Her teacher has given her homework of writing something every weekend as practice because the kids in her class are writing a full page and dd was only writing a couple of sentences in class. At first, for her homework, she was asked to write about her weekend and dd really, really struggled. As a result I initially thought the teacher must be right. It surprised me because dd has a wonderful ability to tell stories, many of which I had copied down for her. What soon became apparent though was that the issue is not that she can�t write, she was just confounded by the idea that anyone would want her to write about anything quite so mundane as what happened on her weekend (or whatever other topic they were doing in class).
(I explained this to the teacher who completely missed the point and told dd she wanted to hear about what dd 'had on her pancakes for breakfast and so on�. You could see from dd's expression she was thinking 'really??')
But she is SUCH a fly under the radar kid I know all the cajoling in the world is unlikely to get her to produce work to the level she can. All the talking to teachers in the world is unlikely to convince the already unconvinced that she is capable of more. She�s not really motivated by grades and the like and yet none of the work is interesting her enough to become intrinsically motivated (she�s not a kid who is passionate about specific topics either � well, other than Harry Potter).
So this all very funny to me...except my DD is 8, hasn't been skipped, isn't fly under the radar and does better with the personal writing than the made up stuff. We literally had an occasion at her former school where she wrote EXACTLY the minimum 5 required sentances to make a story. The teacher was pleased and, thinking to encourage her, asked for 5 more sentances using adjectives. So the parent volunteer suggests she describe the snowy scene the story was set in. Butter looks at her with disdain and said "Everyone KNOWS snow is COLD." hahahahaha!
fwiw-the IQ/acheivement tests in our case indidcate depressed processing speed, lowered working memory and a coding issue that, combined, point to a fine motor issue and, combined with her perfectionism and high school graduate reading level, make it hard for her to accept the lower expectations of a regular 3rd grade classroom. Then she gets all anxious about her own ability to produce work. When she finally writes, it's 10th grade level *sigh*
I don't know what to tell you as far as her school goes, but we are currently doing "home study". It's like homeschool, but we have a campus and they give us the books, pacing, etc...my point being that, the more unusual your child is, the more unlikely a standard solution is going to work and if the school isn't going to listen to you, you might want to look for one that does...
I hope that helps
