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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Don’t have much to compare it to but my 6th grader seems to be getting some strong writing instruction and challenging assignments in History class.[/quote]

6th grade experience does not foretell high school demands. My older kid wrote more in elementary than they did in high school.

However, OP:  I have been extremely disappointed in high school writing all through my oldest's 4 years and my youngest's 2. I will say, however, that even though there are not any extensive papers per se, I am seeing that my younger child is getting a lot of writing experience now. Most notably, this is through AP Seminar and AP English (11th grade). Can't say the same for other AP classes like APUSH or AP Gov't, though. Waiting to see what AP Lit brings next year.

There doesn't seem to be the same amount of the type of writing there was "back in my day." A lot of persuasive essays and focus on writing from some different perspectives.  However, what I have heard about my child's assignments and the few things I have recently actually seen, the quality of the instruction (in their current classes) is good - particularly in understanding and using quality sources and specific requirements for supporting your argument. And there seems to be a lot (? good amount?) of these shorter types of writing assignments. AP Seminar has been beneficial for identifying quality of sources, working in groups, learning presentation skills, analyzing a topic through a specific lens (ie: scientific, social, futuristic, etc.) though you don't have an opportunity to actually apply many of those lenses yourself because you just do one for each project and can use the same lens for multiple projects if you choose.

There still is not much focus on correcting grammar, unfortunately (even in the AP classes). Focus is definitely more on substance than on the writing per se. Essentially this means that my kid's writing could be better merely by learning how to organize sentences and paragraphs better, learning to phrase things differently, and using more (and correct) punctuation. [/quote]

I don’t think this poster is sharing experience about HBW if they’re talking about AP seminar because HB doesn’t offer it.

As a parent, I’ve found HB has some teachers who take writing instruction quite seriously, and others who don’t. Pretty equivalent to the other schools, though I’ve heard (from a friend who teaches there) HB teachers are meeting to be more intentional about writing pedagogy across grade levels.

The biggest challenge of writing instruction is grading all those essays. Since HB teachers have six classes instead of the normal five, it might mean a comparable number of essays to deal with. I think class sizes are the main obstacle to the kind of writing instruction we’d all like to see.[/quote]

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