My child has an IEP for written expression. Things seem to be okay. His grades are good. He has mainly A’s + B’s. He is in an inclusion setting. He seems to be able to write enough to get the answer correct. His teacher feels he has a real strong ability in social studies. He is reading about a year above grade level.
We have done many things to help him. He has done vision training, and OT. He came up in all areas except one after the post testing from the OT. The areas that still is difficult for him is visual sequential memory. His writing is not very good for a sixth grader. His spelling is poor except for words that all of us use in everyday life. What bothers me is that he spends very little time with his writintg. If he has an assignment to do at night he is done in 15 minutes. I wonder if his course of study is watered down. At times, I question if the kids in the inclusion class are given higher grades because not as much is expected of them. I think he should be working harder in writing.When I push him to proof read and correct the battle lines are drawn. If I just accept that he can’t write then I think he will not get better. Opinions please.
Re: writing
A program such as Audiblox could help with visual sequential memory.
www.Audiblox2000.com
Re: writing
Consider keyboarding/typing. We all learn to see details at different point in our life. Some of us remain big picture kind of people throughout out lives. Sometimes pushing students to see details at a young age is like pushing a young baby to walk earlier than nature intends them to. Grammar check would underline his mistakes for him and allow him to ‘see’ them and correct them.
Spelling and writing are two different things really but students who are weak spellers often ‘dumb down’ or shorten their writing because they cannot spell the words they really want to use. Word processing and its Spellcheck helps immensely with that.
Maybe in time he will enjoy writing but remember part of it is his age and maturity. Sometimes kids don’t like writing, it is like pulling teeth and there are others who love to write. My main concern with teaching writing is to get them to organize their thoughts then freely express what they want to say and not have to worry that it has to be perfectly spelled, with no mistakes. We work on making the corrections after they are done with their rough draft.
Some kids only want to do a rough draft and not polish their writing. I try not to make a big deal about it. I figure as they share what they have written with others they will want to do more polishing. It is a blessing that reads well as the more he reads the better his writing will be.
You may talk to the teacher about doing a writing anthology using the Language Experience Approach. Today I made 25–50 page anthologies for the second semester for students in our classroom. There are sections in the anthology that have room to draw a picture on the top and plenty of lines below to write. Other pages are lined only for writing. To get them started on writing, we give them a writing prompt and we will work on the anthology twice a week. They write about their feelings on the matter and then they share it with their fellow students. It is great to see the changes in these kids with their writing over the year, They feel pretty good about what they have done. We also make a master copy of the best stories to leave in the classroom and those are always being read by the students.