Ok, let's actually talk about writing!
After all my talk about how much better I've found it to be for us to to things together, I have to admit that Maria uses an independent writing curriculum. She is working through a book called Writing With Skill. It is written to the student and divided into 36 four-day weeks. Don't let that lay out fool you - several of these "weeks" have taken longer than an actual week. Not that I'm complaining. There's no busy work in this book. I've been very impressed with its content. It covers academic writing, narrative and descriptive, about history and science and literary analysis. It covers skills like sentence composition, word choice, outlining, organization and others 3 out of 4 days of each "week." Then there is one day each week when they put everything together and write a complete 200-500 word essay. There is a teacher's manual to go with it that tells me how to help Maria with each step of a lesson, as well as a rubric for each essay and often sample essays to compare Maria's writing against.
This program seems to be a great lead into academic writing Maria will soon need in high school level studies. She is only in book 1 out of a planned 4 books. I say "planned" because the author is still writing the series. Book 2 is in beta testing write now. But, even though this is the author's first book in this series intended for the middle grades 5-8, I've found book 1 to be plenty challenging for a seventh grader. In fact, I'm having a hard time picturing Cati using it next year in 5th grade. We will see.
Well, that covers Maria's writing plan for this year. Next time I'll talk about Matteo and Cati's writing plan.
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NaNoWriMo update:
Maria - 6384 words! Now that Maria has officially reached her word count goal of 6000 words, I'll start comparing her word count to her personal goal of 12,000 words. Today, I asked her if she is half way done with her story or if she thinks she will have trouble reaching 12,000 words. She said that she is not even close to being halfway done with her planned story, so she may write much more than 12,000 words! But, I'm not sure she will will get it it done by the end of the month. But, that doesn't matter. I'm really happy with how well. She is doing!
Cati - 2231/5000 words. I told Cati today that she's doing great and that she's almost halfway to her goal of 5,000 words! She was not encouraged by the news. Oops! She's worried that she has to write again the amount she has already written. But, each day she is doing very well, so I think as long as she takes it one day at a time, she will be fine. The big picture seems to be overwhelming, but when she works each day, she is excited and happy about the little part that she's working on.
Matteo - 839/1000 words. He's inching up on his goal! Yay, Matteo!
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