Thanks, everyone. We finally have a 504 in place.
ditto pb. Your description sounds like he has trouble with idea generation, initiation, possibly organization and theme development. The WJIII does not assess any of these skills. These are actually more closely related to executive functions. Sometimes that may manifest as inconsistencies in written expression/output. A topic for which he has high interest and/or background knowledge may lower the threshold for the above EF-laden writing tasks.
He definitely has issues with initiation. However, once he begins, he writes a fair bit. Sometimes, though, it seems like he is "stuck". The school is not really helping with writing (and it is only 2-3 weeks till the end of school). I am wondering what resources/writing programs/afterschool classes helps with this.
Since you haven't signed off on the 504, I would consider requesting further testing on writing. If you're wondering about the specific WJ-III writing subtests, you should be able to find descriptions of each subtest online.
Polarbear, we finally did sign off on the 504. They showed us his WJ writing samples. Compared to his in-class work, it was very good.
Some of the staff in the school administration seem very helpful. We are going to assess his writing at the beginning of next year (in 3rd grade). Meanwhile, over the summer, I was wondering how to remediate this (where to start etc).
Also, I am not quite sure how much (in terms of length) a third grader should be writing. He is currently writing 10-12 sentences atleast on any topic (it sort of seems excessive to me in 2nd grade, but maybe it is the norm ?). Also, I keep wondering -- shouldn't content matter more than the length ? He's inconsistent with content, but that is more my focus than the length (which seems to be his teacher's focus).
