It's not that I think that "best handwriting" is such an important learning goal, but if the handwriting actually doesn't really matter, then leave it out of the assignment.
IMHO, DD's spelling assignments in general are ridiculous nonsense, and stupidly graded. For this one, I figured that the sheer volume DD produced offset the lack of tidy handwriting, and I personally care more about willingness to produce volume than I care about penmanship. But I'd have been perfectly happy had she gotten a low grade on it - I'm just not willing to fight the "your teacher has unacceptably low standards" fight over handwriting.
For the one that was "come up with 10 more words that fit this week's pattern," and the pattern was "take a verb that ends in -ate, and modify it to form a noun ending in -ation and an adjective ending in -able," I did explain the pattern, and provided a list of -ate verbs for DD to modify. The teacher wrote a note on the page that any word ending in -ation or -able would have been counted right. For that one, I was strongly of the opinion that if the assignment was to follow the pattern, DD needed to follow the pattern. (And that the fact that no 4th grader could possibly have come up with 10 words that fit the pattern without assistance is just proof that the assignments are ridiculous nonsense.)
My parenting in this regard is influenced by my own experience as a kid, when my parents told me (repeatedly) that getting an A was meaningless, because the teacher assigned work that was too easy / graded too laxly. "Perfection isn't good enough" is not the message I want to send my kid. If I want her to work harder on something, we'll work on something at home, but I leave school standard-setting to the school when possible.
