Planning the remainder of the logic stage - getting to rhetoric

[nobeatenpath]

Apologies in advance for what may be a long post.

Our son has had a rough few years - both with health issues (which are mainly sorted) and a disjointed education of school-homeschool-boarding school-homeschool. We are now in a position to take stock, plan and really take a big picture look at what we want his learning to achieve in the next few years.

He is very asynchronous both in his learning - some subjects he is way ahead of his peers in school, some subjects a bit behind - and in things like comphrehension and attitude - at times he 'gets' stuff some adults don't get, at other times he struggles with things like really basic organisation.

We have professional help for some of the 'issues' (his specialist describes it as 'he doesn't fit all the strict diagnostic criteria for Aspergers, but there is definitely something going on') so we are now getting in to the proper 'schooling' planning.

At the end of the next month we are moving again, this time to Istanbul. The posting is hopefully for three years, so that will take us up until just before Willem turns 13. I am hoping that at that stage we can move on to the 'Rhetoric' stage. So what do we need to achieve in the next three years to get there? I know that there are a lot of materials out there that give me an idea of what he would be expected to be doing in a US/UK/Australian school system, but I am more interested in the hive mind's experience and ideas of where he could be. Ultimately I would like a bit of an end-state to work back from, taking in to account our interests, travel plans, lifestyle, priorities etc.

 

Please give me your ideas on what a student ready to move on to the Rhetoric stage/Highschool looks like. What have they achieved? Where are their skills at? Feel free to be as prescriptive and specific or as vague and 'meta' as you like.

 

 

[nansk]

According to SWB's writing lectures, 8th graders should be able to prepare a 3-level outline from their reading and rewrite from that outline. From the Writing Without Fear handout:

 

History: Outlining sections, once per week; writing brief summaries from that outline
Science: Outline sections, write brief summaries
Reading: Half-page reports: summary, character analysis, criticism

 

This recent thread on the typical writing output of high schoolers may give you some idea.

Another thread about WTM writing in the middle grades.

Edited March 30, 2016 by nansk