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feedback on this please


caedmyn
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I think this is a little more representative of my 7th grade DD's actual writing abilities than my previous post here, so I'm looking for feedback on it.  This is a written narration that she wrote last year about a chapter of Animal Farm.  It could have used a little more editing (I haven't been making her correct every single thing because she gets overwhelmed so I tried to increase the expectations over time) but I don't think it's terrible.  She generally tries to keep any writing assignment as short as possible so there's not a whole lot of detail.  She's quite a bit more detailed in oral narrations.

Mollie was acting strange.  She complained about aches and pains, but her appetite was excellent.  Then one of the pigs thought he saw her letting a person pet her.  She denied it though.

The next day, however, she disappeared and was seen by some pigeons happily living with some humans.  In her bedding they discovered some sugar and ribbons she had hidden there.  Sadly, Molly had missed her human life greatly, and she was never seen again.

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This is tough to give a lot of feedback on, just because it's so short. I assume the assignment was just "What happened to Mollie in Animal Farm?" or something along those lines? Or to give a narration about Mollie?

Well, first and foremost, she clearly understood the basics of the narrative and conveyed them pretty clearly here. That's big and really good.

Her sentences feel kind of stilted. They're not wrong per se, but she might try reading her work aloud and seeing how it sounds. "She denied it though," is a good example of where her words really lack any sort of flow and feel choppy. She also uses a lot of passive voice. It clearly doesn't occur to her to really explain what she's talking about. I mean, a really good answer or narration would start by telling us that Mollie was a horse, at the very least. I've worked with a lot of struggling writers and this sort of thing is one element that they have in common - where they don't quite connect things or define things. If this were a piece of writing I received from my boys (and it's not so far off from short answer questions my boys might have given in 7th grade) then my first thoughts wouldn't be the writing per se, but the analysis. Like, why is it "sad" she missed the humans? So she was never seen again, but what do you think happened to her? What does any of this say? I know the purpose of narration is to just summarize, but I wonder if getting more thinking is a way to elicit more from her in general.

This is better writing than the first assignment you posted. However, if this is a reflection of her writing stamina as a 7th grader, then I think you've still got cause for concern just based on that. Can she write anything longer? Like, if this was part of a larger assignment where she talked about lots of different characters, then that's one thing. If this and the other thing you posted are the longest pieces she's written, then she needs to up her stamina. She just has to learn to get more words on the page.

Having read your other thread, I'm not totally sure where you go from here. I really think you just need to work with her. She's probably going to be fine with a little instruction. But she has to get that instruction.

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First, as Farrar mentioned, her wording is stilted. The repeated use of “some” in particular jumped out at me.

Second, her writing assumes that the reader is familiar with the characters she is referencing and will understand the importance of the plot points she highlights. Having last read Animal Farm over a decade ago, I had no idea what type of animal Molly was and was unsure why the things she mentioned were significant.

Whenever I receive this sort of narration from my son, I encourage him to expand upon his thoughts by asking wh- questions: Why is Mollie allowing herself to be petted a significant and, presumably, shameful thing? Who found the hidden items in her bedding, and why were they looking through her things? How long had she been missing before the pigeons found her? 

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Have you read through examples people have posted on this forum? Perhaps seeing the expectations of others will help you clarify age appropriate output for middle school writing?

Here are just a few you might want to look through. Read Farrar's feedback in those links. They provide insight into what students should be working toward.

https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/667520-history-essay-by-dd12-7th-grade/

https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/646681-in-desperate-need-of-opinions-on-grade-8-expository-essay/

https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/536126-4th-grade-essay-ready-for-wws-soon/

 

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She does tend to assume her reader knows what she's talking about.  We've had several talks about the need to identify who you are talking about before using a pronoun.  

As for the length, that may be related to the dyslexia.  I have read that the writing process is very difficult for dyslexics.  Maybe I need to have her try a speech-to-text program and see if that helps.  I know she often spends quite a bit of time trying to figure out how she can write as little as possible.

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7 hours ago, caedmyn said:

She does tend to assume her reader knows what she's talking about.  We've had several talks about the need to identify who you are talking about before using a pronoun.  

As for the length, that may be related to the dyslexia.  I have read that the writing process is very difficult for dyslexics.  Maybe I need to have her try a speech-to-text program and see if that helps.  I know she often spends quite a bit of time trying to figure out how she can write as little as possible.

Caedmyn, I have a large family with kids of varying abilities. 3 of them are dyslexic and one is autistic who had and still has major life hurdles. Our autistic ds took and still takes more of my energy than all of my other children combined even though he is now an adult. When our oldest was 12, our scenario was 12 yr old dyslexic, 10 yr old autistic with severe behavioral issues that only got worse as he hit puberty, 8 yr old very avg distractable student, 6 yr old severe dyslexic (extremely severe difficulties in learning to read), 3 yr old, and a new born.

So when I am writing my responses on your other thread, I am not clueless as to what it is like to have to manage a large family with kids with LDs and special needs.  I do understand. I am also being very pointed in my responses bc your Dd is not little. She is in 7th grade. This is the point where education starts to build on all those foundational skills that they needed to master when they were younger. Now is the time where remediation can make a difference in her lifelong outcomes and opportunities. As she gets older, falling behind will start to snowball at a much more accelerated rate bc all those skills that are missing start to get compounded bc the new ones that required the foundation just aren't there. Yes, she can always go through remedial education when she is older (but that can also lead to a lot of resentment and difficulties with parent/adult children relationships.  I have unfortunately witnessed that outcome in my extended family where homeschooled now-adult children resent their mother and blame her for not providing an appropriate education. That family dynamic is hard to imagine when your oldest is 12, but I have witnessed immense pain and strain in that family.) Your Dd will be better served if she receives the appropriate interventions now so that she can make appropriate progress forward as she gets older.

My current 7th grader, also dyslexic, is a very avg student who struggles academically. Getting her to write on par with what she is actually capable of doing takes immense effort. It isn't just putting the words on paper. She struggles with knowing what to include and what to eliminate. She struggles with organizing her thoughts logically. She struggles with varied sentence structures. Even if she used speech-to-text software, it wouldn't eliminate the need for me to directly work with her on what constitutes good writing.  She requires direct one-on-one teaching at the various stages in the writing process. There is no simple hand-it-to-the-student solution, especially dyslexic children. Speech-to-text software is a tool. Tools still require skills to produce good results.

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54 minutes ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

 

My current 7th grader, also dyslexic, is a very avg student who struggles academically. Getting her to write on par with what she is actually capable of doing takes immense effort. It isn't just putting the words on paper. She struggles with knowing what to include and what to eliminate. She struggles with organizing her thoughts logically. She struggles with varied sentence structures. Even if she used speech-to-text software, it wouldn't eliminate the need for me to directly work with her on what constitutes good writing.  She requires direct one-on-one teaching at the various stages in the writing process. There is no simple hand-it-to-the-student solution, especially dyslexic children. Speech-to-text software is a tool. Tools still require skills to produce good results.

I understand that speech-to-text would not be a cure-all.  I do think it would at least show what she is actually capable of, and allow her to work on improving her writing without fighting the getting-words-on-paper process itself.  I do plan to work with her.  And I have worked with her writing in the past, but I've followed a more Charlotte-Mason approach to teaching writing and perhaps that hasn't been enough for her.  Also, I'm a more natural writer but didn't have much writing instruction myself (A.C.E. school), so while I recognize good vs poor writing, I don't know that I have the words to analyze everything that's wrong with poor writing.  I think having a scripted, incremental program will help me there.

She has had remediation for reading and spelling.  I have ordered IEW, the writing program recommended by the author of the dyslexia reading program we used.  We'll give that a go for a few months and then I'll post another paper of hers for feedback.  I hope IEW's what she needs because I don't even know where to go if it's not.  

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Caedmyn, I was just coming on to recommend IEW to you.  For my non-natural writers, it has been a tremendous aid.  It begins with building strong sentences, but intermixed with paragraphs.  So, the student is writing sentences, but practicing what a paragraph looks like. I know some folks don't like it, but, for the child who needs it, it can be a miracle.  (My student who needed and used it the most went on to get a 5 on an English AP and is thriving in a humanity honors program in college, so it definitely can "get the job done.")

My biggest recommendation though is (if you are doing the video course) to make the time to watch the videos with her (usually 10-30 minutes once every other week.)  Then you will know what she has been taught and can help her.  I still watch them even with my fourth child.  I can often grade work, fold laundry and field occasional questions from other children at the same time.

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