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focus pocus!
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My 11 year old DS is having problem concentrating. Many times he makes mistakes on things I know he knows, just doesn’t pay attention. Pretty much in every subject. Some things, like using capital letters I am sick of repeating and feel like I am not going anywhere.
I make him re-do his copywork, go over everything w/him but I don’t see any changes.
Anyone has any suggestions on how to help w/that?
Is this a new thing? Has he always been easily distracted or inattentive? Does he struggle with spelling or neatness? My boys are both very easily distracted and youngest has great difficulty with paying attention. I’m fairly certain that I have adult ADD, myself. Older son has dysgraphia and it is a huge factor in his written work. Although he knows how to use capitals, etc in theory, he really struggles to apply to his work. Spelling is very difficult and retention of spellings learned is not good. He struggles with math, but is starting to find more success there of late. He’s very bright, but easily frustrated. We were not doing cursive at all, but recently I tried him with a few letters ad noticed a huge improvement over two years ago when he was in ps. I am starting to think that cursive may solve some of the issues with upper/lower case letters, at least mid word.
Copywork: I had to go back with my son (10yo) to 5 minutes of copywork at a time recently. The idea is to re-train them in the habit of perfect execution. So, you start with only 5 minutes, done to their best ability. Once they have mastered that, you can build up from there. He can now do his Spelling Wisdom copywork with perfect execution (about 15 minutes). He just had to learn how to really concentrate on what he was doing.
Are you doing prepared dictation from his copywork? This, to me, is where all the little grammatical things (like capital letters) ‘stick’. He should be perfectly prepared for the dictation and start with shorter passages, until he can build up.
Also, I have found with my kids that they don’t know how to use language properly until they NEED to know in order to communicate. So, I had to increase their writing opportunities. Have him write letters, lists, notes, and narrations at least once a week.
Gentle correction – my experience has been that (most) boys are slower to grasp language arts than girls usually are. It was a very natural process for me, so it takes a lot of patience to teach these things sometimes. Just keep on working on it and requiring it of him and he will get it!
thank you both, good to know I’ll need more patience, I have 4 boys!!
We have been homeschooling for 2 years and although he did well his teacher did tell me that he sometimes lacked focus. He would not do well on tests for things she knew he understood.
I don’t think he has any major issues, I think it is probably a question of time.
Just trying to get some trick to help move along.
He does very well in general, his cursive is pretty nice, he his very good at spelling. His script, depending if he tries or not. I just told him that if he keeps making u’s that look like a’s I’ll have him write a thousand of them!!
We do dictation once a week instead of copywork (from either his copywork, a poem we are working on or a Bible verse), copywork all the other days.
Should I just add more dictation?
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