Yes, that's true. I thought I added that to my post. I guess I was thinking in terms of difficulty, with one review saying it's much easier and the other more difficult.

I think they would also have to be accredited, no?

My 5th grade son really enjoyed the Little Britches series by Ralph Moody. Warning: there's 8 of them and you might not want to listen to that many. I enjoyed the first couple and then let the kids listen to the rest on their own. Swallows and Amazons series was a hit here too, as were the "Hero's Guide" books. Mr. Lincoln's High-Tech War: How the North Used the Telegraph, Railroads, Surveillance Balloons, Ironclads, High-Powered Weapons, and More to Win the Civil War Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal- the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

I'm not sure this is new. A long time ago I found some rubrics for assessing writing before CCSS came out. I can't find the handy dandy table I found then, but I did find the 2007 document for assessing grade 4 writing for the old standardized tests. In it there are samples of what types of writing receive 1-4 points. Page 31 is the beginning of the 4-point essay examples. And keep in mind this was for grade 4, not 11 year-olds.

No he couldn't, because writing is his weakest area. He could probably do 2-3 good paragraphs with 3-4 sentences each. I will say I could have done it at that age. One I learned outlining in 5th grade and had a way to organize my thoughts and formalize a writing plan, writing became much easier for me. I'm tutoring a public-schooled 3rd grader and he told me his class is writing a 2-page essay over a few days. They are working on it only in class because the teacher decided the parents were helping too much and basically doing the research at the library and over-prompting the kids too much. I'll be interested to read his essay when he's done with it. He's pretty excited, I have to say.

Interesting, wapiti, thanks for posting, This sounds like a different test when compared to the reviewer in post #3, no?

Lots of good suggestions, so I'll add one not mentioned yet: Get video, put up on youtube, post a link to video on reddit, along with the police contact info. This is exactly up their alley. Many times wrongs have been righted when redactors started calling PDs about egregious behavior posted on there.

Weird. I live in a place where the mail carriers deliver on foot and most of the mailboxes are attached to the house or are mail slots. But my parents live in a place where the mail carrier comes by vehicle and if the mailbox is blocked, he brings the mail to the door. It's been that way for years.

I don't usually watch press conferences, but .

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

I was also astounded. DH is still not talking much about it. Although I suspected it was the content of the book that got to him, I was allowing for the idea he didn't want to accidentally spoil it for me. Now that I'm done, he still doesn't want to talk about it much, so there you go.

I think I'd be giving the access info to a different child or another relative and having them call me! Not sure I could wait.

I finished the book this morning and read the interview at the end of the book. I think he did capture most of the feeling of the land, although my personal opinion (and who am I to contradict Gaiman?) is that to capture the feel of a lost land one needs more botanical information. I would have loved to hear more about the native plants, not just the ones planted around the house and in the fields. But that's just me and my own preference. As soon as stories are set in England I want to hear about wild roses, heather, and peat. ;)

Thanks! I didn't know about this and I just checked our local bookstore and they're having author discussions, giveaways, etc. The kids have been fixated on Free Comic Book Day, which is also tomorrow. We'll have to make two stops, then. :)

I was thinking last night about a moment I don't want to mention because it's a spoiler, where I thought these parents really pay no attention to their kids at all. It made me wonder how much of it was "real", i.e. the greater independence of children in previous generations, how much was just so the story could even take place at all, and how much was about the perception of children of the "grown up world" and how far away it seems when you're a child.

I did too! But I wasn't going to say anything. Glad I'm not the only one. I've already cried several times reading this book. And decided that anyone who thinks their kids are "free range" doesn't know what they're talking about. :laugh: It's also my favorite of the series. I haven't read them in a few years but I've actually been thinking about it this year. It just feels like it's been too long.

I am also really enjoying it. It's excellent, but not what I expected. There's a certain quality about it I can't put my finger on. And right now it seems like a cross between Stephen King and Madeleine L'Engle with better writing.

There are two kinds of AGDs, the historic kind and the ones that look like the kids who buy them. Some of the latter have curly hair. You can see them here. There are a couple of dark dolls with curly hair, one long and one short. Just FYI, for the future.

The orchestra study was about sexism, not racism, but yes, orchestra have become more diverse when they hold blind auditions. Here's an article about it. Racism doesn't involve people just being poor or worse off. Positive stereotypes ("all the people from that country are rich") have a negative effect as well. I'm not saying you think that. but kids might perceive it as such if they're surrounded by it.

Please take care of yourself and rest. Caiden sounds like he's in good hands! :grouphug:

My first grader really enjoyed G is for Googol. I picked it up from the library but just now when I went to the Amazon page to link this I saw it says you can download an instructor's guide.I read it to her and went over some of the concepts. It gave her a broad overview of some of the fun things about math. DS really liked it as well, but he read it himself. I think kids like to see possibilities. Highly recommended.

Just for you:

:hurray: :hurray: :hurray:

This is DS. He struggles a lot with writing and doesn't enjoy it. His neuropsychologist said he needs more scaffolding than most and lacks ability in applying organization of large, amorphous tasks. I try to teach him explicitly how to approach different things because he struggles with figuring out how to tackle something he hasn't done before. A few things that made a difference here: He loves to talk and has a vivid imagination. I explained to him that writers are talkers who are willing to preserve their thoughts on paper. He liked this idea. He loves to read and we also talked quite a bit about how everything he reads has been written and about what kind of thought, research, or planning might have gone into a few of his favorite books. We're getting a lot of mileage out of Evan Moore's Daily Paragraph editing. He enjoys finding other people's mistakes and he's learned all of the editing marks, which is useful in the following context. We moved to WWS. Even though SWB said it's may be better to wait until 6th, we're still doing it with a lot of scaffolding. I think he'll need that regardless so I don't see any reason to wait. Plus we finished WWE and I didn't want to do anything different for a year. He's made really good progress and gained confidence with it. Because of the large leap from WWE to WWS and his documented problems, not only am I scaffolding him, I'm allowing 1.5-2 years to finish the book. (He also has documented processing speed issues.) SWB's instructions, paraphrased: "Replace the common nouns and adjectives with something other than what was used in the outline. Here are the original instructions for the writing." My instructions: "Take one sentence at a time. Using a colored pencil, underline all the common nouns and adjectives. Think of a replacement for each one, or if you cannot, use the thesaurus. Use your editing marks to delete the old word and add in the new one. Then rewrite the sentence. Move to the next one." These chunks keep his attention longer than if I just gave him the original instructions.

You know, I didn't even think about the fact that if they consider 2n to be the middle and add 1n and 3n to it, they'll still get the right answer. That is not a well-designed question!