Tobin's Story

I've written about some of Charis's writing assignments, so I decided it would only be fair to give Tobin a turn. We haven't done as many of his "assignments" as we could--I learned a lot from working with Charis on the same LA program last year. A lot of his assignments I let him dictate to me. I've learned that he is a natural-born storyteller! (No surprise to those who have heard his whopper lies, ha!) A few weeks ago, for example, he was to tell a favorite Bible story in his own words. It was "supposed" to be 6-8 sentences. But since he didn't have the act of writing to bog him down, he narrated a whole page (in my small handwriting)!

The picture shows his assignment that he worked on last Friday. He was supposed to describe a favorite object, and he chose his "Ellie," or stuffed elephant. In case you can't read the writing in the picture, here is what he wrote:

"I like Elle. He's soft. Before I was born I had him. He is green. He is an elephant."

The only corrections I helped him make were to capitalize the "I's" and to change "a elephant" to "an elephant." Everything else he did on his own, including the apostrophe in "he's." Not bad for a 6 1/2 year old!