Writing in elementary school

[Anonymous]

Of course writing should be practiced frequently at school and feedback given by teachers... but if you're seeing a lot of basic errors in your kid's writing why can't you spend a few minutes a week on it at home? As with any subject/topic they are struggling with?

Correct the capitalization, punctuation, spacing, word choice, etc. and talk it through with them a few times and their writing will improve. School is not a magic wand to make every kid an expert in everything at once.

[Anonymous]

My reaction to the title of your post: HAHAHAHA.
Expecting writing, or even homework is too much.

As to your specific complaint- this is part of the instruction given to teachers. It is more important to have kids writing, than to correct them and hurt their self-esteem.

[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.

Different ES teacher. My students write sentences with our weekly words all the time and some still struggle to write stories or nonfiction. Many are so critical of their win ideas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course writing should be practiced frequently at school and feedback given by teachers... but if you're seeing a lot of basic errors in your kid's writing why can't you spend a few minutes a week on it at home? As with any subject/topic they are struggling with?

Correct the capitalization, punctuation, spacing, word choice, etc. and talk it through with them a few times and their writing will improve. School is not a magic wand to make every kid an expert in everything at once.

+1. Help them improve a skill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course writing should be practiced frequently at school and feedback given by teachers... but if you're seeing a lot of basic errors in your kid's writing why can't you spend a few minutes a week on it at home? As with any subject/topic they are struggling with?

Correct the capitalization, punctuation, spacing, word choice, etc. and talk it through with them a few times and their writing will improve. School is not a magic wand to make every kid an expert in everything at once.

That’s the thing. We don’t see it. Or at least some of us don’t. My kid never brings home any writing. I only know she gets 2s on her report card. And get tutor shows me examples. My kid’s teacher doesn’t send home writing worksheets so it’s hard to correct anything. Anyway. That’s just us.

[Anonymous]

FCPS is not teaching writing.

Accept that and either teach them yourself or hire a tutor. Or do one of the weekly AoPS Language Arts class. Complaining will get you nowhere and your time will be better spent focusing on enriching your own child.

Hard truths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is not teaching writing.

Accept that and either teach them yourself or hire a tutor. Or do one of the weekly AoPS Language Arts class. Complaining will get you nowhere and your time will be better spent focusing on enriching your own child.

Hard truths.

Apparently some schools are.

[Anonymous]

What does FCPS teach? I know they don’t teach reading and realizing they are not teaching writing, spelling and basic math. They have PE down packed?

[Anonymous]

Schools have weekly words? We have never seen this. This is third grade? We have never had any language arts homework at all in third grade! I try and make up homework/spelling words for him but i’m not a teacher and I really have no idea what they are working on because there are no text books!

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

Thank you for explaining. Not surprised at all that admin is the problem. Where do they come up with these things? It’s like someone sees one study, doesn’t bother to look if the data have ever been replicated, and then builds a whole new curriculum out of it and pushes it downward through the school systems. I have a lot of problems with education research. Most of it is very poorly done compared to the sciences, including social sciences, yet changes are always being made based on it.

[Anonymous]

It’s such a disappointment. My son is in 6th and the comments he gets back on any of his writing (which is not great by any means) is “good” or “great”. No feedback on areas to improve. Unfortunately it’s not just this year - it’s been every year thus far. I found out about an online program that focuses on writing assignments and gives detailed feedback during the pandemic and had him do that weekly. That’s the only time I’ve seen actual actionable feedback provided. We only did it while he was virtual but it helped.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is not teaching writing.

Accept that and either teach them yourself or hire a tutor. Or do one of the weekly AoPS Language Arts class. Complaining will get you nowhere and your time will be better spent focusing on enriching your own child.

Hard truths.

If you want to teach writing at home and address many of the concerns raised in this thread, look into the Michael Clay Thompson language arts curriculum. It systematically teaches writing and grammar at the sentence, paragraph, essay, and beyond levels. I have one kid completing the the sentence level (the "Island" level) and the other the paragraph level (the "Town") level this year and have been very satisfied. You can integrate it with other materials.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.