Frustrated with writing – time – in 7th grade boy

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  • Misty
    Participant

    My 13 yr old son is a struggler.  He struggles to learn, not a learning disability at least I don’t think so as he is right on ever year and making progress with his yearly testing (we have to in MN).

    Anyway.. we were talking today and about how to get more from his grammar.  It is an online program.  Self-correcting.  he likes it very much but some topics are a struggle.. so now I get to the point.  So I mentioned why don’t you copy the sentence on a piece of paper, label what you are putting on the sentence and then re-label when it gives you the correct answer so we can discuss it.

    He was so sad, it’s just so hard to write, it takes so long.  

    He has such a hard time doing copy work/narration/or writing.  It does take him a long time and his writing (other than copywork which is corrected for neatness/etc) is very sloppy and hard to read.  He’s not a good speller, which just adds to it as he has to look at a letter, write it, look at the next letter, write it (or maybe 2-4 letters at a time).

    Anyone else have a child like this?  What have you done to help them?  

    He is so good at reading, but writing, math these 2 just pull him down and it’s all about writing.  Thanks for the thoughts, suggestions, etc. Misty

    4myboys
    Participant

    Yep–that’s my 12 year old.  Anything related to writing is difficult for him.  We are trying to focus on typing more this final term. His OT had him doing a great deal of fine motor exercises at first to strengthen his hand muscles, and we do regular copywork which has improved his handwriting tremendously.  He has had to relearn how to format most of his letters since coming home from PS.  Still, writing, grammar, spelling, etc are very hard for him.  I get much more out of him orally, without the frustration of writing to curb his composition. We are going to focus more heavily on typing the rest of this term so when he starts written narrations next year he’ll have at least one less thing to slow him down (I hope).

    I’m not sure which grammar program you are using or how your diagramming is being done, so I don’t know what to suggest there.  If there is a way to add manipulatives to eliminate repetitive writing (sticker labels, colouration coded cards, etc.) it might help.  We often practice spelling words with scrabble tiles before ever writing them, or doing spelling tests on the white board.  A marker requires less effort (pressure) than pencil on paper so he doesn’t tire as easy (pen is easier than pencil but not so to fix mistakes).   Maybe it doesn’t help with neatness as much, but sometimes that’s not the overall goal.  

    I don’t suppose the program allows copy and paste of the sentences?  If he could copy and paste all his sentences into a word doc and print them in a larger font, he might be able to use colored highlighters to label (colouration code what he needs to label).  If you were able to copy each sentence twice consecutively he could correct immediately below.  Maybe that’s not possible, though.

     

     

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