Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Exactly. I can tell you that it has already impacted my 5th grader very adversely. And since they are doing some assignments in a blog I can read his classmate's writing and it's also abysmal for the most part.

In addition to my high schoolers, I also have a 4th grader so I am familiar with the curriculum. What I am trying to say is that by 7th-8th grade, kids seem to get it without any formal grammar training.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Exactly. I can tell you that it has already impacted my 5th grader very adversely. And since they are doing some assignments in a blog I can read his classmate's writing and it's also abysmal for the most part.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Anonymous wrote:“ My 2nd grader’s teacher marks all spelling and grammar mistakes. Even on things like math work. He has to correct it and turn it back in.”

This is what ALL kids need. Seriously asking - what are public teachers being made to do / focus on that does not leave them time to do this fundamental work? And then how can we get those other things weeded out?

Anonymous wrote:“ My 2nd grader’s teacher marks all spelling and grammar mistakes. Even on things like math work. He has to correct it and turn it back in.”

This is what ALL kids need. Seriously asking - what are public teachers being made to do / focus on that does not leave them time to do this fundamental work? And then how can we get those other things weeded out?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Devil’s advocate: is the new technique making kids into more creative writers? If so, maybe it’s worth it? I tend to think of grammar and punctuation as the “easy” stuff whereas creativity and flow is where genius lies, and we shouldn’t tamp it down by making kids self-edit. Many writers also say that they write/type continuously and only edit later. Editors are a dime a dozen, whereas writers who can craft a compelling story and evoke feeling with their prose are much rarer.

I do agree that the dumbing down of kids’ books is leading to crap writing. I posted a few days ago about HP books not being good literature and was flamed, but frankly... they’re not.

I occasionally work as an adjunct at a public university in a major city. This type of thinking is why I have teach remedial English and writing to college students.

In the beginning, the poor grammar made me question whether they are fully fluent in the English. I thought maybe there were many international students who somehow made it through the cracks.
Then I found out most of them were born and raised in the US. When I explained the rules of basic grammar to them, they told me no one ever taught them. This goes double for formal writing. They struggle to write 3 page papers. They don't actually understand how to compose essays, how to build arguments, etc. They don't understand that formal writing requires a more formal syntax. The tone is overly conversational, there's slang, or sometimes, the kids sound like they're texting their friends.

Sometimes, they even have problems understanding academic texts and articles. It's not a content issue. They literally can't read longer and more complex English sentences.

A good number of these kids were considered high achievers in their high schools. Apparently, they wrote alot in high school but never recieved formal instruction and/or feedback on their writing.

Reading their papers is one most depressing and soul draining experiences I've ever had. If I wrote that way as an undergrad, I would've failed on the poor writing alone. The education system definitely failed these students.

Creativity is important but so are tools (grammar, writing) that students use to express themselves. Ultimately, the lack of proper foundation limits their ability to express themselves.

PP here and that’s terrible. What I meant was, maybe it’s okay to let them write creatively early on (so we don’t stifle the creativity), but the basics of grammar and punctuation definitely need to be ingrained in middle or high school.

As for the inability to read research papers, I wonder how much of that is due to screentime and social media causing decreased attention spans? I see that in myself sometimes, which is why I’m asking.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 6th grader went from papers with many misspelled words, run-ons and sentence fragments everywhere, jumbled and sometimes incoherent ideas, poor verb tense and number agreement, and all of those other issues at the beginning of the year to writing a pretty solid, coherent, grammatically correct 5 paragraph essay now. The solution was an outside enrichment class that uses the Michael Clay Thompson curriculum.

I can't comment on any other school systems, but FCPS is a huge mess with writing instruction. It's bad enough that they don't teach grammar, but the real travesty is that they emphasize volume over quality and give very little feedback. None of my kids' teachers have ever circled spelling or grammar errors, or have written comments to help tighten up the writing. For the most part, they just get a rubric sheet with numbers 1-4 circled in different categories, but without much direct feedback needed to improve. The kids write so much every single day, but very little of it is graded or given any feedback at all. They only very rarely are doing a first draft -> editing -> final draft approach to their writing. When kids don't receive the corrections that they need, their bad writing habits and poor spelling become ingrained and much harder to correct.

Wow. This is so different from Catholic school. My 2nd grader’s teacher marks all spelling and grammar mistakes. Even on things like math work. He has to correct it and turn it back in.

Anonymous wrote:My 6th grader went from papers with many misspelled words, run-ons and sentence fragments everywhere, jumbled and sometimes incoherent ideas, poor verb tense and number agreement, and all of those other issues at the beginning of the year to writing a pretty solid, coherent, grammatically correct 5 paragraph essay now. The solution was an outside enrichment class that uses the Michael Clay Thompson curriculum.

I can't comment on any other school systems, but FCPS is a huge mess with writing instruction. It's bad enough that they don't teach grammar, but the real travesty is that they emphasize volume over quality and give very little feedback. None of my kids' teachers have ever circled spelling or grammar errors, or have written comments to help tighten up the writing. For the most part, they just get a rubric sheet with numbers 1-4 circled in different categories, but without much direct feedback needed to improve. The kids write so much every single day, but very little of it is graded or given any feedback at all. They only very rarely are doing a first draft -> editing -> final draft approach to their writing. When kids don't receive the corrections that they need, their bad writing habits and poor spelling become ingrained and much harder to correct.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Devil’s advocate: is the new technique making kids into more creative writers? If so, maybe it’s worth it? I tend to think of grammar and punctuation as the “easy” stuff whereas creativity and flow is where genius lies, and we shouldn’t tamp it down by making kids self-edit. Many writers also say that they write/type continuously and only edit later. Editors are a dime a dozen, whereas writers who can craft a compelling story and evoke feeling with their prose are much rarer.

I do agree that the dumbing down of kids’ books is leading to crap writing. I posted a few days ago about HP books not being good literature and was flamed, but frankly... they’re not.

I occasionally work as an adjunct at a public university in a major city. This type of thinking is why I have teach remedial English and writing to college students.

In the beginning, the poor grammar made me question whether they are fully fluent in the English. I thought maybe there were many international students who somehow made it through the cracks.
Then I found out most of them were born and raised in the US. When I explained the rules of basic grammar to them, they told me no one ever taught them. This goes double for formal writing. They struggle to write 3 page papers. They don't actually understand how to compose essays, how to build arguments, etc. They don't understand that formal writing requires a more formal syntax. The tone is overly conversational, there's slang, or sometimes, the kids sound like they're texting their friends.

Sometimes, they even have problems understanding academic texts and articles. It's not a content issue. They literally can't read longer and more complex English sentences.

A good number of these kids were considered high achievers in their high schools. Apparently, they wrote alot in high school but never recieved formal instruction and/or feedback on their writing.

Reading their papers is one most depressing and soul draining experiences I've ever had. If I wrote that way as an undergrad, I would've failed on the poor writing alone. The education system definitely failed these students.

Creativity is important but so are tools (grammar, writing) that students use to express themselves. Ultimately, the lack of proper foundation limits their ability to express themselves.

PP here and that’s terrible. What I meant was, maybe it’s okay to let them write creatively early on (so we don’t stifle the creativity), but the basics of grammar and punctuation definitely need to be ingrained in middle or high school.

As for the inability to read research papers, I wonder how much of that is due to screentime and social media causing decreased attention spans? I see that in myself sometimes, which is why I’m asking.