Re: re. Report on how kids can't write well

[Laura Johnson <lauraj -at- CND -dot- HP -dot- COM>]

Westra, Kayla L.  (13718westr -at- kcpbldg01 -dot- bv -dot- com) wrote:
:  Sometime teachers grade on content only (as opposed to other times when they
:  grade only grammar).  I did it on occasion just so the kids who suffered
:  through grammer wouldn't get back a paper covered with red ink.  It seemed
:  to help their confidence level.

In general, I think it's bad to compartmentalize education in this way.
Kids get the idea that you only worry about grammar from nine until ten,
math from ten until eleven, and so forth.  I remember being really excited
the first time a teacher showed me how what I was learning in one class
could be applied to another class.  The whole idea of different subjects
being related was new to me.  Although I was capable of writing
well-structure, grammatical papers in English class, it did not occur to me
to apply the same principles to a report written for biology class.  After
all, the biology teacher obviously didn't care about my grammar!  It's no
wonder that kids don't think their education has anything to do with "real
life" when they're not taught how to apply it outside of the classroom.

I don't mean to imply that it's easy. Kayla brings up a good point about
kids who always get back red-inked papers. But I think the answer is to
give more detailed feedback, rather than leaving part of the feedback out
entirely. ("Your ideas were great. They count for 80%.
You lost a lot of points on the other 20% because your poor grammar really
hinders the expression of the ideas." Or something like that.)