7th graders have zero written assignments in LA
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Anonymous
| I recently reached out to both of my twins’ language arts teachers to find out how they are doing with their writing this year. I haven’t seen any written assignments all year, but figured the teacher had them hand write somethings. Zero. Neither teacher has assigned any real written work longer than a couple of sentences as a reading response to a text. None of which either teacher can even show me, fwiw. No essays, not even a paragraph! One teacher claimed their new curriculum doesn’t leave enough time for writing. I don’t understand how this is possible given its LA class. Would you contact admin and ask why 7th graders at the school are not learning how to properly write? I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus, but this is ridiculous in my opinion. |
Anonymous
| What school is this? |
Anonymous
| They are working on speeches now (requiring multiple parapraghs) and have done other multiple paragraph work earlier in the year. The Outsiders was a big project. |
Anonymous
^APS |
Anonymous
| Op here - I expect to see the writing process practiced in some way (organize, draft, edit, finalize) incorporating all the grammar/skills they have been working on all year. I think this is the bare minimum to see at least one written piece….. |
Anonymous
Which school/district? |
Anonymous
| Yikes! This would be concerning to me as well. |
Anonymous
|
Mine was in 7th last year in APS and definitely had writing assignments. As someone mentioned a persuasive speech. Mine also did a pretty long play. Other things I can't remember.
Is your issue you want them hand writing all these things? They do use a key board. |
Anonymous
The problem, as always, is that it depends on luck of the draw for school and teacher. But writing instruction is pretty poor overall in APS. |
Anonymous
Where did your kid get no writing in 7th grade in APS? |
Anonymous
It would be more believable if OP shared the school. |
Anonymous
| It actually sounds a lot like what my seventh grader is doing in language arts (at least The Outsiders), and I feel like they are doing a lot of grammar and writing. Maybe it’s just not painful like we remember it? |
Anonymous
| Op here - I’m not going to share the school (we aren’t in Arlington). There’s no written work hand written OR typed. Second LA teacher confirmed that there’s no time in LA for writing. Apparently they are working on boosting reading scores. I can’t believe though, that the school can just ignore writing standards. I asked on here to get a feel for whether or not this was happening in other school districts locally or not. Thanks for everyone’s input. I’m writing the principal and asking why the writing standards are being ignored this year. |
Anonymous
| Which district? |
Anonymous
|
You should ask what curriculum they are using. There is a good chance it is HMH into reading.
I really think parents need to learn about this HMH and rail against it. It is terrible. It's just a fire hose of reading and assignments that is impossible to get through, so schools have to make judgment calls about what is going to get left out. So yes, please complain, without blaming teachers because it's not their choice. Also there is so much evidence that academic writing boosts reading scores that it's absurd to dispute it. Here is just one of a million articles you can find on it: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-writing-directly-benefits-students-reading-skills/2020/01 |