We started writing/learning about paragraphs today. Ds is 7 and we are in between levels 1 and 2. Today we started the colonies book. Yesterday we talked about paragraphs and how they are composed and that went very well. We also worked on his mind map.

Today he wrote his first paragraph with some help from me. Would you mind reading the paragraph and helping me decide what we do from here.

Jamestown was hard to live in. One reason is because there wasn't enough food. The settlers planted corn but it wasn't harvest time yet. They could not go hunting because the Indians would attack. Then the Indians and the colonists became friends. Then the Indians and the colonists would trade for corn. Later the Indians would not trade becausethe colonists wouldn't give the Indians weapons. The colonists would starve if the Indians would not give them food. Life was hard in Jamestown because the colonists could not find food.

In your opinion do all of the sentences belong in the paragraph? How much editing would you do on this?

Thank you for your help.

Kerri

What a wonderful paragraph, Kerri. For his first attempt, and especially at his age, I woulnd't change a thing. I would consider it a great victory!

Later, you can begin to work on improving the rhythm and punctuation and such, but you have many years to accomplish that. This is an encouraging start!

Thanks for your help teriskidz. I really appreicate it.

Writing is one of those areas I'm nervous about.

Kerri

I think he seems to have grasped a lot of what you're working on: a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. The sentences are mostly in a logical order (chronological). There is a focus (the relationship of the Indians and the colonists and how it affected the food situation). This is a lot to accomplish with your first writing assignment!

What I did at this point was to put my son's paragraph away for the weekend. On Monday, we got it out again and read it over. I asked him to read it aloud and tell me what he liked about it, and what he thought should be changed. Most of it he still liked, but there were some things that he changed for various reasons. (I skipped lines when I wrote it down so we would have room for modification.) I didn't offer a lot of suggestions on this, but I was happy with the result, and he was very proud of his paragraph.

I find it interesting how different your son's paragraph is from my son's, even though they were both written about Jamestown. It's interesting how people approach things from a different direction - it makes it fun to read other people's work.

I truly wish that I'd had this program when my daughters were this age. I wouldn't be struggling so much at the high-school level, if we had.