One of Charlie's fourth-grade tasks this semester is to keep a journal. I've read a couple of his journal entries and I had seen the teacher's comment about his first entry, but this evening I got to see the other three. In his last entry, Charlie wrote about his favorite 10 Pokemon characters. The teacher, in her comments replied that she was happy to hear about his "Pokemen". I pointed this out to Charlie, who took great relish in making a correction to her comment. (As far as I'm aware, "Pokemon" is both singular and plural). I remember that feeling as a child too -- wanting desperately to be able to correct the teacher. What I impressed me, though, was to read the comments the teacher wrote. She is building and maintaining a correspondence with the kids -- a dialog in writing. In one entry, the teacher wrote 51 words -- that's a substantial investment of effort. And Charlie is reading what she wrote and beginning to get the feeling that someone is listening to his writing. For the first time this year, I'm feeling genuinely encouraged by what he's doing in class.
The other homework tasks we did this evening were worksheets on homonyms. Worksheets. We did it together, which made it a lot more fun. He was only required to do one, but I wouldn't let him go play until we did the other one because I was having fun. He got an extra 20 minutes of play time before bed out of deal, so he was happy too.