Are you happy with your kid’s English/writing instruction?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am finally thrilled this year (4th grade). The teacher is very old school and experienced, and happens to have been an English major. All the basic fundamentals are finally being covered. Grammar, spelling, reading comprehension, proof reading...

How old is the teacher? My worry is that this kind of teacher (old school, traditional, love of English) is dying out. Most teachers teaching K-5 right now were going through college or getting their ED degree in the Balanced Literacy / Workshop + EdTech way of teaching, not grammar, spelling, reading actual books kind of teaching.

You are right. She is probably mid to late 50s. My kid has generally had younger teachers up until now, and this is the first time he has had this type of direct instruction. Everyone else just seemed to phone it in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am finally thrilled this year (4th grade). The teacher is very old school and experienced, and happens to have been an English major. All the basic fundamentals are finally being covered. Grammar, spelling, reading comprehension, proof reading...

How old is the teacher? My worry is that this kind of teacher (old school, traditional, love of English) is dying out. Most teachers teaching K-5 right now were going through college or getting their ED degree in the Balanced Literacy / Workshop + EdTech way of teaching, not grammar, spelling, reading actual books kind of teaching.

The teachers following their school’s “EdTech / Balanced Literacy / whole language” progressive curricula are doing a massive disservice to our children.

How massive? - many graduate HS without being able to read:


https://www.newsweek.com/how-did-honors-student-who-says-she-cant-read-write-get-college-2038026

[Anonymous]

Yes, very happy. Sidwell ‘22 grad

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am finally thrilled this year (4th grade). The teacher is very old school and experienced, and happens to have been an English major. All the basic fundamentals are finally being covered. Grammar, spelling, reading comprehension, proof reading...

How old is the teacher? My worry is that this kind of teacher (old school, traditional, love of English) is dying out. Most teachers teaching K-5 right now were going through college or getting their ED degree in the Balanced Literacy / Workshop + EdTech way of teaching, not grammar, spelling, reading actual books kind of teaching.

The teachers following their school’s “EdTech / Balanced Literacy / whole language” progressive curricula are doing a massive disservice to our children.

How massive? - many graduate HS without being able to read:


https://www.newsweek.com/how-did-honors-student-who-says-she-cant-read-write-get-college-2038026

You can't really blame these younger teachers because they are teaching the curriculum approved by the school or district or state. And they themselves were probably taught using the same methods. Their training in college all included EdTech, I'm sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am finally thrilled this year (4th grade). The teacher is very old school and experienced, and happens to have been an English major. All the basic fundamentals are finally being covered. Grammar, spelling, reading comprehension, proof reading...

How old is the teacher? My worry is that this kind of teacher (old school, traditional, love of English) is dying out. Most teachers teaching K-5 right now were going through college or getting their ED degree in the Balanced Literacy / Workshop + EdTech way of teaching, not grammar, spelling, reading actual books kind of teaching.

This is true. The new teachers are not trained to teach an intensive English lesson. They themselves have horrible spelling and grammar evidenced by the work products and emails they produce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am finally thrilled this year (4th grade). The teacher is very old school and experienced, and happens to have been an English major. All the basic fundamentals are finally being covered. Grammar, spelling, reading comprehension, proof reading...

How old is the teacher? My worry is that this kind of teacher (old school, traditional, love of English) is dying out. Most teachers teaching K-5 right now were going through college or getting their ED degree in the Balanced Literacy / Workshop + EdTech way of teaching, not grammar, spelling, reading actual books kind of teaching.

You are right. She is probably mid to late 50s. My kid has generally had younger teachers up until now, and this is the first time he has had this type of direct instruction. Everyone else just seemed to phone it in.

what does ‘phone it in’ mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a middle school and high schooler, public school. Yes, instruction in writing is practically non existent until AP English.

I don’t understand posts like this. I believe you, but my question is how it’s possible? And how do students suddenly catch up or keep up in 10th or 11th, while also prepping for SATs and writing college apps? Because I’m assuming at least SOME kids are receiving some kind of writing instruction earlier than that (through tutors, better school curriculum, etc), wouldn’t they have a huge leg up?

I don't get it either. If students aren't writing, and they're not reading books, what do they actually do all day?

I know what they do (screens, group "work," SEL, "skills based work and assessments"), but I want to know how does this lead to top high school and college students? My area touts the public high schools as among the top 1000 public high schools in the country, but how can this be true if the kids are on Chromebooks for much of the day and not actually reading full books or writing essays until 10th grade?

what school is this? Our kids had to write paragraphs and essays since first grade and onward due to the stupid Calkins writing workshop. Our kids also have to read chapter books in book groups since fourth grade. They also read the boring 2 page passages with SOL questions afterward. So they do get reading and writing, but the writing instruction didn’t become structured and formal until 7th grade. And, they missed learning formal grammar so were not taught parts of speech and sentence diagramming. It’s a hodge podge and poorly taught English. —FCPS parent who has supplemented for a decade

Sentence diagramming?? I don't think that's been commonly taught in public schools in several decades. Parts of speech they will learn when they learn foreign language.

Not necessarily. Grammar is on the outs everywhere trendy, even for foreign languages that desperately require it. I was helping a cousin in LCPS with her Latin homework. Brilliant child, now working for a company that attracts brilliant people. Anyway, I asked her what noun declension she was on. "What's a noun?" she asked. At that point, she was midway through freshman year.

I supplemented my own kids until I threw my hands in the air and just sent them to a religious private that provides thorough grammar instruction, amongst other pleasant features.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a middle school and high schooler, public school. Yes, instruction in writing is practically non existent until AP English.

I don’t understand posts like this. I believe you, but my question is how it’s possible? And how do students suddenly catch up or keep up in 10th or 11th, while also prepping for SATs and writing college apps? Because I’m assuming at least SOME kids are receiving some kind of writing instruction earlier than that (through tutors, better school curriculum, etc), wouldn’t they have a huge leg up?

I don't get it either. If students aren't writing, and they're not reading books, what do they actually do all day?

I know what they do (screens, group "work," SEL, "skills based work and assessments"), but I want to know how does this lead to top high school and college students? My area touts the public high schools as among the top 1000 public high schools in the country, but how can this be true if the kids are on Chromebooks for much of the day and not actually reading full books or writing essays until 10th grade?

what school is this? Our kids had to write paragraphs and essays since first grade and onward due to the stupid Calkins writing workshop. Our kids also have to read chapter books in book groups since fourth grade. They also read the boring 2 page passages with SOL questions afterward. So they do get reading and writing, but the writing instruction didn’t become structured and formal until 7th grade. And, they missed learning formal grammar so were not taught parts of speech and sentence diagramming. It’s a hodge podge and poorly taught English. —FCPS parent who has supplemented for a decade

Sentence diagramming?? I don't think that's been commonly taught in public schools in several decades. Parts of speech they will learn when they learn foreign language.

Not necessarily. Grammar is on the outs everywhere trendy, even for foreign languages that desperately require it. I was helping a cousin in LCPS with her Latin homework. Brilliant child, now working for a company that attracts brilliant people. Anyway, I asked her what noun declension she was on. "What's a noun?" she asked. At that point, she was midway through freshman year.

I supplemented my own kids until I threw my hands in the air and just sent them to a religious private that provides thorough grammar instruction, amongst other pleasant features.

No basic grammar in Latin? That is crazy. A big pro of learning Latin is the grammatical structures!

[Anonymous]

It is the weakest part of their education. My kids’ school has excellent math and science departments. Way better than what I had growing up in NJ.

But the English and social sciences classes have very little graded writing. They have a lot of assigned reading. They read 6-7 books a year in class, all the typical classics, but they don’t write any graded essays or papers that are marked up and corrected and critiqued.
Their writing is stamped! They don’t have a teacher who is working with them to improve their sentence structure or advancing their ideas or challenging their assumptions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public elementary - was not happy, except with the first grade teacher who of her own initiative taught herself how to teach phonics. She was awesome. Other than that, the kids were given sub-standard, non-evidence based language arts instruction.

Private elementary - much happier. The official curriculum is in some ways not much better than public (there's still too much Lucy Calkins influence), but it includes explicit teaching of spelling, grammar, and how to structure a paragraph. There are whole class novels. There are five paragraph essays.

Private middle - quite happy, backfilled a lot of gaps created in public elementary.

But this is the stereotype about public v. private these days, of course. Private will teach your kid to read and write. Public won't. But public high school will generally have better STEM education simply by having higher numbers of kids who are prepared for it, except when compared to the most high achieving, hard-to-get-into privates.

How important is it to have top notch STEM though? I keep hearing AI and international talents are filling in the tech and science sectors. Isn’t it better going forward to have kids competent in Calc level math and Biology/Chem/Physics and be able to write and think critically, versus not being able to read full books or write well but able to code a game or build a robot?

Quoted PP here. I'm a programmer, and I don't see AI pushing us out entirely ever. Who else will upgrade and maintain the AI?

But to your point, I am not encouraging my kids to follow in my footsteps (though one wants to so much that I may stop discouraging it). And I honestly think it's better for actual technical abilities to learn things like formal logic than to take TJ-level coding classes, though both helped quite a bit in college. I also went to a liberal arts college versus a technical school and my job interviews at most places focused on the liberal arts side of my education once I proved I could code.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a middle school and high schooler, public school. Yes, instruction in writing is practically non existent until AP English.

I don’t understand posts like this. I believe you, but my question is how it’s possible? And how do students suddenly catch up or keep up in 10th or 11th, while also prepping for SATs and writing college apps? Because I’m assuming at least SOME kids are receiving some kind of writing instruction earlier than that (through tutors, better school curriculum, etc), wouldn’t they have a huge leg up?

I don't get it either. If students aren't writing, and they're not reading books, what do they actually do all day?

I know what they do (screens, group "work," SEL, "skills based work and assessments"), but I want to know how does this lead to top high school and college students? My area touts the public high schools as among the top 1000 public high schools in the country, but how can this be true if the kids are on Chromebooks for much of the day and not actually reading full books or writing essays until 10th grade?

what school is this? Our kids had to write paragraphs and essays since first grade and onward due to the stupid Calkins writing workshop. Our kids also have to read chapter books in book groups since fourth grade. They also read the boring 2 page passages with SOL questions afterward. So they do get reading and writing, but the writing instruction didn’t become structured and formal until 7th grade. And, they missed learning formal grammar so were not taught parts of speech and sentence diagramming. It’s a hodge podge and poorly taught English. —FCPS parent who has supplemented for a decade

Sentence diagramming?? I don't think that's been commonly taught in public schools in several decades. Parts of speech they will learn when they learn foreign language.

My private school kids learn to diagram sentences in 5th. Super helpful to even just do the basics. In the younger grades they do a more basic version (underline the nouns, double underline the verbs, that sort of thing).

How can you teach kids important things like "vary sentence structure" if they don't understand different sentence structures? And how can they learn sentence structures without known parts of speech and valid ways to order them? They can't.

[Anonymous]

Was not happy in DC charter. Much happier with move to Catholic School for 3rd grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am finally thrilled this year (4th grade). The teacher is very old school and experienced, and happens to have been an English major. All the basic fundamentals are finally being covered. Grammar, spelling, reading comprehension, proof reading...

How old is the teacher? My worry is that this kind of teacher (old school, traditional, love of English) is dying out. Most teachers teaching K-5 right now were going through college or getting their ED degree in the Balanced Literacy / Workshop + EdTech way of teaching, not grammar, spelling, reading actual books kind of teaching.

The teachers following their school’s “EdTech / Balanced Literacy / whole language” progressive curricula are doing a massive disservice to our children.

How massive? - many graduate HS without being able to read:


https://www.newsweek.com/how-did-honors-student-who-says-she-cant-read-write-get-college-2038026

Teachers don’t do this in DCUM world and if they do, tell the reading specialist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Was not happy in DC charter. Much happier with move to Catholic School for 3rd grade.

Three page in and project 2025 is here to shine on the Catholic schools! Get your golden cross necklaces on!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a middle school and high schooler, public school. Yes, instruction in writing is practically non existent until AP English.

I don’t understand posts like this. I believe you, but my question is how it’s possible? And how do students suddenly catch up or keep up in 10th or 11th, while also prepping for SATs and writing college apps? Because I’m assuming at least SOME kids are receiving some kind of writing instruction earlier than that (through tutors, better school curriculum, etc), wouldn’t they have a huge leg up?

I don't get it either. If students aren't writing, and they're not reading books, what do they actually do all day?

I know what they do (screens, group "work," SEL, "skills based work and assessments"), but I want to know how does this lead to top high school and college students? My area touts the public high schools as among the top 1000 public high schools in the country, but how can this be true if the kids are on Chromebooks for much of the day and not actually reading full books or writing essays until 10th grade?

what school is this? Our kids had to write paragraphs and essays since first grade and onward due to the stupid Calkins writing workshop. Our kids also have to read chapter books in book groups since fourth grade. They also read the boring 2 page passages with SOL questions afterward. So they do get reading and writing, but the writing instruction didn’t become structured and formal until 7th grade. And, they missed learning formal grammar so were not taught parts of speech and sentence diagramming. It’s a hodge podge and poorly taught English. —FCPS parent who has supplemented for a decade

What do you supplement with?