Writing in elementary school

[Anonymous]

I’ve been really disappointed with my third graders writing. He isn’t capitalizing proper names, leaving spaces between words and not using punctuation. He teacher makes no corrections for these things. Shouldn’t she correct these mistakes do he learns the correct way to write? I’m very disappointed with the lack of writing instruction. He has never had any writing home or spelling words for all of third grade! Is this just me or are others having the same issues in FCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been really disappointed with my third graders writing. He isn’t capitalizing proper names, leaving spaces between words and not using punctuation. He teacher makes no corrections for these things. Shouldn’t she correct these mistakes do he learns the correct way to write? I’m very disappointed with the lack of writing instruction. He has never had any writing home or spelling words for all of third grade! Is this just me or are others having the same issues in FCPS?

It’s just you.

They aren’t going to be churning out serials like Dickens at this age.

[Anonymous]

My 3rd grader's writing is worse now than it was in 1st grade. Those errors, including not spacing words apart, proper capitalization, and some others, are things that he learned in 1st grade and then forgot over the pandemic.

I don't think our kids were the worst hit by the pandemic, but I think they were pretty high up there. My kid in upper elementary didn't regress nearly as much over the past two years.

[Anonymous]

Is anything being done to get these kids caught up? I don’t think online tutoring would work well for him as virtual learning was a joke. He doesn’t even capitalize “I” and that’s not Dickens that’s first grade. I was hoping for more writing and spelling words this year but we haven’t had anything.

[Anonymous]

My third grader's writing was atrocious at the beginning of the school year - like capital letters in the middle of a word, run on sentences, no punctuation, missing words, awful spelling. We are working with a tutor where the focus is 1/2 reading and 1/2 writing and my child's writing skills have improved a lot.

But hey, I'm impressed that you're actually seeing things that they do at school. My child's teacher has not sent home a single thing this year. I've seen nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is anything being done to get these kids caught up? I don’t think online tutoring would work well for him as virtual learning was a joke. He doesn’t even capitalize “I” and that’s not Dickens that’s first grade. I was hoping for more writing and spelling words this year but we haven’t had anything.

In-person tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been really disappointed with my third graders writing. He isn’t capitalizing proper names, leaving spaces between words and not using punctuation. He teacher makes no corrections for these things. Shouldn’t she correct these mistakes do he learns the correct way to write? I’m very disappointed with the lack of writing instruction. He has never had any writing home or spelling words for all of third grade! Is this just me or are others having the same issues in FCPS?

It’s just you.

They aren’t going to be churning out serials like Dickens at this age.

There is no excuse for the teacher not to correct those mistakes. That is first grade stuff! They don’t need to be writing novels but sentence level mechanics should be better than that in third grade. My second grader at Catholic school had trouble with all that last year and it was always corrected. Now he is good other than misspelling tougher words like fascinating. We are coming back to FCPS for third because a younger sibling’s needs cannot be met in Catholic school and this kind of thing makes me nervous. I think math and science will be better in FCPS but I’m expecting language arts to be disappointing. I guess I will have to keep him progressing on these things at home. Ugh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My third grader's writing was atrocious at the beginning of the school year - like capital letters in the middle of a word, run on sentences, no punctuation, missing words, awful spelling. We are working with a tutor where the focus is 1/2 reading and 1/2 writing and my child's writing skills have improved a lot.

But hey, I'm impressed that you're actually seeing things that they do at school. My child's teacher has not sent home a single thing this year. I've seen nothing.

Have you asked the teacher why nothing is sent home? I don't understand how a teacher can get away with that. Could you talk to the principal if you don't get anywhere with the teacher? That would really bother me. Parents can't be a team with teachers if they are totally kept out of the loop.

[Anonymous]

This is not a Covid thing. This is a normal FCPS curriculum thing. They don’t really care about writing until high school and by then you’re kid kind of sucks at it. This is what private schools do better.

If you want your kid to write better, you really have to work on it at home. My kid is too busy working on google slides at school. Haven’t you noticed they don’t even do book reports anymore? When I was a student at fcps, I had to do a book report every month.

[Anonymous]

We’ve wondered about book reports as well as he has never done any. It’s just so dissapointing that they spend all this time doing computer work and mental health work and no time focusing on a key life skill like writing! It’s crazy that you have to hire a btutor when they are spending something ridiculous like $17K per kid with the FCpS budget.

[Anonymous]

I’m a teacher. Our third graders have taken personal narratives, “all about books”, content area research, realistic fiction and poetry through the writing process. They planned, drafted, revised and edited their work. They met with peers and teachers in writing conferences. Their writing was graded using the FCPS rubrics. Our focus lessons have covered punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher. Our third graders have taken personal narratives, “all about books”, content area research, realistic fiction and poetry through the writing process. They planned, drafted, revised and edited their work. They met with peers and teachers in writing conferences. Their writing was graded using the FCPS rubrics. Our focus lessons have covered punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, etc.

And they are writing this all out by hand with corrections by you?

[Anonymous]

they don't spend 17k on an average kid. more like 5k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher. Our third graders have taken personal narratives, “all about books”, content area research, realistic fiction and poetry through the writing process. They planned, drafted, revised and edited their work. They met with peers and teachers in writing conferences. Their writing was graded using the FCPS rubrics. Our focus lessons have covered punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, etc.

And they are writing this all out by hand with corrections by you?

The initial drafts are done by hand in their composition notebooks. The edits and revisions are too. Corrections can be made by themselves, a peer and me. Most of my corrections are made while working with the child during a writing conference, but there are also times when it’s more impromptu. Final copies could be handwritten or typed depending on the assignment. For example, all of the final poetry is being typed into a Google slide deck that I will download as a PDF and share with families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher. Our third graders have taken personal narratives, “all about books”, content area research, realistic fiction and poetry through the writing process. They planned, drafted, revised and edited their work. They met with peers and teachers in writing conferences. Their writing was graded using the FCPS rubrics. Our focus lessons have covered punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, etc.

And they are writing this all out by hand with corrections by you?

I’m a different teacher. Yes, students in my 2nd grade class have been writing this all out by hand. I often help them correct these mistakes while we are discussing their 1st draft. Guess what? They sometimes disregard them in the final draft.