What length of paper should a 4th grader reasonably be expected to write without help

[Lisa loves Pooh]

that "you even write in math classes."

Now you have me curious. What did they mean by that?

I recall proofs and theorems and such, but through Calc II don't recall anything that I constitute as writing like you would in other classes. I remember my hand cramping though from the lengthy problems though.

 

[taximomfor4]

Now you have me curious. What did they mean by that?

I recall proofs and theorems and such, but through Calc II don't recall anything that I constitute as writing like you would in other classes. I remember my hand cramping though from the lengthy problems though.

My kids, starting in about 2nd grade, often have math problems that they solve and then have to write a paragraph describing how they arrived at the answer. My 70's-80's schooled self cringes at those assignments. Generally, it is something they haven't learned yet (like personally, I would just do long multiplication or something).

As far as your original question, these days, writing a paper that's long enough to be a 3-5 minute speech sounds perfectly normal for 4th grade. IF one is looking at what our public schools are teaching. DD7, in first grade, had to write each day in a journal. Now this year, in 2nd grade, she writes stories with beginning, middle, and end and answers essay questions on tests (each answer several sentences long of course).

DS9 is in 4th grade, and writing is heavily incorporated into every subject. He began writing 3 minute speeches in 3rd grade...in the fall, specifically. I remember him practicing it. I didn't see it, but I heard him (he is very private about his schoolwork until it's graded and returned).

Perhaps supplement the classical curriculum with some writing? I have heard good things about classical, btw...just maybe your dd needed to take other classes first, and lead up to that speech class if she has not been writing on her own as much as some other kids.

And my hat's off to you for homeschooling. I consider it every year or 2, but I know I couldn't do it.

 

[Scurvy]

The writing in math started as a part of the "Whole Language" movement, I believe. That method was a big part of my Elementary Education classes because one of my instructors was a strong proponent of the method. (She wrote the textbook about it. ) Basically, reading and writing were to be used across all of the subjects. In the course of the day, the different subjects weren't separated as much as they typically are. Say the student is studying plants, for example. Plants would be a part of every lesson that day, and the different subjects (math, English, science, etc.) would be blended together as much as possible. So while you would have a set time to study English in the morning, you'd be writing sentences that had to do with the subject you were working on in science. In math you'd do problems about plants and then have to write about the methods used or alternate methods you could have used. I'm actually a big fan of that method, but of course not every child thrives under the same style of education.

As an aside, Lisa Loves Pooh, I hope you know that my comment wasn't meant as an attack on your curriculum. I know that different children learn differently and I am sure you chose the curriculum that you believe is the best fit for your daughter. I only mentioned supplimenting with some additional reading assignments because these days writing is widely considered to be so fundimental to everything else kids do in their classes. I wasn't sure if you were aware of just how much focus there is on writing in mainstream education. If your daughter isn't comfortable with it and her peers are, it could lead to unnecessary difficulties for her in any group educational settings or classes she might participate in. Obviously you know your daughter better than anyone on here, and if you don't think a stronger focus on writing would be appropriate for her at this time then you should do what you feel comfortable with.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

As an aside, Lisa Loves Pooh, I hope you know that my comment wasn't meant as an attack on your curriculum. I know that different children learn differently and I am sure you chose the curriculum that you believe is the best fit for your daughter. I only mentioned supplimenting with some additional reading assignments because these days writing is widely considered to be so fundimental to everything else kids do in their classes. I wasn't sure if you were aware of just how much focus there is on writing in mainstream education. If your daughter isn't comfortable with it and her peers are, it could lead to unnecessary difficulties for her in any group educational settings or classes she might participate in. Obviously you know your daughter better than anyone on here, and if you don't think a stronger focus on writing would be appropriate for her at this time then you should do what you feel comfortable with.

Not at all.

I do supplement her with reading comprehension work and we do have the Writing Strands book that was highly recommended to help teach writing.

Part of our issue is that I was bedridden with morning sickness for a month and had difficulty teaching for the week or so before and a few weeks after. So she really should be in week 17 of her curriculum. But she isn't. But it's okay as she will have her work done within our school year and we will be fine. (Our school year concludes end of July/Beginning of August.)

I do believe the class was much tougher for her than I expected, but our main problem this week was a diligence issue and really the reason why I asked the question. The topic was one that she goes on ad nauseum about often. It was not unfamiliar. Yet it was more difficult to get her to write anything that it was on other papers where she didn't know much about the topic. But in those cases, she had research and had essentially a source for what she was writing.

I was trying to figure out if my expectations were too high and it seems given our hiatus and where she is academically in regards to writing her thoughts to paper on her own, that it was a bit advanced for her.

Now, I have a baseline for her writing.

I will also consider the journal writing that some others suggested. Not sure how to come up with topics though or if I should just let her free write or something.

Any thoughts on that?

The standardized test we use, the group does the portion that doesn't contain writing (not sure why....a certified teacher orders the tests, Standford Achievement and there is one with writing and one without.)

So in that aspect, I'm not too concerned. But on the Florida rubrics, it looks like the assignment she did for today would have been about a 3. Much room for improvement of course.

That method was a big part of my Elementary Education classes because one of my instructors was a strong proponent of the method.

Any links to that Whole Language Method? What you describe sounds like unit studies that I know many families work on for their curriculum. However, they'll extend it over a week or several weeks.

My kids, starting in about 2nd grade, often have math problems that they solve and then have to write a paragraph describing how they arrived at the answer. My 70's-80's schooled self cringes at those assignments

That would have ruined my love of math.

 

[Shelton123]

500 words sounds about right for a 4th grader. IIRC, that's about what I did in 4th grade.

 

[Momvic5]

If she were in public school, this is the year she'd be taking the FCAT writing test in March. I googled the rubric and while it does not give a word count, it does require some pretty demanding and well organized writing. I would take this as the standard that the average Florida 4th grader should be able to write at. Here's a link: http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/rubrcw04.pdf

Fourth graders in Texas take a writing test also. When my oldest was in 4th grade, I was worried sick over the test. He made a 100% on both the state reading and math tests in the 3rd grade, but writing was a challenge for him. He had the imagination, but his organization was awful. They practiced all year long getting ready for the writing test, and according to my standards, his practice writings would have failed big time. According to his teacher's standards, his writing skills were poor but not failing. Boy... were we both wrong according to the standards of that test. He passed with a very high score-one of the highest in his class. The standards can not be that demanding because I still can not believe the score he was given. Thousands of children take those tests every year, and not many children fail them. The level of skill is so extreme between children and yet, most children pass. I am not trying to be snarky. I was just so shocked by my son's 4th grade writing score that my opinion of these type tests and their standards has drastically changed.

 

[Scurvy]

In my experience free writing doesn't work as well, because some kids have a hard time deciding what to write about and spend so long trying to choose that they don't have much time to actually write. Since your daughter's schedule is tailored more for her individually it might work better for you than it does in a larger class. If you decide to assign specific topics, this link might be helpful to start you off. I was googling for the list my son's teacher used a few years ago and couldn't find it, but there are many similar topics on here.

I haven't really kept up with the Whole Language info online since I graduated, so I don't know any good links. (Actually, I didn't keep up with any info about it online when I was studying it - we had email but not much more than that!). I'll poke around and see if I find anything similar to what we learned - it wasn't exactly like the method most people seem to write about. The thing I loved about it, though, was that it seemed like common sense. It made sense to me that you'd approach the education process as a whole rather than segmenting it so much. There wasn't really much actual "method" to it; it was just a breakdown of the lines between the classes. Kids learned without realizing it, if that makes sense. Since they tend to excel at different things, they seemed to do better when the subjects they didn't feel comfortable with were blended into the ones they did like. So the kids who were strong in science ended up being more comfortable with the English lesson because they were writing and diagramming sentences about science, which they did like. The English kids absorbed more about science because it felt more like an English lesson to them.

I don't know much about Homeschooling but I think that lots of Homeschoolers do this without knowing that it's a form of the Whole Language method. One person I know is doing a unit on Christmas cookies right now. All of her lessons are themed to the cookies. I don't know if this is part of the actual curriculum she follows or if it's something she came up with on her own, but her kids are loving it and apparently it's going really well.

I love the trend to include writing in more of the other subjects because I've seen too many people get to high school or even college without feeling comfortable with writing. These days writing is so important, even in many jobs, that it's a huge advantage when someone really feels comfortable putting their thoughts on paper. And of course journaling is an excellent thing for kids, even aside from the educational aspects. It's a great outlet for things that they are thinking about but don't necessarily know how to talk about. I think it also helps them learn to express themselves well when they can actually look over their words and re-read them, and re-phrase them until they say exactly what they want. (I imagine the dictation method you use is also good for that.)

I can remember times when my son would sit for hours staring at a blank sheet of paper trying to figure out what to write. After a few years of journaling, the rest of his writing now seems so much easier. He had to write a 500-1000 word paper the other day. Even a couple of years ago it would have been a multi-hour struggle to get him to write it, complete with tears and a tantrum. Plus he would have stopped at word 500 and called it finished. I was thrilled that he finished the thing in around an hour and it was longer than it had to be. I totally believe that I have all that journaling to thank for it!

ETA - Yes, typically we also did units that lasted a few weeks. I loved it. I think the kids learned more because they were so engrossed in whatever topic we were convering rather than being yanked from one subject into something completely different.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

(I imagine the dictation method you use is also good for that.)

I can remember times when my son would sit for hours staring at a blank sheet of paper trying to figure out what to write.

I'm that way. I find it difficult to write spontaneously and it is like I need prompts or a question to answer or something.

Also--I found I struggled more with writing when it was with a physical pen and paper. I hated it. My papers in high school were atrocious. But I had the greatest English Teacher Junior year and she was tough. But I need that and it took all year to slowly migrate my papers from a C-grade to my final paper which was finally an A. My ability to write improved in college when I was writing on computers. My hands did not fatigue and the typing speed was closer to my thought speed. In handwriting, I'd often lost track of my thoughts b/c handwriting is more tedious and not as quick as typing.

On the dictation method. I would have to go dig in my resources as they do explain very well why it is that method.

But from K-3 (using the classical approach), they mentioned something about how developmentally it is more difficult to get the thoughts to paper as it disrupts their flow of thought or something. So the focus is getting them comfortable in expressing their thoughts without the writing impeding the flow.

Okay--I so made that sound so terrible, b/c they explain it much better than that. I am very weak at recall. But that is the basic idea.

4th is a transition year, but with more lengthy copying (in the syllabus alone, not including anything supplemental).


I'll take a look at the journal topics.

We had a flip journal one-time. The kids loved it.

You'd flip and get silling things would be writing about:

A fish who sang in a mall.

A horse that swam on a mountain.

Very nonsensical stuff.

 

[Scurvy]

But from K-3 (using the classical approach), they mentioned something about how developmentally it is more difficult to get the thoughts to paper as it disrupts their flow of thought or something. So the focus is getting them comfortable in expressing their thoughts without the writing impeding the flow.

Okay--I so made that sound so terrible, b/c they explain it much better than that. I am very weak at recall. But that is the basic idea.

No, that makes sense. We did something similar. But we only did the dictation very briefly. Once the kids could write words we had them start writing stuff down for themselves, but we didn't worry about the spelling or grammar. They spelled things the way they sounded and the sentence structure was practically nonexistant. I wasn't thrilled with that part at first - I worried that by writing things "wrong" that they would learn them wrong as well. But it worked out better than I expected and they became far more comfortable with writing than most kids seemed to be at that age. I can see how children who are too worried about getting it right might not be able to write much at all.

I know what you mean about the typing vs. writing, as well. I used to get so frustrated - I'd lose my train of thought mid-sentence because I'd be thinking so far ahead of what I was writing. I greatly prefer using the computer (though I'm not the fastest typist so I still tend to have some problems), and I know my son is much better at writing when he can type rather than write.

I love those journal ideas - they sound like the kinds of things that kids could have lots of fun with!

 

[taximomfor4]

Not at all.



That would have ruined my love of math.

It ruins mine, too. And 1 dd especially struggles with that kind of math. I think what they miss is simple arithmetic. They do JUST this math...and often, I problem we would have simply used long-division to solve takes an entire page, and 4 sets of pictures/paragraphs to solve. We do NOT NOT NOT like it. Perhaps as an ALTERNATE method (that some kids would benefit from if they forget their arithmetic), but to forgo arithmetic leaves a big hole.

DD is now in 6th grade at the middle school. We taught her long multiplication (they did some weird several-step math), and long division although she should get another lesson on that before she forgets (they use calculators all the time, so don't need to know how!)

 

[taximomfor4]

4th is a transition year, but with more lengthy copying (in the syllabus alone, not including anything supplemental).


I'll take a look at the journal topics.

We had a flip journal one-time. The kids loved it.

You'd flip and get silling things would be writing about:

A fish who sang in a mall.

A horse that swam on a mountain.

Very nonsensical stuff.

I might still have a workbook I bought to supplement oldest dd's writing. She couldn't slow herself down to actually write a decent story of essay answer. I NEEDED her to acquire the self-discipline to re-read and add as necessary, not jot down 10 words and call it "done." So anyway, dd did grab the workbook one day and write like 3-word answers on every page. But you could use the topics and have your dd write on a blank sheet of paper, kwim? I can send it to you.

Beth