Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Dd's writing is holding her back

Those examples are very good for the beginning of second grade. If her classmates are writing pages and pages it could be because they're unusually talented and motivated when it comes to writing. Or it could be that they're just really long-winded and add lots of filler and repeat themselves a lot. It sounds like your daughter's style is just very pithy and concise.

The arguing and whining would be my concern rather than the quality of what she's producing, given your examples. Is it the composition that's difficult for her or the act of writing? Is it easier for her if you scribe for her?


One thing I've seen, having worked and volunteered in quite a few public schools, is that writing in elementary school is generally barely *taught* at all. Even teachers who require a lot of writing from their young students don't seem to actually teach them what good writing is. I've heard teachers say things like, "You need more details, make it more interesting, and don't start all your sentences with 'I'". That's not very helpful!

I think classical educators are onto something with teaching narration, dictation, and copywork in the early grades without requiring original compositions until the grammar stage is complete. Certainly there are naturally talented young writers who should be encouraged to write whatever they like, but average writers and those who struggle should receive more direct instruction before being expected to perform.

This sounds like possibly dysgraphia - your dd had a relatively low coding score on the WISC, is resisting handwriting task, and her older dd is dyslexic (I think?). Has she been evaluated for dysgraphia?


While this may seem like a bare minimum compared to her classmates or compared to what you might expect based on her IQ, it doesn't seem unusual for output from her age group. Based on the quality and quantity of these summary samples, my guess is that her challenge is with the physical act of handwriting and not with summarizing. *However* you also need to be figure out the challenge and accommodate for handwriting if she needs accommodations, because while she might not be really struggling with summarizing at this point in time, there is a potential catch-22 as time goes by in that she might not be receiving as much practice as peers if her handwriting is holding her back - so you need to figure out what's up with her unwillingness to use handwriting, and get accommodations in place asap if she needs them.


I'd add a third category too - kids who love to write vs kids who aren't really into it. My dds are not dysgraphic and they are both capable ahead-of-grade-level writers. One loves to write, the other loves loves loves... math... and is not terribly fond of writing. Two kids who are very capable, and the level of output and enjoyment while writing is *extremely* different


This sounds so much like what homework time was like for my ds before his dysgraphia was diagnosed!

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - the reason I mentioned your older dd's dyslexia is that I have read that dysgraphia and dyslexia sometimes occur together in individuals or in families. It's definitely the case in my dh's family!

I typed up all the writing done by my DD's classmates (all GT, 98th-99th%) in second grade. Your DD's sentence structure looks quite good for beginning of second grade, compared to that class as a whole. She would be near the top of the class in terms of complexity and vocabulary.

However, they were expected to write more than that. They had a weekly writing assignment and needed to produce perhaps twice what you pasted in. This was not supposed to take a really long time--I think the teacher thought it would take half an hour or something. If that took your DD a really long time and a lot of angst, then I would say there may be a concern, but I don't at all see a problem with the actual thoughts expressed.

(Again, keep in mind that this was NOT a typical second grade.)

Some kids did write pages (my DD was one). Some had terrible handwriting and some had beautiful handwriting.

note, however--I didn't read the source material for that Labor Day one so I don't know if she was sort of cribbing phrases from that.