Eleven Errors and Ten Minutes
You are helping Denise, a fifth grader, with a persuasive paragraph for a class debate on later school start times. Her draft opens: “School should start later becuse kids are tired in the morning. I know I am. My brother falls asleep in first period every day and he never does that at home. Also the bus comes at 6:45.” The paragraph has eleven spelling and capitalization errors, no concluding sentence, and a strong, specific voice. You have ten minutes before the class moves on. Denise hands you her pencil and says, “Can you just fix the spelling so I can turn it in?” The teacher's rubric gives 60% of the score to ideas and organization and 40% to conventions, and the class is still in the drafting stage.
1. Denise asks you to fix the spelling. What do you do with the ten minutes, and why?
Read the worked answer
Don't take the pencil. Fixing eleven errors produces a cleaner draft and teaches nothing; the next paragraph will have the same eleven errors and the same request.
Spend the time by the rubric, not by what is easiest to fix. Ideas and organization carry 60% of the score, and she is still drafting - this is the stage for content, not proofreading.
- Minutes 1–5: the paragraph has evidence but no conclusion, so the reader never learns what she wants. Ask, “What do you want the reader to do after this last sentence?” Have her say it aloud, then write it.
- Minutes 5–8: two patterns, not eleven words. 'Becuse' is a word she will use again; have her find it, say it slowly, and fix it. Then check capitals at sentence starts.
- Minutes 8–10: she rereads aloud to me. She will catch several herself, and rereading aloud is a strategy she keeps.
What I say: “I'm not going to fix it for you - that's your 40% and you can do it. Let's make the ending strong first, then hunt for two patterns.”
2. Which of the eleven errors do you address, and how do you choose?
Read the worked answer
Selection criteria - all four have to hold:
- It repeats. A word misspelled once is a slip; a pattern is teachable in ten minutes.
- It is high-frequency in her own writing. 'Becuse' and sentence-start capitals will appear in every paragraph she writes this year. An unusual content word may never come up again.
- It blocks the reader. Missing capitals make the reader restart sentences. A misspelling of a key term can derail the argument.
- It is within what she has been taught. If apostrophes haven't been covered yet, marking three missing apostrophes is a lecture, not feedback.
So I address: 'becuse,' sentence-start capitals, and the missing conclusion.
I leave: the remaining minor misspellings, commas, and words she is unlikely to reuse. They go on a later proofreading pass.
Why not fix all eleven: a student handed eleven corrections remembers none of them. The marginal errors are worth a fraction of the 40%, while the missing conclusion costs far more - and it also loses points under ideas and organization.
3. How do you leave her set up to write the concluding sentence without writing it for her?
Read the worked answer
Prompt, don't supply.
- Ask about the reader's action: “After hearing this, what should the school board do?” She already has the evidence; a conclusion is a claim, and she can make one.
- Have her say it before she writes it. Oral rehearsal - “so what you're saying is…” - lets her hear whether the sentence follows from her evidence, without my drafting it.
- Offer a frame, then plan to remove it: “School should start later because ___.” If she fills it in, the frame has done its job and shouldn't appear on the next assignment.
- Test it against her own evidence: “Does your brother falling asleep in first period support that sentence?” If not, she revises.
Why not write it: the conclusion is the part of the paragraph the rubric weights most heavily under ideas and organization. If I write it, the grade measures me. If she writes a rough version and revises once, the grade measures her - which is the point of a draft.