At What Level Should Grade 3 Students Be in Their Writing?

I assigned my first essay of the year to my third-graders. I wanted to see what they would come up with on their own, being close to the beginning of the third-grade year. I chose a nice, easy, open-ended topic where they would all easily have plenty to write about–All About My Family.

I was pleasantly surprised by most students’ essays. I found the level of this year’s students reasonably good. I am pleased that they are able to express themselves in writing. Some years they have come to me far weaker (and once they came to me much stronger.) I can see that they have an idea about writing sentences, indenting, capitalization, and punctuation, but that they often forget about the rules while thinking about what they want to say (pretty typical for this age). My judgment is that most of them are right about where they should be for starting third grade. (I would be interested in anyone else’s opinion on this, however, or how they compare to students in other schools of the same age.) Below are six short examples. Remember that none of the children in the following examples are native English speakers–for all of them, it is their third (or even fourth) language.

First, I have one intractable little boy who has the potential to be at the top of the class, but who is extremely stubborn and lazy about not doing any work which doesn’t interest him. If he is forced to do the work, he does as little as possible in a slapdash manner! Here is his essay (names changed), which neither I, nor our headmistress find acceptable. Not only is it not acceptable for Grade Three, it is not even acceptable for Grade Two! (This is typical of all of his work, so today I called his father in for a conference. We are going to work together to get his son’s grades up where they should be. Here is his essay (errors included for readers to see):

All About my family

I have 6 people in my family I have Mom, Dad, karim, mohamed, and othmane.

The following is from a boy who is not a strong student, but who is serious, and tries hard:

all about my family

my famiy sleePs and when they wake up they go to work. And when they come back they sit and eat wile they are watching then they go shoping sometimes.

Here is a typical essay, from another student, who is about in the middle of our class in terms of work:

all about my family

When my mother was little and she went to a school and in there they don’t hit thme with the belt and my mother was the good one in the class and they do have windows and she work hard and my father to was a good Kid and he work hard to get A+ and A.

This is from a stronger boy student:

All about my family

My mother is a very nice woman and kind with people. All my family is nice. And my father is a very very nice man and he always goes out to buy things to eat. And my mother always works in the house. And we always go out to the cinema, or to macdonald’s to eat. And my mother always takeS me to the park and play games and my sisters are So nice too.

The following is from a girl who is one of the best students in the class, and who is the daughter of a dentist:

All about my family

All started when my parents were born, My mother lived in xxxx city and my father in xxxx city. In thier school, there is the place where my parents swa each other. they past years and years together (in school?). But one day they to seperate. But when all those days past, my parents came back. My my mother came back with a broken tooth so my father told her that she was nice and solved her tooth and married.

This last example is from a reasonably strong girl student:

“All About my family.”

First of all, I Love my parents, because they are the only persons that love me so much. When I am sick, they take care of me, even the night. The buy me what ever I want. They are so kind, even when I am bad. I hope that GOD gives to parents health

Eileen 

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