13 yo son's essay. Help me to help him improve his writing.

[rose]

I've been using TGATB level 6 with some amendments. Can someone here give me some feedback on how to help my son improveon an essay about Australian wildlife. There are so many things to address her I don't know where to start. Factual issues are easy enough to deal with. Obviously grammar and punctuation are issues. I can address these in a straightforward manner. The tone of the whole thing just seems so juvenile but he is juvenile! Should I even address that? How can I tell him to sound more serious and yet try to engage his readers and be interesting? He's pretty sensitive. Thoughts?

—————

Introduction a for “Wildlife Of Australia”.

    Australia has the best and craziest and exiting fauna ever. Wow, just read on. Australia is simply crazy it has between 200,000 to 300,000 animals. Guess how many species of animals there are in Australia. Well I’ll tell you there are actually 250 species of animals in Australia! Although there aren’t very many placental animals in Australia, but there are a lot of Marsupials.

Introduction to possums.

    Possums are really some of cutest animals in Australia.
All of those really cute and awesome possums have really great hearing. Male possums are called Jacks and the females are called Jill's. Wow now isn't that cool. Now I’ll tell you one more thing a family of possums are called a passel. Now we are done the opening paragraph for possums. That was fun wasn’t it.

Possum No.1 The pygmy possum.

Pygmy possums are arguably Australia’s cutest marsupials. Wow cool. Actually there are five different species of pygmy possums. Pygmy possums only eat nectar. Yum. Did you know that pygmy possums only live in trees. They have large eyes and long ears. They also have long whiskers. When there is lots of food pygmy possums tails swell with fat. Pygmy possums are nocturnal.

The Greater Glider

The greater gliders are primarily nocturnal. They are also extremely cute. They have have a tail about there body size. Wow now isn’t that cool. The grater gliders are actually 3 different species of marsupials. Now the most cool thing is that The greater Gliders can glide from tree to tree. Wow, how interesting. Greater Glider can glide up to 100 meters. They are in the family of Ringtail Possums.

Wombats

Wombats are some of the most cute and adorable animals. They are marsupials and they are born in a pouch. Wombats are particularly well known for their poo because it is square. Also adult Wombats use their bum to shield themselves from enemies. Gross. Smashed Dingo skulls have been found near wombat holes, some researchers think that they smash predators heads against the ceiling of their burrows.

Fat Tailed Dunnart
Fat Tailed Dunnarts are marsupials. They actually only eat meat. No fair. Dunnart babies are smaller than a grain of rice when they are born. That’s crazy. The Dunnarts tails are carrot shape because they will then have have extra fat for when there is famine. The Dunnart is a mouse like marsupial. Dunnarts are in the same family as the Tasmanian devil. If Dunnarts are captured they will gladly eat hard boiled eggs and minced meat. Dunnarts will actually eat common house mice when hungry, and they will cuddlle with them when cold.

Wallaby
Wallabies are marsupials native to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Wallabies eat grass, leaves, and roots. There are nine species of the Wallaby. Adult Wallabies are called does, fryers, or Jill’s. The wallabies enemies are Dingo’s, Feral Dogs, feral cats, and red foxes. Humans are also a big threat to Wallabies due to making more and more cities. Wallabies can defend themselves by kicking and biting. They are like small kangaroos. And they are really cute.

Closing

To end, I just wanted to tell you that I picked some more of the cuter animals of Australia. If you ever have a chance to go  to Australia I think you should try to see some of the animals from my essay. See you next time.

[EKS]

I'd focus on helping him understand the idea of writing to a particular audience. Who is his intended audience for this piece?  Just reading it, I would say another 13 year old boy interested in a comedic take on the wildlife of Australia.  Let's assume that it is.  How could he make it even funnier?  One way might be to point out the weirdness of the various animals.  Carrying babies around in a pouch!  Everything will kill you!  Whatever.  The main thing will be that he needs to stop saying everything is cute and come up with other observations that are more acute...so to speak.

Then with a different assignment, you can decide on a different audience.  A more serious one, but perhaps still not academic and stuffy.  When he seems to get the idea about audience and can produce a paper that is appropriate to that audience without a ton of input from you, you can introduce the idea of the audience for a paper assigned by a teacher. 

The audience for papers assigned in class is a bit tricky.  Most students assume that the audience should be the teacher, but that is wrong (usually).  Assuming the audience is the teacher means that you will assume that the audience has too much knowledge.  Better to assume that the audience is another member of the class who just happens not to know about the particular thing you're writing about.  Of course, the idea of "another member of the class" in a homeschool context is a bit odd, but he can use his imagination!

I hope this helps!

ETA: Note that I'm quite sure that the writing program's idea of an appropriate audience isn't another 13 year old boy interested in a comedic take on the wildlife of Australia.  But I think meeting him where he is with this piece will help keep him engaged. 

Edited June 4 by EKS

[caffeineandbooks]

@EKS has some great suggestions.  Things I enjoyed about your son's paper: he sounds genuinely enthusiastic about his topic.  He went beyond the typical "koala, kangaroo" which makes me think he actually did some research.  His sentences vary in length (although "Wow!" "Yum!" are informal, they break up the longer sentences).  He encourages the reader to make an emotional connection with his writing by asking rhetorical questions and uses informal language.  He understands the idea of an introduction, conclusion and transitions between paragraphs.  He has organised his paragraphs in a logical way.  You could consider returning to this same topic for a second paper: talk about the idea of voice, and ask him who his audience was and how his paper would connect with that audience (I think EKS is spot on here and you could use her words if he doesn't know who he was writing for).  This is also the kind of "Crikey!" language that Steve Irwin was famous for and that Australia Zoo still tends to use in their marketing.  Then talk about how the writing would look different if the intention was, say, to advise a government department about key species that might be affected by a natural disaster, or to tell visitors to a national park what to look out for, or whatever scenario you like.  Brainstorm together how the writing should sound for the new audience, keep a clear purpose in mind (to entertain WHO?  persuade WHO to do WHAT? inform WHO about WHAT?) and ask him to write the paper for the new audience.  You can be clear that this is a new assignment, not a criticism of the old one.

I've never used TGATB, and it may be exactly the right fit for your son.  However, you seem to have some concerns about the informal tone of the writing (perhaps you were expecting a more traditional, academic sounding essay?) and note that it's difficult to give feedback without hurt feelings.  If you look at switching curriculum in the future, perhaps you might enjoy Jump In!  It's written to the student, and is really well put together: the student gets to see examples of the kind of writing they are to produce, gets to practice the steps one by one across several projects, has a checklist to help them sequence their work, and gets choice in the kinds of topics they do.  It's a fun program but does talk about "voice" as well and might help him to think about audience and word choice.

For more academic writing, if you are wanting this to be more of a focus than TGATB has provided so far, you could look at Writing With Skill.  I definitely wouldn't call it "fun" - it's formal academic writing all the way - but she chooses fascinating topics for her source material and teaches very incrementally, including things like documenting sources, using a thesaurus to avoid repeated words, and giving clear checklists for the student to follow before handing in their work.  Generally the student will produce a paper each week on a prescribed topic.  Some of these are only 150 or so words, but several through the year are longer finished pieces (including some topics of the student's choice) of 500+ words.

Best of luck on your writing journey!

[rose]

18 hours ago, EKS said:

I'd focus on helping him understand the idea of writing to a particular audience. Who is his intended audience for this piece?  Just reading it, I would say another 13 year old boy interested in a comedic take on the wildlife of Australia.  Let's assume that it is.  How could he make it even funnier?  One way might be to point out the weirdness of the various animals.  Carrying babies around in a pouch!  Everything will kill you!  Whatever.  The main thing will be that he needs to stop saying everything is cute and come up with other observations that are more acute...so to speak.

Then with a different assignment, you can decide on a different audience.  A more serious one, but perhaps still not academic and stuffy.  When he seems to get the idea about audience and can produce a paper that is appropriate to that audience without a ton of input from you, you can introduce the idea of the audience for a paper assigned by a teacher. 

The audience for papers assigned in class is a bit tricky.  Most students assume that the audience should be the teacher, but that is wrong (usually).  Assuming the audience is the teacher means that you will assume that the audience has too much knowledge.  Better to assume that the audience is another member of the class who just happens not to know about the particular thing you're writing about.  Of course, the idea of "another member of the class" in a homeschool context is a bit odd, but he can use his imagination!

I hope this helps!

ETA: Note that I'm quite sure that the writing program's idea of an appropriate audience isn't another 13 year old boy interested in a comedic take on the wildlife of Australia.  But I think meeting him where he is with this piece will help keep him engaged. 

This is great advise. Thanks. I'll plan to do something along these lines. I was also thinking after I posted that I might introduce him to the concept of filler and see what he can identify on his own.

[rose]

12 hours ago, caffeineandbooks said:

@EKS has some great suggestions.  Things I enjoyed about your son's paper: he sounds genuinely enthusiastic about his topic.  He went beyond the typical "koala, kangaroo" which makes me think he actually did some research.  His sentences vary in length (although "Wow!" "Yum!" are informal, they break up the longer sentences).  He encourages the reader to make an emotional connection with his writing by asking rhetorical questions and uses informal language.  He understands the idea of an introduction, conclusion and transitions between paragraphs.  He has organised his paragraphs in a logical way.  You could consider returning to this same topic for a second paper: talk about the idea of voice, and ask him who his audience was and how his paper would connect with that audience (I think EKS is spot on here and you could use her words if he doesn't know who he was writing for).  This is also the kind of "Crikey!" language that Steve Irwin was famous for and that Australia Zoo still tends to use in their marketing.  Then talk about how the writing would look different if the intention was, say, to advise a government department about key species that might be affected by a natural disaster, or to tell visitors to a national park what to look out for, or whatever scenario you like.  Brainstorm together how the writing should sound for the new audience, keep a clear purpose in mind (to entertain WHO?  persuade WHO to do WHAT? inform WHO about WHAT?) and ask him to write the paper for the new audience.  You can be clear that this is a new assignment, not a criticism of the old one.

I've never used TGATB, and it may be exactly the right fit for your son.  However, you seem to have some concerns about the informal tone of the writing (perhaps you were expecting a more traditional, academic sounding essay?) and note that it's difficult to give feedback without hurt feelings.  If you look at switching curriculum in the future, perhaps you might enjoy Jump In!  It's written to the student, and is really well put together: the student gets to see examples of the kind of writing they are to produce, gets to practice the steps one by one across several projects, has a checklist to help them sequence their work, and gets choice in the kinds of topics they do.  It's a fun program but does talk about "voice" as well and might help him to think about audience and word choice.

For more academic writing, if you are wanting this to be more of a focus than TGATB has provided so far, you could look at Writing With Skill.  I definitely wouldn't call it "fun" - it's formal academic writing all the way - but she chooses fascinating topics for her source material and teaches very incrementally, including things like documenting sources, using a thesaurus to avoid repeated words, and giving clear checklists for the student to follow before handing in their work.  Generally the student will produce a paper each week on a prescribed topic.  Some of these are only 150 or so words, but several through the year are longer finished pieces (including some topics of the student's choice) of 500+ words.

Best of luck on your writing journey!

Thanks for the help. As for curriculum choice, we settled on TGATB after trying WWS. I had used WWS for my older children but this particular child is strongly ADHD. He just couldn't handle the concentration needed to read through all the instructions and then to do the "boring" assignments. He kept trying to infuse wild creativity and informal language into those assignments and I had no idea how to handle that. I think that he was just too young and unaccustomed to focused academic work. TGATB is definitely not rigorous but he finds it stimulating enough and I'm seeing some improvements in his work as the year goes on. We may switch back to WWS when he's older but we'll see. I'll take a look at Jump In! too.

[EKS]

3 hours ago, rose said:

He kept trying to infuse wild creativity and informal language into those assignments and I had no idea how to handle that.

I have never found a writing program that I liked.  I recommend that you read about how to teach writing and then have him write across the curriculum instead.  

Also, I don't know what your own writing background is, but the absolute best preparation I got for teaching writing myself was taking a writing intensive class in a subject where I was learning new things at the same time as I was mired in the task of teaching writing.  It gave me a much better perspective on the entire process.  (And, interestingly, my background was that prior to the homeschooling thing I had spent some years as a professional scientific writer, so you'd think I'd be a natural at teaching writing--not so!)

Some books that I found particularly useful (for me):

• Engaging Ideas (this and the next one are actually written for college professors teaching writing, but they have a lot of good information)
• Habits of the Creative Mind
• Advanced Academic Writing (MCT)
• The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing
• They Say/I Say
• Grading with a Purple Crayon

I have not read this book, but it might be helpful:

• The Writing Revolution

 

[Haken]

I like what your son wrote. It feels happy. However, I think you have a specific style of writing that you want him to do. So I suggest showing your son many examples of what you think "good" writing looks like. I think that's the fastest way for him to learn how to write in the style you have in mind. Even in a school setting, if a child is getting a B on papers, the best way to get an A is to see what an A paper looks like.

[TheAttachedMama]

I know this is going to be an unpopular answer.....but I'll share my advice:  

Switch him over to a year of IEW, and it will correct a lot of the problems you are seeing in his writing.   I'd almost be willing to offer a money back guarantee (except I am a broke homeschool mama!).  lol  

I know that a lot of people on this forum don't like IEW because it is "formulaic" and they feel that it takes away from the natural voice of the author.   However, I would argue that your son, in particular, seems to have a VERY strong voice and personality, and I don't think that is going anywhere!   I would also argue that IEW works particularly well with kids with ADHD and other learning challenges.  (That is why I suggest it.)   It just clicks with many children who think differently and seems to be the one tool that can get them over the hurdle of this challenging logic stage.   The lessons are also served in small bite-sized pieces which won't overwhelm kids with ADHD.   

And yes, IEW can produce formulaic writing at first---But only when it is used with inexperienced writers.  Many times, these types of writers (especially those with learning challenges!) need some structure to fall back on when trying to put their thoughts into words.   I see him stringing a lot of adjectives together because he is trying to convey strong emotion and excitement in his writing.  But what if he was forced to use a few strong verbs or adverbs to convey his thoughts?   What if he was forced to add a few dependent clauses to his sentences to further describe Australia?  What if the word "cute" was added to the banned word list and he had to use a thesaurus to find alternatives?   It would give him the tools he needs to put his thoughts into words a bit more eloquently.   Secondly, I think a year or two of formulaic writing would help fix some of the grammatical errors in is writing.  

IEW will also give him practice with many different forms of writing.  He will write fiction.  He will summarize science and history selections.   He will write research reports from a variety of sources, etc. etc.   So this will help him to learn when to write more formally and when it is ok to use less formal writing.  Most importantly:   IEW would give YOU, the teacher, the language you are searching for to help him get better.   I was at a loss with my daughter in middle school.  I kept saying, "tell me more" or "let's think of a way we can say this differently" or "let's try to sound a bit less casual"---and nothing was working.   She really liked the checklists that IEW gave her because they helped her to know exactly what she had to do to "give me more" or "say something differently" or "sound less casual".   They gave her the tools to be successful.

Am I saying use IEW forever?  No.   A year---maybe two years---is all he is going to need.  After that, I bet he will take all of those tools out there and be able to use them in whatever writing program you want to use.    Using IEW for too many years in a row can get boring for mom and student.  Plus, there are other things that you can work on in writing.   I am saying use it for a year, and I bet it will fix a multitude of the issues you are experiencing.  

For the record, I did not do any of the teacher training for IEW.  (Did I mention I am a broke homeschool mom?  It was WAY too expensive.).  I personally was able to teach it just fine using the theme programs.   The theme programs by Lori Verstegen are amazingly easy to teach.   (She is my favorite IEW theme author.   I wanted to love the Narnia theme programs, but I didn't love those as much.)   Another option is to do the video based teaching series and have Mr. Pudewa teach.   You can watch along with him and learn the "IEW lingo" as you go.   Those programs are great, but the lessons took a bit longer than the theme lessons.   

 

Edited June 5 by TheAttachedMama