It was a pleasure meeting Cal today. He's a terrific kid and easy to work with. I can tell that he has some insecurities about his writing. I told him that he is a good writer and he must trust that he's better than he thinks he is. I had him write a brief paragraph about his favorite activity. This allowed me to evaluate his writing process. It also allowed us to review some grammar and discuss how to vary sentence structure. I brought up an idea that I will continue to review with him: in his writing, he should always show and not tell. It is better to describe something rather than to just tell the reader flat out what to think or feel. We will work on grammar and some more structured writing assignments next week.