We haven't homeschooled, but we've done a *ton* of after schooling to help our dysgraphic ds with writing - both the mechanics and written expression (generating ideas, organizing, summarizing, what is expected on a written assignment etc).
Have you asked your ds what is difficult about the writing prompt assignment? He may be too young to really be able to answer the question, but he might have some insight that would be helpful. Are you having him use handwriting to answer the writing prompt?
The first thing we did when our ds was diagnosed (or at least attempted to do - school didn't cooperate lol).. was to *completely* separate handwriting instruction from written expression instruction. So think through, what is the goal of this exercise? Practicing handwriting or working on building sentences and paragraphs, or creating original written expression. For handwriting, we tried a handwriting-specific program even though our ds had been through one already at school (he was 8 when diagnosed), and ds also went through handwriting OT. The handwriting program we tried at home didn't work because handwriting caused ds pain, so we dropped it and dealt with handwriting only through the 9 months of handwriting OT.
We started ds keyboarding immediately, but keyboarding was also a separate assignment (only to learn keyboarding) until his keyboarding was up to the level it needed to be to respond on writing assignments. While he was learning keyboarding I scribed for him on all assignments that required written answers.
If your ds is a typical dysgraphic, once you've removed handwriting from the equation and he's either keyboarding or you're scribing, he will probably be able to tackle writing assignments and you'll see a big increase in written output. Just remember that "written" doesn't have to mean "handwriting". OTOH, if he's like my dysgraphic ds, you might not see the words flow simply by introducing keyboarding and scribing - in that case you'll want to work on structuring his written expression assignments to target the areas he's struggling in - generating ideas is the first step, organizing ideas next, sentence composition etc - all of these things can be worked on one piece at a time, and for dysgraphic kids, there is sometimes a lack of automaticity in how to do these steps, not just in handwriting - so you need to apply the same philosophy you apply to helping your child learn how to write letters - repeat, repeat, repeat etc.
Hope that helps a little bit!
polarbear
ps - the other thing we did was to prioritize - which skill was most important to tackle first etc. Spelling came out relatively low on the list for us - partly because ds was able to spell when he wasn't in the midst of the writing process - how does your ds' spelling compare/contrast when you ask him to spell a word vs how it's spelled while he's writing? If he can spell well when prompted with just one word, then chances are it's the dysgraphia that's causing spelling errors when writing, and (this is jmo... take it with a grain of salt!)... that's not really a problem that you need to solve. First, it might be something you *can't* solve because your ds is always going to be dysgraphic. Second, with spell correct and word prediction spelling errors drop drastically when keyboarding. Your ds needs to be able to recognize a mis-spelled word when he proof-reads, but he doesn't necessarily have to be able to spell it exactly correctly when writing if he's keyboarding.
Last edited by polarbear; 01/14/15 01:51 PM.
