Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Online writing course for Summer learning?

Sorry to mix topics a little, but I'm starting to think about Summer activities since DD9 decided she didn't like most of the (rather nice) summer camps I had signed her up for last year and 'doesn't want to go to summer camp' this Summer. She wants to stay home and read, which generally is good but I think she needs a little more structure for at least part of the day. I'm thinking about trying to find some kind of online stuff for her to do an hour or two a day (with supervision) and then maybe have a sitter take her to the pool for awhile in the afternoons so she can hang out with other kids and I can get some work done. (Don't worry, we're also going to have a couple of weeks just goofing off and some math camps; there are just a lot of weeks!!) She really needs to learn how to write book reports--her wonderful teacher this year has the kids using a 'graphic organizer,' which I think is supposed to help them organize their thoughts before writing, but DD has resisted this (doesn't like extra writing), and unfortunately hasn't learned the lesson about how to explain things to other people. Does anyone know of a good online course that would teach a kid (middle school or early high school level) how to write a book report or essay or similar stuff?

Thanks, master of none! Time4Writing sounds like just the thing; I'll check it out

We didn't love time4writing when we tried it a few years ago. I was going to check out CTY courses. I think I recall hearing really good things about their individually paced writing courses.

Thanks for the post, gabalyn--I looked around at the CTY offerings and it looks like they have a Summer email-based course that might work for us (and DD qualified for CTY last year, so we would be set on that), but in the course description it sounds like it's geared towards kids who are actually writing above grade level, which would be great for those kids but I'm not sure where DD is and I kind of suspect she is at or below grade level--but I don't know how to evaluate that at all. I guess I could ask the program people. CTY is also much more expensive, but then it might be worth it anyway if it was a good course and a good fit. What didn't you like about time4writing?

Well, dd was 8 when we tried it, and because we kinda unschool, she had definitely not had a lot of exposure to formal writing. I didn't want her to be intimidated, and I was pretty clueless about the extent of her verbal abilities, so I signed her up for the sentence course. It wasn't a lot of work. It was very simple. Fine for what it was, but it didn't really engage or challenge. Then again, maybe that is because I chose the wrong course. But I did find it very basic and formulaic. It is not designed for gifted kids. Teacher feedback was "Great job!!!" how much can you really say about a sentence, I know. But still

At one point, dd got really sick with pneumonia for 10 days and we fell somewhat behind. I communicated with the teacher about her illness. When she recovered we inadvertently submitted two assignments in one week. You were not "allowed" to do that, but I think I lost track in my effort to have her catch up. The teacher wrote me a sharply worded e-mail reprimanding me. It felt unnecessarily censorious to me. A kind reminder would have worked fine. That left a sour taste in my mouth.