Writing in the 5th Grade Classroom
Advice for Parental Units and Authors

Writing is a very subjective endeavor and grading someone else’s writing can become very subjective. As teachers, we want to help students to improve their writing, and understanding how we will be grading and what we expect will help parents assist in this effort and allow authors do his or her best work.

Grades:

1.  All “major grade” assigned papers will be graded as blend of two grades: A Subjective Grade based on 5th grade writing expectations and a Grammatical Grade.

2.  Subjective Grade
This grade is the grade on the paper and is one of 5 overall grades. This grade takes into account the Grammatical Grade below. The grading brackets are 100% - Could not have been done better and exceeded 5th grade standards. 85% - Above average work for a 5th grade student. 78% - Average work for a 5th grade student. 70% - Below average work with definition of the areas of shortcoming. 60% - Unsatisfactory work for a 5th grade student with definition of the areas of shortcoming.

3.  Grammatical Grade – This is an objective grade based on the following items. These items will factor into the overall above grade.

Spelling, General Paragraphing, General Punctuation, Punctuation of Conversation, Paragraphing of Conversation, Required items not included, Excessive repetition of a word, Run-on sentences, Sentence Fragments, Verb Tenses confusing, Compound Sentence Commas, Title, Capitalization, Wrong Word (synonym), Paper did not relate to the assignment, Length not appropriate, Do not use contractions except in conversation, 14point/Times New Roman, Paper incomplete, Underline/Italicize book, movie, magazine titles, Point of view shift

Advice on Parental help and guidance during writing

Parents are the first teachers, and are the most critical part of the Maverick Teaching-Learning Team, but we want to develop our students as capable and confident writers. So, I offer the following guidelines for helping your student write this year.

-  Let the idea for the paper come from the student. You may help by brainstorming ideas and by helping to form the idea once conceived, but let the basic idea be the student’s idea.

-  Please insist on being allowed to proofread our student’s papers. Students typically do not like this so you may need to initiate the “proofing”. However, if the paper the student brings to you has a significant number of errors that you know the student should have caught and corrected, and if the paper is clearly not the student’s best effort please do NOT correct it. Ask the student to go back and do their initial corrections and then bring the paper back to you. This will help them to start to develop a critical writing eye.

-  Word processing the formal final draft to be submitted is required unless specifically disallowed. Please use: 1 inch margins, Times New Roman 14 point font, black ink.

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