pls help me

I gave it a bit of a double take too, but after much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair I came up with music journalism as the one sphere it may be of use.

Oh, and btw, over here they give corrective pencils to kids who don't hold their pencils properly. Handwriting is only assessed, and credited, at Key Stage 2, primary level, ages 7-11. Once they get to secondary schools it's no longer assessed, and it makes no difference whatsoever when they take their public exams at age 16.

This sounds like a fun assignment. I wish I was given an assignment like this one. Fun, fun, and more fun. The subject of music isn't for everyone, but if you want suggestions just ask. No one is going to do your homework for you. You have to do the actual work.

What does your question have to do with anything?

As far as you're concerned is as far as I can throw a motorcycle

Questions of relevancy are, well, relevant.

Do you think a question about the first thing a teacher should teach a child who is trying to learn how to write is relevant?

Let me break this down for you. A young person wrote to this site with the heading "Please help me" The first reply essentially said "Sorry, you've got your troubles, I've got mine." So the assignment seemed too overwhelming to that person to even know where to start. It's not up to anyone on this planet to tell that person "Hey, if you were me, if you were as smart as I am, you wouldn't have to ask for help."
So I changed the subject to education and the stack of homework that kids do from the time they get home from school until they go to bed. They have enough for weekends and yes, they are given assignments to do over the summer "vacation".
Someone voting me down or putting me down because of personal reasons is one thing. I am intelligent enough to know who votes me down and who waits in the bushes for a chance to write "@Ponderer". I marvel not. But beating down a child for asking for help (for whatever reason) is another thing. No one knows the details of that child's life but that child. I tried to write something that anyone with any intelligence would see and say "You know? He's right. I've seen what he is talking about." (Kids struggling from the moment they pick up a pencil because no one showed them how to hold it. )
I've been around here long enough (actually it didn't take very long) to see what game is played here. This is the truth- The people who think they are winning by trying to make people feel bad don't even know that everyone else sees them for what they are.

And now a singalong with this week's top of the iambic pentameter pops: Omar Khayyám



The moving finger writes and having writ
Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

That's not even a proper sentence. You know nothing of education, just your own prejudices and preconceptions.

You wouldn't last five minutes in front of a disaffected group of 15 year olds, and you don't even know how to write a lesson plan.

A pilot wouldn't take advice from someone who's never flied a plane, likewise a real teacher wouldn't listen to someone who has never taught a class, knows nothing of lesson plans and can't even construct a basic sentence, albeit one chock full of clichés.

They've not asked for help, they've asked someone to do their homework for them. Those of us who've had an education know the difference.

This is someone asking for help. And they get given it.

https://able2know.org/topic/499537-1#post-6802108

Bless your heart.

Let me break this down for you.

This site has students of all ages (this one is likely in at least the 6th grade if not on the cusp of graduating high school) who come for homework help. Those who truly want help tend to ask/say things like--

I can't understand what this instruction means. I got this far (often with specifics) but now I'm stumped. I have been searching online for research backup and I can't find anything. I am not a native speaker, does this sentence (or paragraph, etc.) look okay?

Those people get help -- often lots of help. It's nice when they return and say thank you but an appreciable fraction of even them just post their question and never return.

Then there are the students, precisely like the OP, who dump their entire assignment via copy and paste, and then sit back, waiting for the answers to roll in.

There's no proof that they have done anything beyond copy and paste, waiting for someone to do their work for them.

And those "questions" (truly, all homework questions can, but the dump and run questions seem to attract it more) bring on the homework spammers. Where for a price, you can spend your school days playing video games or smoking or hooking up or whatever, while handing in assignments done for you.

That's cheating, pure and simple, and it's kind of dangerous to our society. When wealthy students skate by through buying papers, and get the old gentleman's C, they get into colleges and they get jobs which they are not prepared for. In medicine, the law, architecture, engineering, science, etc., this can be disastrous.

While this sounds like I am claiming that the sky is falling, I assure you, I am not. And I am well aware one assignment, one class, one semester, one year, one school do not necessarily make or break academic or professional careers.

But they do perpetuate a cycle of cheating. And they also perpetuate a cycle of money buying people into positions, rather than merit. This of course impacts certain segments of the population more than others.

It also puts and keeps mediocre people in positions of power and it can lock out gifted people who don't have the economic resources to cheat-- but who fall behind not because they are incapable but because they are working two jobs, or caring for younger siblings, or trying to grow up in a hostile environment.

All this from one topic on A2K may seem a little much, although I see you have had no trouble connecting it with the small potatoes issue of how to hold a pencil.

True story: my best friend from high school is left handed. She writes in an extremely cramped manner. Her handwriting is unmistakable. She's also got 2 degrees.

Holding a pencil "wrong" didn't matter. And it often doesn't. But even if it somehow does matter, it's a far-fetched tangent at best in this topic.

I have also taught, both high school and graduate school levels. Students who do the work do well in life. Those who don't, do not. And those responsible students who don't understand the assignment ask questions because they want to understand it and be able to do it on their own.

Doing work for others doesn't help them. It doesn't help society and it doesn't help change the educational system.

It just rewards laziness and cheating.

(Hops off soapbox)

Despite Ponderer's protestations he's not offered any help at all, just gone off on a rant. You have offered advice, pretty good advice too.

So, if you had taught first grade students, and if you were teaching children how to write, and if you saw a student holding a pencil in an awkward manner, and the student was continuously dissatisfied with what he had written , and was continuously erasing and rewriting, would you consider that a "small potatoes issue" (your words) and not worth your time to give any assistance?

What makes you think the OP is first grade?

Your question is ill informed. If a teacher a primary school thought a kid wasn't holding their pen properly they would give them corrective pencils that can only be held the right way. They use them until it becomes ingrained.

At the other end of the scale someone whose handwriting is considered illegible, (which is extremely rare,) they would be treated the same as someone who had broken their arm and assigned a scribe.

Let's just keep moving those goalposts, shall we?

And let's throw ourselves light years off the topic -- which is someone clearly way beyond first grade, who just wants others to do their work for them.

First grade? Okay, sure.

BTW, children should be writing, holding pencils and the like a lot earlier than the first grade. Generally, the start of coloring and other writing implement holding is a nursery school/preschool activity.

Everybody (little children included -- and yes, even you and me) gets frustrated on occasion, erasing and rewriting whatever it is we are doing. This is not necessary any indication of a problem with motor skills or with learning. Rewriting and changing isn't necessarily a problem with an assignment at all. It's also a sign of trying to perfect one's work. This is a good thing, is it not?

And motor skills issues -- surprise! -- aren't a first grade teacher's job.
https://study.com/first_grade_teacher.html

It's a pre-school teacher's job.
https://www.snagajob.com/job-descriptions/preschool-teacher/

A child with the kind of continuing issues with motor skills you are outlining would most likely get an Individualized Education Program
https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/special-services/ieps/understanding-individualized-education-programs

Special education these days isn't just for students who are slower at learning; it's for students who have issues with how they're being taught. It's not a black mark of shame. And those kids nearly always get earlier intervention -- certainly way, way, way before the OP.

Do kids fall through the cracks? Of course they do. No system is ever going to be perfect.

But once again, this is not the issue for the OP. And pencil holding, yeah, it really is small potatoes. Because someone with such motor control issues probably can't dress themselves or feed themselves -- and those things would be noticed far, far earlier than the moment they enter a classroom and are asked to hold a pencil and write.

Ponderer reminds me of a short film I saw about Victorian schooling. The inspector arrived to find a class of kids copying out the first psalm, all with beautiful copperplate handwriting.

Very impressive on the face of it, but that's all they had done, spent the last year or so copying out the first psalm, not even learning how to read letters, just copying out the first psalm over and over again.

I asked a basic question about the first thing a child should be taught about writing a few days ago in this thread. I stated the the failure on the part of the teacher to teach "Lesson 1", could possibly cause that child to see himself as a failure at a deeply subconcious level. I couldn't help noticing that no one had an answer, not even the two people who were teachers. Try holding a pencil with three fingers on one side of the pencil and your thumb on the other and write your name. See if you blame the result on your lack of "motor skills". I am not surprised that the two teachers have attempted to denounce anything I write and discredit me.

Here's your answer.

What's the first thing someone should/will learn about writing? Probably how to sound out letters, seeing as reading and writing are intimately intertwined.

As for deciding that this is the thing which will somehow horribly scar a child for life if they do it wrong, we all do stuff wrong when we are first learning it. Yet it doesn't scar us forever. If the first failure caused a child to give up forever, no child would ever walk or talk. They wouldn't dress themselves, recite numbers in order, or set a table, or do a million other things.

People, even very young people, are considerably more resilient than you seem to want to give them credit for.

And, that's still not what this topic is about.

You didn't ask an honest question, you had an answer in mind and we all had to give your answer or you'd get on your high horse.

That's what you've done, and your answer isn't even the right one. Learning to read is more important than writing, that's what comes first.

And Jespah is right it's got naff all to do with the subject of the thread.

I talk to idiots with an axe to grind about education all the time. They all know what's wrong, but none of them have a clue about doing anything about it.

Go on then, how would you teach a class of 30 kids how to hold a pencil correctly. You've got 50 mins. How do you break up the lesson, and make sure the kids stay on task?

How will you measure the success of your lesson?

I won't hold my breath.