Nagging Can Work

I’ve written quite a bit over the past school year’s worth of homework about the boy’s writing assignments. He has his strengths, mainly in the creativity department, and his weaknesses which, initially, were pretty much everything else. Terrible spelling, terrible grammar, terrible structure.

Last week saw another type of writing brought into the fold: book report type writing. He’s been asked to read from a book and then write short summaries of what he reads each day, with a final summary to be turned in at the end of the week. There are also a group of questions which he can choose from which forces him to think a little deeper about what he read.

He’s been very studious about getting the work done. Mostly because it gives him an excuse to continue reading the Harry Potter series, I imagine. The assignment calls for him to read for 20 minutes, but the Wife and I both suggested he just read a chapter each day. He’s been happy to oblige.

The Wife and I have both been pleasantly surprised with his summary paragraphs. He’s finally seems to be getting better at organizing the thoughts in his head before setting them to paper and the results, while not perfect, are markedly improved. To the point where the Wife and I have just been pointing out spelling mistakes, as opposed to having him rewrite the paragraphs. I’d personally still like to see him write drafts and then do the final. But for the way this assignment works, he’s doing it well enough that I’m not going to pick a fight with him over that quibble.

That only took a year.