Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Writing fluency?

What is AAS.

I tested her this morning medicated and in 1 minute she wrote about 46 letters which is a little better, but I'm guessing still not great. I also had DS7 do it and he wrote 33 letters in one minute which probably isn't normal either. He has developmental coordination disorder, though, so it's pretty much what I expected.

Sorry to ask a somewhat OT question, but I'm curious about how this might relate to a child who has dysgraphia (and developmental coordination disorder) who also has difficulty with expressive language (written and verbal). When DS is tasked with a writing assignment and is completely stuck, he says he "has nothing" in his head re ideas, and the problem isn't getting the ideas out of his head, the problem is there is nothing to "get out". Is it possible that the knowledge is there, or the knowledge required to generate the ideas, but the steps leading up to it are so overwhelming (or undone) that the child just isn't able to access the ideas?

I'm not sure if that made sense. DS does much better with written (and verbal) expression when he is dealing with facts that he obviously knows. Or when he's just totally lost in thinking through some interesting scientific challenge/problem etc. But give him an open-ended or non-science-related prompt and he's lost.

Even discussing the results of a science experiment - if he has to write a lab report, it's minimal and his conclusions are not terribly deep. But if he did the same experiment without having to write a report, just did it for the experience to see what happened, he can draw some pretty amazing conclusions.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off-topic, just always trying to figure out what's up with our kids who are so challenged with expressing their thoughts

polarbear

Following, because DS9 has a similar, but possibly different, problem. He knows the alphabet (i.e. can sing the ABC song), and knows how to write all his letters. But he cannot alphabetize easily, and does not know the alphabet order well without singing the ABC song. Some he knows (e.g. E comes after B), but I don't think he knows that M comes before S without giving it a lot of thought.

I haven't tried timing his writing, but perhaps that would be a good idea.

This is basically what is going on with DD as well. She would have problems telling me a story as well, although if I sit with her and prompt her after every single sentence, and do all the writing, she would be able to pull something together. Her language comes across Ok, at least on a "sentence" level. I remember scribing a story with her and she said "the next sentence is 'they ventured further into the forest'". She was 8. That doesn't sound like a kid with a language issue, but she would not be able to tell me a story. She did very little pretend/dramatic play when she younger either. She just couldn't seem to be able to organize a "story" even for play. She would carry her toys around the house, but never really play with them. The school wants to do the WIAT writing cluster and I asked about language and they pretty much ignored me. I'm not sure if there is even a test that would pick up the issue because she is fine on a sentence level, or a few sentences. But ask her to "tell a story" and a wall goes up immediately.

This is exactly where DS is as well. He's got a history of expressive speech/language problems that I don't feel have every been fully explained.

How do you deal with a kid who WON'T write, seems to have no ideas there to present, but when he does come up with something, it's along the lines of "I hesitate to go trick-or-treating tonight because my cheeks will sting in the bitter wind."

Sorry, blackcat - AAS is All About Spelling (home Orton Gillingham) I have a thread in the 2e board from late August about Stealth Dyslexia.

It's ironic because DD seems to have no problems making up "stories" about things going on in real life (eg grossy exaggering or lying). "Why didn't you clean up your floor the way I asked?" "Because my light burned out and I couldn't see anything. I went to look for a new lightbulb and couldn't find one." "Huh? Light looks Ok to me." She's made up elaborate stories of things that happened at school, like conversations with people that never occurred, and is very convincing. Yet seems to have no creativity or ideas when actually asked to make up a story or act out a story. It's very frustrating. She does seem to do better with writing if it's factual information that can just be rewritten or explained, but does the bare minimum possible with very little detail.

I'm going to try to respond to some common themes above, without conflating children too much. I don't have high hopes!

Grossly, writing involves the mechanics of written output, the language content being communicated, and organizing said content. An individual child struggling with writing could be challenged by any or all of those areas. Working memory affects all of them.

There are assessments for other aspects of working memory, such as visual working memory (usually block span). Subtests include the SBV nonverbal working memory, the Wechsler Nonverbal/WISC-IV Integrated spatial span, finger windows from the WRAML-2.

Other aspects of EF are heavily involved in writing as well.

Here's a nice little presentation on EF:

http://www.nasponline.org/conventions/handouts2010/unstated/nasp_ef_presentation.pdf

Lots of good stuff in it. It starts with a bunch of neuroanatomy, runs through assessment, and then ends with educational manifestations and interventions. I'll just abstract this slide on EF and writing:

"Examples of EF Problems in Writing Skills
• Poor graphomotor control and lack of automaticity for handwriting.
• Poor organization of written material.
• Poor retrieval cueing or poor generation cueing (idea generation or idea fluency when writing).
• Inability to use multiple self-regulation EF’s at one time (hold, manipulate, retrieve, generate, execute)."

As you can see, different aspects of EF affect different aspects of writing. Working memory is involved particularly in automaticity. Planning can be part of what is termed here "poor graphomotor control" (i.e., motor planning).

And now, in no particular order:

"nothing to get out": this may have something to do with mental flexibility/shift, initiation, or retrieval. Often there are facts and ideas, but the child does not have ready access to them. I compare retrieval weaknesses to a disorganized filing system with lots of documents, but poor file structure. Unless it's a document that is very frequently accessed, (so there's a brute force rote memory path to it), the inefficiencies of the filing system mean someone else often has to start opening drawers (or folders) to cue memory of what is in them, or where to find something specific. You can imagine that if your files are in a big mess, starting a search can feel overwhelming, which relates to initiation. (Think of it as the reason few people want to start big closet cleanouts. Except for those of you with excellent EF!)

stories with parts missing: This sounds very much like an EF issue, with organization/sequencing, working memory, self-editing, and maybe a little perspective-taking thrown in. The examples read like there is a complete story somewhere in the child's head, but it's difficult to re-tell it so that someone else understands it. Cueing with sequencing key terms can help (first, next, then, so, finally). Also cueing with sensory descriptive questions/sentence starters, asking for show-not-tell. Using graphic organizers to provide a little external structure and cueing for omitted sections. Generally, scaffolding that makes the process more concrete and externalized. Paper (or an electronic document) is a great working memory aid. Reading aloud what you've written is helpful for self-editing, as is asking yourself, how will the reader know this?

aeh, thanks for the information. I noticed possible memory/retrival problems when she needed to learn States and their capitals. If I named a state, DS almost always yelled out the answer before her, and he was there a fraction of the time learning. I tried giving her mental images to use, like a boy named Trent or Trenton is fighting a herd of Jersey cows, but she just couldn't remember anything. I told her to make her own associations, and she didn't. She doesn't have a problem finding states on a map, though. If I say"where is New Jersey?" she points to it. So I'm not sure what the issue is. I'm not sure how to sort out what is slow processing speed, and what is a retrieval/memory problem or if they are the same thing.

She has to write a memoir for class told in the first person, and the teacher did have a sort of outline for them to fill out first.

Action:
Dialogue:
A Thought, Question, or Feeling:
a Sound Effect:

The kids are supposed to fill in their thoughts, and then write the memoir. DD just filled in a couple words on each section and then wrote (typed--with spell check) this:

"When I was little I went to a snow tubing place called XXXX with some of my relatives and I thought it was just going to be fun fun fun FUN!!!!
But surprisingly I was wrong. We ended up having my little brother YYY getting a skull fracture (which was really scary because I wasn't with him and he's my ONLY brother I will ever have!!!!)
We were just having lots of fun. Then when we went down another time there was an accident. I don't know who bumped into me. But we collided, YYY hit his head, and had blood gushing out of his ear! He had to go to the hospital in an ambulance! YYY had to wear a neck brace! He had to wear an eyepatch because he had double vision. He had to stay home from school. When he could go outside he had to wear a helmet until he got better. THE END.

I don't think this is what the teacher has in mind. Part of the problem with this is that DD doesn't really remember the episode enough to even put in enough detail. If we have her switch topics, what specific graphic organanizer could i use to make this turn out better?

That example has me curious: where is the threshold between helping your kid and undermining things?

If a school assignment is viewed as an assessment, will extra scaffolding break that communication loop?

Or is there authentic learning required to bridge between your child's uniqueness and the teachers style?

This is stuff that I've pondered with very similar assignments. Because DS has motivated teachers who seem really engaged and attuned, I worry if we help too much then the teacher is led astray in terms of ability and their personal effectiveness. I know I can ask probative questions to get DS to open up and restructure things, but I'm not sure how I know it wasn't temporary.

DD actually had to turn it in, so that's what she turned in. I'm not sure if that was considered a rough draft or final paper (the communication is lacking, to say the least). I emailed her teacher and said that I wanted her to see what we're dealing with...so I did not help at all with the above writing, so now she should know what it is like "unassisted" but either she or I are going to have to sit down with her and say "here's what the assignment is supposed to look like instead." Otherwise I don't know how she's going to learn anything. The teacher could go ahead and give her a "D" (and she might), but that's really not going to help DD learn to write.