I'm ecstatic that my son got points taken off his last book report! Crazy right? Well, here's what happened...
My ten year old son had a complex book report to do (complex in the form of cutting poster board in the shape of a kite, with different sections for different aspects of the book - characters, plot etc.) What ever happened to just writing a straight forward paper? But I digress... So I watched as he sat at the kitchen table hunched over his masterpiece writing drafts and crossing out what he didn't like. Finally, he finished his project and brought it to me to proofread (he was very excited about some of the vocabulary he had been able to work in and could hardly stand still!) Together, we made a couple minor adjustments of capitalization and basked in the glory of his completed report. Phew. It was finally done.
Well, the next week he comes home completely distraught. "She took points off of my summary," he told me. When I asked him why, he thrust the report rubric into my hand. Written at the bottom of the page, it read: "-5 pts. Summary sounds like it was copied off the back of a book."
I beamed. Is there any higher compliment than being in fifth grade and writing so well that it sounds plagiarized? Ah, I'm a proud mama indeed that maybe at least one apple hasn't fallen far from this tree!
That is a compliment and you should be very proud! It drives me a bit crazy though that some teachers deduct points instead of acknowledging that they have a gifted child in there class (this actually happened to me when I was a little girl too, and I guess even with the deducted points I turned out OK).
ReplyDeleteI hope he wasn't down about that for long. Your reaction probably made him feel a lot better!
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