Successful curriculum for middle school LD Lang. Arts?

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

Hi,

I’m in my 5th year of teaching LD middle-schoolers. This is my first year teaching Language Arts.

My question is specifically about writing.

What instructional methods/curriculum/etc. are other people using to teach grammar/mechanics/expressive writing to middle school LD kids???

I’m really only interested in stuff that you have found to be VERY SUCCESSFUL. Please tell me why you like it and/or how it has been effective.

Thanks so much!!!
Christa

Submitted by Janis on Sat, 09/06/2003 - 9:26 PM

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Christa,

While you await replies, I will tell you that the most mentioned program here is Step Up to Writing by Sopris West. You may want to do a search on this forum and read through some posts. Also, here is the web-site:

http://www.stepuptowriting.com/

Janis

Submitted by Sue on Fri, 09/12/2003 - 9:34 PM

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I”ve been busy :)
Charlotte MOrgan’s _When They Can’t WRite_ is a comprehensive all-laid-out-for-you program that really works for the kids who start out not even knowing what a sentence is. She worked at a college-prep high school for kids with LDs (now she’s working at a college) and this is what she taught with rather good success :)
Another good resource is Diana Hanbury King’s Adolescent Writing Skills, which is shorter and cheaper, and has a whole lot of ideas to start from for good writing skill activities for middle grades, from sentences to paragraphs to research papers.

Submitted by Sue on Fri, 09/12/2003 - 9:36 PM

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more details —
When THey Can’t WRite starts with what nouns and verbs are, and what concrete and abstract nouns and verbs are — and the kids get used to generating lists of them by looking around where they are, etc. THen it goes to simple subject-predicate sentences, then builds specific kinds of phrases onto that. Not a whole mess of terminology to learn — lots and lots of examples and practice. Lots of flexibility for different abilities — creative kids can really go to town, but pluggers can also do *fine* with the information around them.

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