Absolutely Shocking - Children's Inability to Write

[MaMa2005]

My DH is a HS teacher and a college professor. I am his grader for some of his assignments (I am a retired teacher so I have the credentials to grade.)

 

Writing scores in his HS are so poor that the principal has created a new plan. Each Monday, the students are given a prompt. On the first Monday, they are to do a graphic organizer. On the next Monday, they are to write about the prompt.

 

Last night, I graded the first complete writing and I was SHOCKED. These high school students cannot write, spell, punctuate, etc. Their prompt was to write a persuasive letter. Most could not format a letter much less write in a persuasive style.

 

What have these students been learning in elementary and middle school? It certainly doesn't appear to be types of writing.

 

After this encounter, it just makes it that more important for us to be able to home school our DS.

[Jean in Newcastle]

It is good that the principal is making this a priority then.

[Renee in NC]

My experience with the ps is that they do *plenty* of writing, but no one teaches them *how* to write. The goal seems to be get a huge number of words on paper, but not to care about the quality of those words. There has been no explicit teaching of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

 

It reminds me on a regular basis why I am drawn to TWTM - the focus on the nuts and bolts as well as the rest.

[3andme]

My experience with the ps is that they do *plenty* of writing, but no one teaches them *how* to write. The goal seems to be get a huge number of words on paper, but not to care about the quality of those words. There has been no explicit teaching of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

 

It reminds me on a regular basis why I am drawn to TWTM - the focus on the nuts and bolts as well as the rest.

 

 

:iagree: I just withdrew my ds from 3rd grade to homeschool him. His school did a fairly good job with grammar instruction and using graphic organizers to help break down the writing process but they expected the students to turn out multi-paragraph assignments without first getting the mechanics of a sentence in place. Extensive corrections and editing would be required to achieve a good result.

 

I much prefer the WWE method of copywork and dictation and crafting a single well written sentence before moving onto more complex writing.

[LibraryLover]

i think part of it too, is that many teachers/schools use a once-size-fits-all program that doesn't work for all students. I also think there is precious little attention paid to processing issues, such a dyslexia etc. I think dyslexia is more common that autism and few schools know how to address this very complicated neurological issue. There is a spectrum of processing issues...from very mild to quite severe, and unless a child is a behavior problem, learning issues are rarely addressed in any significant way, or addressed as laziness etc.

[LibraryLover]

I am glad the principal is concerned but prompts don't actually teach them to write. These kids can't write a persuasive letter. They have to learn to write a sentance first.

 

I see this so often and it drives me CRAZY. How do school expect kids to write well when they don't teach the skill? Volumes of writing does not a good writer make.:glare:

 

This is one reason journal writing for little kids makes me crazy. I mean, OK some kids love to do this, fine. But it's not teaching them the mechanics of writing, for the most part. Show them what good writing looks like, and address what it takes to get there.

 

Parents do want to give their children writing practice, so I can see why they want children to write lots, such as in the case of journal writing. I think age matters a great deal.

 

I do want my child to practice writing, so I do give prompts to my 10 yr old, but we go over it. A lot of people don't know what they are doing. I include some hs parents in this. lol Since I am not perfect, I count myself among that group. ;) Some children have very complicated needs at times. Some kids get what you're giving easily ;), and some kids absolutely do not. Schools have a lot more at stake when they screw up, a lot more students. Hsers get a little more leeway. I can see why parents often change curric, and I can see why some schools are often in curric flux and change. Nothing really works for all kids.

Edited February 8, 2010 by LibraryLover

[LibraryLover]

Oh! I wanted to add one more thing re kids who love to write. My oldest dd was/is a poet/writer. She wrote plays and poems before she could spell well or tell you what an object pronoun was. Her work was delightful! It helped her become the creative person she is today.

 

It would have been evil to tell her to stop creating because the mechanics of her prose was 'wrong'. Those children who love to write, should write, no matter. They should be encouraged in their joy, their work should be appreciated. The mechanics of it all can be tackled later.

 

But pushing little kids to write before they want to/are ready? Nope.

[RanchGirl]

Is your dh teaching them writing or are they already expected to know how and this is just additional practice?

[LibraryLover]

Is your dh teaching them writing or are they already expected to know how and this is just additional practice?

 

 

I was thinking about that today as well. lol Funny. Will these kids finally get what they need, even if they should have gotten it already?

[Wildiris]

For what it is worth:

 

I home schooled one son through winter of his 7th grade year. In CA if you school through a charter as we did, then the charter would like the student to participate in state wide testing . In 7th grade all CA student take a written exam. I took the time to teach this boy to write, and as the test date approached we practiced taking a timed written exam based on state provided prompts. Two weeks before the test he decided he wanted to go to school because a friend was going to school. So he took the state written exam at a public school. He received the highest marks in the school. This is a very small school. 14 students graduated 8the grade with my son. I would have thought in such a small school the quality would have been better. It was one of the few times I had a teacher say home schooling had its benefits.

 

After four years in public school I am sad at how his skill as a writer declined. All of the thing stated in the original post are true, and worse I do not see anyone but myself correcting his mistakes. He spent one year in high school English doing vocabulary tests and one written report for the whole year. What he learned at home enabled him to rise above his peer and still get a decent grade when he had to write a paper for a class. More shocking is when the student do peer editing in class my son reads other student papers and comes home with comments about how awful his classmates write.

[Caribbean Queen]

Is your dh teaching them writing or are they already expected to know how and this is just additional practice?

 

In elementary school I was asked to write lots. Except for certain special projects, spelling didn't matter. Punctuation didn't matter. My content of my writing was insipid. "I like the ______ because it is nice." was in almost every paper. What mattered was that I got some sentences down. It was very unenjoyable for me, and reinforced my tendancy to write badly. I had a very hard time producing good papers in college.

[MaMa2005]

Is your dh teaching them writing or are they already expected to know how and this is just additional practice?

 

No, DH is an information technology teacher. ALL teachers in the school, regardless of what they teach, have to participate in this program. If the students fail 3 prompts, then they will be referred to a before school tutoring program.

 

The expectation is that the students already know the mechanics of writing and this is to weed out the ones that really need extra assistance.

[bettyandbob]

My ds is in public high school. He's in 10th grade now, taking all honors classes. And I think that's the key difference--all honors classes in a pre IB program. IB requires lots of writing. He has fine motor problems and as a result, avoided writing as much as possible. This I feel put him behind where he should have been in this skill when he started high school. That said, his writing has dramatically improved and he went from C+'s to B+'s in his honors English classes. I judged science fair at the school the last 2 years and the quality of writing in the science projects is good.

 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of students are not graduating high school taking all honors type classes. I think the problem is that the bar is way too low for students not in honors classes. I think, at least in school districts near me, students who are not funneled into more advance tracks are not provided decent expectations at all. And I think less skilled teachers are often funneled into teaching the less advanced tracks as well. Giving average students poor teachers is just not a good combination. If my child were not in honors/IB classes, I would try to get him assigned to teachers who teach both honors and regular sections of the same subject. When I was teaching public school many years ago, I noticed that the best sections of history were taught by the teacher who also taught AP history. I made the same observation in math.

[Miss Sherry]

No, DH is an information technology teacher. ALL teachers in the school, regardless of what they teach, have to participate in this program. If the students fail 3 prompts, then they will be referred to a before school tutoring program.

 

The expectation is that the students already know the mechanics of writing and this is to weed out the ones that really need extra assistance.

Are the students that do not demonstrate they have the writing skills they need going to be getting instruction in writing mechanics or just more prompts ?

[Miss Sherry]

For what it is worth:

 

I home schooled one son through winter of his 7th grade year. In CA if you school through a charter as we did, then the charter would like the student to participate in state wide testing . In 7th grade all CA student take a written exam. I took the time to teach this boy to write, and as the test date approached we practiced taking a timed written exam based on state provided prompts. Two weeks before the test he decided he wanted to go to school because a friend was going to school. So he took the state written exam at a public school. He received the highest marks in the school. This is a very small school. 14 students graduated 8the grade with my son. I would have thought in such a small school the quality would have been better. It was one of the few times I had a teacher say home schooling had its benefits.

 

After four years in public school I am sad at how his skill as a writer declined. All of the thing stated in the original post are true, and worse I do not see anyone but myself correcting his mistakes. He spent one year in high school English doing vocabulary tests and one written report for the whole year. What he learned at home enabled him to rise above his peer and still get a decent grade when he had to write a paper for a class. More shocking is when the student do peer editing in class my son reads other student papers and comes home with comments about how awful his classmates write.

Is there a writing program you could recommend or were you using what was provided by the charter school to teach writing skills to your son ? I am interested in hearing about a writing program you may have used.

 

Thank you.

[MaMa2005]

I would bet that the principal is in for a rude awakening then, when most of the school fails these prompts. Well, I guess that depends on how bad they have to do to qualify as "failed".

 

Failed is defined by the school as '70 or below'. The school is using a higher number to make it more difficult. The kicker, though, is that on the state administered test, the students only have to score a 50 out of 100 to pass.:w00t:

[lovemykids]

Oh! I wanted to add one more thing re kids who love to write. My oldest dd was/is a poet/writer. She wrote plays and poems before she could spell well or tell you what an object pronoun was. Her work was delightful! It helped her become the creative person she is today.

 

It would have been evil to tell her to stop creating because the mechanics of her prose was 'wrong'. Those children who love to write, should write, no matter. They should be encouraged in their joy, their work should be appreciated. The mechanics of it all can be tackled later.

 

But pushing little kids to write before they want to/are ready? Nope.

:iagree:

[MaMa2005]

Are the students that do not demonstrate they have the writing skills they need going to be getting instruction in writing mechanics or just more prompts ?

 

The students are supposed to receive additional instruction. However, the time allotted for the tutoring is going to be 20 minutes a day x 3 times a week for about 2 weeks. I really don't know how this short of a time will help these students that are so far behind,:001_huh:

[cougarmom4]

Ah, this discussion is timely for me. This is one area that I feel ps is really failing in...there are plenty of writing assignments...just no instruction on how to write them. And then the expectations of the finished product are not high enough! (Punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc. don't seem to count, just as long as you get it done and it's at least two pages...)

 

Ds12 was homeschooled last year, we used Jump In and had a pretty successful time. Up to this year, he has had Shurley English--although pretty haphazard and not very consistently at his previous school. Currently in 7th grade...no grammar program whatsoever. The high school ds will be going to has some fabulous honors classes that look quite rigorous, but I'm extremely troubled by the route from here to there...or the lack thereof! How can these kids suddenly be able to write & analyze when they haven't been taught?!?

 

So...I've been doing lots of research on here trying to figure out a do-able at-home workbook type of grammar and/or writing program that would be easy to implement. Easy...as our time is quite limited and getting ds to do additional work after-school is always a bit of a fight. So I guess I mean easy to implement yet still covering the bases, if that makes any sense. I'm thinking it might become one of our summer goals, too. Recently I found out about Saxon Grammar & Writing on here...it looks like it might be right what I'm looking for. (We've done Saxon math for years, so I'm trying to figure out if the similar format would be a positive or a negative thing!) Any opinions out there?

[Charles Wallace]

My DH is a HS teacher and a college professor. I am his grader for some of his assignments (I am a retired teacher so I have the credentials to grade.)

 

Writing scores in his HS are so poor that the principal has created a new plan. Each Monday, the students are given a prompt. On the first Monday, they are to do a graphic organizer. On the next Monday, they are to write about the prompt.

 

Last night, I graded the first complete writing and I was SHOCKED. These high school students cannot write, spell, punctuate, etc. Their prompt was to write a persuasive letter. Most could not format a letter much less write in a persuasive style.

 

What have these students been learning in elementary and middle school? It certainly doesn't appear to be types of writing.

 

After this encounter, it just makes it that more important for us to be able to home school our DS.

 

I teach high school. I teach at a good high school.

Your experience is consistent with mine...and I came to the same conclusions as you did.

[Charles Wallace]

My experience with the ps is that they do *plenty* of writing, but no one teaches them *how* to write. The goal seems to be get a huge number of words on paper, but not to care about the quality of those words. There has been no explicit teaching of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

 

It reminds me on a regular basis why I am drawn to TWTM - the focus on the nuts and bolts as well as the rest.

 

Well, and bear this in mind also: I'm ol-skoool, which means that I was taught from Warriner's English Grammar and know the meaning of the words "participial phrase." Many of the newer teachers were never taught grammar themselves and didn't learn how to teach it because they learned in their colleges of education that to teach grammar was mean, soul-killing, repressive, and just plain evil. Yeah, I know this sounds like hyperbole, and to a small degree it is, but in essence, this was the mindset of the college of education to which I went and was fairly typical of most teacher training programs. You were looked upon as a Gradgrindian monster who would clip students' creative wings if you told them that a sentence needs to end with some form of punctuation -- and again, I am exaggerating only slightly.

[MamaSheep]

I've had a writing eye-opener lately too. Our neighbor is going through a "career change". He recently retired after 20 years in law enforcement and is taking college courses. Last semester he had an English teacher who asked him didn't he have a wife or a girlfriend or someone like that who could proofread his work before he turned it in (first of all, sexist much?). He doesn't, but he and dh have been friendly so he came over and asked if I would be willing to check a paper for him. I've since checked several others as well. I'm not sure the word "shocked" quite covers it. The poor guy clearly knows nothing about what makes a group of words qualify as a complete sentence, has never heard of subject-verb agreement (frankly I'm not sure he knows the difference between a noun and a verb), and just sort of throws in random punctuation marks willy nilly. Dh finally went over and showed him how to use the spell checker on his computer, but his papers are still a mess of homophone guessing games--and not just the common ones like "to" versus "too", it's things like "acceptation" when he means "expectation". What he really needs is a tutor, not a proofreader. But what gets me is that he's been writing up police reports for 20 years. I mean...couldn't "the department" have helped him out a little somewhere along the line? Paid for a night class or something? And why is the college not putting him in a remedial class and teaching him how to write before they let him take classes where he's going to be graded on his papers? I don't get it.

 

It does, however, make me feel better about my children's writing abilities.