Parents of 5th and 6th graders ES students - FCPS - can you please ask your child what are the

[Anonymous]

Rising 6th grade AAP student in FCPS, and we discovered during distance learning in the spring that she had minimal/nonexistent instruction in grammar and punctuation. I was shocked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8 parts of speech or even what an adjective is?

Something in another thread came up and I am curious if not knowing that by the end of 4th grade is a student problem, a school problem or a county wide problem.

If you please could answer and age/grade of your child. I would prefer to get answers only from students who go to public schools and not have extracurricular help (tutors, AoPS classes in LA, CTY, etc). AAP students answers are appreciated as well.

Thanks!

If the kid doesn’t know it at that age it’s their fault. Stop making everything political.

It is political though. I've had numerous talks with our school and they refuse to teach grammar. They used to have a 5th grade SOL test that tested some of these and as soon as that test went away so did any writing and grammar teaching. We've had to push push push over the years since then to get any writing and grammar back into the classroom. FCPS got so many complaints that they finally started trying to make this a focus, but without the SOL, it's still teacher dependent.

It's true, we can teach this at home, but not all students get this at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8 parts of speech or even what an adjective is?

Something in another thread came up and I am curious if not knowing that by the end of 4th grade is a student problem, a school problem or a county wide problem.

If you please could answer and age/grade of your child. I would prefer to get answers only from students who go to public schools and not have extracurricular help (tutors, AoPS classes in LA, CTY, etc). AAP students answers are appreciated as well.

Thanks!

If the kid doesn’t know it at that age it’s their fault. Stop making everything political.

It is political though. I've had numerous talks with our school and they refuse to teach grammar. They used to have a 5th grade SOL test that tested some of these and as soon as that test went away so did any writing and grammar teaching. We've had to push push push over the years since then to get any writing and grammar back into the classroom. FCPS got so many complaints that they finally started trying to make this a focus, but without the SOL, it's still teacher dependent.

It's true, we can teach this at home, but not all students get this at home.

This is the key part. The Standards of Learning, which is more than just the test, tell districts and teachers what needs to be taught and when. Teachers would teach it if it were part of the Standards.

[Anonymous]

But tell that to the anti-testers and they scream that they don't want teachers to teach to the test and the more tests removed the better. When in reality these tests are being removed because we have students who can't meet these basic standards. But they all think it's making the school system more creative when it really isn't. It just gives teachers a break to teach the more laborious writing skills.

[Anonymous]

Teacher here. The issue is the higher ups telling teachers how to structure their day. We are told how much time should be allotted. Teachers have no autonomy in the classroom anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The issue is the higher ups telling teachers how to structure their day. We are told how much time should be allotted. Teachers have no autonomy in the classroom anymore.

Maybe they should just go ahead and do what they think (within reason of course) it should be done. Instead of making kids read in class for instance, teach some grammar (or whatever) and assign books to be read at home - the same book for the whole class, so they can discuss it and practice critical reading/thinking and writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The issue is the higher ups telling teachers how to structure their day. We are told how much time should be allotted. Teachers have no autonomy in the classroom anymore.

Amen. Teachers would love to have the time and resources to teach this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The issue is the higher ups telling teachers how to structure their day. We are told how much time should be allotted. Teachers have no autonomy in the classroom anymore.

Amen. Teachers would love to have the time and resources to teach this.

As long as they don't have to bring any work home to check. The few writing assignments my kids had to do maybe had once sentence of feedback by most teachers if anything. Teacher work doesn't include grading papers at home anymore like all teachers used to do, so this is what they mean folks. They want time to do this during the school day including both teaching and grading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The issue is the higher ups telling teachers how to structure their day. We are told how much time should be allotted. Teachers have no autonomy in the classroom anymore.

Amen. Teachers would love to have the time and resources to teach this.

As long as they don't have to bring any work home to check. The few writing assignments my kids had to do maybe had once sentence of feedback by most teachers if anything. Teacher work doesn't include grading papers at home anymore like all teachers used to do, so this is what they mean folks. They want time to do this during the school day including both teaching and grading.

I think a lot comes down to time allotted again. When I first started teaching we didn’t have a separate writing block. It was very difficult to trach when it was shared with our reading block. The past few years we bow have a separate block and it has been wonderful. Most schools use a workshop model approach so feedback is given during the writing process. I still do give feedback with the published piece but there is a lot of conferencing happening. This is why teachers need to make their own schedules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The issue is the higher ups telling teachers how to structure their day. We are told how much time should be allotted. Teachers have no autonomy in the classroom anymore.

Amen. Teachers would love to have the time and resources to teach this.

As long as they don't have to bring any work home to check. The few writing assignments my kids had to do maybe had once sentence of feedback by most teachers if anything. Teacher work doesn't include grading papers at home anymore like all teachers used to do, so this is what they mean folks. They want time to do this during the school day including both teaching and grading.

I think a lot comes down to time allotted again. When I first started teaching we didn’t have a separate writing block. It was very difficult to trach when it was shared with our reading block. The past few years we bow have a separate block and it has been wonderful. Most schools use a workshop model approach so feedback is given during the writing process. I still do give feedback with the published piece but there is a lot of conferencing happening. This is why teachers need to make their own schedules.

The time is still the same though. So what's different? Couldn't any teacher just have a time separation if they wanted to between these two subjects before? What's different is politics. There used to be more oversight. The idea now is that being creative is more important than being accurate which drives what the kids focus on in writing and grammar and sentence structure is left behind. Do you agree that the new method of teaching writing is not to correct and instead encourage which could be politically and technology motivated? That with fewer people coming in speaking English, English language standards have been downplayed? That teachers tend to reduce writing instruction because of the amount of time it takes constantly telling the public how many new requirements they have on their plate, that teachers teach less writing in elementary because the 5th grade SOL was removed? Teachers teaching less writing saying that technology doesn't require so much knowledge of it anymore. There is no oversight on the teachers in terms of a state or local mandate for these standards and without the SOL, you can have a principal and teacher who just don't care or who at least favor other items over grammar and writing.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think you understand. The teachers are being told how long to spend on each subject. When I had 1.5 hours of LA, I was told that I need to pull reading groups. Schools are so focused on Reading and Math. It was a few years ago that writing started becoming more of a priority. Forget SS and Science. We get 30-45 mins a day to teach both. Teachers have no say. There needs to be a whole revamp of education in this country so we can teach all subjects and not just focus on Reading and Math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think you understand. The teachers are being told how long to spend on each subject. When I had 1.5 hours of LA, I was told that I need to pull reading groups. Schools are so focused on Reading and Math. It was a few years ago that writing started becoming more of a priority. Forget SS and Science. We get 30-45 mins a day to teach both. Teachers have no say. There needs to be a whole revamp of education in this country so we can teach all subjects and not just focus on Reading and Math.

Because students come in not prepared to read and don't read at home and don't have homework anymore. It's all political. Kids who come from immigrant families or poor families can't supervise homework like even reading a book, so now kids don't read books at home. They read books in class. Immigrant families don't know the language, so more time on reading than native speakers. Special needs kids may need more time so more time helping them than decades before. Foreign language and STEM classes take over science and social studies time. Also political.

[Anonymous]

Parent of a rising fourth (non-aap), she could define noun, verb, adjective, adverb but didn’t know what a part of speech was

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think you understand. The teachers are being told how long to spend on each subject. When I had 1.5 hours of LA, I was told that I need to pull reading groups. Schools are so focused on Reading and Math. It was a few years ago that writing started becoming more of a priority. Forget SS and Science. We get 30-45 mins a day to teach both. Teachers have no say. There needs to be a whole revamp of education in this country so we can teach all subjects and not just focus on Reading and Math.

Because students come in not prepared to read and don't read at home and don't have homework anymore. It's all political. Kids who come from immigrant families or poor families can't supervise homework like even reading a book, so now kids don't read books at home. They read books in class. Immigrant families don't know the language, so more time on reading than native speakers. Special needs kids may need more time so more time helping them than decades before. Foreign language and STEM classes take over science and social studies time. Also political.

Also I have an issue with the way language arts has been presented as if all of these are being taught when as you say there is more emphasis on reading and math. If the principal and teachers were more honest about not having the time to cover grammar and writing I’d have more respect. But they tell parents they teach this stuff and then don’t. And the standards are still showing up on the state SOLs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a pretty successful adult and I would have to google the 8 parts of speech. I don't have a job that would require that at all. I bet there are very few jobs that would require that. Why is that something you are worried about? I get wanting to make sure my kid can write well, but I would argue you can learn to write well without knowing exactly what each part is called.

Don't you think learning grammar (and that is pretty basic grammar) helps you to write well/better? I get that you don't know now, but I bet at one point in your life you learned it and incorporated that knowledge into your writing.

My experience as a high school teacher is that the kids coming from environments that emphasize grammar in elementary are the reluctant writers. They often have beautiful handwriting, but their sentences are short, because they're afraid to take a risk on words that they can't spell or sentence structures they don't remember how to use. The kids coming from public are much more fluent, their writing is better organized, and they have better voice. Then in middle school, they learn the parts of speech easily in the first year of foreign language, and editing becomes a focus in English. They enter high school as better writers.

Well, my experience as a college professor is that almost all the students are terrible writers, but that "fluent" ones fill more pages and are harder to understand.