The phrase was enough to strike terror in Cpher’s soul. It certainly scared the crap out of me.
“Three book reports. 160-pages each, minimum. Due October 4, October 26, November 11”
Cpher still sees his tutor twice a week….Suzanne and I have had this discussion recently and the answer is “he’ll go as long as we can reasonably make it work out”. There’s no doubt that it’s been good for him….and these book reports were probably the surest example of how that’s working it out.
Cpher went on a Roald Dahl-fest for these reports; he started with Matilda (a school story), then went to James and the Giant Peach (science-fiction/fantasy), and is finishing up with Witches (his choice). Finished the reading in plenty of time to get the three paragraphs done. And best of all, with only a little discussion from Mom and Dad about format, generated three decent paragraphs for us to work on and edit.
Hand-written writing will never be a strength; Cpher needs those red-squiggly lines in the word processor to help with his spelling. But what has really improved is his word choice….he’s using “five-dollar” words now and has taken the rubric-guidance to heart, he almost always uses an example from the book to back up what he’s saying in the report.
His teacher commented on one of the words he used on his first report; did he choose it or did his parents? And he said he did…and we had saved his rough draft to show his tutor just how he was progressing, and sure enough, that word was there…it wasn’t one of the edits. Whew!
Got 25/25 on Matilda…..no score back yet for the Peach….he did say his classmates were checking out his diorama though when he brought it in.
