As a follow up to Old Man and the Sea, I had Rowan write a 5 paragraph paper about challenges he's overcome. He's writing this paper without any help from me, and I couldn't be more pleased with his effort. At the beginning of the year he couldn't write a sentence without my input, and today he set up the paper, wrote a solid introduction and two solid paragraphs. His sentence structure still needs a little work, but his focus and effort are the best I've seen yet.