Composition

I know I've said it a million times...JT despises composition. Because of this, I try to assign the least I can to meet the school's requirements. Our Calvert curriculum typically requires one composition and one other writing assignment (sometimes a poem) per test lesson. PACyber had the brilliant plan this year to send along additional required test sheets for the Calvert students. So, for the lesson 40 test, JT is required to write a composition from a list of three topics, a Cinquain and a 2 paragraph composition about Robinson Crusoe. This news was NOT greeted with enthusiasm in our household. I have tried to break the work up into smaller pieces to keep the distress to a minimum. I told him to go ahead and print for the bonus work. I know they probably want him to use cursive, but I am one of those people that think the need to write in cursive is a waste of time. I want him to be able to read it (important historical documents are no fun to view if you have no idea what they say) but I assume my kids will be working with keyboards far more than fountain pens in the future. Plus, I never mastered cursive myself, so I have no room to expect perfection. All of my teachers seemed to think my penmanship indicated a certain career in medicine.

I do want my children to be able to communicate their thoughts in written form. I just wish there was a way to pull that off in a less painful way for all of us. Earlier this week JT put together his shape planner for the composition. The school requires one for most writing assignments in 4th grade. Today I had him pull that out and get to work. His paragraphs are well written as far as entertainment value goes. I'm not so sure the teacher will grade them based on that. We shall see...