Why is there so much writing in Public School??

[swainsonshawk]

Why is it common and necessary for a first grader to learn to write a paragraph in Public School? Why is it beneficial for a fourth/fifth grader to be writing 5 paragraph essays? This is not commonly how homeschoolers teach writing, and I know it would not have worked when I was first teaching my oldest son how to write, but now that I am working with the younger kids, I find that I am wanting to teach earlier some of the things that I put off with my oldest son. (Like grammar and spelling)

 

Perhaps I should teach writing longer pieces earlier, too? Why do you think that public school requires writing so much more than homeschoolers do? Does it make a better writer? Should homeschoolers require more? Discuss

[Chris in VA]

Both my boys went to ps for elementary, and dd did 3rd, 5th and now 6th grade there. I will say that state testing has a lot to do with the writing push, but why the states push it, IDK.

 

Most of first grade writing consisted of keeping a journal, and creative writing. (SWB and JW talk about this in WTM.) It's very interesting to me that content is emphasized before any "technique" is mastered in ps elementary; that means the writing doesn't seem to be very organized, and a lot of bad habits develop! That's my experience, any way. They seem to be constantly screaming about the importance of "getting kids to be able to put their thoughts on paper" before they really have time to develop their own thoughts in any coherent way!

 

Maybe there just isn't a handle on a very methodical, intentional and effective way to develop writing skills, like there is in the classical method (copywork/narration/dictation/outline/short essay/long essay/research paper is the way I think SWB does it).

[Hen]

in my experience/view, our State pushes it because writing is on the standardized tests. I am not impressed with the output, but they want you to push/pull your student through the 5 paragraph essay etc. and don't seem to care about how well it is done, just that they can do the trick. :glare:

 

We do the horse & buggy show for the test but I prefer the approach of WWE and this is where I am concentrating, the test essays are an annoyance.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

I agree its all about testing. To push a kid to write so much when they do not have a good grasp of how to write makes no sense. SWB audio lectures completely won me over. Hook, line and sinker. It just makes sense. We do not need good elementary school writers. We need to teach kids how to write logically in elementary and middle school so they will be good high school and college writers, when it counts. Pushing them to write so much before they are cognitively ready is what turns kids writing-aphobic.

[alisoncooks]

I taught 1st grade in the public schools for 5 years, and we were always told to write-write-write. I found that we spent so much time editing and doing "writer's workshops" and teacher-coaching just to get a decent (presentable) finished product. The end result was really not indicative of the students' abilities.

 

I have read TWTM and WWE/The Complete Writer. These methods really make good, logical sense to me, though I admit I really struggled to swallow it at first.

 

For me, I have to simply allow myself to trust the experts (and not try and have it both ways, i.e. implementing TWTM writing + something *else*). I've seen "the other way" in action --and have seen it not work over and again.

[EKS]

What is odd is that there is this huge push to get little kids writing copious amounts but by the time the get to middle and high school, it goes down to a few papers per semester. This is the opposite of what it should be.

[readinmom]

Dd's school adopted Step Up to Writing several years ago. She was writing the color-coded essays last year in 2nd grade.

 

I will agree that writing to write doesn't make a good writer. One bad paragraph = five bad paragraphs.

 

The new Common Core Standards that have been adopted require students to apply critical thinking skills in their writing. I have been studying these and there is a call for more in-depth writing.

 

I personally am still recovering from "inventive spelling". It doesn't matter whether or not the if word is spelled correctly, just the fact that the student is trying to use more difficult words. :confused:

[Mrs Twain]

 

I personally am still recovering from "inventive spelling". It doesn't matter whether or not the if word is spelled correctly, just the fact that the student is trying to use more difficult words. :confused:

 

Ugh--don't get me started on "inventive spelling," or "creative spelling" as they called it in our public school. :D

 

I agree that the public school's approach to writing is commonly ineffective. I believe it is mainly because they don't have the time to work with students individually to help them edit their papers and learn how to improve their writing. Therefore it just doesn't get done, and that is why the public school kids' papers are generally low quality work IMO.

 

I have my kids do a lot of writing, and one of my goals is having my kids be able to write a decent 5-paragraph essay by the end of 5th grade. I don't do it because of standardized tests, but because I think more practice and experience in writing will eventaully lead to better writers.

 

IMO the main ingredient to help kids learn to write well is not to delay them, but to give them a strucutured, systematic approach with a lot of individualized assistance. By a structured approach, I mean teaching them first to write coherent sentences. Next they learn to write a solid paragraph. After that a 3-paragraph paper is not much more difficult. Finally, a 5-paragraph paper is basically the same skill except longer.

 

My philosophy is not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because the public schools in general can't produce good writers doesn't necessarily mean that their goals are not worthy.

[Crimson Wife]

What is odd is that there is this huge push to get little kids writing copious amounts but by the time the get to middle and high school, it goes down to a few papers per semester. This is the opposite of what it should be.

 

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

[ScoutTN]

Because they haven't listened to SWB's lecture on writing for K-4 students! ;):D

[WeeBeaks]

Writing isn't really tested here until 4th grade in a lot of schools. The standarized testing starts earlier, but it is fill in the bubble. The first writing testing is 4th grade most years in the big state wide public school test (STAR here). Because it is more intensive to grade (think $$$), they aren't testing writing every single year anymore.

 

They still push writing though in 1st grade onward. My best guess was that it is a combination of everyone just thinks they should so it perpetuates, and the fact that in a large classroom it is more efficient to grade based on something written ... so you need to write early on.

 

Interestingly, I was surprised to find TOG Writing has level 1 (lowest level) doing paragraphs as well. I was too used to SWB, totally shocked me. :lol:

[bbcooker]

So will children who orally answer information rather than write their answers be behind in their writing education?

 

Is it important for a 2nd grader to be writing something of 6 sentence length on a given topic, all spelled correctly, with great penmenship? (This is what I saw at the public school displayed for each 2nd grade student.)

 

Maybe a better question is ... what should a 2nd grader (homeschooled) be doing?

[mom2scouts]

The PS push for writing is for the tests. I doubt it does much to help students become good writers. In fact, this is one of the things that started our switch to homeschooling. My son was a decent writer, but he was so overwhelmed by the amount of writing required in first grade that he became writing resistant. The teacher would make him rewrite paragraphs if they were too creative or not *exactly* what she wanted for the topic, but she didn't care about spelling or grammar! His teacher started keeping him in from his only recess of the day to finish his writing and that made things even worse. When I brought him home, he would cry if I asked him to write a single sentence. I didn't require any writing for the first half of our year and then very slowly started adding dictation into our lessons. He is now near the end of third grade and he is just beginning to write sentences or short paragraphs without complaint, but his grammar, vocabulary and spelling are excellent. I think for many children, the early push to write is not productive.

[Surfside Academy]

Because they think quantity leads to quality...

[Jen500]

Hmm, I don't know...I have been happy with my dc's writing instruction at ps in the younger years. Maybe it was the teacher, or my kids would do ok with any type of instruction. I have no experience with upper elementary ps though, and I don't really use TWTM writing progression.

[MinivanMom]

When I was teaching public school it was all about the tests. We had statewide writing tests starting in 4th grade and it was a big deal. I remember one weekly faculty meeting where our principal got up and said, "We can't start teaching writing in 4th grade if we want our school to have good scores. We can't start in 3rd or 2nd or 1st. We need our kindergartners writing every single day!"

 

Basically, it's just an extension of the old idea that earlier and more are always better. Our kids were burnt out by the time they got to 4th grade and finally had to take that test. Those poor 4th graders hated writing!

 

Ugh--don't get me started on "inventive spelling," or "creative spelling" as they called it in our public school. :D

 

I agree that the public school's approach to writing is commonly ineffective. I believe it is mainly because they don't have the time to work with students individually to help them edit their papers and learn how to improve their writing. Therefore it just doesn't get done, and that is why the public school kids' papers are generally low quality work IMO.

 

snip

 

My philosophy is not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because the public schools in general can't produce good writers doesn't necessarily mean that their goals are not worthy.

 

:iagree:

 

Just because public schools are doing it poorly, doesn't mean that everything they do is wrong. We do a lot of writing in our homeschool. We do creative writing. I teach my children how to use the writing process to revise and edit their writing. The difference is that I am also teaching them skills (phonics, spelling, grammar, writing structure).

 

What we do looks a lot like the Writers Workshop that so many homeschoolers love to hate. The difference is that I am the one who assists my kids in revising and editing their work rather than fellow students. I can work one-on-one with them, give them valuable feedback, and teach skills as we go along. That is what is missing in a classroom setting where 2nd graders are expected to help each other revise and edit.

[Roadrunner]

We are having a very interesting experience in PS. At first my son (1st grader) began to bring home sentences with 10 adjectives. It was a mess. Over the course of the year the teacher has done an outstanding job polishing up his writing skills. We basically have one parent and a teacher's assistant every day in the classroom, which allows our teacher to pull kids and work individually with them on editing their journals. I believe she does it three times a week. The results have been impressive. DS has no fear of a written word and he can now put together a surprisingly coherent 5 sentence paragraph.

I have a greater concerns of what's to come in middle and high school. It seems they work very hard on writing with kids in elementary school (especially first three years) and then they begin to relax. Strange indeed.

 

Oh, they also do quite a lot of dictation and narration (teacher reads short stories and kids write summaries). It's not only creative writing. Again, this could be just happening in our classroom and not in others. My experience is very limited and I have no idea if writing instruction is similar in other schools.

 

Edited March 26, 2012 by Roadrunner

[EMS83]

Well, a homeschooled 2nd grader should be doing whatever their parents want them to, according to each child's ability.

 

If you want your children to write a lot and to write well, then prioritize your school day around that. I agree with SWB on this subject, but that's just me and no one but me is me.

 

I personally think that public school should be the absolutely last place we look for educational philosophies and methods. I consider the public school system irrelevant to my world. Particularly when it comes to curriculum scope, sequence, and implementation. No expert-worship here.

 

If you saw samples of second grade handwriting, how may different students' work did you see? And what percentage is that of that school's entire 2nd grade population. It's all fine and well to show off the 20 best students' work. But if there are 100, 200, 300 second graders at that school, what do the rest of the children's work look like?

[Crimson Wife]

Is it important for a 2nd grader to be writing something of 6 sentence length on a given topic, all spelled correctly, with great penmenship? (This is what I saw at the public school displayed for each 2nd grade student.)

 

When I visited a 3rd grade classroom last year, I saw 5 paragraph essays proudly displayed on the wall. However, the students' writing had universally atrocious spelling & grammar, and most of the paragraphs were incoherent. I seriously don't know how the teacher could stand to read 32 of them because they were so awful.

 

I really don't get the push for quantity over quality when it comes to writing in PS. I'd rather get a single high-quality paragraph out of a 3rd grader than a horrible 5 paragraph essay.

[tm_burriss]

I don't think there is enough writing in public school.

[2_girls_mommy]

What should a 2nd grader be doing? I agree w/above poster: what their parents have them doing at their level.

 

Both of my 2nd graders have done such different work in 2nd grade. My older is a natural speller, reader, writer. In 2nd grade she was (actually starting in K) able to do whatever I could show her or ask of her. Her work would have been on display in one of those showing the top students in any 2nd grade classroom that she was in. I have no doubt about that.

 

My current 2nd grader still struggles with remembering her capital letters at the beginning of the sentence, getting her bs and ds correct and definitely with spelling and phonics. Most of our day is spent on these subjects and she improves slowly and steadily.

 

She would fall behind in a classroom that was expected to put out big amounts of writing without help. But she does Rod and Staff English just fine (with reminders from me on the periods and capitals and bs and ds and spelling help.) She does copywork and narrations in the other subjects, and that is enough for her. I think she will be a fine writer someday.

[Jenny in GA]

Funny you should ask ... this morning I was enjoying re-reading an entire thread I had started over a year ago discussing the same type of thing. It's a pretty interesting thread!

 

Is writing the homeschooling "weak spot"?

[Jenny in GA]

I will add that I get the impression (and perhaps it's completely off-base) that many other homeschoolers (probably not the people on these forums) don't spend much time teaching writing, and/or don't know how.

 

Now that I'm taking the time to think about it, I think that impression is based on:

1) The fact that I think teaching writing is much harder than, really, any other subject (and I am a published writer), and so I could easily see people just ignoring it, or not knowing how to go about it and doing more workbook/worksheet type activities

 

2) We know two homeschool families, both with multiple high school kids, and I have never seen or heard any evidence of them writing anything. Sure, it's not like they need to tell us everything they do, but you would think over the many years, especially when discussing homeschooling and schoolwork with either the parents and the kids, I would hear something about a 16 or 17 year old about writing a report, doing research, working on a paper, writing an essay, etc.

[Riverland]

What I remember about the writing at my dd's former elementary school was that it all sounded the same. Every paper hanging on the wall sounded like the teacher had revised and edited to the point that all the kids' papers were nearly identical. It was very robotic and unimpressive.

[Jenny in GA]

I don't think there is enough writing in public school.

 

I thought this was interesting. I spoke with a woman a year ago who said she had sent her fifth grader to public school for five weeks, simply because the girl had begging to go for years and the parents wanted to get it out of the girls' system.

 

Anyway, this mother told me that in five weeks, the only evidence she saw of any writing was one assignment where they had to write a few pages of journal entries if someone had been living in the time period they were studying in history.

 

This was a school in what is considered a pretty good district.

 

In my own experience (which may count because it was a looong time ago), I went to the "best" school district, and we didn't write anywhere near what TWTM suggests in upper elementary/middle school.

 

Except for a two-page report (with no bibliography) that I wrote on The Beatles when we studied England; and a few "essay test questions" with one science teacher (ie, describe the rainfall cycle in 3 sentences), I don't remember doing any writing in science or social studies from 6th-8th grades.

 

So ... I'm not even sure that there actually IS a lot of writing in the public schools.

[Hunter]

Before we can teach a child to write, we first need to decide what we want to teach. That is the hard part.

 

So many curricula are robotic, just plain ridiculous, time gobbling, or expect but don't TEACH. Robotic is better than the last 3 problems, so I tend towards robotic. So often though I miss opportunities to teach writing because I don't have anything prepared that I'm so sure is worth a student's time.

[2_girls_mommy]

I don't remember doing any writing in science or social studies from 6th-8th grades.

 

So ... I'm not even sure that there actually IS a lot of writing in the public schools.

 

 

I think most of us are thinking of elem. grades here. They are required to do a lot of journal writing, creative stories, and some are learning essays and such at very young ages. I know that we were. I remember the free write times where you were told to write, "I don't know what to write. I can't think of anything.." until you thought of something. The point of the writing exercise was to keep your hand moving. There was no instruction.

 

As to my memories of middle school, I never had to write in social studies or science. But I did have a whole hour of writing class for 2 years in middle school. That was separate from my hour of English/grammar. So we did write there too. I had an amazing teacher for those hours. The topics in that class did include history topics, but not to do with what we were studying in history.

 

But fmy elem. writing experience is not one that I will replicate with my kids after hearing about classical education. It just makes so much more sense.

[creekster519]

This is one of the reasons I started looking into homeschool. My son had to do so much creative writing in 1st grade and it was overwhelming to him. He wasn't ready so he just shut down and wouldn't write anything. I don't know how many days he cried over that stupid journal he was supposed to write in every day. Plus, the teacher had no idea how to help him.

 

Then I read The Well Trained Mind and was so relieved to learn that if he wasn't ready to write in 1st grade, that was OK!! Now we are working through IEW in 3rd grade in he's doing great.

 

They also encouraged the inventive spelling which seems to have ingrained the wrong spelling in his brain. It was no easy task to correct that!