I am meeting with a team from my dd's public school next week to create a plan for her gifted education in language arts. She is in 5th grade at a small public school system in California. ACT Profile test results put her in 93% for 8th graders.
Question 1: does she change schools for 6th grade, middle school? If so, what are the options there? Any gifted programming or special writing classes available there? Is there a choice of schools? It's not too soon to look ahead, not least because she will feel hopeful if there's something good looming.
DD is instigator of this meeting; she wants her time during the school day to be "more productive," she knows she wants to be a writer, and feels she is not being challenged by any of the curriculum
My goal would be to use that writerly ambition as much as possible.
The principal wants to solve the situation as follows: "When the class is writing a paragraph, the teacher will make sure your daughter writes two paragraphs."
But I would not go for quantity for quantity's sake. That's silly and it won't feel good to your DD either, although I will say that one way to become a great writer is to write A LOT.
On the plus side, her current teacher is amenable to some kind of arrangement. At the moment, I am thinking of asking them to allow my dd to take online courses at school during school time, at school expense, to be monitored by the school. DD is currently taking an online high school class in Shakespeare in her own time at our expense.
What you build in depends on how her schedule is ordered. Here are some ideas.
You could give your DD some written materials that teach writing skills and let her use her writing time to self-teach. Some people really like this curriculum that has rubrics for self-judging one's own writing in it:
https://store.schoolspecialty.com/O...=464112&gclid=CIbxqfKWnLICFQVgMgodx34AmAIf a paragraph was assigned, she could write the paragraph-- but instead of just doing it the assigned way, she could challenge herself to apply one of the concepts in the curriculum to make it a really excellent (persuasive, whatever) paragraph. Flexing extra muscles while doing the same work the class is doing. This would be literally no work for the teacher, and could work if your DD is motivated to try it.
If she's bored in social studies, teach her the principle of writing an op-ed piece and let her have at it. Would the teacher excuse her from lecturing on mastered material to write her op-ed? Perhaps?
Some people really like books about writing process (what comes to mind is Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, but you should pre-read because I am pretty sure I recall some strong language in there). I bet there are better models out there for a young writer. Something like that is less technique-oriented but still could be inspiring in terms of writer's craft.
Good luck,
DeeDee
