I have a DD, aged 9, who still thinks the goal of school work is to complete it in the fastest time possible. How much should I intervene when it's homework she is doing?

[Pernickety]

DD1 is in Year 4. She's very able and doing well. She loves school and approaches every subject with a huge amount of enthusiasm.

But.... her work is very messy. She did have extra support for handwriting and she has a slanted board on her desk at home and an ergonomical pen for doing homework. She tends to get project style homework and her method is to sit down and pour out her thoughts/words onto the sheet of paper/book infront of her, writing at a speed of a million miles per hour! Pictures are scribbled, text is all different sizes and scrunched up, and often illegible.

She can write neatly and legibly when she slows down. I've seen her books at school and the work looks much more presentable. If she's given a free reign though, she doesn't appear to take any care over the presentation of her work.

I wonder if I should help her more to draft and plan her work and produce it neatly. But that would entail sitting with her and coaching her through every step of her homework (even though I wouldn't be feeding her actual content). I don't always have the time to do that and it seems to go against what homework is for. But if she carries on producing work at home, to this standard, how is she going to cope with homework at secondary school?

Does anyone else have a child that is similar, and what do you do?

Ds is the same only he is messy at school and tidy at home (dh makes him do it again if it is messy). His teacher said it will come with time, he has lots of ideas and is in a rush to get them out. We will wait and see.

yep, dt2, but he is year 2. we just dont accept rushed work. if he rushes he has to do it again. We've had long discussions about effort and presentation over speed, but it's only taking a hard line that really works with him.

Why not enter competitions where the standard of the entries is an important issue? Why worry about secondary school homework now? If your daughter is capable of doing neater work but doesn't do it now, presumably it isn't an issue now, except for you.

As a teacher, I'm not too fussed about presentation unless it shows me one of two things: either the DC has absolutely no pride in their work, or I can't read it.

Some kids are just messier than others. I remember my year 4 teacher telling me my writing looked like a spider had died across my page. As an adult, my handwriting is still appalling at the best of times, although I have perfected my teacher handwriting.

There are a lot of children who can produce amazing work if they produce it messily, and if you stop the free flow of ideas then they get bogged down with presentation and it limits their output. Same goes for spellings. If only the 'correct' spelling is accepted, then they won't try to use adventurous vocabulary.

The deal I usually make with children with scruffy handwriting is that they do half in their own scrawl, and half neatly. For example, for homework our kids have to write a sentence for each spelling word. Three sentences have to be their best handwriting, and the other three legible enough to make sense.

If in doubt, ask her teacher. Different strokes for different folk, but if it hasn't been mentioned so far, I'd guess it's not an issue at school.

See - that's why I wonder about my input. DD does have a lot of pride in her work. Her teachers obviously value the effort and the content of her work and the norm seems to be not to undermine that by criticising the presentation of her work. Which makes me reluctant to diminish her pride by making a big deal out of the poor presentation. But when does this end?

Will her Year 5/Year 6 teachers demand a higher standard of presentation or is she going to get to secondary school and get a big shock when her poorly presented homework is not held in high esteem?