One of our goals for this academic year is for Noach to improve his essay writing skills. The OM Civics assigns 1 to 4 essays of varying length each week. There are additional essay assignments in OM English 8 but not every week. Rather than 3 badly written essays done over the week, we have decided to do one good essay that is then edited the following week. The remaining work is discussion BUT he must come to the discussion after preparing his answers. This prevents my waiting on him to hem and haw and mutter "I don't know. What do you think?" It is a waste of my time unless he is prepared.
Thus each week there is an essay being researched and written in rough draft and another in the editing phase. Editing is difficult for Noach since any discussion of the paper seems like criticism to him. After seeing a review on Strewing: Unschooling Resources last week, I am thinking about using WriteGuide.com in January. Noach improved his writing greatly last spring while doing K12 lit with a teacher and I think this could be used in a similar way. The assignments could come from OM and the time commitment would not be much greater than it is right now. Having another person to work with rather than me is definitely better for shalom beit. And shalom beit is important. PRM
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