Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Grade-appropriate writing for first grade

I was thinking about this thread just now due to another post and thought I would update. WOW, has DS ever improved on writing this year. He can now produce 2 or 3 solid pages of small, neat writing that is engaging, interesting and complex. He's way above grade level and any concerns I had are completely gone. Just goes to show that sometimes there is nothing to worry about. I would also add that much more was expected of him this year...

Awesome news, ultramarina!

Reading through this post, you could have been describing my concerns about my own DS this time last year. His issue is that his handwriting was neat but extremely slow. I think it took him over 5 minutes to write out all of the upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet once. There was also some irregularities in his writing, and we were trying to sort out if it was normal or if it was indicative of an LD.

This year, he has had the opportunity to write quite a bit more, and as a result has gotten much more fluent without losing his neatness. It turns out there was nothing for us to worry about, either. I would also echo that much more is expected of him this year, too. I don't know if that helps, but I think putting writing in the context of personal expression has motivated him much more than last year while the focus was repetitive, isolated letter formation (bleah!).

That's great, ultramarina!

My DS7 doesn't have issues writing letters. He's been a fluent and neat writer since he was 2. However, he doesn't like writing. He complained that he doesn't know what to write. Since he was in K, the teacher had pushed him to write more complex sentences than just simple 3 word sentences, because the teacher knew he could do more. He improved somewhat at the end of the year but still not great.

The 1st grade teacher continues to encourage him to write more. The latest effort is to have him write something about a country or a US state (since he loves geography). He'll do research about the location and write about his findings. Since it's something that he is interested in, he may be able to write more complex contents.