Several (many?) of us have children who have big trouble producing output that anything like matches their intellectual ability; this is a thread for us to avoid derailing another.
Here's where my DS is and what we're currently doing. Suggestions appreciated!
DS is 7, untested but very advanced in reading (has been able to read anything for some years) and maths. He's with age peers in a private school which has been great with him so far. He's just about to leave the cosy younger-kids part of the school to where he'll have specialist teachers for different subjects and be expected to organise himself much more. He's anxious about that and the thing he's most anxious about is his ability to write enough and fast enough.
That particular worry isn't silly, but I see his anxiety as much more important than his actual weakness in writing. He has neat joined-up writing, which is just a little slow and painstaking. When he writes by hand he has a tendency to get lost and forget what he was trying to write. Sometimes he "gives up", stares into space instead, and ends up not finishing what he's writing. I tend to think of his writing as "age appropriate on a good day" which I think is fair for handwriting. Within school I think he is not quite meeting their (high) expectations; he's always had "targets" along the lines of "write faster". His spelling, grammar, vocabulary etc. are all more than fine.
He is learning to type, but finds this similarly frustrating to handwriting. I don't think typing is going to be a good general substitute for handwriting any time soon.
My reaction to his being anxious has been to institute a daily practice regime with the aim of getting him to feel happier about writing by the time school starts next week (more with the idea "get back in practice" than for improving as such). Interestingly he's been pretty happy with this. [ETA what I mean is: even though he's anxious about writing and dislikes doing it, he does see practice as the way to get past the problem. I am hugely encouraged by this.] What he does:
- warms up by writing over an alphabet sheet
- practice for thinking of what to say: dictates at least 5 sentences on a given topic to a typing parent. He gets one minute to think about the topic, and then has to dictate fast enough that the parent doesn't have to stop typing.
- practice for physically writing: copies out a list of words, the same ones every day (it's actually a list of kings and queens, killing two birds with one stone!) and is timed with a stopwatch. It takes him about 20 mins; I would hope he can get that down, but even if not, at least he's doing a few minutes of writing every day. At the end we write his time and the date on the paper (and I read him a few pages of a good history book on the monarch of his choice).
Last edited by ColinsMum; 08/29/11 09:31 AM. Reason: added detail
