My DS is also in third grade. He is also being penalized for handwriting via both a penmanship grade AND his papers being marked down when they are illegible. I feel he's being penalized twice and intend to speak to the teacher about it at conferences. When he writes by hand, he does exactly what you mentioned your DD doing.
it's the forgetfulness of spelling, capitalization, punctuation at this age level that bothers me. When she writes fast it gets worse. We go over it again and again yet she always forgets.
Last year, it wasn't a problem but with his move to an HG class and third grade, the writing requirements have increased significantly. When he writes on the computer, it's no problem. I know because I just enjoyed a weekend of watching him write a seven page (double-spaced, 14 pt font) paper wherein he expressed his ideas clearly and self-corrected his punctuation, grammar, capitalization, and spelling. His fav thing right now is spell and grammar check; he will deliberately misspell something just so he can correct it. ;-)
So this child, who can clearly write, can NOT clearly write by hand. Even I struggle to read his handwriting sometimes and he has to focus to make it neat. We are waiting on the school psychologist to get back to me as I want to have him evaluated.
Sadly, I have no advice on how to talk to the teacher as I am terrible at advocating. We are fortunate to be in a school district where they identify and support gifted students; without that, I would definitely have to have him tested outside and then have some kind of accommodations written.
