Writing in elementary school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s unbelievable that people are suggesting kids will pick up grammar just from reading quality literature. My third grader loves to read but still isn’t capitalizing proper nouns. This is the schools job. I am not trained to be a teacher.

You can’t teach you kid about proper nouns? It’s public school and grammar has never been that important. Same with spelling and handwriting.

Grammar has always been important. So is spelling. And handwriting. It is still being taught in other school districts. Stop acting like this is all new and parents are being unreasonable to expect our kids are taught the basics.

It isn't important to public schools. If it was, it would be tested. What is tested is taught.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe writing is not on those standardized tests anymore because it is much harder and time-consuming to grade then multiple choice questions? Writing used to be on standardized tests. I remember doing it for standardized tests when I was in grade school. My mom who taught elementary remembers it being on the standardized tests. Then once it stopped being on those tests schools stopped including writing instruction in their curricula. Horrible mistake. They didn’t drop writing instruction because writing isn’t important. They dropped it because they are teaching to these stupid test. No Child Left Behind absolutely ruined education.

I took standardized tests in ES. Back then it was the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. No writing on that. It was fill in the bubble testing. What standardized tests did you take that involved writing? I agree that writing is important. I am not defending public schools. I'm a math teacher in a public school. I switched my kid to Catholic school in part because of his terrible writing.

There was a VA writing SOL for years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a fourth grader and it seems that this year the Teacher is starting to actually teach how to write. They have been discussing how to approach different parts of a paragraph and how to generate ideas, what types of words they can use to make a sentence more interesting. I have noticed a real improvement in DS ability to write and quality of what he is writing. There still is not as much emphasis on punctuation, capitalization, and spelling as I would like. I asked the Teacher about that in a conference and she said that writing is really complicated and that it is over whelming for kids to be focused on everything. Her focus is on developing thoughts and the complexity of those thoughts and when kids are comfortable with that tackle more of the process errors. I do see papers coming home with punctuation corrections and capitalization corrections. We are handling spelling corrections at home. We ask Ds if he can spell a word, he spells it correctly and we remind him he needs to do that when he is writing. Or proof read his writing and correct mistakes that he finds.

It does seem like writing is improving. The impression I have gotten from all of my sons Teachers is that they are just trying to get the kids writing with confidence first and then correct the grammar and spelling mistakes. They don't want the kids to get so worried about making those mistakes that they don't write at all.

This approach makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t teachers want to work on things like capitalization, spacing, and punctuation while kids are still writing very simple sentences? Solidify the skills at the sentence level so that these things are automatic, then start working on putting ideas together at the paragraph and whole paper level. It is very hard to assess longer papers when sentence level writing is a mess. If you get bogged down in editing sentences you can’t evaluate the ideas and organization because the writing is too hard to read. I don’t necessarily blame the fourth grade teacher but this just seems like a failure of the first through third grade teaching approach.

Because some kids struggle with getting their thoughts on paper as it is, when you add in extra steps (punctuation and capitalization) you make it harder to get thoughts on paper. That is what the Teacher explained to us. The idea is to build confidence with putting thoughts on paper and then focus on the specifics.

Why does very early writing practice have to be about getting thoughts on paper? You can use sentence copying or dictation as a way to work on basics of capitalization, spacing and punctuation. This doesn’t have to be the main focus but it can be a part of early writing instruction. Not all writing has to be creative. Or if you actually do spelling lists you can have kids write sentences with their spelling words in them. Like three or four sentences total each with one of the spelling words. If a child has trouble thinking of how to put one of their spelling words into a single sentence in second grade there is a bigger problem going on. If a child is confidence in putting their ideas on paper maybe it’s because they don’t even have a grasp of basic sentence writing yet I need to work on it when there isn’t any pressure to generate their own ideas.

Totally agree.

[Anonymous]

How are folks supplementing writing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer editing is the most ridiculous thing ~ relying on students who know so little, to do the corrections. Lazy teachers!

I don’t rely on students to do the corrections. I don’t know anyone who does that. Students meet with peers to share, revise and edit, but that’s for practice. They listen to each other, ask questions, make suggestions, and often are able to help each other improve their writing. They still conference with the teacher about their writing and receive input and corrections then. Often, many revisions and edits have been made before the student conferences with the teacher, but why would you see that as a negative?

Have you never had someone else look at your writing?

+1, they are learning a skill in writing and in communication (giving oral feedback appropriately).

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are folks supplementing writing?

AoPS

Tutors

Step Up to Writing program done by a parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s unbelievable that people are suggesting kids will pick up grammar just from reading quality literature. My third grader loves to read but still isn’t capitalizing proper nouns. This is the schools job. I am not trained to be a teacher.

You can’t teach you kid about proper nouns? It’s public school and grammar has never been that important. Same with spelling and handwriting.

Grammar has always been important. So is spelling. And handwriting. It is still being taught in other school districts. Stop acting like this is all new and parents are being unreasonable to expect our kids are taught the basics.

It isn't important to public schools. If it was, it would be tested. What is tested is taught.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe writing is not on those standardized tests anymore because it is much harder and time-consuming to grade then multiple choice questions? Writing used to be on standardized tests. I remember doing it for standardized tests when I was in grade school. My mom who taught elementary remembers it being on the standardized tests. Then once it stopped being on those tests schools stopped including writing instruction in their curricula. Horrible mistake. They didn’t drop writing instruction because writing isn’t important. They dropped it because they are teaching to these stupid test. No Child Left Behind absolutely ruined education.

I took standardized tests in ES. Back then it was the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. No writing on that. It was fill in the bubble testing. What standardized tests did you take that involved writing? I agree that writing is important. I am not defending public schools. I'm a math teacher in a public school. I switched my kid to Catholic school in part because of his terrible writing.

There was a VA writing SOL for years.

What happened to if?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

FCPS pacing guide for writing said something about how correcting errors can hurt their feelings. I am not kidding. During student teaching elsewhere we did mark errors in colorful pen. They didn’t use Calkins so they taught spelling, grammar, etc. Came to FCPS where they never had spelling tests and the gifted kids struggled with writing. I corrected errors in attempt to teach the correct way but was told numerous times to stop because it could hurt their feelings.

I am really not kidding. I lasted one year because it hurt my head. Many parents seemed to want things that were normal in the schools I had been in before, but admins and others above me just kept telling me no.

Lurking here, considering going back to teaching. Just want to do it somewhere with a more classical approach to ELA instruction. Anyway, don’t blame the teachers. Complain to those above them. Unless you’re very seasoned, you can’t really get away with just teaching whatever you want and however you want, even if we are talking about safe things like marking corrections or explicit writing instruction.

how can a parent view a pacing guide?

PP here. When I was there I’d send the PDF if a parent asked. I do not think we were supposed to though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

this is that Lucy Calkins garbage. With her method she does not teach sentence structure, grammar, and spelling.

+1. There are no lessons and practice on each grammar component any longer. They just ask the kids to simply write a personal narrative, for example. They have not taught parts of speech, possession, apostrophes, rules, etc. Just slop some words down with no eye to run on sentence or diversifying sentence structure. Kids are expected to have intuition that a sentence needs a subject and predicate. It’s sad.

This may be school specific. I teach 2nd and have lessons from FCPS (in the pacing guide) on apostrophes, possession, etc.

+1
Third grade.

+1
I don't know where people are getting the idea that there is no grammar, formal aspects of writing taught in FCPS. It's been a part of every grade level of both of my kids' K-8th grade education in FCPS. It's in the FCPS curriculum and pacing guides and they consistently do exercises. I've volunteered at school (pre-pandemic) and I've seen them doing the exercises. There is also free writing where the emphasis is not on teaching grammar, but they have received plenty of formal writing instruction. I'm not sure where parents are getting the idea that it's not taught in FCPS.

Because after you teach it once, it needs to be reinforced. And reinforced in a way that ties it all together and in which the teacher gives actual red ink back showing the mistakes. Not just attaching some dumb rubric circling the things that are wrong generally, but not specifically. That is not happening. It has never happened in our 10 years (so far) of FCPS.

Red ink back shows the mistakes. That's about it. Meeting with the student in a writing conference during the writing process and afterward to discuss the "mistakes" helps the student understand. The whole class instruction happens during the daily focus lesson. Of course instruction also occurs 1:1 during a conference. We have 50 minutes every day for writing. A lot can get done in that amount of time.

Often when grading, the teacher is at home. So mark the corrections then meet with the students individually and explain why it was corrected.

That’s what I did until so many people above me (admins, more experienced teachers) told me not to and I noticed the pacing guide also suggested not to. Made no sense to me but I felt I had to obey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a fourth grader and it seems that this year the Teacher is starting to actually teach how to write. They have been discussing how to approach different parts of a paragraph and how to generate ideas, what types of words they can use to make a sentence more interesting. I have noticed a real improvement in DS ability to write and quality of what he is writing. There still is not as much emphasis on punctuation, capitalization, and spelling as I would like. I asked the Teacher about that in a conference and she said that writing is really complicated and that it is over whelming for kids to be focused on everything. Her focus is on developing thoughts and the complexity of those thoughts and when kids are comfortable with that tackle more of the process errors. I do see papers coming home with punctuation corrections and capitalization corrections. We are handling spelling corrections at home. We ask Ds if he can spell a word, he spells it correctly and we remind him he needs to do that when he is writing. Or proof read his writing and correct mistakes that he finds.

It does seem like writing is improving. The impression I have gotten from all of my sons Teachers is that they are just trying to get the kids writing with confidence first and then correct the grammar and spelling mistakes. They don't want the kids to get so worried about making those mistakes that they don't write at all.

This approach makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t teachers want to work on things like capitalization, spacing, and punctuation while kids are still writing very simple sentences? Solidify the skills at the sentence level so that these things are automatic, then start working on putting ideas together at the paragraph and whole paper level. It is very hard to assess longer papers when sentence level writing is a mess. If you get bogged down in editing sentences you can’t evaluate the ideas and organization because the writing is too hard to read. I don’t necessarily blame the fourth grade teacher but this just seems like a failure of the first through third grade teaching approach.

Because some kids struggle with getting their thoughts on paper as it is, when you add in extra steps (punctuation and capitalization) you make it harder to get thoughts on paper. That is what the Teacher explained to us. The idea is to build confidence with putting thoughts on paper and then focus on the specifics.

Why does very early writing practice have to be about getting thoughts on paper? You can use sentence copying or dictation as a way to work on basics of capitalization, spacing and punctuation. This doesn’t have to be the main focus but it can be a part of early writing instruction. Not all writing has to be creative. Or if you actually do spelling lists you can have kids write sentences with their spelling words in them. Like three or four sentences total each with one of the spelling words. If a child has trouble thinking of how to put one of their spelling words into a single sentence in second grade there is a bigger problem going on. If a child is confidence in putting their ideas on paper maybe it’s because they don’t even have a grasp of basic sentence writing yet I need to work on it when there isn’t any pressure to generate their own ideas.

Totally agree.

+2. It’s the same reason we need to drill multiplication facts. If kids don’t have a solid grasp of those before they start doing long division, long division will tax their cognitive load and it’ll get overwhelming.

I have just been doing handwriting without tears over and over again (10 minutes a day and when we fill out one workbook we start another) as he listens to audiobooks, and it has made other writing assignments so much less frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s unbelievable that people are suggesting kids will pick up grammar just from reading quality literature. My third grader loves to read but still isn’t capitalizing proper nouns. This is the schools job. I am not trained to be a teacher.

You can’t teach you kid about proper nouns? It’s public school and grammar has never been that important. Same with spelling and handwriting.

Grammar has always been important. So is spelling. And handwriting. It is still being taught in other school districts. Stop acting like this is all new and parents are being unreasonable to expect our kids are taught the basics.

It isn't important to public schools. If it was, it would be tested. What is tested is taught.

Some states do test writing…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s unbelievable that people are suggesting kids will pick up grammar just from reading quality literature. My third grader loves to read but still isn’t capitalizing proper nouns. This is the schools job. I am not trained to be a teacher.

You can’t teach you kid about proper nouns? It’s public school and grammar has never been that important. Same with spelling and handwriting.

She could teach her kids about proper nouns, sure, if she learned how to teach it, made her kid sit down after a full day of instruction, and did as many lessons as it required for her kid to learn it.

But why should she have to do that? Her kid goes to *school* and there is no reason teachers can’t do that same thing and teach 25 kids instead of just one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

this is that Lucy Calkins garbage. With her method she does not teach sentence structure, grammar, and spelling.

+1. There are no lessons and practice on each grammar component any longer. They just ask the kids to simply write a personal narrative, for example. They have not taught parts of speech, possession, apostrophes, rules, etc. Just slop some words down with no eye to run on sentence or diversifying sentence structure. Kids are expected to have intuition that a sentence needs a subject and predicate. It’s sad.

This may be school specific. I teach 2nd and have lessons from FCPS (in the pacing guide) on apostrophes, possession, etc.

+1
Third grade.

+1
I don't know where people are getting the idea that there is no grammar, formal aspects of writing taught in FCPS. It's been a part of every grade level of both of my kids' K-8th grade education in FCPS. It's in the FCPS curriculum and pacing guides and they consistently do exercises. I've volunteered at school (pre-pandemic) and I've seen them doing the exercises. There is also free writing where the emphasis is not on teaching grammar, but they have received plenty of formal writing instruction. I'm not sure where parents are getting the idea that it's not taught in FCPS.

Because after you teach it once, it needs to be reinforced. And reinforced in a way that ties it all together and in which the teacher gives actual red ink back showing the mistakes. Not just attaching some dumb rubric circling the things that are wrong generally, but not specifically. That is not happening. It has never happened in our 10 years (so far) of FCPS.

Red ink back shows the mistakes. That's about it. Meeting with the student in a writing conference during the writing process and afterward to discuss the "mistakes" helps the student understand. The whole class instruction happens during the daily focus lesson. Of course instruction also occurs 1:1 during a conference. We have 50 minutes every day for writing. A lot can get done in that amount of time.

Often when grading, the teacher is at home. So mark the corrections then meet with the students individually and explain why it was corrected.

That’s what I did until so many people above me (admins, more experienced teachers) told me not to and I noticed the pacing guide also suggested not to. Made no sense to me but I felt I had to obey.

Isn’t that what the PP stated in bold?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a fourth grader and it seems that this year the Teacher is starting to actually teach how to write. They have been discussing how to approach different parts of a paragraph and how to generate ideas, what types of words they can use to make a sentence more interesting. I have noticed a real improvement in DS ability to write and quality of what he is writing. There still is not as much emphasis on punctuation, capitalization, and spelling as I would like. I asked the Teacher about that in a conference and she said that writing is really complicated and that it is over whelming for kids to be focused on everything. Her focus is on developing thoughts and the complexity of those thoughts and when kids are comfortable with that tackle more of the process errors. I do see papers coming home with punctuation corrections and capitalization corrections. We are handling spelling corrections at home. We ask Ds if he can spell a word, he spells it correctly and we remind him he needs to do that when he is writing. Or proof read his writing and correct mistakes that he finds.

It does seem like writing is improving. The impression I have gotten from all of my sons Teachers is that they are just trying to get the kids writing with confidence first and then correct the grammar and spelling mistakes. They don't want the kids to get so worried about making those mistakes that they don't write at all.

This approach makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t teachers want to work on things like capitalization, spacing, and punctuation while kids are still writing very simple sentences? Solidify the skills at the sentence level so that these things are automatic, then start working on putting ideas together at the paragraph and whole paper level. It is very hard to assess longer papers when sentence level writing is a mess. If you get bogged down in editing sentences you can’t evaluate the ideas and organization because the writing is too hard to read. I don’t necessarily blame the fourth grade teacher but this just seems like a failure of the first through third grade teaching approach.

Because some kids struggle with getting their thoughts on paper as it is, when you add in extra steps (punctuation and capitalization) you make it harder to get thoughts on paper. That is what the Teacher explained to us. The idea is to build confidence with putting thoughts on paper and then focus on the specifics.

Why does very early writing practice have to be about getting thoughts on paper? You can use sentence copying or dictation as a way to work on basics of capitalization, spacing and punctuation. This doesn’t have to be the main focus but it can be a part of early writing instruction. Not all writing has to be creative. Or if you actually do spelling lists you can have kids write sentences with their spelling words in them. Like three or four sentences total each with one of the spelling words. If a child has trouble thinking of how to put one of their spelling words into a single sentence in second grade there is a bigger problem going on. If a child is confidence in putting their ideas on paper maybe it’s because they don’t even have a grasp of basic sentence writing yet I need to work on it when there isn’t any pressure to generate their own ideas.

Totally agree.

+2. It’s the same reason we need to drill multiplication facts. If kids don’t have a solid grasp of those before they start doing long division, long division will tax their cognitive load and it’ll get overwhelming.

I have just been doing handwriting without tears over and over again (10 minutes a day and when we fill out one workbook we start another) as he listens to audiobooks, and it has made other writing assignments so much less frustrating.

Oh, by the way, I homeschool. I don’t think that parents whose kids are in school should have to make their kids do this. It’s absurd that there is this idea that teachers should outsource the principals that lead to academic success to parents, especially when they don’t even make that expectation explicit. There really is no reason teachers can’t spend 20 minutes a day doing math fact drills and handwriting. Especially when around fourth grade you see an educational success split among kids of different socioeconomic status. It’s so unfair to the kids that don’t have parents who will/can teach them fundamental education concepts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s unbelievable that people are suggesting kids will pick up grammar just from reading quality literature. My third grader loves to read but still isn’t capitalizing proper nouns. This is the schools job. I am not trained to be a teacher.

You can’t teach you kid about proper nouns? It’s public school and grammar has never been that important. Same with spelling and handwriting.

Grammar has always been important. So is spelling. And handwriting. It is still being taught in other school districts. Stop acting like this is all new and parents are being unreasonable to expect our kids are taught the basics.

It isn't important to public schools. If it was, it would be tested. What is tested is taught.

Some states do test writing…

How would a standardized test assess a student’s lead or conclusion? Could it assess their use of transition words? Would it be scored by human scorers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s unbelievable that people are suggesting kids will pick up grammar just from reading quality literature. My third grader loves to read but still isn’t capitalizing proper nouns. This is the schools job. I am not trained to be a teacher.

You can’t teach you kid about proper nouns? It’s public school and grammar has never been that important. Same with spelling and handwriting.

Grammar has always been important. So is spelling. And handwriting. It is still being taught in other school districts. Stop acting like this is all new and parents are being unreasonable to expect our kids are taught the basics.

It isn't important to public schools. If it was, it would be tested. What is tested is taught.

Some states do test writing…

How would a standardized test assess a student’s lead or conclusion? Could it assess their use of transition words? Would it be scored by human scorers?

Yes, human scorers. Just like it has always been done for tests that include a writing section like the GRE and AP tests.