Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Supplementing (Middle School) Writing Curriculum

Hello!

I'm wondering if anyone has done extra-curricular writing work with their child, and in what format.

Background: my son enjoys writing, and gets excellent grades in his Language Arts classes. This is not bragging--I don't think the standards are unbelievably high :-) We are fortunate to be in a great school district, and have a wonderful LA teacher this year, but nonetheless the class size is about 25, and the teacher has 4 LA classes, so that means a lot of papers to grade per assignment. One thing that I see happen in our public school, given the workload, is probably fewer writing assignments than what would be ideal.

But the killer to me is that I see grades/scores come back on papers, but very little personal feedback on the papers themselves. Personally, I would love to see the papers come back in a sea of red....no matter how far above grade-level your writing might be, there is always room for improvement. He might write well, but definitely not perfectly! There are some awkward sentences, not-as-powerful-as-they-could-be sentences, occasional parts that may not logically flow from one to the other, etc. There are times when there could be better word choice, etc. So even if he deserves a 100% when scored against the district rubric, I would like him to get some serious improvement feedback.

Now, despite this awkwardly written post :-) I am actually a decent writer myself. So one option, of course, would be for ME to just take a copy of his school work, and edit it, and point things out. But for some reason I am unbelievably lazy about this. I'm motivated about doing science projects and other things, but despite good intentions, the truth is that I don't get around to this.

I'm wondering if anyone else finds the writing feedback to be lacking in your schools, and if so, do you:
* step in yourself to help (not so lazy!)
* use a writing tutor
* send your child to a writing camp
* give them extra writing assignments at home (that might be either truly "school-like" or more natural, like writing letters to Grandma that really describe a vacation, etc)
* encourage them to participate in writing competitions
* other??

Anyway, I'm just curious, because I think I'm dropping the ball on this one. So any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

My step-mother (English teacher) always reviewed our written assignments before we turned them in. We very rarely ended up getting anything back from the teachers, because she had gone over everything beforehand.

I think the most important factor in writing well, is reading good writing. If you make a habit of reading good writing, bad writing just FEELS wrong. You know as soon as you type something out that it's "off."

I am starting to run into this as well. My 6th grader is on auto-pilot with respect to written assignments at this point. Her writing is decent but not dazzling. She is very independent, rarely goes to her teacher for assistance and does not appreciate unsolicited writing critiques. She would not respond well to a "sea of red" from me. She wants to do everything herself but can't get to the next level on her own.

I've been working on giving feedback within her narrow, acceptable parameters. At this point, I am giving her the option to have me review her work and what types of comments I am allowed to make. For example, she is notorious for using run-on sentences and recently asked me to review her paper for them. Afterward, I asked her if I could make some other comments about potential improvements. She grudgingly listened to a few comments. Last week, she asked me to review a piece because she knew it wasn't great but didn't know how to fix it. We had a wonderful conversation about the differences between objective and persuasive writing styles. I'm hoping that we will continue on this path where she allows me to comment without violating her sense of autonomy.

DD7 is in 1st grade with a GT pullout for LA, so obviously the standards are somewhat different than in middle school. We saw her getting writing assignments in her regular K and 1st grade classes, though... like writing in a journal... and we were like, WHAT? It turns out they have this weird idea about something called "developmental writing," which as far as I can see means it's okay to have the kiddos writing like illiterate text-speak.

[grumpy old man voice]In my day, we didn't write anything until we knew how to do it right, and then when we wrote something, we wrote it right![/voice]

As a result, even in DD's GT class, nothing comes back with any feedback whatsoever.

When DD gets writing projects to take home, I take the lead in providing feedback, because I'm a wannabe writer and English is DW's second language. But it's not like I have to push it, because DD automatically comes to us for this stuff, because she knows she's doing it wrong and she hates it.

Gifted perfectionist + developmental writing = meltdowns

We do extra work in writing with my middle school ds, but we're coming from the opposite end of the spectrum - he's 2e with an expressive language and written expression disorder, but fwiw, maybe some of what we do might help.

The first thing is, I do review his work and help him out with suggestions - if your child is ok with this, I'd keep doing it!

Second thing - do you think it would help your dd to hear her writing read back to her? That helps struggling writers, but I'm thinking it might help a good writer too - you could either have her read it back to herself, you could read it to her, or she could use a text-to-speech option on the computer if she's composing on the computer.

Reading - I honestly think even as students get far along in school and develop their writing at high levels, reading that supports what they are learning in their writing helps. If your dd likes working with you, you could help by picking examples of specific types of writing to read and discuss together.

Journaling - fwiw, we don't do this with our writing-challenged ds, he's too challenged! But I do this with my dds, both of whom love to write. They're younger, but I think it would work with older kids too. It's a simple journal where we write back and forth to each other. I started it with a dual-goal - sharing our thoughts, plus working on writing conventions. We read what we write together, and I make suggestions on how to improve the writing.

I hope some of that helps!

polarbear

This is a great topic, and these are great suggestions.
other -
study grammar or vocabulary
read and use '6+1 writing traits' to develop a language about writing so you can discuss the work of other writers
read favorite books and go online and do fan-writing
find an online fourm on a favorite topic and contribute
polish typing skills

Just a quick idea.  When she finishes a paper instead of pointing out rough spots maybe you rewrite the paper with the best grammar you can use and she reads the edited version independently from the page she wrote.  Not only is she hearing the writing flow properly while drawing attention away from the "corrections" she also may hear something in your draft that would sound better a different way.  

My dd is also in 6th. She likes writing and considers it a career option. She actually welcomes our feedback when she is working on school writing assignments, but the amount of writing she is asked to do is not great. She is a good writer - she recently won a grade level award in a statewide writing competition.

So, now that the school year is winding down, we *just* signed her up for an online NUMATS course on writing graphic novels to do over the summer. Has anyone else tried online writing classes? I'd be interested to hear what you think.