeat.

Michael Farris:
My friend Kathy Weitz is with me in the studio today. Kathy, welcome to the program.

Kathy Weitz:
Thank you, Mike. I'm glad to be here.

Mike:
Kathy, as a homeschooling mom, what have you found most challenging about teaching writing to your children?

Kathy:
Well, I think the biggest thing has been figuring out how to evaluate my children's writing. Like, what should a 3rd grader really be able to write, and what do I expect from my 9th grader in terms of reasoning? The Classical Writing curriculum has really met that need with a systematic progression of skills and checklists that help me know exactly what skills I'm supposed to be expecting from my kids. The other big stumbling block for writing, especially for kids, is "I don't know what to write." The centerpiece of the Classical Writing method is analyzing and imitating, using well-crafted models or examples of writing from literature, history, or science. So that gives them their content. And the other thing is, I really like the idea of integrating all the subjects, as you talked about with Lene. And it's just really hard to pull all that together, but the workbooks from Classical Writing are going to be doing that—laying out the lessons and the models and the exercises that you progress through as you do your writing with your kids.

Mike:
Listeners, join us tomorrow as we continue our discussion of classical writing. I'm Mike Farris.