Schools simply do not teach writing any more

[Anonymous]

I have a child in 5th grade. They did some teaching on how to spell phonetically n grades 1-3, but nothing after that. He still has no clue about parts of speech, verb/noun relationships, what a run-on sentence is. He has never taken a single spelling sheet home. However, they are supposed to write paragraphs and edit their mistakes. I was just on the phone with his teacher and she said: "we tell them to write freely and then we will fix all of the mistakes later." My kid struggles with this free flow of ideas approach. He is a kid that likes rules. He does really well in math because of that. I wish the schools would teach our children the rules for writing too. Where I grew up we concentrated equally on grammar and creative writing. I guess I'll have to teach him grammar on my own at home.

Vent over.

[Anonymous]

That is not the case in our DCPS school. 4th grade.

[Anonymous]

Catholic school does

[Anonymous]

Grammar and parts of speech are pretty easy to supplement with Khan Academy and Bee Star, if you are so inclined.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is not the case in our DCPS school. 4th grade.

OP here. My DS is in DCPS and I can vouch that this is definitely the case in our upper NW school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grammar and parts of speech are pretty easy to supplement with Khan Academy and Bee Star, if you are so inclined.

Yes, I will supplement, but that is not the point. This is the most basic thing that the school should be able to do.

[Anonymous]

This is a big reason we plan to pay for private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a big reason we plan to pay for private school.

OP here. I wish we had the money to do it.

[Anonymous]

Catholic school did the trick after the same ridiculous mumbo jumbo from my son's public ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grammar and parts of speech are pretty easy to supplement with Khan Academy and Bee Star, if you are so inclined.

Yes, I will supplement, but that is not the point. This is the most basic thing that the school should be able to do.

The education industry follows whatever trend is fashionable, and the currently the trend is to not explicitly teach most of the basics. The idea is that is better for kids to pick things up naturally, through osmosis. From the school's perspective, this seems to work for many kids. Of course, behind the scenes, the kids for whom this is "working" are generally those whose parents are now either doing the explicit teaching at home or are driving them to one of the many tutoring centers that have opened up since the fad seized hold.

[Anonymous]

My second-grader is learning about paragraphs, topic sentences, supporting facts, etc. They are learning editorial marks right now. They have also been learning punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.

But honestly, I write for a living, and almost no one teaches writing as well as it used to be taught anymore. So I fully expect that I will be teaching my child more grammar and style than she will learn in school.

[Anonymous]

If you’re looking for a supplement and don’t mind Mennonite content, Rod and Staff publishes VERY thorough grammar books for grades 2-10. They are cheap (around $10) and really well done, covering things like writing from notes, outlining, poetry as well as diagramming, parts of speech, verb tenses, etc.

You can view samples and purchase at milestonebooks.com.

My kid is similar to yours and having explicit grammar instruction really helped because then I could say, “you need an active verb instead of a participle” and she would get it and make the change, rather than relying on “that doesn’t sound right, does it?” which did not always work for my kid.

Alternatively if you plan for your child to take an inflected language (Latin, Russian, Ancient Greek) in middle and high school, they will learn more than anyone ever wanted to know about grammar because all the words in the sentence change based on their role in the sentence - so that may help too if you want to wait a bit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grammar and parts of speech are pretty easy to supplement with Khan Academy and Bee Star, if you are so inclined.

Yes, I will supplement, but that is not the point. This is the most basic thing that the school should be able to do.

+1

I agree, OP. Too many people are OK with this. Everyone needs to complain because this is the result: it's increases inequity in education.

It's not right! Yes, Catholic schools and private schools still teach parts of speech, grammar and technical aspects of wiring. So those affluent kids are getting a good foundation. Public schools across the country have phased this out, and children who need this foundation most are not getting it.

I can't understand for the life of me, how public schools would let this happen to our kids.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate rules (and I love grammar), too; however, in my opinion, the fact that they aren't learning it the way we did hasn't adversely impacted their ability to write. My older kids had to take a grammar quiz prior to the start of middle school and I was worried they would fail since they had never taken a formal grammar class; however, they aced it and now, as high schoolers, continue to write well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I appreciate rules (and I love grammar), too; however, in my opinion, the fact that they aren't learning it the way we did hasn't adversely impacted their ability to write. My older kids had to take a grammar quiz prior to the start of middle school and I was worried they would fail since they had never taken a formal grammar class; however, they aced it and now, as high schoolers, continue to write well.

Since you have high schoolers you have no idea what's happening in elementary schools right now. It has changed dramatically even in that short time frame.