Jean in Newcastle Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 How many short (1 -2 page essays) would you assign in a week for a 10th grader? I'm just wondering if I need to give some extra time. The essays require some research. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 None. We don't write that many short essays, but fewer longer papers a few times per semester. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanetC Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Ditto regentrude -- we're at about 1 paper every 3 to 4 weeks. More than half of those require no research outside of textbooks on hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueenCat Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 With my younger one, one almost every week in history & English. We did longer papers with the older one, only to discover that in his first two years of college, shorter papers with quick due dates were the norm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 (edited) I was a perfectionist while in college when it came to writing papers which means it took me two weeks to write the "perfect" introductory paragraph and then I had to race to write the rest of the paper before the deadline. My experience shaped my decision to have my kids write more shorter papers. I want the ability to write an essay to almost be an automatic reflex. But that is my goal. Jean, how much time are you able to give to creating assignments and grading them? If I remember right, your son is definitely not a reluctant or unskilled writer, so you have a lot of flexibility. Edited November 7, 2012 by swimmermom3 Obviously not a perfectionist now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted November 7, 2012 Author Share Posted November 7, 2012 I was a perfectionist while in college when it came to writing papers which means it took me two weeks to wrote the "perfect" introductory paragraph and then I had to race to write the rest of the paper before the deadline. My experience shaped my decision to have my kids write more shorter papers. I want the ability to write an essay to almost be an automatic reflex. But that is my goal. Jean, how much time are you able to give to creating assignments and grading them? If I remember right, your son is definitely not a reluctant or unskilled writer, so you have a lot of flexibility. In this case, I didn't create the assignments. They are part of Memoria Press's Traditional Logic 2. This week he was supposed to write a 1 - 2 page case analysis of an article from the newspaper outlining the syllogistic argument contained in it and it's validity. He was also supposed to write a 1 -2 page analysis of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" argument and it's validity. And he was supposed to write a 1 - 2 page biography of Descartes. That seemed like too much to me but I wasn't sure if I was being a softy. I told him to just read about Descartes but to not write the biography on him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 In this case, I didn't create the assignments. They are part of Memoria Press's Traditional Logic 2. This week he was supposed to write a 1 - 2 page case analysis of an article from the newspaper outlining the syllogistic argument contained in it and it's validity. He was also supposed to write a 1 -2 page analysis of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" argument and it's validity. And he was supposed to write a 1 - 2 page biography of Descartes. That seemed like too much to me but I wasn't sure if I was being a softy. I told him to just read about Descartes but to not write the biography on him. If that is the only writing he is doing this week, those two short papers would be a perfectly reasonable expectation. If there was significant cross-over in the two assignments, I would assign one longer paper, but I don't know enough about logic to make that assessment here. :tongue_smilie: I would consider the biography paper to be busy work at this stage and easily expendable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teachermom2834 Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 We're doing Kolbe and ds typically has three 1-2 page papers every week- one each in theology, history, and literature. We've been keeping up with it pretty well. Some weeks I'll skip one of the papers depending on time constraints or if I don't care for the assigment. I'm just now getting comfortable with not doing every single assignment. Three papers a week all year is alot. I do want him to be comfortable with that type of writing and able to knock them out pretty easily before college. I'm actually going to tweak that next semester and have him skip a few weeks of the short papers to get practice writing a longer one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candid Posted November 8, 2012 Share Posted November 8, 2012 SWB's A Plan for Teaching Writing talk for Rhetoric suggests two one page papers per week. I am not a perfectionist so this doesn't bug me in the least. I think it might be useful to college prep where especially in a freshmen English class they maybe writing many short papers. Obviously that depends on the school. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sisyphus Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 Ds writes 1-2 a week, along with short summaries (expository writing) of current events reading, and sometimes science writing. I always assign a history paper- either document based or just a topic given. English is iew windows to the world and online creative writing, but that isn't really much writing, so he is reading from selected books I just think he should read (how is that for planning?:lol:) and I will give him topics based off those, ie setting in Scarlet Letter or whatever. As we get more into literary analysis, I hope to not have to give such implicit instructions, but that's what he is learning right now so that is to be expected. Ds is a good, but not great writer who struggles with making connections and analysis, so that is the focus of this year- to teach this skill. He has some issues that make this kind of thing very hard for him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted November 9, 2012 Author Share Posted November 9, 2012 It is Thursday. He's still writing his first paper. In his defense, he had mostly written the first paper and then forgot to save it on the computer and then had to rewrite it but he's being way too anal about this. It does not have to be a work of art. His second paper is due tomorrow. I feel like there is going to be a meltdown in his near future. . . I wish I felt more sympathetic but I'm afraid that I don't. Just write the darn thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candid Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 It is Thursday. He's still writing his first paper. In his defense, he had mostly written the first paper and then forgot to save it on the computer and then had to rewrite it but he's being way too anal about this. It does not have to be a work of art. His second paper is due tomorrow. I feel like there is going to be a meltdown in his near future. . . I wish I felt more sympathetic but I'm afraid that I don't. Just write the darn thing! Maybe you should start him at one per week and work up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted November 9, 2012 Author Share Posted November 9, 2012 Maybe you should start him at one per week and work up? I did, or I should say the book did. It assigned 1 paper for last week and then 3 for this one. I lowered it to 2 for this week. He finally handed his first paper in last night. I think if he hadn't lost his first attempt it wouldn't have been a problem. But for some odd reason he seemed stuck on getting it written the second time. Because of this struggle, I'm on the fence on whether I'll require him to write the second one today (and probably over the weekend) or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bugs Posted November 9, 2012 Share Posted November 9, 2012 My 9th grader is working on the same subject. He is also writing short papers for CW: Cheria. I am just assigning one of those Logic papers a week. Next week he can choose between the weekly alaysis assignment or the case study. I let him write 1 -2 pages for either (IMHO I think it's overkill to write a biography (esp. "2 -3" pages) for Logic class.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted November 9, 2012 Author Share Posted November 9, 2012 Now that he knows what I want, he was able to knock the second one out in an hour. So we're good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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