How can I encourage an attiutude of seeking excellence in work?

[rose]

I have a few children that really struggle to care about doing a good job on their school work. My 12 year old son in particular races through his work to move onto something more stimulating. His one and only goal is to get it done to a level that I will let him move on to something else. He acts like this with his chores too. I'm sure that this is normal for a lot of children but it seems to me that homeschooling makes this a little worse because a teacher's failing mark is worse than a mothers' and wondering if your peers will look down on you for a failing mark also discourages this.

This can be particularly obvious with his writing. This boy oozes creativity from every pore. He writes stories for fun although they're horribly written because he just has to get the story out without pausing to think about grammar or spelling. He has stuff to say but forcing him to slow down and create a logical train of thought and then actually write it out in an engaging manner is like torture. Lately I've just been having him write letters about our life to the grand parents because at least that has the hope of a reply attached to it. But still it comes out something like this:

Quote

Dear Grandpa,

How are you. I am fine. Today some neighbours stopped by. They were annoying. I hope that they don't come tomorrow.

Baby Danny is sick. We were all sick last week. I don't like being sick. Do you? Hahaha!

Love x

His math suffers too but a little less so. At least with math it's a little easier to hold him accountable.

Any thought?

[8filltheheart]

How would he react to creating a magazine?  When I had a few kids around that age and younger, we created a family magazine.  They wrote stories, wrote about animals/flowers/insects in our local habitat, articles about things that they found interesting (I can remember specifically things like planets, hurricanes, tornadoes, dinosaurs, our sick dog, etc.)   You can mail them or they can create them as ezines.  

Part of it is the age.  My 13 yod is a gifted violinist.  She is currently preparing to audition for All State Orchestra.  The pieces are extremely difficult.  She was getting testy with me about practicing.  I made sure it was abundantly clear that auditioning had absolutely nothing to do with me.  It is all about her.  She has talked about future goals and things she wants to achieve.  I presented her with a series of questions that I wanted her to contemplate, basically summed up as which way leads to the possibility of achieving her desires---the easy way or the hard way.  Later that day, she practiced for 3 hrs and has been serious about her practices since.  

It is all so much easier if the impetus comes internally from them.  I hope you find a way to encourage him.  It makes everything about homeschooling and parenting easier.

[rose]

50 minutes ago, 8filltheheart said:

How would he react to creating a magazine?  When I had a few kids around that age and younger, we created a family magazine.  They wrote stories, wrote about animals/flowers/insects in our local habitat, articles about things that they found interesting (I can remember specifically things like planets, hurricanes, tornadoes, dinosaurs, our sick dog, etc.)   You can mail them or they can create them as ezines.  

Part of it is the age.  My 13 yod is a gifted violinist.  She is currently preparing to audition for All State Orchestra.  The pieces are extremely difficult.  She was getting testy with me about practicing.  I made sure it was abundantly clear that auditioning had absolutely nothing to do with me.  It is all about her.  She has talked about future goals and things she wants to achieve.  I presented her with a series of questions that I wanted her to contemplate, basically summed up as which way leads to the possibility of achieving her desires---the easy way or the hard way.  Later that day, she practiced for 3 hrs and has been serious about her practices since.  

It is all so much easier if the impetus comes internally from them.  I hope you find a way to encourage him.  It makes everything about homeschooling and parenting easier.

That's some good food for thought. I'll run the ezine idea by him. I'll have to think about how I might help him find some internal motivation. Writing seems so difficult because as a homeschooler he knows full well that he could communicate any information with me verbally much more easily than through writing. I'm imagine we'll figure this out. Thank you fellow "mother of many!"

[HomeAgain]

At this age that looks fine for notes.  I'd have him cut it apart and work on it a little bit at a time for the rest of the week. 
Monday: first round of "notes"
Tuesday: Paragraph about the neighbors.  Make a topic sentence, give 3 things you want to say/describe, and wrap it up with an 'effect' sentence (why does it matter?)
Wednesday: Paragraph about being sick.  What happened?  What was notable?  Give three things you want to say, wrap it up.
Thursday: Paragraph asking about the grandparents.  What has been going on in their lives? What do you want to know more about?
Friday: write full letter, send it off.

 

I think at this age it's worth it to stick through the grumbles and expect clear thought.  Do one piece weekly, but make it something that he's going back to again and again in order to learn how to edit and expand what he is trying to say.

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Edited September 1 by kathyl

[73349]

Make sure it doesn't seem like busywork. I was in 7th grade before I ever learned anything from doing a school assignment, and in most subjects, not even then... The lesson kids get from that is there's no point in working really hard just to check a box and move on; you might as well do the minimum, check the box and move on. For math, I would allow two of the easy questions and half or so of the hard questions from the page, if done correctly with work shown as appropriate, to count for the whole assignment. If he can do those well, he has learned the lesson.

My non-writer is getting some results this year with Structure and Style for Students from IEW. Anything too open-ended was an uphill battle.

[lewelma]

You could also attack it totally differently. At that age if he is as creative as you say, writing would just be a miserable chore because he knows what he write is not very good. Have him do speech-to-text to get a real story out of him with a real story flow. Show him that he has something to say, something he is proud of. He may not want to edit at first. But you could have him read it out loud to you, and ask him to make one change to the plot arrangement, or just augment one description. For the next story, ask him to make 2 changes. etc. Don't go after grammar and punctuation until you have some buy in to the writing process. You won't get far if he doesn't own it. Good luck!

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

I agree with @lewelma’s suggestion.
 

Each year DS10 participates in NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program, where he is guided through creating setting / characters / plot, then writes a story start to finish. They make a big deal about shutting down your “internal editor / critic” & just getting words on paper for one month.

 Once he’s done, we take our time turning it into a polished product by fixing spelling & grammatical errors, breaking it into paragraphs, discussing organizational conventions, etc. There’s ample buy-in because it’s HIS work. At the end of this NaNoWriMo season, I plan to take all of his stories from PK-5th & “publish” them into an actual paperback that he can gift to friends & family. 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Shoes+Ships+SealingWax