This is an offshoot to the venting about writing thread.
Shay (who used to post here a lot) recommended “Step Up to Writing” by Sopris West to teach my LD son to write. It is a good, structured approach, that is flexible enough to be used at all levels. They do fun things like the “stoplight” method. They use red, yellow and green as signals for what type of sentence (or paragraph - depending on the level of the student) should come next. They have several other methods, and teach ways to do informative, expository, etc. papers.
I’ve always said you have to learn the rules before you can choose to break them - raised four kids that way. :-) And my young LD son NEEDS to know the rules in order to be able to write. Otherwise it’s way too overwhelming for him. Our writing SOLs (Virginia) are in about three weeks. I’ll be interested to see how he does.
Lil
Re: Step Up to Writing
Hi Marie,
We worked with Step-Up the summer between 3rd and 4th grades - amid many tears and recriminations from my son. We were also doing Reading Reflex …
After fighting our way through three papers (one a week) I finally gave it up. :-) The reading was stressful enough for him, and I felt that was more important to work on than writing.
HOWEVER, I did get the Step-Up techniques written into his IEP, and he had push-in services 1:1 during the school day. He’s doing much better now.
I don’t know what middle school will bring next year, but I have a feeling we may be pulling that book out help format longer written assignments.
Lil
Re: Step Up to Writing
I saw the CD “ad” for Step up to Writing. It didn’t look particularly difficult But unlike reading which often is a much clearer thing to the kid, I think this is harder to get the kid to see the value of this.
I saw some strategies that I could easily use right now without the program. One thing was that each kind of sentence is color coded so that intro and conclusions are in green (topic sentences)— ie green means go the writer says what he is going to say, how he will say it, what he will explain, what info he will give; yellow is slow down, introduce concepts to support topic sentence; red “stop and explain” provide evidence and examples; green “go back to the topic” restate topic, restate topic and information.
The example in the flyer is: G- topic- why I should learn to swim
Y- Safety reasons
R- help yourself
R- save others
Y- Social reasons
R- parties
R- vacations
R- summer
G- conclusion- benefits of being a good swimmer
The kid does an outline (I’d think 3X 5 cards would be easier, wouldn’t have to be in order, as an outline is a skill that has to be taught)— anyway each thought is on a separate card.
Then color codes the thoughts as above and puts in order
(using strips of colored construction paper)
Then writes it. The kids used green, pink and yellow highlighters to go back and show the parts of the written paragraph.
Note that this starts at the paragraph level. If the kid can not write a clear sentence this is obviously not appropriate yet.
Also obviously the manual would be helpful as there are other things involved in the program which I was not privy to via the short CD.
I think the program is pretty much in the manual and the program includes things like classroom reproducibles, overhead masters, posters, etc.
—des
Lil,
Please let us know how he does. I agree with your observation that you have to know the rules before you can break them.
Nancy has posted here that Step-Up may be more suitable for sixth grade and up. I’ve also heard that it is a bit difficult to do at home. How did you find implementing it with your son?
Hope he does well.
Mariedc
(P.S. Have you asked his school why they don’t teach writing in a way he can learn it? I know it would be hopeless at my ds’s school. They blame the students for their lack of learning.)