I need advice on 5th grade writing...

[Blossom'sGirl]

I give my 5th grade ds the NYS tests each year just so he is comfortable with test taking and to see how he fares. I have linked to the test he is taking. It is the 2007 Social Studies test Booklet 2. He did Book 1 just fine but .... Booklet 2 requires an essay. He is just acting clueless. He asked me what an essay is and is saying he has no idea what to do.

 

He is not a stranger to writing. He has done narration and dictation and just learned note taking and outlining through Rod and Staff English.

 

Here is the test:

http://www.nysedregents.org/testing/scostei/socstudies5.html

 

Any advice? I was thinking of making him take a stab at it and then discuss what to do but his attitude is lousy.

[Rhondabee]

What he needs to do is plan a paragraph which highlights ways in which New Years celebrations are similar. This will be the first paragraph of his body. (Get info from the Venn Diagrams)

 

Then, he needs to plan a paragraph showing ways in which New Years celebration differ. This will be the second paragraph of the body. This could probably be expanded to more than one paragraph.

 

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Alternately, he could write 3 paragraphs explaining the similarities and differences from 3 different Venn Diagrams. I didn't look at the whole test - maybe that's what they're looking for?

*****

 

He needs to go back and be sure that he's included information from at least 3 documents.

 

Then, he needs to write a brief introduction, and his conclusion. The introduction should be creative, if possible. A nice conclusion would restate some of the differences, and end by highlighting similarity (we're all the same, in spite of our differences). Neither one needs to be very long - one or two sentences would suffice, I would think.

 

If he can't do that on his own, he will learn a lot if you do the work with him. (I know it was meant to be a test, but...)

 

fwiw, I'm fairly certain my 5th grader would balk at this assignment right now as well. Maybe by the end of the year, when he's had some history assignments combining info from more than one source, it would be a more reasonable assignment for him (my son - not yours!). But, we had to take a break due to surgury, and will get to combining notes from more than one source between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Anyway, I just wanted to encourage you - I think that's really a fairly difficult assignment!

[Blossom'sGirl]

After many hours of blood, sweat, and tears yesterday, he finally wrote something. We gave him some pointers for outlining it first and he eventually produced an OK paper. We then read through the scoring essay samples and discussed the positives and negatives for each. To be honest, what they wanted made a lot more sense after I read the other essays.

 

For me it is not as much about the test but at least being able to keep up with his peers in the testing area. He just puddles when asked to write anything like that. I am going to make it a point to have him work on this type of writing together until he is fairly confident on how to at least tackle it.

 

Thanks again!