Teaching the Argument

My son's strengths in school are math and science. They come as easy to him as writing does to my daughter. Writing, on the other hand, is not his forte. We have an agreement. Because his English teacher (who my son adores and has helped him find his love of reading again) does not conference with him about his writing, Mom gets to. He is not allowed to turn in any final copies until we have sat down so I can give him honest feedback and offer suggestions through questioning. Actually, we have been doing this for years because no writing teacher has ever conferenced with him about his writing. This baffles me but that is another story.

Until this year, I taught fifth grade. And thanks to a good friend of mine, I  figured out the best way to meet with my 90 writing students about their writing. Each week. So I know it is possible. How else will a student improve as a writer?

Apparently my son has been turning in paragraphs at a time and didn't see this as a final copy. Tonight, he turned in his conclusion paragraph. He put forth good effort, but it was a mess. The only thing he had to go on was what needed to be included and according to him, he had everything. If everything includes at least four sentences, then he had that. So we talked about what a conclusion looks like. How one can restate their thesis with different words but getting the same point across? How do you summarize what you have already said? What can you say to make the reader think?

We had an agreement, and I was not clear enough about it. Now, we will go through the rest of his argument, paragraph by paragraph. I don't care about his grade because I know he put forth all he had. What I do care about is that he continues to improve and grow as a writer. And one of the only ways to do that, in my opinion, is through conferencing.