Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of the teachers are poor writers as well. Their material is often fraught with spelling errors and incorrect word usage. They mix up homophones and do not place possessive quotations correctly. It’s scary.

Yeah, I've noticed this as well. When teachers' emails are riddled with typos and grammatical mistakes, I can't help but cringe and question their credibility. Obviously, this matters less for STEM classes but if you're an English teacher and you're writing is a mess...yikes.

It never fails: whenever you complain about someone's grammar or spelling mistake, you yourself make a grammar or spelling mistake in the complaint.

Never, but DD got her IB diploma and 770 in SAT, so I guess she turns out fine.

i do it all the time

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of the teachers are poor writers as well. Their material is often fraught with spelling errors and incorrect word usage. They mix up homophones and do not place possessive quotations correctly. It’s scary.

Yeah, I've noticed this as well. When teachers' emails are riddled with typos and grammatical mistakes, I can't help but cringe and question their credibility. Obviously, this matters less for STEM classes but if you're an English teacher and you're writing is a mess...yikes.

It never fails: whenever you complain about someone's grammar or spelling mistake, you yourself make a grammar or spelling mistake in the complaint.

Anonymous wrote:Some of the teachers are poor writers as well. Their material is often fraught with spelling errors and incorrect word usage. They mix up homophones and do not place possessive quotations correctly. It’s scary.

Yeah, I've noticed this as well. When teachers' emails are riddled with typos and grammatical mistakes, I can't help but cringe and question their credibility. Obviously, this matters less for STEM classes but if you're an English teacher and you're writing is a mess...yikes.

The teacher's name is Meri Faulkner and the class is entitled "I don't hate writing anymore." My daughter is a reluctant writer and has writing challenges but she enjoys this class and willingly does the work

Anonymous wrote:I do 1 outschool writing class a week ($15 a class) and then I edit my daughter's mcps work with her once a week. She has done much more work in the once a week outschool class (students have to write a 8-10 sentence response that is persuasive, informative or opinion based depending on the week) than she has done in her enriched ela 4th grade class all year. She also gets a 5 minute individual video feedback session from her outschool teacher each week, telling her how she can improve her writing

This sounds amazing! Can you tell us the name of the class? There are so many writing classes that some guidance would be helpful.

I used to be a middle school English teacher, and I provide feedback on my daughter's work sometimes (she's in 7th.) There's always a balance between her being welcoming and her wanting to slink away. But I have found parent feedback to be very useful. I went to a highly rated private school in the 80s, and while they did provide some instruction on how to write essays, it was really my parents who taught me by giving feedback on my work ("that's....not really a topic sentence for this paragraph." "You need to explain that example more." Etc.)

So I would say share feedback to the extent that you can. It's not like you're trying to get higher grades for your kids; you want them to write well. And after a few years, they'll probably be better at it.

I even find it fun with my kid. Sometimes, we look back at the text together and she has a head-smack moment about missing the point of it, and then her essay gets better. You should decide what's highest priority for you, mechanics or content, and go from there. You can't attack on all fronts every time, but you can teach a meaningful lesson every few weeks.

You can also say, "Look, I think there are things they're not teaching you in school, and I want you to express yourself in writing as well as you do when I talk to you. We're going to devote an hour each weekend to reading something short and doing a long-answer question about it, and at the end of __ weeks, we'll celebrate by _____ (kid decides motivating reward.)" Commonlit and NewsELA are two websites that have great texts and discussion questions to write answers to. You can enlist your kid in choosing which texts they want to look into.

I hope it works out for you, OP!

Some of the teachers are poor writers as well. Their material is often fraught with spelling errors and incorrect word usage. They mix up homophones and do not place possessive quotations correctly. It’s scary.

I do 1 outschool writing class a week ($15 a class) and then I edit my daughter's mcps work with her once a week. She has done much more work in the once a week outschool class (students have to write a 8-10 sentence response that is persuasive, informative or opinion based depending on the week) than she has done in her enriched ela 4th grade class all year. She also gets a 5 minute individual video feedback session from her outschool teacher each week, telling her how she can improve her writing

Anonymous wrote:I don't personally edit my kid's work, but I asked my kid's English teacher if they could use Grammarly. She said it was fine.

Lol

Anonymous wrote:Get your kid a writing tutor asap. MCPS does not have a culture or dedicate the resources necessary to provide the kind of dedicated feedback needed to teach kids how to write well.

We too will have to do this.

Very low standards on graded work. And minimal feedback on subpar work.

And this is on the basics.

It seems like lack of teaching and instruction.

I don't personally edit my kid's work, but I asked my kid's English teacher if they could use Grammarly. She said it was fine.

My daughter loves writing but teachers are not teaching kids how to write well due to the reasons above. If teachers do give feedback they have to focus on the most struggling students first. It’s a huge weakness of the mainstreaming movement and getting rid of lower level classes. High school courses are moving in that direction as well. It feels more and more like middle school where kids are not differentiated into different courses. They are just passed along no matter any failed grades.

The grading in MCPS is hit or miss. I have a middle schooler with an IEP and we have had teachers that don't even appear to read written responses for assignments and quizzes but give an A if the work is done. I know this because after looking at the response it does not even answer the question. This is a disservice to our kid because we really need to know where the gaps are so we can work at home to help understand the content. Every once in a while, we get a teacher who appears to actually grade the work and provide feedback.