Copywork

Getting Ready

Most young children begin their writing careers by imitating what they see others doing -- they mimic the gestures of writing. From the beginning, they are continually refining the result of their effort -- from the first scribbling marks of a crayon to a rounded scrawl, from circles and loops to line upon line of chicken scratches that look like "real" writing. The practice of keeping a copybook continues to refine the art of writing in much the same way -- through the natural method of careful imitation.

A child's first step along the path is learning how to grasp a pencil. In terms of development, gross motor skills must be developed before the fine motor skills can be refined to the degree necessary to perform this task. If your child is having difficulty with this, the best remedy is to set it aside and spend more time in active play. You can also help to develop a better pincer grasp for writing by encouraging other fine motor activities. Some examples might include stringing beads, lacing sewing cards or plastic canvas, or using tongs to sort pompoms or cotton balls into a muffin tin; virtually any activity which involves grasping and manipulating small objects will help to develop the necessary dexterity. If you wish to use them, larger primary-school pencils are available at teachers' stores, and triangular pencil grips can help a child grasp the pencil more securely. In any case, when your child is ready and able to hold the pencil correctly, the actual practice of formal writing can begin.

Beginning Copywork

Copywork begins in this early, pre-grammar stage, as a child begins to trace and copy letters. At the tracing stage, inexpensive workbooks can be purchased from your local toy store, discount store, or teacher's store. You can also form your own "dotted" letters to trace, if you wish. Some parents prefer buying StartWrite software to print out their child's copywork pages, but several resources are also available online, including The Amazing Handwriting Worksheet Maker, Italic worksheets, D'Nealian worksheets, and Handwriting for Kids.

None of these tools is really necessary, though. What is necessary is ensuring that your child learns to form the letters correctly from the outset. I don't recommend giving your child a worksheet and expecting him to follow the series of arrows printed on the page. When teaching one child at a time, it's easy enough to help your child learn to form each letter properly by guiding him hand-over-hand, your hand over his. A simple, easy-to-remember, verbal prompt (such as "circle around, up and down") helps as the progression is made from hand-over-hand to writing the letter alone. The Writing Road to Reading, which we have used as a tool successfully and highly recommend, has an extensive section on teaching handwriting. It includes a very detailed verbal prompt system geared toward classroom teaching -- essentially allowing the teacher to guide a roomful of children in a "hand-over-hand" method.

For children in primary grades, it's best to use a writing paper that is made for younger children. It comes ruled in graded sizes, with a dotted line marking the mid-height. Choosing the largest spacing can have the detrimental effect of forcing the child to draw his letters rather than write them, so you may want to experiment a bit with the second or third grade ruled paper to find what works best for your child. Once your child can form the letters on his own, begin by writing on every other line, carefully forming the letters for your child to copy underneath. A larger ruled paper can be printed out here, or a smaller ruled paper can be printed out here.

Once your child has learned to write the alphabet, he can progress to writing his name, other words, and then simple sentences. Help him write titles, labels, or descriptions on his drawings and other artwork. Incorporate this idea with keeping a nature notebook, if you wish. Learning the written form of the letters goes hand-in-hand naturally with learning their sounds, and integrating copywork with phonics can make your lessons kinesthetic (writing), auditory (hearing the sounds), and visual (seeing the letters) all at the same time. Encourage your child to progress at a comfortably challenging pace, to move from tracing to copying underneath your writing, and finally to copying from a separate sheet of paper or from a chalkboard or whiteboard.

Making Progress

The length of time that your child can comfortably do copywork without tiring will be different from everyone else's child. Let your child lead the way, based on his age, temperament, capacity for seatwork, and facility with writing. Watch how long he can write neatly before his hand tires and his writing becomes more sloppy. See how long he can write before his eye tires or his mind wanders and he begins to make errors in copying. Listen to how long he can write without complaining! Follow your child's cues, and adjust the amount of time to devote to copywork accordingly. Do try to make copywork a daily practice, so that your child can develop good habits through continual repetition.

As your child gets older and his speed and comprehension improve, you can choose to have him write progressively longer passages. Select your passages for copywork carefully to provide the best examples of well-constructed language; by doing so, you will see improvement not only in penmanship, but in vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation as well.

Some interesting reading about the practice of handwriting, including handwriting through history and overcoming pitfalls, is located here. This extensive site also has links to other handwriting and calligraphy sites, and provides an opportunity to enter a unique handwriting contest, which may provide an external stimulus for reluctant writers.

Moving to Dictation

As spelling and punctuation improve, your child can move from copying to writing passages dictated to him. By taking dictation, a child moves from a concrete dependence on seeing the written word to an abstract ability to write what he hears read aloud.

Start out with brief sentences that are easier to punctuate; as long as your child can pick up the clues for punctuation, the sentence structure or syntax should be easily determined. It's okay to spell words out for him, or to write a list of new words on a slip of paper or on a chalkboard. You can review them before dictation commences, or allow your child to refer to the list as he writes. Especially in the early stages, give clues and help him to discover the main points of the passage, and to break the writing into paragraphs accordingly.

As your child's copywork and dictation progresses, you will learn through experience how to decrease the clues and increase the level of difficulty so that your child continues to be challenged. Use various forms of writing for copywork as well, so that he can practice with poetry as well as prose, and dialogue as well as essays. For each one, begin with copywork, pointing out the characteristics of composition and punctuation that are specific to the form, before moving on to dictation.

Eventually the entire writing process will become more natural and your child will be able to construct his own writing exercises, balancing both the mechanics of writing (which he has learned through copywork and dictation) and the art of composition (which he has been practicing through narration). As he moves into the dialectic stage and begins more a more studied approach to writing, he will be well-prepared. His tutors will have been, and should continue to be, the most excellent writers of the English language.

What Do We Write?

Young children love to copy simple Bible verses, biographical quotes, or seasonal poetry. Older children may enjoy copying speeches, quotations, essays, or passages from books they love. Copywork can come from many sources -- from literature that you are reading aloud, from your current history or nature books, or from various sources that you may run into by happenstance. We have collected many quotes from friends on mailing lists, pasted them in a wordpad file, and printed them out. By cutting them up into separate quotations and putting them into a basket, we have created our own eclectic copywork file that is fun and easy to use for those days when we want a taste of something different. Our older daughter is permitted to choose up to three slips of paper from the basket before deciding which one she would like to copy.

To determine the appropriate level of complexity in the copywork you choose, you may want to consider using your child's spelling and vocabulary words as a guide. Selecting copywork passages that include words just a bit more advanced than these will help to expand his knowledge of the English language without frustrating his ability to understand what he is writing. You can also choose passages from graded English texts such as McGuffey's Eclectic Readers, Primary Language Lessons, and Intermediate Language Lessons. Each of these offers other language lessons as well as passages for copywork and dictation. Another print source is The Harp and Laurel Wreath, by Laura Berquist, which is a contemporary collection of copywork passages for classical educators.

Another good choice for copywork is your child's own oral narrations. You can take dictation as he narrates if you can type quickly, or you can tape his narrations and transcribe them for him. By copying out his narrations, he will begin to bridge the gap between oral and written communication, and will learn how to apply the rules of grammar and mechanics to his own writing. At the same time, writing his oral narrations can help him learn to improve his speaking skills, because errors of speech will stand out more clearly when read from a written transcript. Here you can see an example of our 8-year-old's Van Gogh narration, which was formatted by mom as copywork for our daughter. The narration took only a few moments for our daughter to dictate, but it took her more than a week to copy her own words in written form. On the same page, you can see our 4-year-old's early copywork attempts. ;-)

By selecting wholesome works that exhibit the best in eloquence and style, you bring to your child the beauty of the English language, and help him to develop a love of reading, writing, and learning. In choosing works containing relevant content, you can also reinforce lessons from across the curriculum; any course of study can be the subject of copywork. Use copywork to reinforce Biblical values, catechism verses, and character-building lessons; pick historical documents and speeches to make the past come alive. Enliven foreign language study by including foreign literature as copywork. Help a child learn what scientists, artists, musicians, architects, and poets thought, and how they interpreted their times. Give children the diaries and writings of kings and commoners, so they can understand how they lived. All of these are wonderful fodder for copywork.

Christian Resources

The Blue Letter Bible, with devotionals by Oswald Chambers and Charles Spurgeon
The Westminster Shorter Catechism, with proof texts
The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed
CyberHymnal

Classic Children's Poetry

The Family Library of Poetry and Song, edited by William Cullen Bryant
A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Enchanted Tulips and Other Verses for Children
The Young Gardeners' Kalendar, by Dollie Radford (great for nature notebooks!)
The Real Mother Goose

Children's Primers

The New England Primer of 1777
A Book for Boys and Girls, or Temporal Things Spiritualized, by John Bunyan
The New McGuffey Fourth Reader

Classic Literature

The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Aesop's Fables

Quotable American History

The American Heritage Library
Washington's Rules of Civility
Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
Inaugural Speeches of the Presidents of the United States
Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech
Martin Luther King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail"
James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
A Chronology of US Historical Documents

Classic Quotations

The Quotable Ben Franklin: Almanack
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Quoteland.com

Copywork is for Everyone!

Since we started homeschooling, I've enjoyed keeping my own copybook, collecting quotes for a nature notebook and favorite passages about children, motherhood, family, faith, and books. Why not pick up your own pen and join your children in maintaining a copybook of your own; collect the wisdom of the ages and enjoy!