What Do Skilled Writers Do?

I sometimes like to help my wife grade her students' work, though she won't let me touch the English papers. I'm not sure why. If you don't mark everything (and I mean everything), how will they learn?

Regardless, we're only four weeks into the school year and I've already received quite the education from both her kids and mine.

My wife went down. Last year, she taught fourth-graders. This year she is teaching second grade, and she's very thankful for that. Me? I went up. I am now working with third, fourth and fifth grades.

So it was no surprise that I found myself helping out by grading my wife's second grade math papers. You know, kids are great. Their answers may not always be correct, per se, but sometimes they are really pretty accurate.

Here are just a few of the questions from the papers I graded.

What is the value of three dimes, one nickel and three pennies? The answer given -- Monday. 

Wow! Nailed it! Mondays are pretty worthless.

What is two days before Saturday? The answer given -- Monday.

Another asked what is two days after Monday? The answer given -- Friday.

Wishful thinking, kiddos. Wishful thinking.

While I've also learned a bit from my upper grades, my favorite thing is a poster in one of my fifth grade classes. It's titled (not entitled - English lesson!) "What do SKILLED writers do?" Each student wrote on it what they thought skilled writers do.

Here's a brief sample of their contributions.

[Skilled writers] Take neat notes.

[Skilled writers] Use action words.

They make books.

They use gramer.

[Skilled writers are] Storyiers for people to read.

And my personal favorite:

they wriite flawlessley...  I guess...

I'm currently working on my next flawless blog post. It will be neat, since I'll compose it on the computer. It will also include some action words.