Nov 4

It's always like pulling teeth to get children to write. In this school system they use a writing rubric that's consistent throughout grades. Normally I would think this strategy would be very effective, but these students naturally are very poor writers, and I'm pretty sure they don't follow the guidelines even when prompted. My guess is that they have had some very structured work with this rubric in the past, but for some reason it hasn't stuck with them. I'd really like to know what instruction they've had. Their writing skills are all over the board. It's hard to convince students who don't even like to read why they should write. Even though we have creative assignments they still have difficulty, and I'm not sure the editing (by an adult) really helps them the next time they write.