6th Grade Writing- 22 pages!

[Grace]

I overheard a conversation yesterday that has me wondering....

 

A mom was saying her 6th grader just turned in her term paper that was 22 pages long! YIKES!!! :eek: Should this be how much a 6th grader writes?

 

I was planning on starting my 5th graders on a one-page report. Am I behind or should I stop ease-dropping. ;)

 

How much is your 6th grader writing?

[Blue Hen]

First, IMO, 22 page report from a 6th grader is out of line. Way too much. I thought of making a joke here, but I'm dead serious, No WAY. I wouldn't require my 10th grader to do a 20+ page report.

 

My 6th grader writes:

3, one page papers for Classical Composition per week

1, one page topical paper for History per week

1, one page topical paper for either science of literature per week.

 

The approach I'm using is to write often, but not that lengthy of a report.

 

My 10th grader will write a research paper, his first, this spring. It is to be about 10 pages in length. 22 pages, I'm still shaking my head.

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

after the class read aloud "My Side of the Mountain"....

 

it consisted of:

 

A mock up of the novel's cover on poster board AND a game based on the novel.

 

This is in a highly-rated middle school. I'm sure there are students choosing to do more traditional assignments, but now days they give them options.

 

:confused:

[Quiver0f10]

Yes, but how well written was it? I'd rather my kids write 2 well done pages than 22 with grammar and spelling errors and a lot of fluff rather than decent content.

[Beth in Central TX]

The writing that my 6th grader turns in is usually a page long. My 5th grader is working up to a page, but right now it's usually 1/2 to 3/4 of a page. Both boys are very verbal, but surprisingly stingy when it comes to putting words on a page.

 

For fun, my 6th grader is writing his own book, but even that's not 22 pages yet. He uses a lot of dialogue to take up space.

[Susan Wise Bauer]

I'm guessing that a 22-page paper from a sixth grader included a LOT of text from the book, or else paraphrased from a website.

 

Or else the kid is a genius.

 

Either way, your kid shouldn't have to compete. :-)

[WTMindy]

I'm guessing that a 22-page paper from a sixth grader included a LOT of text from the book, or else paraphrased from a website.

 

Or else the kid is a genius.

 

Either way, your kid shouldn't have to compete. :-)

That was my first thought, too.

[Guest Lorna]

My goodness, most of my friends at university would have been in shock if they had to turn in a paper this length. It would be considered 'waffle' at this length anyway at degree level.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

Really?

 

My 2nd grader wrote a story that was 10 pages long. (she chose too, I didnt require her to do it. She's currently writing her second 'book')

 

My 5th grader is working on a story that is 10 pages long *on the computer* (printed pages!)

 

I remember in grade 10, we were required to hand in 40 pages and more book reports, in our SECOND language, TYPED (no computer back then, it was the old typewriting machine). By grade 6, our *dictations* were 2 pages long.

 

I can easily see a report take 22 pages, especially for a term paper. The child was probably required to write a few pages per week, on a different approach to the topic. That's what they did for us. If it was a book report, we would be asked to write one page on a character and how that character's past influenced his behaviour in the story. The following week, another character and how his flaws influenced the story. Then, following week, talk about the setting, etc... If you're slightly 'verbal', you write two pages instead of one, and at the end of the term, you have more than 20 pages.

[jmgconner]

I like Cleo's approach to the term paper, but as a flat out assignment, it's too much for a 6th grader.

[OH_Homeschooler]

Really?

 

My 2nd grader wrote a story that was 10 pages long. (she chose too, I didnt require her to do it. She's currently writing her second 'book')

 

My 5th grader is working on a story that is 10 pages long *on the computer* (printed pages!)

 

 

 

Yeah, this is what I'm thinking...it could be just that the kids wanted to write that much!

[Carol in Cal.]

We each had to research a South American or Central American country other than Mexico, and cover geography, history, indigenous cultures, and anything else that we could throw in.

 

It required a bibliography, properly done, a title page, a table of contents, and that no more than 3 of the 10 pages be comprised of illustrations or drawings. (IIRC, the Bib, title, and TOC pages didn't count toward the 10 pages.)

 

Anyway, I turned in a 50 page report. Why? Mostly because I got chicken pox and mumps, and so I had lots more time to work on this while stuck at home. Partly because this was the only thing comparable to a unit study that I had ever done, and I got very interested in it. To this day I 'notice' news about Peru and tend to ignore Chile, Bolivia, and other South American countries because of the interest born from this experience.

 

But were these 50 pages of typed info? By no means! I bought old National Geographic magazines and cut out pictures and labelled them. I got some Peruvian stamps and made up a page of those. I traced a famous building stone from a picture book, and commented on it. (I am SO old; this was before copiers were really all that common.) I drew the flag and wrote about what it symbolized. I drew one or two maps and labelled them. I ended up with more pages without text than with text. Most of my text was in pretty much self-contained 'articles' that I wrote, like "The Mochicas" or "History" or "Geography."

 

Maybe the original was not 22 pages of writing.

 

But it is this experience and one other one that makes me assign longer research projects to DD from time to time, and has made me move in the direction of notebooking and lapbooking now that she is old enough to do the books herself. I know that this slows down our race through history, but the retention and actual interest is so high that I think it is worth it.