I went to a parent meeting at my son’s school yesterday and the topic was teaching writing. I thought I would share some scattered thoughts about what I have learned.
1. TEACH TYPING and DO ALL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS USING WORD PROCESSOR-for LD students writing is a very difficult task (sometimes just the mechanics, sometimes copying, sometimes both), hence re-writing (like during editing phase) is difficult and seems like never ending process- eliminating spelling errors and introducing a new ones in process of copying (I have certainly witnessed this one ). Hence, they need to become efficient in touch typing since they will depend on it.
2. TEACH WRITING STEPS EXPLICITELY. What I mean by that- the school has developed the “Seven step writing process” and all students are explicitly thought to prepare their papers following these steps.
Steps- a, b, c - prewriting steps, steps e, f, g, layered editing
a. Brainstorm- gathering information (put ideas in your words on paper in an efficient way)
b. Clustering- grouping information (Ideas in groups with MAIN IDEA and 4-6 SUPPORTING DETAILS; creating so-called “spiders” where the main idea is the body and the supporting elements are spider’s leags)
c. outlining- structure information (put main ides in logical order- lists supporting details in a logical order, add topic sentences for each cluster- add introduction and conclusion
d. rough draft- information in essay form ( transfer from outline form into full sentences and structured paragraphs)
e. Content edit- strengthen and clarify info (is information relevant? accurate? adequate? strong? clear? interesting?)
f. Grammar edit- check rules for writing (proper punctuation, capitalization, agreement subject predicate, tense usage- they have a list of things to check during this step)
g. Spelling edit (run spell-checker, use human reader to read the story)
3. USE ELECTRONIC DICTIONARY (most of them cannot really handle book-dictionary due to the sequencing problems)
In terms of assistive technology usage: students in middle school use “Inspiration”, but they start using it only after they attain certain level of organizational skills to handle pre-writing steps efficiently. The director said they had tried Inspiration a few years ago and decided that it can only help when students have good pre-writing skills in place- otherwise they cannot really differentiate main ideas from supporting details and the software will create an outline that is a mess. She said that the software helps immensely in creating a sequenced outline from clusters, so it speeds up the prewriting process.
For word processing the students use a very basic word processor, which for example will not capitalize et.c. so they can develop this skill if they need to write by hand.
They started testing co-writer with older students but she said that by the time the students are ready to use Co-writer they are usually such fast typists that they are crushing the software by typing faster that the word-prediction feature allows.
They are looking for a phonetic spell-checker since majority of students will spell phonetically and the regular spell-checker will not suggest the needed word.
Just to give you a perspective of a time needed for LD student to master the writing skills. The seminar was presented by a teacher who works with middle-school students and she said that for some students it takes 4-8 months to become independent in the pre-writing steps with daily one hour instructions in small group. For some of them it may even take longer. She mentioned that some of the skills needed are also thought in comprehension classes, which I imagine are something similar to visualization and verbalization (I do not really know since my son does not have comprehension class).
My son is in lower school and part of his writing class was instruction in sentence structure, like for example differentiating between sentence and heading (he could not do it and still has problems and he is a 5th grader); usage of punctuation, like for example an exclamation mark, question mark et.c.
The school has a list of “forbidden” words like for example: stuff, things, a lot, which the students have in their writing folders. Each paper is graded for sentence length (the goal is average sentence length of 12-14 words); paragraph length, it also lists how many words per error- on average (including all kinds of errors- grammar, spelling, et.c.), how many “mature words” were used (the mature words are words above the grade 2 vocabulary; any mature words used more than 3 times in a paper become “non-mature”).
Sorry it is scattered, but I was quite amazed and can only think how nice would it have been if somebody had thought me writing this way….
Re: Teaching writing (long)
My daughter who is not LD but still has some dysgraphic characteristics (you should see her hold a pencil) started typing everything in 6th grade. She is now in 7th and types things like news letters about our dog and other frivolous things. She learned word processing at school and my life got easier when she did. Recopying anything was a real struggle from 3rd grade on. Most of the time I ended up typing after she couldn’t do any more.
Beth
Re: Teaching writing (long)
I will print this out and read it when I am alert!! Thanks for sharing.
Beth
An opposing viewpoint
My daughter was forced through a formal “writing process” curriculum, and it drove her completely nuts, and I couldn’t stand it either.
We have coordination problems/late development problems/vision problems and if the concept had been around when we were young we would definitely have been considered very badly dysgraphic; both of us read fluently four years before we could put a legible sentence on paper.
Typing is *not* an advantage, as our fine coordination is just as bad on a computer. I taught myself to type in my own fashion after the age of forty.
Both of us can prepare a good essay mentally and write a first draft that is pretty finished; we don’t mind a little polishing but the rest of the official process, forget it.
We have coped with our dysgraphia by planning ahead and organizing our thoughts so as to minimize the work load of the actual writing.
Both of us, if absolutely forced to do an outline, do the essay first and then make up the outline from it. We both agree that this is really stupid, and we only do it under threat of failing grades, not exactly a productive motivation.
But she is doing well studying anthropology and writing papers that her professors consider examples of clear and concise writing, and I write notes for my students and the outlines that you all see here.
If this system works for you when nothing else did, that’s wonderful. But I hope that this system won’t be enforced as a lockstep as it was on my daughter.
Re: An opposing viewpoint
Hi Victoria,
I strongly agree with everything you said about forcing a “formal writing” process on students. Many years before my LD diagnosis, I had a wonderful professor at a community college who taught me how to write. I have little recollection of the methods he used but I am certain he did not require that I use an outline. If he had, I definitely would have remembered that as I hated having to outline anything. I would have done exactly what you and your daughter did in writing the essay first and outlining later. By the way, after I had tutoring with this professor, I never received a grade below a B on my papers and most of the time, I received an A.
PT
Re: An opposing viewpoint
Apparently my son is the opposite of you that fits the LD profile the school is targeting. He started with <3grade level writing skills (narrative of 35 words, 1 paragraph, sentence length 5 words) and at half the year assessment produced a 5 paragraph essay with 135 mature words. There is a lot to be desired of his style but at least he will write.
My son is definitively the one that needs the outside structure to organize his thoughts. Even in public school, in 4th grade his teacher gave them the graphic organizer for expository writing with boxes for main idea and smaller boxes for supporting details et.c.- what a difference it had made for him. From a child that would not write a word, he could create a writing “piece”. The problem was- he would have needed to have it done several dozen times to master the task and remember that this is the way one approaches the writing task. Without such support- he ended up writing the 35 words piece consistent of one paragraph. My son is VERY visual and he cannot really organize language tasks “in his mind”, so all this outside structure is a great help for him to get started and to go through necessary steps.
Added clarification- I organized my son’s school papers yesterday and I found the original acceptance letter that we got last summer- the first paragraph stated clearly that the school is accepting him because they believe that they can help him with his academic delays. Apparently the school is accepting children of similar profiles so they have a good chance of helping them.
Re: An opposing viewpoint
How I got through college papers—a high school teacher who taught us over and over: state your central idea and three ways it is supported. Elaborate on the three ways (one paragraph each); write a conclusion. I never wrote more of an outline than jotting down a few words that captured the gist of the central idea and the three supporting ideas.
My ds needs more structure than this (not that the school even teaches the bare bones of the above). But the webbing thing—Ewa you called it a spider—can be a nightmare for the visually disorganized or hyper-visual kids like my ds. A neat outline works better for him. I think this may be the difference between kids who find Inspiration helpful and those who prefer Draftbuilder. Wish the latter were available on 30-day free trial like Inspiration is.
Re: An opposing viewpoint
This is how my son was taught to write this year. It is very cookbook like but for a child who other wise couldn’t write an essay it was a big improvement.
Beth
Re: Teaching writing (long)
My son’s written output as well as the organization of his writing increased exponentially when his keyboarding skills had increased to the point that he was comfortable composing on the keyboard. Until we reached that point, he was so blocked that on anything of any length, (meaning more than a sentence) someone had to scribe for him, or he couldn’t get anything done at all.
As a person who writes as a profession, I think it’s crazy to insist that dysgraphic kids re-write papers by hand or even write drafts by hand once their keyboarding skills become functional. I NEVER use paper and pencil in my work. All composition, re-writes, editing etc. are done on the keyboard. That’s what real people in the adult world do if they need to write anything longer than a “thank you” note.
Incidentally, the assistive technology specialist who evaluated my son told us that most dysgraphic kids find it easier to keyboard than write by the time they reach a speed of only 6 words per minute. That shows how painfully slow the physical act of writing is for these kids. With my son, he actually had to get to about 10 wpm before he made the mental switch. I suspect that this was because in his case, it wasn’t just a physical issue. His keyboarding had to become automatic enough that more “brain space” could be assigned to the actual content.
Karen
This is a timely subject for me!
My son (3rd grader) had to finish a one page, 4 or more paragraph story (first draft!) last night. It took him 2 nights and over four hours! The first night he added maybe one sentence to the starting paragraph which had been assigned at school. He spent the whole time sitting at the table not knowing what to write. I even sat next to him and tried helping him brainstorm possible story directions. I asked him a lot of questions, tried to get him to visualize where the story might be going, what the main character might think or feel, what would be his next move, etc…
One of the most ironic things about this is that I was an English major in college and did my graduate work in creative writing. How can I have a child that can’t write?
Anyhow, he finally did write the story and he even came up with a pretty clever story line on his own with only a teeny tiny bit of help from me. But I know he’ll eventually encounter this problem again. Thanks for sharing all the different techniques for dealing with this. I’m definitely going to have my son try these ideas to see which might be most helpful for him.
Re: This is a timely subject for me!
My son has to first say the story out loud. The whole thing top to bottom.
Then he says it again and I stop him ever sentence and tell him to write it down.
When he does this he writes a very good story.
He is highly verbal so this is what works. Numerous drafts and steps is a nightmare and that is what he is taught at school. His writing at school and his writing at home are night and day. I tried to get them to help him use this method at school but they seem stuck on the visual organization charts.
I think they think I write his papers for him.
I recommend dragon speak naturally
We were able to get my daughter onto dragon speak naturally last summer. What a difference!
She has recently gotten better about using the kind of writing steps that the above posts talkd about -spiders, outlines. I think it was change in material at higher grades-more facts, easier to pick out main ideas. But she was dictation only for along time.
She is still not much of a typist.
Re: This is a timely subject for me!
My older son is NLD, and visual methods of organizing thoughts, like webbing are worse than useless for him. He does better with outlining, although that isn’t easy either. But at least with outlining, he can expand on it and move directly from the outline into paraghraph form via the computer.
We had the opposite problem that you are having, though… They were doing a lot of scribing for him at school last year, and the person scribing was often an aide rather than the SPED teacher. The problem with that was that I think the aide was guiding the writing process too much, almost giving him the words, and CERTAINLY giving him the structure and organization.
When I showed our neuropsychologist the difference between the work he did really independently, and the work that he passed in that had been scribed, she was adamant that we get them to stop the scribing. She said that they HAD to accept a lower amount and quality of output that was done truly independently or he never would learn to organize his thoughts himself.
The school has honored that this year, although either the teachers or I will step in and help if he gets truly stuck in order to prevent total shut-down. He is slowly and steadily improving. But I don’t think we could have stopped the scribing until we gave him the keyboarding skills. The combination of hand writing (well printing… he can’t “write” as in cursive at all) and written expression was just too much for him.
His IEP goal for writing is that he he can write an age/grade appropriate 5 paragraph essay by the end of the year. Of course in MA, they are supposed to be able to write a 5 paragraph essay for the 4th grade MCAS, but hey, better late than never :-/ They’ve got 3 months to get the job done, and he hasn’t written a 5 paragraph essay age appropriate or otherwise yet!
Karen
Re: I recommend dragon speak naturally
I’m sure it’s a viable option for some kids, but it didn’t work for us at all. His speech has a lot of the same dysfluency you see in his writing, and although he did TONS of training with the program, he was never able to get anything useful out of it. It took longer to correct the output than it would have tanken to type it to start with.
Karen
Re: An opposing viewpoint
In regards to the motor aspects of writng, I think all children should work toward legible handwritng. The best chances for remediating are in the elementary grades. I work with middle school student to proof read for legibility. If they can type they can use a laptop or alphasmart in the classroom and home or school computer for lengthier assignments. My point, don’t give up on handwritng to soon, it’s a functional skill, you may not have access to a computer when you complete your drivers license application.
Re: This is a timely subject for me!
Both typing and handwriting are important in middle school; my son has to take pages of notes and be tested on them in several subjects and he couldn’t type fast enough to take notes from someone speaking; there are lots of group production of research projects, booklets and science things that require everyone to write a few pages, then put it all together in a typed format. They even had to write short stories of 4-5 pages and publish it in the format of a children’s book with illustrations! My biggest problem is not the writing, but the amount of map drawing, illustrating, graphic-intensive stuff they have to do in middle school!!
Re: An opposing viewpoint
I agree with that. My son’s printing is actually quite neat, it’s just painfully slow. Cursive seems more trouble than it’s worth, beyond teaching him to sign his name. (he’s very proud that he has learned to do even that, and it took a LONG time to teach him!) But when it come to something that has to be done by hand, like a shopping list, or a quick note, I’d rather read his printing than my husband’s!
Karen
Re: This is a timely subject for me!
My son can’t keep up taking notes either typing OR writing, though they are trying to get him in the habit of trying to get them onto his lap top. However, they supply him with notes from every class, which from what I understand, is an accomodation that they routinely offer right through High School in our school system. They still encourage the kids to do as well as they can taking notes, but it’s not the end of the world if they miss something.
My son’s keyboarding skills, plus the fact that he has a laptop that he can bring to a group even in the classroom has actually been seen as an asset during group projects at school. He can’t write as fast as te other kids, but he can type faster than any of them! (of course, he’s had direct instruction in it where they haven’t, but it gives him a place where he can shine)
What grade is your son in? While we’ve had lost of projects, we’ve had nothing requiring more than a few paragraphs so far. (6th grade) Actually he’s done far more writing for science class than he’s done in English and SS together (both of these are taught by the same teacher) This worries me, because it seems to me that they had to do more writing in 4th and 5th grade than he’s done so far this year. I’m concerned that if he gets a more rigorous English teacher next year, he may be dead in the water.
I can’t imagine him doing ANYTHING that is multiple PAGES long any time soon. Anything longer than a single paragraph is considered a monumental undertaking.
As far as graphics are concerned, repeat after me… “Google Images is our friend”. We turn to it over and over again. Most of our teachers will allow clip art images to be dropped into a Word document as long as proper credit is given.
If something needs to be modified, I have a tool that we bought for me, but has become a favorite with the kids. It’s a tablet about the size of a piece of paper that attaches to the computer with a USB cable. It has a “pen” that you use to “draw” on the tablet and creat art work directly on the computer screen. With a scanner and a simple paint/draw program, the kids can produce really striking graphics. Coloring in shapes like maps can be done at the touch of a button with the “fill” tool.
Karen
Re: This is a timely subject for me!
Karen Randall wrote:
> If something needs to be modified, I have a tool that we
> bought for me, but has become a favorite with the kids. It’s
> a tablet about the size of a piece of paper that attaches to
> the computer with a USB cable. It has a “pen” that you use
> to “draw” on the tablet and creat art work directly on the
> computer screen. With a scanner and a simple paint/draw
> program, the kids can produce really striking graphics.
> Coloring in shapes like maps can be done at the touch of a
> button with the “fill” tool.
>
you mean:
“….Tablet PCs are one of the hottest innovations in computing hardware:
Lightweight, full-function PCs that let you use a pen to handwrite text
and drawings into the computer. You can also use the pen and your
voice to control your computer in situations when you’d prefer not to
use a keyboard or mouse. Experts from tablet vendors Acer, Toshiba and
HP/Compaq will attend the showcase to demonstrate their tablets and
answer your questions….”
We have an expo this Friday- so I will go and see what it is.
Ewa
PS. My son acctually loves drawing so I am not that concern sicne the scanner will do the rest.
> Karen
Re: This is a timely subject for me!
No, this isn’t a PC, it’s just a peripheral for a PC. It costs less than $100.
I don’t think we’d have much use for a PC my son could write on… We went to the PC specifically so he could keyboard!
Karen
Re: An opposing viewpoint
Certainly true- the webbing being a nightmare for visually disorganized.
the teacher named the children who do it through the spider for each paragraph and some even “layered bubbles” (I do not really know how to described it better) for the entire paper and convert later to sequential outline. She also said that she would never be able to do it this way.
There are children who start with “linear” outline (more like a “comb” I would say). I think the major idea is to have some outside structure to organize the thoughts.
My son is this “3D” child, so it does not bother him a bit.
On the other hadn, he definitively cannot tell a story that would be sequential without organizing his thoughts first and revising it. At his SL evaluation when he was asked to talk about his favorite movie the evaluator wrote that she could not figure out what the plot of the story was.
Re: An opposing viewpoint
> On the other hadn, he definitively cannot tell a story that
> would be sequential without organizing his thoughts first and
> revising it. At his SL evaluation when he was asked to talk
> about his favorite movie the evaluator wrote that she could
> not figure out what the plot of the story was.
Ha! Robbie can tell you what everyone in the story ate, and what the wore. But don’t even TRY to get him to tell you the plot or main theme.
Do you know what he took away from the first Harry Potter movie? DID YOU KNOW, that in the scene in Diagon Alley, there is one sequence where you can see the camera man reflected in Harry’s glasses? THAT’S what Robbie noticed!
Karen
Re: An opposing viewpoint
there you go….
But I can relate…
On many occasion I joked that should have been an CIA agent with my memory for faces… though with my extremaly poor memory for words - I would never remember names.
my son is in 6th; even 4th and 5th require lots of writing..
probably thanks to the MCAS test, all projects require lots of pages of reports!
Laura, you may find this article of interest
http://www.writing-edu.com/newsletter/archive.phtml?id=677709841
You may find this article of interest
http://www.writing-edu.com/newsletter/archive.phtml?id=677709841
Re: An opposing viewpoint
I agree 100%. I work with kids and adults at all levels and ages, and it is just so frustrating for all concerned to meet a nice young adult who is missing a basic functional life skill, whether basic writing/printing, basic spelling, or basic arithmetic. You want to help a person get into a college, get into a high school class, get a job, whatever, and you hit a brick wall when they can’t fill out the application form or pass a basic competency test or whatever.
On a personal note, both my daughter and I took four more years after we learned to write to get to printing barely legibly. Neither of us could write fluently until high school, and neither of us willingly put more than necessary on paper until after high school (taught us to be clear concise writers!) Typing was no easier as our problem is with basic hand coordination compounded by vision. But we both fought with writing until we amstered it, combined pressure and support from family and at least some teachers. And we now both write for pleasure and have been published in newspapers. It IS worth the fight.
I am impressed that your middle school age child can compose essay-style on the computer; my son writes things out and then word-processes, as do all 6th graders at his large public school …because the teachers insist on it. His 4th and 5th grade used the John Collins method of teaching writing, and it was helpful. John Collins used focus corrections at each draft…yes, they rewrite by hand, and somehow my LD son(who can only print), managed.