When you get to the conference, you might try clarifying with the teacher what the assignments really consist of, and what kind of instruction and scaffolding they receive in the classroom. Of course, expectations differ, but I would have found frequent, unscaffolded 5 para essays to be unrealistic for even GT 4th graders. OTOH, walking them through the process of composing a 5 para essay (say, one week for planning, and then one paragraph per week, over the course of a 6 week writing unit) would be more realistic.
