I'm usually here talking about DD5, but today have a question about DS8 in 3rd grade.
A little background: He was very precocious (especially verbally) as a baby/young child, and today is a deep thinker, creative, inventive, and emotionally very sensitive and perceptive. I think he is equally gifted to DD5 but is not the "shining high achiever" that DD5 is. He has a greater disparity between his intellectual/academic abilities and social/emotional maturity. He gets mostly good grades but can be inconsistent in his output depending on how much effort he "feels like" putting into something.
He often finds the "process" of schoolwork tedious and pointless. (For example, if the teacher writes sentences on the board and tells them to copy down the sentences and underline the verbs, he'll say, "Why can't I just write the verbs? Why do I have to write the whole sentence?") He hates having to explain his work or how he arrived at a conclusion. He is impatient, wants to rush through work to get it over with, misses details, hates following directions, and quickly gets frustrated when he has to "slow down" or do anything over.
He/we have made huge progress this year in several areas: 1)many fewer emotional meltdowns at school over little things like one wrong on a spelling pretest; 2)less arguing/complaining about doing homework; 3)better understanding of the importance of studying and not just "winging it"; and 4)starting to show a greater willingness to slow down, take more time, and try to do his best work.
However, WRITING remains a huge frustration for him. My question is: How can I help him with his writing skills? And should I have him pursue writing the same way he's being taught at school?
Our entire district uses the "Four-Square Method" of teaching writing, and he absolutely hates it. He doesn't want to have to "plan" what he's going to write... he just wants to write it. I can't say I blame him, as I am more of an intuitive writer myself and I find the Four-Square Method somewhat restrictive. However, this is what is going to be used to teach writing in every grade in our district for the foreseeable future...so it is something he has to learn.
He says he hates writing, which breaks my heart because he's so verbally adept and creative with language. At school he complains (and sometimes cries) about having to write on assigned topics because he says he can't think of anything to write. He says if he could write about any topic he chose, it wouldn't be so hard. But then, when given an open-ended assignment to write about any three things he is thankful for, he was just as frustrated. At home he says it's having to do the "stupid" Four-Square that he hates the most.
On the "three things thankful" assignment, which he wrote at home because of being missing school when they worked it, I let him write the paper first (rough draft and final version) and fill out the Four-Square afterward. Writing the paper was still a frustrating process for him (and thus agonizing for me), even though we broke it down into small portions separated by long breaks... but he loved being able to fill out the Four-Square afterwards!
However, the teacher did NOT like this approach, as she let me know at conferences. She also said she prefers he do his writing assignments at school so she can see his process. (It ended up being a really good paper, and I think she thought I helped him write it. But I did not help him write it, just asked questions to get him thinking, broke it down into smaller parts, kept him on task, etc.) She liked the idea of having him do more writing practice at home but didn't have any suggestions for me about what exactly to do.
I talked to DS this week and he is willing to work on his writing at home, even seemed excited about it. I asked if he had any ideas about what we could do, and he said "maybe we can find some ideas on the Internet." We talked about the point being to learn about the writing process... start with an idea, flesh it out, write a rough draft, do revisions, etc. That it wasn't going to be a "sit down and rush out a story in ten minutes" kind of thing, but might take one or two weeks to do one project... he said he got it.
So, we started yesterday. His idea was to draw a picture and then write a story about it. He drew a quick picture of Santa on a rooftop. On the back of the drawing he wrote: "Paragraph #1: Christmas is coming in a little bit. I'm really excited because Christmas will be fun. It's fun because you spend time with your family."
At that point I said "whoa, wait a second... remember we talked about PROCESS? First step is the drawing. Second step is mapping out your ideas..." and I asked him to back up and do a Four-Square. He got mad and frustrated and said he just wanted to write the story, not map it out on the "stupid Four Square." Eventually he did fill out the Four-Square but grudgingly and then did not want to have anything more to do with the project.
I'm not sure where to go from here. Should I just let him write the way he wants, let it be creative free-flowing writing-for-the-sake-of-writing? Or should I make him do it the way they do at school?
(Sorry this got so long. Brevity is not one of my strengths.)
