7th Grade Reluctant Writer

[BoyMom2]

Could I please get some outside opinions?

DS thinks writing is the worst thing he has to do for school, and it doesn't matter if it's answering short answer questions or an actual writing assignment. We're using Jump In this year, which has resulted in a tad bit less complaining and gnashing of teeth, but it's still his least favorite thing to do and no fun for either of us. I've tried to take baby steps with him over the last few years, breaking things down, but I'm finding it hard to know where he's at skill wise as we prepare for 8th grade in the Fall. His older brother has always had an easier time writing, and was easily writing longer, well balanced papers when he was in 7th. I don't want to compare them, but it makes it hard to adequately judge where youngest DS is in the scope of 7th grade peers. 

The attached assignment was a 5 paragraph report on the topic of his choice, and was required to be between 400 & 500 words.

I was looking at the 8 week Lantern English writing courses as a possibility for next year, but I'm not certain which would be the best to start with. I think it would help him to expect feedback from someone other than me.

 

Five Paragraph Report.docx

[caffeineandbooks]

I think this looks great.  It's well structured and thought out, avoids repetitive words and phrases, and the contrast between Ford and Benz is a nice way to add interest to the topic.  The introduction and conclusion are consistent with one another and with the paper, but take slightly different angles so that they don't bore the audience.  Spelling and grammar are good, too.

My 7th grade "budding engineer" has used a little of Jump In (which I think is a great program) but disliked it.  He can outline or summarise anything you like, but abhors any kind of creative writing.  We're partway through Writing With Skill 2 at the moment and I would say he's producing work of a similar quality to the sample you linked.  Comparing the two programs, I would say Jump In allows more choice of topic and encourages more creativity, whereas WWS is strictly academic writing.  There are no newspaper articles or blog posts or personal opinion pieces, but there is scaffolded note taking, referencing, and clear assignments on (what I consider) interesting topics from history, science and literature.  It looks like Jump In is working well for you, but if you're both hating it, it's not too late to look at WWS as a possible alternative.

[BoyMom2]

21 hours ago, caffeineandbooks said:

I think this looks great.  It's well structured and thought out, avoids repetitive words and phrases, and the contrast between Ford and Benz is a nice way to add interest to the topic.  The introduction and conclusion are consistent with one another and with the paper, but take slightly different angles so that they don't bore the audience.  Spelling and grammar are good, too.

Thank you very much for the feedback! I thought it was interesting as well, but I didn't want to be looking at it only through "mom eyes." He's worked on varied sentence structure and interesting writing on a sentence level quite a bit, and I do think that is being incorporated into this report, so that's a big positive. However, it was like pulling teeth to get a report of 5 paragraphs completed. He required a lot of scaffolding and assistance, both in encouraging him to come up with ideas and organizing his ideas into a outline. The entire process took quite a bit longer than planned for in the book. The planning, researching, and writing time all included a great deal of complaining and saying that he didn't know what to do and just hates writing. Ugh!

 

21 hours ago, caffeineandbooks said:

My 7th grade "budding engineer" has used a little of Jump In (which I think is a great program) but disliked it.  He can outline or summarise anything you like, but abhors any kind of creative writing.  We're partway through Writing With Skill 2 at the moment and I would say he's producing work of a similar quality to the sample you linked.  Comparing the two programs, I would say Jump In allows more choice of topic and encourages more creativity, whereas WWS is strictly academic writing.  There are no newspaper articles or blog posts or personal opinion pieces, but there is scaffolded note taking, referencing, and clear assignments on (what I consider) interesting topics from history, science and literature.  It looks like Jump In is working well for you, but if you're both hating it, it's not too late to look at WWS as a possible alternative.

I have never looked into Writing With Skill, but I will take a look. Thank you for the recommendation!