Hawaii looks at bright side of 8th-grade writing

[Menehune]

Educating our children has been a current topic.

Schooling choices - Private - Public - Charter - Home school?

The merits of each and there abilities to truly educate our children.

This story hit the "National" wires today (Google News)!
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/p...LNEWSFRONT

Maybe using "forums" as an educational writing tool could help? Based on this report - it couldn't hurt. Beats "You Tube"!

Many on this forum have superior writing skills - storytellers - poets - professionals in various career fields.

Any other ideas?

Time will tell - I'm listening?
Time will tell - I'm speaking?

[girlster328]

forums are a great way to get kids writing again. I am currently an 8th grade teacher in Boston and am moving to the island this summer to teach middle school science. I love using forums with kids. I recently had students participate in online forums for their science fair projects. It was a great way to have the students give feed back to one another and an easy way for me to grade all their work right here at my home computer.

There is one draw back. Kids these days have created a new online dialect that isn't any where close to "Standard English." A lot of teachers and parents discourage this because it seems as if the kids are not improving their writing at all. This is true in a lot of circumstances, but I like to look at it in a more positive light. Every generation makes its own contribution to the English language. What students really need to start to learn is how to use language. When texting and IMing friends it is acceptable to use one style of writing. When writing a letter you need to use more formal writing. As adults we all know there are diffrent norms for diffrent situations and openly talking with kids about understanding these norms is the best kind of real world teaching there is out there. As always any students success starts at home.

I ahve recently seen a psa campaign that says

Can you name 5 suppermodles?
Can you name 5 students in your child's class?

Just thought it was clever.