This summer, we are doing a journal. It is a major pain to get him to sit down and do the journal more often than not. He will complain longer than he actually spends doing it, but he will tell me he liked doing it once he finished it.
We ask him for a page or two and a drawing. I don't correct anything, but I will verbally tell him how to spell something correctly. It isn't everyday, but a few times a week. It has really helped when I sat next to him and wrote in my own journal. His little sister also sits down and draws pictures in her journal too. This is makes it more like family time than an assignment.
This is a good idea. I'm a little hesitant to "allow" him to practice a lot of writing without going over the letters first. I spoke with DS about writing sentences or words instead of letters and he agreed it sounded better. Maybe I'll look up funny sentences to dictate or him to just copy instead. He doesn't mind journaling, but if I just tell him to write it is not legible usually. And I thought by going through a program like HWT it would isolate individual letters. The program also asks to not have the children write words where they have not yet been taught letters. And I have seen progress! But when he doesn't practice a specific letter for a while it looks worse again.
I'm also thinking of getting a tracing book (don't know if they have those anymore) or something else for him to just focus on using his writing skills without it being boring writing. For instance I get him maze books which his enjoys, but his doesn't stay on the paths in general, even in wide maze books. I guess it's still practice, though.
I also discussed with him maybe saving up for a new app every X days he does his writing. He seemed very enthusiastic about that!
