My DS#1 (10) has been given a project to complete by end of March. The children were allowed to select their own topic. DS was full of enthusiasm to start with which surprised me as he's not the most motivated of children. The project has to be at least 20 pages long, can include photos, diagrams and artwork, but no great chunks of text taken from a book/website.
Once we'd got down to it to get started the other day it became clear that he hadn't thought it through and actually it was totally beyond him without plenty of input from me or DH. He has made some wonderful artwork (his strong point) but that is all. DS hasn't the faintest idea of how to precis text, is really struggling to focus on what he wants and how to acheive that when he is sure. None of these are skills that he has been taught in any depth at school - this is the first time they have been asked to do anything of this sort. His writing is slow but very neat and his typing skills are not strong. There is also a self-evaluation sheet with scores of 0 to 12 and the comments against the lower scores are pretty damning . I am more than happy to give him my time and help but can't quite see how the teacher can mark the work as his when most of it will be mine!And I'm 99% certain that this will be the case for most of his class too.
DH thinks I should just leave him to sink or swim but I can't see how he'd do anything but sink and it wouldn't be his fault! I remember my first project of this sort and it was much more minor and low-key - I was age about 12. I was also at a very academic private school. Does this seem a bit ott for year 5?