We have a 4th grader with learning disabilities (visual processing) in reading, language, and spelling. He is able to do Daily Oral Language, (i.e., correcting sentences on the board) and skills addressed in his English textbook. He can use correct capitalization and punctuation. However, in his own writing (i.e., essays and paragraphs) he doesn’t use ending marks correctly or capitalize appropriately. How can I help him carry over these skills into his own writing?
Re: Need Input!
My son has difficulty with this. A few things I have found that have helped. Victoria really helped me to understand alot of this so I need to give her the credit for most of this.
1. He has to read in sentences. He sometimes will just read and read without stopping at the periods. He has to learn to read the punctuation in order to write the punctuation. I have recently realized the reason that he does this is because when he stops at the period he tends to lose his place. It is easier for him to keep going. He has vision issues which once fixed should correct this problem.
2. He has to speak in sentences. He also tends to get excited when telling a story. He will just go on and on with his ideas. I now slow him down every time he does this and make him think about speaking in sentences.
3. When he writes I make him sit and think in sentences, then he has to tell me what he wants to write in sentences then he will write down what he tells me. I have him first tell me the whole story. When it is time to write I will stop him from talking after 2 or 3 sentences then tell him to write them down. If he gets too far ahead he forgets what he has to say.
This is a child with almost too many ideas. More ideas than pracitical skills. I think alot of kids are the other way around.
When we do this my son can write a good story with just one draft.
Re: Need Input!
We have the opposite problem. Every period, comma, capital and even quotation mark is in place; however, there is no elaboration. I have to drag every word out of her. The other night, I noticed (I HOPE she was just tired, it’s the first time I’ve seen this), she was putting the adjective BEHIND the noun. The tail fuzzy, the ball noisy (talking about her cat). I would say okay, now read the sentence and of course, she would then catch it, laugh at herself for how funny it sounded, and fix it. It took us 1.25 hours to write 4 small paragraphs.
If we could team our kids up for a book report we’d be in good shape.
Re: Need Input!
What reading program are they using for him? He should be taught to read as soon as possible so that he can read books and see what sentence structure is all about. It is very difficult to teach a non-reader to write because they have nothing to model from. They usually don’t notice sentence structure due to the fact that all they see are words that they don’t know how to decode. Show him in the books that he does read the ending marks and capitalization. He is really not alone, I had many 11th grade academic students who used no punctuation or capitalization in their writing!
Gosh, I really wish I had the answer to this one. Here’s what I do but it still doesn’t work all the time.
On my magnetic white board I have a punched out period, question mark, and esclamation point. I put magnets on the back. Next I put a big green cap (baseball shaped green paper cut out to look like a baseball cap.) On the cap I write all the important things that should be capitalized (states, rivers, names of people, and then things that shouldn’t be capped on the back with the big no sign over it ) Then, I put magnets on the back of 5 real pennies. I keep these up all year and refer to it as necessary. I put the cap first, next the pennies, and finally the cap with all things that need to be capped.
I say, each sentence must have a cap and punc. Then we ask ourselves, does this make cents? (wrong cents but the kids don’t care) At the end of each writing assignment the child goes through it and chant.s….cap punc, cap punc, cap, punc, cap , punc, quickly checking each sentence. After they do the cap/punc check they ask themselves…..DOes this make sense? (cents)
Then, the one they forget the most…..indenting 2 fingers. I tell them that if they forget I will sing the song they hate which is Britney SPears, OOPS I DID IT AGAIN….. So when they hand it is I say.l….you don’t really want me to sing do you. I tell them that I will get the CD and play it…but I really never have.
I don’t know why this is so hard after years of practice but it always is.
By the way, One little tip I use in resource that I found to be great is this. I copy the 30 Daily Oral Languagelessons and also a cursive writing. I bind them into a book together with cursive in the back. On the cover I use cardstock with the cursive alphabet on the front and back.
When the children come to resource they must fix the 2 sentences of the day….one in cursive….one in print…When done the child goes to the back of the book to write cursive. This is great because then the children always have something to do as the cursive never ends and they all finish at different time and come in slightly at different times. We then correct the 2 sentences of the day on the overhead…and then go into the writing lesson together.This has been a great way to get the child on task right away with a routine. It works for me.
Michelle