Writing in elementary school

[Anonymous]

FWIW, new poster here, my FCPS third-grader does have awful penmanship. That being said, her language arts units are fine. She's learning to decipher and discuss quality poetry. Do I wish her writing skills were stronger? Yes. And I will help with that at home. But the whole point of literature? FCPS is getting that. I'm pretty sure the amazing Catholic schools you are all extolling for their writing programs aren't doing Socratic Seminars exploring poetry by Rumi and Tupac, so calm down. Every school does some things better than others, and it is up to parents what they value most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

This! FCPS is HORRIBLE with language arts.

My kids have had excellent LA teachers in middle school and high school. I agree that elementary school LA was weak.

[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.

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.

Oh come on. I agree that parents shouldn't HAVE to teach some of this basic stuff but it is not a huge haul to teach SOME of it. And proper nouns does not require knowing how to teach or require a huge lift at home. And frankly, it can be reinforced while out an about "Campbell's soup", is that a proper noun, Larla?

The parent would need some knowledge of the topic. For instance, Campbell's soup versus Washington Monument. Explain why you believe soup isn't capitalized?

[Anonymous]

I have noticed a few posts have focused on penmanship. I haven’t considered that in this thread. I think ES composition instruction is good and usage instruction has been ok. There has been some cursive instruction this year, but I haven’t been concerned about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It is infuriating when you think about it. I can’t understand why many school systems (it’s not just FCPS) are punting on making sure kids have basic skills needed for later success. Like they’re so obsessed with kids being “21st century problem solvers” that they skip right to projects without making sure there’s foundational knowledge first.

Rejoice! I got an e-mail from an FCPS school board representative trumpeting the new superintendent: "She is brilliant, insightful, with a vision for providing a 22nd century education for all of our students", so the kids will presumably be getting a thorough grounding in agriculture, marksmanship, small unit tactics, water purification, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have noticed a few posts have focused on penmanship. I haven’t considered that in this thread. I think ES composition instruction is good and usage instruction has been ok. There has been some cursive instruction this year, but I haven’t been concerned about that.

My 10th, 7th and 5th grader have received zero cursive. The younger two have basically illegible writing due to fcps overreliance on google slides. Fifth grader brings home maybe one worksheet a week. The ten year old only writes in all caps with serial killer spacing. All in AAP btw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, new poster here, my FCPS third-grader does have awful penmanship. That being said, her language arts units are fine. She's learning to decipher and discuss quality poetry. Do I wish her writing skills were stronger? Yes. And I will help with that at home. But the whole point of literature? FCPS is getting that. I'm pretty sure the amazing Catholic schools you are all extolling for their writing programs aren't doing Socratic Seminars exploring poetry by Rumi and Tupac, so calm down. Every school does some things better than others, and it is up to parents what they value most.

Please stop telling other parents to "calm down" when they express concerns about what their kids are being taught. It's extremely condescending. Happy for you that your 3rd grader is doing well in language arts at her school. My 3rd grader isn't doing as well for a variety of reasons, which is why we hired a tutor. But I remain concerned that overall, the ES language arts curriculum in FCPS is leaving a lot of kids behind and unprepared for junior and high school. And I have no confidence that this will change, given the administration's focus on other things.

[Anonymous]

My 9th grader and 8th grader have never written more than one page for any topic. The 8th grader also has done a ton of group projects on google slides. These seem really pointless. The writing errors are never corrected.

[Anonymous]

I don't even understand what they are *doing* at school all day. My 6th grader seems to spend a ton of time "free reading".

So parents need to teach:
memorization of multiplication facts and how to do math the "regular" way
handwriting
cursive
all aspects of grammar
all aspects of writing

What is happening at school all day?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have noticed a few posts have focused on penmanship. I haven’t considered that in this thread. I think ES composition instruction is good and usage instruction has been ok. There has been some cursive instruction this year, but I haven’t been concerned about that.

My 10th, 7th and 5th grader have received zero cursive. The younger two have basically illegible writing due to fcps overreliance on google slides. Fifth grader brings home maybe one worksheet a week. The ten year old only writes in all caps with serial killer spacing. All in AAP btw.

My fourth grader, too. And she actually had really nice penmanship for a second grader pre-covid. Her teacher has had them on the laptop all year. I guess she already scanned everything is last year, so why bother making copies, grading work, or teaching when she's already found youtube videos from "Mr Math?"

[Anonymous]

If FCPS would just have their own 5th and 8th grade writing tests at the end of the year again despite whatever the state is doing, a lot of these issues would go away.

[Anonymous]

My child's teacher also plays youtube videos for math instruction. Then they do all their work on the computer. Which doesn't make sense to me. How do you remember something without writing it down while you practice it? And it's a no homework school of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't even understand what they are *doing* at school all day. My 6th grader seems to spend a ton of time "free reading".

So parents need to teach:
memorization of multiplication facts and how to do math the "regular" way
handwriting
cursive
all aspects of grammar
all aspects of writing

What is happening at school all day? +1

+1

[Anonymous]

They need a standard curriculum to keep kids off google slides and youtube. Its so easy now for the worst teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't even understand what they are *doing* at school all day. My 6th grader seems to spend a ton of time "free reading".

So parents need to teach:
memorization of multiplication facts and how to do math the "regular" way
handwriting
cursive
all aspects of grammar
all aspects of writing

What is happening at school all day?

At least in APS I know that they are teaching kids what a caption is, how to find the meaning of words in context, what a table of contents is, and how to find the main idea.

So my kid got to sixth grade iffy on her times tables, but by golly after weeks worth of lessons she knows what a caption is!