Boys and girls are different creatures, that is for sure. I have so many boys (7) but only my oldest boy is up to written narration. However the next oldest boy is 8 and with him, especially, I have seen that the material we choose to read really affects his narration ability. He thrives on non-fiction and biographies are second best. Fiction, story driven narrative, isn’t as memorable to him. He’s a facts and figures guy. (This may just be him though, he’s my gifted learner and so he’s been a bit different all around so far.)
For getting consistent handwriting, really my only advice is to keep copywork going a few days per week. Other things that have helped my oldest boy (he’s 11) is to remind him before we begin that I want to be able to read what he wrote (and he has to read it aloud to me if I can’t, which he really doesn’t like doing). If I’m wanting him to remember capitalization we’ll go over when we capitalize before a writing assignment and I’ll not worry about anything else in it. Honestly, with written narration, I’m not worrying about spelling and capitalization, etc. We try to choose ONE writing piece each month to take all the way through the editing process, and that is the only one where we pay attention to those things. And not on the original written narration when he first writes it, just when we are ready to edit.
