Evaluating Writing: An Evaluation Program

An important thing to keep in mind is that children want to learn and want to please their parents. As a teacher, what a great position you're in. Find something absolutely wonderful about what has been written and ask your child to read that aloud. Then ask your child to read it to you. Then ask your husband or wife to read it. And then ask your child to read it to you both because you both think it's so beautiful. Now your child will feel good about what's been written. At this point, rather than point out all the things that are wrong with the paper, you can show one or two ways to make it even better. Say that the writing is almost perfect, and to make it perfect, you have one rule that you'd like to explain. Read that one rule and explain how it works. Help your child apply that rule to the writing. This will demonstrate what that application has done to that almost perfect sentence. Now, read it again and call it perfect!