Having Elementary schools teach proper writing is too much to ask for?

How can handwriting be improperly formatted?

You should be more concerned with your own writing, I have no idea what you're complaining about.

Is it your child's spelling, their sentence construction, lack of punctuation, mixing up of tenses, what is it?

No wonder your kid's prose doesn't make any sense if you're anything to go by.

Btw, not all of us are American. I have no idea what the 4th grade is supposed to be. How old are they?

Fourth grade is like 9 or 10 years old in the US.

Thanks.

Here are a few examples of what I meant by improperly formatted words: harmful = humfull, homework=homewoke, because=becus, outside=otsid ... these were in his paper, that by the way was graded as 100% correct. His improperly formatted words do include spelling, tenses, pretty much everything as most words are not properly spelled, so hard to tell the tenses for instance.
It is not that what he is trying to say does not make sense, he is very bright with great ideas, great comments, great reasonings, etc. just writing down the words correctly is a huge challenge for him. At school, it seems they are never corrected for spelling mistakes, etc.
Just for your understanding, I am not an American either, English is my 3rd language. ;-)... and this is one of the reasons why I also think that schools should be teaching children the academics....parents should be teaching their children life lessons. Of course one does not exclude the other, but this should be the basic approach.
4th graders are typically 9-10 year old children, depending what month / day they were born on.
I also find your post a little offensive, but just put a smile on it and leave it at that. ;-) Thank you!

That's not formatting it's spelling.

It looks like he's spelling phonetically which is far less of a problem than spelling mistakes that are not phonetic.

Find out what words he's spelling incorrectly and do an old fashioned spelling test, ten words a week, no more than that.

That is a great idea, thank you!...we will try that out.

Where are in located? Are you in the US? Which state? The parameters can be different depending where you live. But assuming you are in the US, most states do have certain expectations of reading or writing level at each grade. Have you met with the teacher to ask specifics? I am not sure how you approached this, but my suggested is that you write down the specific questions you want answered and to schedule a time to meet with her/him.

I would ask things like what is the expectations at this grade on grammar/writing skills? Is my child meeting these requirements and where is he falling short or can improve? How can we help him? Remember the child is not in school (assuming he is in the US) for 8 hours; most schools are 6 hours and remember within those 6 hours are things like lunch and recess as well as many other classroom subjects: math, science, history, music, physical education, art, health.

Your child might just simply struggle with writing. He may excel in math where he does not struggle. So he may need extra help outside the classroom or it could be your expectations on appropriate writing at his age is higher than it really should be. You will not know without asking the right questions, but be open and respectful and not confrontational. If you are respectful and ask questions in a way to gain understanding rather than criticize a teacher that is overworked and dealing with 30 other children, you are more likely it get a good answer and suggestions on how to improve his performance.

And as far as the 100% on his paper, what was the objective of the paper? Was it creative writing rather than say grammar or spelling? Maybe the creative part was worthy of 100%. We have no idea as you really need to reach out to the teacher, sit down with him/her, explain your background and why you are concerned and want to understand what the expectations are. The teacher may be able to better understand why you are concerned and the teacher could then perhaps allay your concerns.

In regard to phonetic spelling errors, this is common in young children. To me, this shows a child understands the sounds and relations of letters. Spelling, is not common sense, so a child could be very intelligent and spell poorly. This is not to say he should not learn correct spelling, just so you understand that it is common for children to make many of these spelling errors.

Get him to sound the words out - that helps a great deal. Also, English is a very difficult language to spell - look at the following sounds of ou", for example.

bough, cough, tough, though, fought, would, throughout

Hello, thank you for your input. Yes, we are in the USA. We have found this issue in every school our child has attended so far. We also had several meetings in the schools and we were told that it is not important as it is not a requirement for the children to spell correctly. We are in disbelief how this cannot be important.
You are right, children have more subjects than writing, but in most of those other classes they do write more or less, too, except for PE and art of course. So, they should have plenty of opportunities in a day to practice writing. Our child spends 8 hours at school, as this school has after hours tutoring which our child attends.
Your suggestion of being respectful and not to criticize the teacher has put a smile on my face. This is common sense :-). We are very involved with helping our child, communicating with the school and had a good relationship with every teacher our child had so far.
We are aware that young children often have spelling errors and they tend to write as they hear the words, but how long are they too young before they could pick up correct spelling we wonder. We would think in grade 4 this should not be a high expectation...or is it? This is why I posted this to see what other people think.... and what suggestions there are.

Yes, great idea. And you are absolutely correct with how hard English language is in respect of spelling. Almost every word is spelled differently then pronounced. ... some do not make too much sense ;-) and I see how it can be very confusing for children.

This explains everything about why your child hasn't excelled.

:-) Thank you for you comment. Seems you stopped reading my message after this half sentence. This is how it continues: "When he does homework, we do work with him correcting the words, just they learn in such fast pace that we feel we will never catch up. We also do feel, after sitting in school 8 hours, he should be able to go outside, move around, give all the energy out, meet friends, and just be a kid. "
You seem very opinionated. What is your opinion about schools? What are schools there for?

Ok, since you asked...

Your examples of your child's writing:


There is no teacher on earth than can help a child to stop being lazy and to actually do the work. These examples do not reflect on the teacher whatsoever but do speak volumes of your child's inability to care about the quality of work he does. These aren't even phonetically spelled, it's a half-assed attempt to fly through something he doesn't want to do.

This isn't a school's failure, it's yours to continue to allow poor work habits from your child.

Unfortunately common sense is not so common. And you would not believe how many parents are so very rude to teachers. I know every state is different and you got your answer that the school/state does not hold spelling as being in high importance. So you have a choice, help your child himself or continue in this way.

Does he use a computer to type up his papers? Maybe get him in the habit of doing spell check. Also do a little search on the internet of how best to improve spelling.

Unfortunately if your child's school system does not hold spelling as being high on their priority of teaching, he is not going to get in the school and if you want him to be a good speller, you will need to emphasize and help him on your own.

Two other things - words and letters are not everyone's forte. Einstein was a notoriously bad speller, for example. My husband, who has a Master's in Geology, asked me the other day how to spell 'lenient'. It doesn't mean they're stupid - they just excel in a different part of their brain. By the same token, not everyone will be able to grasp a lot of math concepts, or find their way back to their car.

I also think a lot of children spell very badly in the beginning because they don't grasp the concepts and rules. "I before E except after C" has a LOT of exceptions!

There are other children in the class with their own issues and each school's expectations are different for each level. There are also good teachers and lazy teachers. All things to be considered.

I'd say spending more time and finding a way to get your child's current issues is of major benefit to both of you. Don't be negative - it's really not that big a deal.

My daughter went through French Immersion and some of her mistakes in English were hilarious. She pronounced 'southern' as SOW-THERN, for example. She pronounced 'whether' as "WEE-THER. I have no idea why she disagreed with us, but we all pronounce them that way when speaking to her and get a good laugh. She knows now, of course, but growth is just that - growth.

Don't be too hard on your kid.

:-) You sound like an angry teacher wanting to defend all teachers.
Actually, there are teachers who can help to stop kids being lazy; the good kind of teachers do that very successfully. Laziness is not a problem here. If he were lazy, he would not write a 2 page essay, and several sentences to a question. He loves to write, he just does not spell correctly.
Also, I do not think that you are correct with we allowing him poor work habits. We do sit with him and go through his homework and ask him to correct the words he misspelled, sound it out, etc. There is only that much time of the day after he comes home at 4pm or 5pm, and before we all eat dinner at 7pm. He spends way more time in school learning than we ever could provide after school at home. If we all were lazy and careless as you state, we would not ask for help or work with him at all. But appreciate your comment, interesting to see other people's point of view.

Hi, thinking about it again, you are right, common sense is not that common... just that is what came to my mind first.
He is not using a computer for writing. We want him to be able to know handwriting. Also, at his school they do handwrite school papers. For tests, they use the computer, but mainly it is just picking out an answer and clicking it. We are trying to teach him at home, also read with him, but so far did not get the desired results. We feel that both schools and home should help with spelling. We do feel completely alone with this task, more and more papers are coming each day and seem an impossible task to catch up with all that.

Yes, trying to work with him as much as possible, just he is home at 4 or 5 pm, and we typically eat dinner at 7 and get ready for bed. This only gives us a little bit of time as we also like to let him play a little after the sitting in school all day. We do help with checking his homework and read together. Maybe you are right, it may not be such big of a deal, just hard to see it that way for us at this time. :-)

You are right, very smart people do misspell sometimes, too. Just I think this should not be a forte rather a knowledge to base everything upon later.
Just thinking about contracts, etc. If someone does not know how to spell words, may read a contract completely false, but it might be still legally binding. This can cause a lot of trouble later.

We also have noticed that not all teachers are up to par. When we hear a teacher stating that there are only 2 kinds of animals based on diet, herbivores and carnivores, that makes us wonder.... also when we hear a geography teacher starting her list as Moscow, Paris, London to the question Name 5 countries in Europe, leaves us with a lot of questions. We have also witnessed teachers lying, and trying to talk children into lying about certain things, which turned our stomach upside down. We volunteered as class help at one time and it was really an insightful experience.
You are right, there are good and less than good teachers; we cannot do anything about that.
Thank you for your response!