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Thoughts on my 11 year old’s assignment


hands-on-mama
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I agree with square_25.  From my adult perspective, I assume they wanted a topic sentence along the lines of "I really like to read."  Then your three points of support would be books, stories, and poems that you like to read.  But I am not surprised that a child would not be able to intuitively figure out what they were looking for. 

I also think asking for a favorite "story" is a tall order for a kid.  I think many kids think of "story" as a synonym for plot ie the book Peter Pan tells the story of a boy who doesn't want to grow up.  It might have been easier if they asked for a favorite fairy tale or fable.  Even then, though, the line is fuzzy; Cinderella is clearly a fairy tale and could be a "story" found in an anthology, but it is also the title of any number of picture books.

As for grammar, it is pretty rough.  Did your daughter read the paragraph aloud after she wrote it?  That has always been one of the things that really helps me clean up my writing.  Personally, if the goal is proper formatting of titles, then I would move on because I think it is a poorly worded assignment to begin with.  OTOH, if part of the goal is strong paragraph writing, then I would find a way to work on it far more incrementally.  I love The Writing Revolution which spends a lot of time, even with older kids, working on writing strong sentences.  My son is also working through Put That in Writing level 1 which is taking him step by step through writing strong, interesting, well-organized paragraphs.

Wendy

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2 hours ago, square_25 said:

You know, it's kind of a weird assignment... it seems like however you answered that, it would sound quite disjointed, since a single paragraph about a book, a story, and a poem is bound to sound mushed together! 

I'd definitely work on grammar, writing in a natural voice and writing in complete sentences, looking at this sample. Trying to write in an "interesting" way almost inevitably backfires... 

I agree with you. We've worked on grammar every single year. It's just not seeming to translate into her own writing.  I agree with thinking the assignment in general is silly. I'm not sure what the best approach is for her. 😕 Writing is our nemesis.

 

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19 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

I agree with square_25.  From my adult perspective, I assume they wanted a topic sentence along the lines of "I really like to read."  Then your three points of support would be books, stories, and poems that you like to read.  But I am not surprised that a child would not be able to intuitively figure out what they were looking for. 

I also think asking for a favorite "story" is a tall order for a kid.  I think many kids think of "story" as a synonym for plot ie the book Peter Pan tells the story of a boy who doesn't want to grow up.  It might have been easier if they asked for a favorite fairy tale or fable.  Even then, though, the line is fuzzy; Cinderella is clearly a fairy tale and could be a "story" found in an anthology, but it is also the title of any number of picture books.

As for grammar, it is pretty rough.  Did your daughter read the paragraph aloud after she wrote it?  That has always been one of the things that really helps me clean up my writing.  Personally, if the goal is proper formatting of titles, then I would move on because I think it is a poorly worded assignment to begin with.  OTOH, if part of the goal is strong paragraph writing, then I would find a way to work on it far more incrementally.  I love The Writing Revolution which spends a lot of time, even with older kids, working on writing strong sentences.  My son is also working through Put That in Writing level 1 which is taking him step by step through writing strong, interesting, well-organized paragraphs.

Wendy

 

I'll look at these options. I'm not sure what to do for her honestly. At this point in the curriculum, she's hasn't reached the composition point really. She is still in the section going over grammar. EIW goes through grammar first and then composition during the last half or third of the book. This assignment was focused on underlining and using quotations marks for books/stories.

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