Here is a great idea for teaching writing to children at different grade levels!

A friend of mine got this from a friend of hers. Thought I would share it. I am excited about trying it next year when I go back to doing unit studies and Charlotte Mason.

Teaching writing in a large homeschool family

1. First acquire a good general writing guide such as Writers Inc. or Creative Composition.
2. You will need a large piece of paper or whiteboard and markers.
3. Then, using this book as a guide, teach one type of writing at a time to all your children ages 3rd grade and up.
4. Follow the following process.
 Using the example of the descriptive paragraph, you might have your 8th grader come up with a good topic sentence.
 Then the younger children can all brain storm ideas for supporting details. As the children make their suggestions, you write these on a very large piece of paper or whiteboard.
 After, adding the supporting details, you ask someone to come up with a good concluding sentence and add this to your composition.
 Then you will begin to edit your composition as a family. You may want to deliberately make a few mistakes and see if the children can cue into these. You will also want to improve on your joint composition during this time. For example you may ask your 3rd grader to come up with a more colorful adverb to replace the words “really cool” in the following sentence.

We saw a really cool tree hanging out over the water.

 After your composition is edited, you may want to rewrite the composition on another large sheet of paper or whiteboard (a doublesided whiteboard can be helpful here). Older children can accomplish this on their own.
 After your have finished your composition, you can instruct your older children to write their own descriptive paragraph or perhaps even an essay. Younger children can use the paragraph for copywork. For very young children, you can just underline a single sentence and have them use that for copywork.
 What about high schoolers? Research has shown the following:

If you hear something you retain 20-25%.

If you see and hear it at the same time, you retain 30-40%.
and
If you teach something, you retain 80-90%.

So one of the best things you can do for your high schooler is allow him to teach one of these lessons on his own as he grows comfortable with it. Or he may write a longer paper.

But the key is to have the children writing daily in some form – copywork or original, simple or complex

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