Punctuation in High School Written Narration

[mamas4bugs]

My oldest son started MTMM this week, and since he is in high school, I have started grading his notebook pages so that I have a history grade to put on his transcript. My question is this: how much should punctuation/grammar/capitalization count in the written narrations? His facts are great, the length good, and he's got wonderful flow. He mostly just misses a few commas here and there. I hate to take off an entire point for each grammar mistake, as I feel like the point isn't so much the grammar as it is the retelling of the history, but I feel almost like we're cheating if we ignore grammar mistakes.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

[arstephia]

I had my son format a word document for width to fit into the narration box and type his written narrations for MTMM (9th grade) so he could edit for spelling, punctuation, etc. That way he could get his thoughts down first and then could go back and edit for mechanics. That box was worth 10 pts. 5 for content and 5 for mechanics. By the 4th week, he rarely got any scores under 9 because he was careful to proofread his work before he printed and glued his narration into his notebooking page. It worked really well for us that way, and we are continuing that this year.

[mamas4bugs]

That's what we did this week, too! He typed it up, made it smaller, and glued it into the appropriate box.

Thanks for your input. I guess I'm just trying to decide what percentage I want mechanics to count in the narration.

[Heather4Him]

If it helps at all, I am currently taking college classes myself, and I think our Anatomy and Physiology teacher would take off 1 point for every 4 misspellings. (I don't have too many troubles with spelling, so I'm not 100% sure, but it was something similar to this.) Our Microbiology instructor did similarly (taking off 1/2 points) in our lab reports for technical/spelling/grammar errors, but she was more picky--wanting everything exactly perfect. So, I don't think there is one hard-and-fast rule, but you could try something in between these ideas if it helps!

[mamas4bugs]

Thanks, Heather! That's exactly what I was looking for. It's nice to hear what college professors are doing.