writing problems help!

This is 2nd gr? 1st?

Public or private?

Does he have an IEP?

Were there other behavior issues those first 3 days?

It seems like a big deal to make over just one assignment IMHO

I would go for some middle ground and be sure he’s aware of your position. Perhaps anything over a certain length he can take and do at home? But a brief few sentences must be accomplished at school

Is his writing messy or does it hurt his hand?

I think an IEP could address these issues-insits he be graded only on the content and not the writing-no nasty notes about writing ‘nicely’ either

My sons IEP states he cannot have points taken off for spelling except on a spelling test;someone else mentioned the same accomodation the other day. I think that philosophy should easily be extended to ‘writing”

Now, if he cant put his thoughts on paper? WEll, again, hes only 7-surely they cant expect too much yet? I guess you could try some similar diagrams at home with ‘vacation’ in the middle and spokes of “train ride” ‘cotton candy” etc

Give him a different idea every day and just do phrases on the spokes

No criticism-just praise-even if a spoke says something that has nothing to do with vacation. This worked with my son when I homeschooled last year.

It was as if he was so overwhelmed with the chores of punctuation and capitalization and spelling and……..there was no flow of thought. I found stuff hed written at home in secret that was pages long…….

Hes in 7th gr PS now and I notice the LA teacher has them write on a different topic each day but NEVER comments or correctsor insists on a certain number of words;they just get 5 pts for doing it. His paragraphs just keep getting longer ;)

Hi Marycas

He is in 3rd grade, in a private school, was in public last year, The IEP assessment would start this year(within 50 days). I felt by the time this happened he would be drowning in class. So we put him in a very small school with 10 kids in class. The IEP assessment will still take place soon. We had him privately tested.

He does have some behavior issues going on as well, he knocks under his desk and says someone is at the door, disrupting the class. He’ll pull out his book and read while the teacher is lecturing. She said he fidgets alot. I did notice an air conditioner 8 feet from him and it was noisy. I told her he can’tblock out background noise and she said she would move him to see if that helps.

His handwriting is not messy he works really hard to make it perfest (OCD), and we’re working on the pencil grip, and using a softer lead.

I “think” the biggest problem is the thoughts to paper. Verbally he can expound on the topic, but when it comes to writing it he gets upset and refuses. Now if you prompt him (stand right next to him) he’ll write reluctantly and shorten the legnth of the sentence. I’m having such a hard time telling if he is just being defiant or if he really has a problem with this.I obviously don’t want him punished for something he can’t do. Yet I don’t want to create a monster.
Since last year his teacher let him get away with less writing. He skipped 1st grade and the teacher thought by mid year he would catch up, he never did. ( Believe me I have regretted that decision!)

I worked on handwriting during the summer and really should have worked on thoughts to paper.Arrgh!!

I like your advice with an idea a day with the diagram, I definately will try this and be very positive with feedback. Hopefully that will help with flow and confidence. He probably still shoud at least be a ble to write a paragraph in class though right?

Personally, I despise graphic organizers. I do happen to be a visual thinker, very visual, and I don’t like the over-simplification and the lockstep these things put you into. If I am in a class where the teacher tries to make us use something like this, I rebel too.
I am also a kid who skipped grade 1 and had no writing skills at all until Mrs. Ross, bless her, in Grade 3 with the dip pens and ink wells. I well remember beginning Grade 2 and being told to write a story. I had plenty of verbal and reading skills but my hands wouldn’t guide a pencil. I was kept after school and produced the messiest tear-stained page ever seen. Luckily my teacher figured out what was going on (or else my mom yelled at her, I’m not sure) and backed off some of the more excessive demands for a while.
Writing is a *physical* skill as well as mental/verbal. You just can’t catch up on a year’s physical development and daily practice in a few weeks. Would you expect him to just catch up, right away, if you boosted him up a year in soccer or hockey or piano? He can catch up gradually over a year or two with steady practice but just don’t expect overnight miracles.
And I still recommend to throw out all the yellow pencil and get some nice smooth-flowing pens. It can’t make things much messier or more difficult, can it? And this will cut the fatigue in half.

Personally, I despise graphic organizers. I do happen to be a visual thinker, very visual, and I don’t like the over-simplification and the lockstep these things put you into. If I am in a class where the teacher tries to make us use something like this, I rebel too.
I am also a kid who skipped grade 1 and had no writing skills at all until Mrs. Ross, bless her, in Grade 3 with the dip pens and ink wells. I well remember beginning Grade 2 and being told to write a story. I had plenty of verbal and reading skills but my hands wouldn’t guide a pencil. I was kept after school and produced the messiest tear-stained page ever seen. Luckily my teacher figured out what was going on (or else my mom yelled at her, I’m not sure) and backed off some of the more excessive demands for a while.
Writing is a *physical* skill as well as mental/verbal. You just can’t catch up on a year’s physical development and daily practice in a few weeks. Would you expect him to just catch up, right away, if you boosted him up a year in soccer or hockey or piano? He can catch up gradually over a year or two with steady practice but just don’t expect overnight miracles.
And I still recommend to throw out all the yellow pencil and get some nice smooth-flowing pens. It can’t make things much messier or more difficult, can it? And this will cut the fatigue in half.

At day 3 in the class, the teacher was trying to gauge skills. She introduced a very easy topic-no research or recall of academic facts- and provided prompts via a graphic organizer. She was trying to see who could write a complete sentence, who could string 2 ideas together. Just get a gentle baseline on where kids were at. Not an unreasonable request.

I think its great you are going to see her. Don’t wait. The more information you can give her, the better. It is interesting that your son was able to produce the work. What’s with the defiance?

mmm,
Thanks for the reply, I didn’t think the writing was unreasonable either. She really has to find out where the kids are with their writing. Believe me I’m there with the information,and volunteering in the class room. hopefully things will smooth out. Thanks for the encouragement!

victoria,
My son is a visual spatial kid like you, I thought the graphic organizer would be a good thing if you are visual. Do you have any suggestions on what would work better?
And you are absolutely right about the soccer/hockey analogy, I thought the teacher understood he came from kindergarten and would “bring” him up to class level by teaching him, not osmosis. Even if I was using workbooks at home with him I really was not sure what to do.. ( writing is not my strong point) Anyway I read your post last night and then went to bed and woke up at 1:30 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I felt horrible about what didn’t happen last year and feel so bad for him.

Talked to the teacher this morning and explained the situation. She was understanding . I also told her he will start to use fine ball point pens for writing to take the stress off his hands, while we work on fine motor coordination.

Once again I thank you!!!!

Last year the teacher put less demands on him regarding the writing, he was unable to put thoughts to paper so I would scribe for him. This was because we were trying to figure out what exactly his problems were.

I feel like he should be able to write a paragraph. Or at least try.

Any suggestions for myself or the teacher?[/quote]

It’s interesting that last year you felt he was unable to put his thoughts to paper and then this year, you feel as if he should be able to write a paragraph. What’s changed? What’s changed in him that he goes suddenly from scribing to being able to generate a paragraph on his own?

To me it sounds as if we’ve skipped a step. Can he write a sentence on his own? And had you explained to him that you were not going to scribe for him this year and that you feel he’s now capable of writing a paragraph on his own? Did he know you felt that way when he went to school this year?

And what are his problems? What did you figure them out to be?

In any case, can’t he use the computer to write? It does help some kids.

Good luck.

Well, I didn’t want to keep anyone up all night!

I and my daughter both find the physical skill of writing tiring. So we think up what we want to say, get it all organized in the mind, and write it. Period. No multiple drafts. No on-paper outlines. All that is in the head. We are good at imaging, me visually and her verbally, and a two-dimensional piece of paper is just too limiting.
We do edit more with computers, but it’s still a finished first draft. Just lets us go back and insert a new paragraph here and there.

She suffered terribly when her school tried to teach creativity by enforcing a lockstep, forcing everyone through their incredibly tedious version of the “writing process”. The worst, she said, was when she wrote exactly what she wanted to say and then she was grouped with some semi-illiterates whose “editing” was full of grammatical errors. I couldn’t tell her anything except to write what she was going to write anyway and then go back and make up an outline to make the teacher happy.

Here’s a step-by-step approach that I have used to get some students moving on writing:
1. Student talks and you scribe. You make him formulate his ideas in full sentences, a sentence at a time. If he stalls, you ask a question: And then what? Who are we talking about? What do you think about that?
You may need to help him formulate sentences by asking systematic questions: subject — who or what are we talking about? Verb — what did he/she/it do? OR what about it? (the circus — what about the circus? — We went to the circus) Object/modifiers — where/when/why/how/to what?
The main thing is that you finally pry a reasonable sentence out of his lips, you don’t make anything up yourself.
2. Student tells you the sentence as above, now that he knows how to formulate a formal sentence, and then you give it back to him *one word at a time*; he then writes from your word-by-word dictation *as slowly as it takes*. Longer words you break into syllables to help encoding. If he makes an error in spelling, you tell him the irregular bits and silent letters, but you re-sound regular parts and have him fill in what was missed. Paper is full of cross-outs but that isn’t the point. You still ask leading questions to pry the next sentence out of him. You can get a paragraph of two to four sentences this way.
3. Student tells you the sentence orally and then you give it back to him in phrases of three to five words. You still help with the sounding and spelling as above but you try to gradually fade out the most leading questions and just ask if that is all he wants to say. You have him re-read what he is written out loud to you, and ask him again if there is anything he wants to add or correct.
4. Student writes a sentence at a time by himself and you wait until the end of the sentence to help him with errors. You praise each finished sentence and encourage him to think up something else to say.
5. You can brainstorm with him by getting him to talk and you note down key words and phrases and ideas, and then you give him the notes and let him organize from that.

Each of these stages would continue for weeks or even months until it is clear the student is ready to move a little faster on his own. By the end of the school year he should be writing full and interesting paragraphs and feeling a lot more confident in spelling.

If possible, go to the library and see if you can borrow a copy of Mel Levine’s “Educational Care.” There’s a wonderful chapter in it that goes through the writing process step by step and it may help you figure out where the breakdown occurs.