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    Joined: Sep 2009
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    Originally Posted by readermom123
    CNM, thanks for the info. Wow, some good ideas. Do you have your son correct his homework if it's incorrect? I've just been leaving it because it's the end of the day and he tends to be a little melty at that time, but maybe I should push him to make corrections.
    FWIW, we went through something similar with my DD when she was in first grade (she's now 16). We found that after a full day at school and struggling through her spelling/writing assignments, she just didn't have anymore to give. Depending upon the assignment, we sometimes went back and corrected things over the weekend. As she got older, we would have her make more corrections but even then, we tended to focus on one thing at a time, i.e. if we were working on capitalization, then we did't focus on spelling for that exercise.

    If you feel that your kid is "melty", then it's probably not the right time to push anything. You're just setting yourself up for battles that will drain both you and your kid.

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    Originally Posted by readermom123
    CNM, thanks for the info. Wow, some good ideas. Do you have your son correct his homework if it's incorrect? I've just been leaving it because it's the end of the day and he tends to be a little melty at that time, but maybe I should push him to make corrections. I hope the full IQ testing gives good information for your son.


    His teacher rarely gives homework beyond reading. For classwork, she tries to remind him at the start and check in with him several times during the assignment to make sure he's leaving spaces between words, using punctuation, and to give him feedback about capitalization. When he is writing something at home, I try to sit with him and catch his mistakes as they happen, so it's not a huge overwhelming "do it all again" kind of thing when he thinks he's done. I'm sure you could do that with spelling and letter reversals if those are the main issues your boy is having. It does take a lot of time though.

    Someone on his IEP team suggested making him a checklist of the things he struggles with the most and have him self evaluate after every assignment. I think we may try that next year after we've built the skills a little more (hopefully).

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    If you have a child who enjoys charts and graphs, you can also help them chart their improvement on focus correction areas. Pick something that happens relatively frequently, and is easy to score as correct or incorrect (such as remembering to capitalize the first letter of every sentence, or use end punctuation at the end of every sentence, or use a finger or pencil tip space between each word), and then help him rate his percent accuracy on some regular interval (depending on how involved you want the process to be, and how often this kind of product is generated), such as daily, twice weekly, or weekly. The assignment can continue to be graded or ungraded as usual, based on whatever rubric the teacher is using, but you can also monitor progress on a specific mechanical skill. Take data for a few days first, to see what his baseline is, and then either set a realistic goal for growth over a specific time period (such as when IEP goals and objectives are written), or just monitor to see how it improves when this skill is consistently top of mind for a month or two. The intervention is not to correct the work, but simply to take data on it, and change the level of self-awareness.

    If percents are too complicated for a less math-skilled child, you can also arbitrarily always take data only on the first five sentences, or the first ten words, or something similar, and use an absolute accuracy count for your chart.

    When you reach a consistently high degree of accuracy (say, better than 80%, or better than 4 out of 5), over multiple consecutive measurement intervals, you can bump up to another focus area, and start the process over again.


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    With respect to correcting homework, I think here it does matter a lot whether the problem is actually LD-based. It can be really, really hard to judge, but I try to think in terms of what the child could reasonably be supposed to do, and what they have been explicitly taught to do.

    I tend to bring two considerations to this. First, if the child couldn't reasonably be expected to spell without an O-G based spelling program, I don't correct any spelling that involves words forms that have not yet been explicitly taught. Besides feeling like punishment, the reality is the child probably isn't going to learn anything from your corrections anyways if they are not within the context of a structured program and rules the child has already been explicitly and systematically taught. (My DD is highly motivated to spell my name correctly. She's seen it written correctly a million times. She still spells it differently every time.)

    Second, what is the purpose of the assignment? Is writing the end, or a means to the end? In the latter case, I think it's important to be way more hands-off than the former. LDs are a lack of automaticity. That means the child needs to expend enormous brainpower on basic mechanics of spelling, letter formation, location of letters in space, etc. While they are doing this, there's not much brain left for anything else. So in every assignment, I kind of have to consider: where do I want the majority of her brain resources spent - on the mechanics, or thinking about the content? Because unlike the other kids, she has to pick one. So it's good to have stuff that's all about practicing the mechanics - and the rest of the time, ignore them.

    Incentivizing can be very helpful for most kids (not mine, alas, but most). The challenge is to make sure it doesn't inadvertently turn into a punishment - for something the child can't control, or for lacking a skill that has not yet been taught. You also don't want to incentivize the child into thinking only the mechanics matter, and convince them to put no resources into thinking, creating, and analyzing.

    My DD is now 11. When she does something for presentation - a poster or a birthday card - she will still check spelling with me on virtually every word, because it matters to her to get it right. But the work then becomes almost entirely about spelling, and content is subordinated. But she's a poet, and when her muse takes her, she runs to her whiteboard (where there's no spell check to distract her), and whips up the most extraordinary, beautiful poems. Barely decipherable poems. When she's done, she recites them to me (because there's no way I could read them) and I type them up for posterity. If she was thinking about spelling or word spacing or anything else, those poems wouldn't exist and my world would be a lot less amazing.

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    I am a little late in the mix, and I didn't read all the answers, but as the parent of a gifted dyslexic...its weird. Since we homeschool we are in a different situation, and there is no one to "keep up" with or compare with. I have not pushed spelling until now, my daughter is 11 and wants to be a better speller. I know 11 is old, but I have seen how quickly she learns when she knows she is ready and when the desire comes from her. She was almost 10 before she read well. She went from a 2nd grade reading level to a 7th grade reading level in one year or less and is now able to read just about anything and reads all the time. I see the look on people's face when I talk about her dyslexia...since she eats up 2-4 novels a week. Kids with dyslexia are supposed to be bad readers. About a year ago we began letting her use voice to text for writing, and she now writes novelettes and posts them to wattpad. She is a very strong writer and this adaptation has really let her flourish and get to the next level. And her love for writing has inspired her to learn to spell, and she is working with "sequential spelling" which is a zillion time better (for people with dyslexia) than the phonics way of learning spelling. We started at a very low level though, like 2nd grade. She is going 2-4 "daily lessons" each day. Not sure where I am going with this, but just letting you know, this is what 2e dyslexic/gifted looks like. We looked into dysgraphia due to the difference in writing/reading, but that wasn't the issue. I find it amazing the way the gifted dyslexic mind works. I am still not sure exactly how she learned to read so well.

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    Hello all. I'm sorry I dropped out of the conversation so abruptly. I had hip arthroscopy a few weeks ago and it knocked me on my heinie for a lot longer than I expected. As way of an update, my son qualified for the gifted program in his district (solidly, he had several 99th percentile scores and nothing lower than a 94th percentile on the Cogat and IOWA). However, when I was looking at his istation results (this is a computerized reading program that the kids test on each month) and he has huge discrepancies between vocabulary, comprehension, etc and spelling, phonemic awareness and other things like that. His spelling in particular was in the 23rd percentile while vocabulary and comprehension are in the 99th. I sent a screenshot to a friend who is a reading specialist in an elementary school and she said it is indeed looking similar to dyslexia. She also mentioned that in most kids that she works with, dyslexia and attention issues tend to co-occur. There are only 2 weeks left in the school year so I don't think we'll be able to do any testing through the school district until next year. His teacher is going to meet with me sometime before the end of the school year and so we'll see what she suggests as well.

    I appreciate so much everyone taking the time to reply and give information about your own experiences. I'll update as we actually take action and give information about what helps him. Right now the plan is to work over the summer on handwriting and spelling, probably with input from my friend. I'm still hemming and hawing about whether to try to do it myself (maybe using the curriculum people have suggested) or hire someone (some teachers from his school tutor over the summer, there are specialized handwriting tutoring centers, etc).

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    Just chimmimg in to add... Parents of dysgraphics should place typing under management needs in the child's IEP. It is somewhat harder to get iPads and MacBooks approved as AT if the typing is slower that the already slow handwriting.

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    Emma, this is a really good point. I've definitely updated my 'learn to type' timing for sure. His hands just seem so little for it! smile

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    Originally Posted by readermom123
    His hands just seem so little for it! smile
    Is an iPad an option? Until the writing got substantive in grade 4, my DD much preferred having an iPad, and used a lot of word prediction.

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    His little hands may surprise you! I started my kids on typing at about 6 or 7, and they've done pretty well with it--the dysgraphic one included. Typing Instructor for Kids has some fun games on it, as does typing.com.


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