Falling Through the Cracks

At the beginning of last month, a neuropsychologist, whom I collaborate with, and I were discussing how a lot of today’s high school students have fallen through the cracks with their writing education.

I think that this current widespread issue is, in large part, due to spell-check, editing apps, AI, etc., masking elementary and middle school students’ writing deficiencies, both at school and outside of it.

The most critical years in a student’s education for building a strong writing foundation are the elementary and middle schools years—if a student misses out on that window of opportunity, overall academic success in high school and college and overall success in the work world will be compromised unless an intensive writing remediation plan is implemented in high school, which can be challenging to do due to time constraints.

Below are 4 of my top writing instruction recommendations for parents of elementary and middle school students, which are based on over a decade of writing instruction experience:

1. Don’t use a wait and see approach. Be proactive.

   The sooner you identify the holes in your child’s writing foundation (almost all kids have holes in their writing foundation these days) and act on filling in them in, the better off your child is going to be both academically and emotionally. The longer you wait to pinpoint and address your child’s writing deficiencies, the more compounded they will become and the more challenging it will be to address them.

2. Prioritize writing instruction for your child when they are in elementary school and middle school.

   Take advantage of the extra time that your child has at this age to ensure they become an independent strong writer who is prepared for high school and beyond.

   Elementary school (2nd–5th grade) focus: spelling, editing, and grammar skills

   Middle school focus: grammar, writing, and advanced vocabulary skills

3. Be consistent with the learning process.

   Starting and then stopping and then restarting writing instruction is a counterproductive approach. Valuable time is lost and reteaching is almost always needed because students quickly lose knowledge that they are not applying regularly until they have mastered that knowledge.

4. Writing instruction needs to come full circle.

   If your child’s writing instruction is stopped too soon and, thus, doesn’t come full circle, time and money will be lost, and your child will be dependent on others to assist them with their writing indefinitely.

Just about every career these days requires one to write regularly, and that writing is visible to colleagues, supervisors, employers, professional connections, clients, etc., and provides insight into the author’s overall education and intelligence.

How will your child’s writing skills hold up in the work world where the predominant means of communication is written?

~ Christina Caputo

Founder & Owner of ★ W O R D S

A simple method to get a true understanding of what your child’s independent writing skills are like:

1. Turn off the spelling, grammar, and capitalization tools in Google Drive.

2. Have your child independently write a nonfiction multiple paragraph paper.

3. See if you can you read the paper from start to finish without any unwanted “stop signs” (i.e., places where you stop to connect dots, edit sentences, question your reading comprehension skills, etc.).