Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Writing With Ease vs. Charlotte Mason's Writing Techniques

At first glance, Writing With Ease (WWE), the writing program by Susan Wise Bauer, is reminiscent of Charlotte Mason's techniques- narration, copywork, dictation. Sound familiar?
However, we get more into the program, I find that this method of honing in on the main points of the story and learning how to summarize differs from CM's narrations.

CM wanted the child to make the material his, to interact with it, to tell all that he remembered, in his own words. I feel like with WWE I'm having him regurgitate what I want him to know, but not necessarily what's the most interesting to him. I firmly believe he has plenty of time to summarize in middle school. I say let the child take he material and own it.

I'm still going to be using the WWE text, but we're going to do narrations across the curriculum next year, using our own materials. Starting next week already, I'm ditching summaries in favor of what he finds interesting.

It feels intuitively right to be aligned with my original CM goals once more.