Worried: TPS Said My Son is not Doing as Great as I Thought

[Mom2boys]

 

I would love personal recommendations of online classes that would teach the skills he is missing.  I wish we could work together on it, but it is not going to happen right now.   I want a class that really pushes him to learn quickly, and well, and encourages practice, practice and more practice.

 

Again, I thank everyone for their responses.  I have calmed down, but am still bummed.   :mellow:

 

Another option for an online English class is Blue Tent's Intro to Lit and Composition. http://teacherweb.com/USA/BlueTent/Thompson/apt34.aspx

 

This is what a friend's child is taking for 9th grade after using WTMA for middle school English. 

[Haiku]

I agree that your son doesn't need anything way out of the ordinary in terms of instruction. He has a good voice and seems to be able to construct a variety of sentence types. I also don't think his lack of ability (in this piece) to clearly define a thesis means he's horribly behind. I would avoid the TPS 7th grade class because I think (as I stated earlier) that he can get the instruction he needs in a 9th grade class.

 

My dd is a strong writer, and I just started working with her on writing a thesis near the end of 8th grade. I know that some people on TWTM boards expect what I consider to be a high level of writing ability at a young age; I think that some people's ideas of what 8th and 9th grade students should be able to do is unrealistic for a lot of kids. Middle and early high school is where kids are practicing writing skills; they don't need to be perfected at this age/stage.

 

I'm sorry if you felt you got a lot of negative feedback. I think your son is on the road to good writing and just needs some instruction and practice with writing to a thesis, and I think that's what 9th and 10th (and probably 11th) grades are for.

[bethben]

My son has been doing TPS for three years now.  From their site, TPS English classes can be considered Honors level work.  If you want your son to write well, I highly recommend their classes even if he places lower than you think he should.  If he gets 4 years of TPS writing instruction, he will be well prepared for college level writing. Just for your reference of what kind of work is required, I've enclosed two paragraphs from my son's English 2 class. There is a lot more to this paper, but I didn't want to bore people.  It was a persuasive paper on Animal Farm.  For this level of writing, he got an A-.

 

Animal Farm by George Orwell: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Pigs. 

 

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.† This quote by Lord Acton depicts the reign of of the pigs on Animal Farm. Animal Farm by George Orwell tells the intrepid story of a group of farm animals and their overwhelming desire to overthrow farmer Jones. While the animals revolution succeeded, they found themselves under the communistic rule of the pigs, the animals who led the revolution in the first place. Gradually the desire for an extravagant lifestyle overtakes the farm’s leader, a pig named Napoleon, and causes him to rule with an iron trotter. Soon all the animals, besides Napoleon’s friends, plummet into a pit of drudgery and despair.  Without a doubt, the subservient animals in Animal Farm can receive little blame for their misery and stupidity because of Napoleon’s alliances , manipulation, and the destruction of history and memories.

 

Unions between Napoleon and other animals allowed Napoleon to make life miserable for everyone. By recruiting and partnering with other animals, Napoleon received support and assistance for his communistic reign, objectives unachievable without the help of others. Squealer the pig, a valuable asset to Napoleon’s team, craftily deceived the other lowly animals. Through his compelling lies, Squealer created the false notion that the quality of life on the farm rose compared to when Mr. Jones possessed ownership of the farm. Life appeared miserable to the other animals, but Squealer persuaded them using rousing speeches about how much better life became after the rebellion. Although Squealer convinced the animals of their conditions in a superb way, the gullible animals believed Squealer’s lies too easily. Animal Farm states, “In any case he (Squealer) had no difficulty in proving to the other animals that were not in reality short of food… but in comparison with the days of Jones, the improvements were enormous. (112)†Unfortunately, the animals are partially to blame for their conditions, because of their gullible minds and inability to see the horrendous decline of Animal Farm’s living conditions. Napoleon’s alliances allowed him to reign supreme on Animal Farm and destroy the other animal’s way of life. 

 

[bethben]

Also, a side note - I have outsourced my 15 year old completely this year.  It's not that he doesn't listen or resists me as the bigger problem, it's just that if it's an outside class, he does much better and actually tries to do well.  With "mom" classes, he doesn't seem to care too much about doing well.  So, outsourcing has worked very well for him overall and I highly recommend it.

[JadeOrchidSong]

Bethben,

I so agree that dc do better with outsourced classes because my dc also take outside classes more seriously than ones taught by mom.

Ds11.6 had to puts lots of effort to his outsourced IEW Level A and Level B writing, too. He practiced consistently outlining for his paper and writing topic sentences and end sentences to reiterate the topic sentences as I saw your ds did in his second paragraph.

My friend, also a Chinese with an American husband, who inspired me to homeschool, highly recommended Potter's School writing classes. Both her son's took TPS classes and learned a lot.

I am very pleased and excited to have ds11.5 take the Narnia class in the fall. Ds13.8 will take Wilson Hill Academy 8th grade Fundamentals of Expositary Writing. I might transfer him to TPS for 9th grade next year after FOEW because the twice a week WHA classes may just take too much time and I would rather he just took writing once a week so that he can take other online classes with the saved time.

Edited July 25, 2016 by JadeOrchidSong