The papers students write in the Challenge program are my favorite! The goal with my own children is that by the time Challenge II ends, they are able to write papers that would earn them an A in a College Level English Comp 101 class. So, admittedly, I push them in their writing, and I do require they focus on all the little details they would rather ignore.
I also encourage quality over quantity. If the amount of papers CC requires is too much for your student, they are much better off writing fewer papers, but writing them well. If they write all the papers but they are mediocre at best, they are being taught that as long as they can say they did it, the quality of their work does not matter.
Many families desire to have someone grade their student’s papers as grading these can be quite subjective and tricky. I can simply grade papers or tutor. So far, I have graded many Challenge papers and have also tutored Challenge students in order to get their writing up to speed. I have also tutored a Challenge IV student through their Senior Thesis.
Rubrics
Examples using The Sign of the Beaver from Challenge I
- The Sign of the Beaver – Example Paper that Needs Improvement
- Rubric – above paper graded using the advanced rubric
- The Sign of the Beaver – Example Paper that Needs Less Improvement
- Rubric – above paper graded using the advanced rubric
Grading Papers
- $30: Initial Phone Consultation
- $30: One hour spent grading one paper. General feedback will be given.
Example of General Feedback: If the wording of the thesis needs to be reworked, feedback would be something like – work on how you word your thesis by making your proofs parallel. For punctuation, I would make general comments such as, work on comma usage and using semicolons correctly. Depending on time, I would try to point out a couple of places where this needs to be improved.
- $50: Two hours spent grading one paper. Thorough feedback will be given.
Example of Thorough Feedback: If the wording of the thesis needs to be reworked, feedback would be something like – when writing your thesis, you want your proofs to be parallel. Then I would give specific suggestions on how to re-write the thesis with parallel proofs. For punctuation, I would point out several places in the paper where commas should be added and/or removed. For semicolons, I would point out the places they were used incorrectly, etc.
Grading with the Advanced or Basic Rubrics
I grade papers using either the Advanced or Basic Rubric. I also adjust my grading based on parent expectations that are communicated to me beforehand. I am super flexible!
When I take on a new student, we do need to have an initial phone consultation to get on the same page with expectations.
Parents and students are also required to read the Plagiarism document found in the “Writing: Lost Tools and Beyond” section.
Tutoring Options
- $30: Initial Phone Consultation
- $30: One hour of tutoring via Zoom. If the tutoring session is 1.5 hrs., it would be $45, 2 hrs. would be $60, and so on.
We can do 1 tutoring session, multiple sessions, or whatever the parent/student feels they need.
- $25/hour: Stages of Edits and Corrections
This consists of lots of back-and-forth over email and/or Zoom. In the beginning, this will be somewhere around 4 hrs. per paper, give or take depending on the individual needs of each student. Expect this to run around $100 (in the beginning). The goal will be less and less time spent on my end because the student does not continue to make the same mistakes on each paper. Also, the more the parent guides at home and helps with some basic editing, the less time I have to spend on it as well… which saves money!
For the students I tutor, I do require that they write their papers into the outline. This is something I can explain better over the initial phone conversation, but please look at as many sample papers as you can; these are found in the “Writing: Lost Tools and Beyond” section. You will see the papers were first written into the outline. This is hands down the best way to write a paper and my now college-aged son still writes his papers into the outline first. He is not a strong writer but writing into the outline forces him to follow the structure and not leave vital parts of the paper out. He made 3 As and 1 B on his English Comp 101 papers…proof it works!
If you would like to print off the information found in this section, click here.
Contact: Kristi Lane, pbauwife@yahoo.com
Homeschooling Resources 