Bravewriter.. learning difficulties? What are your thoughts? (Warning: long post)

[foxglove]

I have a 14 year old daughter who struggles with sentence structure. I find it very difficult to help her learn better ways to write. She would get corrected by me or her English tutor when she writes sentences that don't seem to flow well and have odd structure, and we would tell her how to word it better. Thing is, this doesn't seem to improve her writing. It just continues being like this. This has gone on for years. I thought it would improve with age but it hasn't really. I think her disinterest in reading for leisure also contributes to this. Following in her father's footsteps a little I guess. They'd never pick up a book to read for fun in an entire year (been years now). Even if the book is on a topic they're interested in, it doesn't get a look in for more than a day or two at most. They only ever read if it is necessary, for work or school. They can read when they have to though, and their spellings are generally fine, but despite that, I think maybe they are both dyslexic to a mild degree?

 

I have 2 other younger ones. My 10 year old daughter is also not very keen on reading for leisure though not to the extent of the eldest, and she will read if they are certain types of books and magazines she likes. My 8 year old son however is a big bookworm if the books are on topics of interest to him. Both my younger ones struggled with spelling (my 8 yr old son more than my 10 year old) so I have been using AAS on them two. They enjoy it and I have seen a noticeable improvement in spelling with the 10 year old. I have seen little improvement with my 8 year old son though, after doing AAS with him for nearly a year. He has been moving through the levels slowly as he does forget the spelling rules easily so I spent more time on revision and review. But even after all this review and slow patient progress through the lessons, he is now nearly at the end of AAS level 2 and still spells horrendously whenever he is writing anything. He just does not apply those rules he learnt outside of spelling lessons... I'm now wondering if it is worth sticking with AAS with him for much longer. He has always had pronunciation issues. Not severe but noticeable. My Speech Pathology friend said it could be mild verbal dyspraxia.

 

Two of my homeschooling friends have raved about Bravewriter before and I have tried looking at the website but feel a little confused about where to start, what to buy, and if it will improve their language abilities. They are very chatty children and have great imaginations, are very creative and love self-expression in music and art. My 2 daughter who aren't keen on reading have no problems with writing for self-expression. They have no trouble at all putting pen to paper when they want to create a story or play. They are however quite weak at writing about their own thoughts. My 8 year old son on the other hand, just does not write for fun at all. He hates writing. He did struggle with learning to write at first. Took him quite a while to get the hang of it, more so than my daughters.

 

My 14 year old is finding herself being asked to do more and more writing tasks by her tutor where she is expected to write about her own opinions or answer questions and support them with her opinions, and she often suffers with being stuck with a blank page. I help her study Humanities subjects with textbooks and I can see her having difficulties whenever asked to give opinions and support it with reasons. I wonder if it is the result of the same problem she has in Maths where she struggles to write down her working to show how she arrived at her final answer? She is hoping to take her GCSEs in about 2 years (a national exam) so we are helping her work towards that, hence the types of questions she's had to answer in her English and Maths homework.

 

Does anyone have an inkling as to what might be the cause of this difficulty and do you think if I started on Bravewriter, if it might improve all my children's writing difficulties? Also do you think I should stick with AAS for my son? I have considered dyslexia testing but at around £200 a pop, I am reluctant to have this done although I will take steps to help her if it is dyslexia..

 

I'd love to hear from you. Caveat being we are located in the UK so not all of the wonderful curriculum available in the US are available to us (and I'd like to avoid import taxes and charges if possible... got stung badly in the past for this). I think Bravewriter must be easily accessible since my UK friends use it, also whatever else American I use I buy from Conquest Books in the UK, but the selection is limited.

 

So in short, my children's abilities are as follows :

 

14 year old daughter

- struggles with sentence structure

- struggles with explaining and expressing reasoning and opinions on paper

- likes writing fictional stories (with some sentence structure issues evident in the writing, but less problematic than when she has to write any non-fiction, argumentative or report writing)

- not keen on reading but can read

- no spelling problems

 

10 year old daughter :

- similar to 14 year old but not as disinterested in reading

- seen improvement with AAS. Now going on to AAS Level 4.

 

8 year old son :

- loves to read (only it has to be topics of interest)

- struggles with writing of any sort and is writing-averse

- struggles with spelling

- some pronunciation issues with speech

- little improvement with spelling after being on AAS for nearly a year and now finishing up AAS Level 2

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

Edited October 22, 2016 by foxglove

[Maryam]

Haven't tried bravewriter but we had great success with IEW

[newhsmom]

I would recommend contacting Julie Bogart directly.  She is very responsive to  inquiries about Bravewriter and will walk you through her suggestions.  She spends a great deal of time every week answering calls and emails.  I would also suggest her Youtube page as a great place to get a feel for BW.  

[MerryAtHope]

I have 2 other younger ones. My 10 year old daughter is also not very keen on reading for leisure though not to the extent of the eldest, and she will read if they are certain types of books and magazines she likes. My 8 year old son however is a big bookworm if the books are on topics of interest to him. Both my younger ones struggled with spelling (my 8 yr old son more than my 10 year old) so I have been using AAS on them two. They enjoy it and I have seen a noticeable improvement in spelling with the 10 year old. I have seen little improvement with my 8 year old son though, after doing AAS with him for nearly a year. He has been moving through the levels slowly as he does forget the spelling rules easily so I spent more time on revision and review. But even after all this review and slow patient progress through the lessons, he is now nearly at the end of AAS level 2 and still spells horrendously whenever he is writing anything. He just does not apply those rules he learnt outside of spelling lessons... I'm now wondering if it is worth sticking with AAS with him for much longer. He has always had pronunciation issues. Not severe but noticeable. My Speech Pathology friend said it could be mild verbal dyspraxia.

 

For an 8 year-old who struggles with spelling, I wouldn't expect spelling in outside writing to be good at all at this point. He doesn't have the volume of reading experience yet to support a strong visual sense of "what's spelled correctly," and he hasn't learned nearly enough words to allow him to be able to write his thoughts without having to stop and think through most words. He also hasn't had the writing/dictation experience yet to make this easier for him. AAS 2 is very early in the series.

 

My kids were older when I started them (9 and 11), both struggling spellers--and for them I started to notice improvements in outside writing after AAS 3, but that was just barely the tipping point. From there, though, I noticed more improvement each year.

 

With spelling, there are layers of mastery that are progressively more difficult:

 

-Spelling in the context of the list with tiles is easiest–words all follow the same pattern

 

-Spelling the list in writing can challenge some students who have to work hard at handwriting.

 

-Spelling from word cards (shuffled to mix the patterns) is slightly harder, but students still only have to focus on spelling

 

-Spelling in dictation is another step harder–many words using differing patterns are used, and the student has to hold the sentence in memory, and also think about capitalization and punctuation.

 

-Writing Station exercises (introduced in Level 3) focus on words the student has learned, but ask the student to come up with original content, which requires additional skills to be used. These serve as a bridge between dictation and spelling in the context of outside writing.

 

-Outside writing–this is the hardest level for the student. It requires them to think about all writing skills at once-grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, usage rules, syntax, handwriting and neatness, paragraph rules–plus content, organization of their thoughts, getting answers correct or being creative, and so on.

 

“Word Analysis†is added starting in Level 3 to get children to think more about why words are spelled the way they are–to think about which techniques they need to use.  Does this word follow certain rules?  Is there more than one spelling choice that could work? Do I have to learn this one visually and use methods like scratch-paper spelling?  Do syllable rules or suffix rules apply?  and so on.

 

Use the dictations and Writing Station exercises to teach basic editing skills–how to look for errors and how to think through how to correct them. This article on automaticity has more information. When my kids made a mistake, I would say, “There’s one spelling error. Can you find it?†Praise if he can find it. Then see if he knows how to change it. If he’s not sure, give a question to prompt, such as, “Can you think of a rule that applies?†or “Sound out exactly what you wrote†(very useful if he has a wrong phonogram, too many sounds or a sound left out of the word) or, “Can you think of a word that might have another option for one of the phonograms?†Try to lead to the answer by getting him to think it through. However, if he starts to get frustrated, you can give more help and just model the process of thinking of the rule, sounding it out, or trying different phonograms.

 

Make sure to put any missed words back in daily review until they are truly mastered.

 

When we started the Writing Station activity, I would put a light pencil x next to each line that had a mistake, and would again see if my child could find them. Again, praise for any he finds. This is hard work for them, and you really want to encourage them. Go through the same process I described above.

 

When he has the hang of editing in dictations and Writing Stations, then you can start to help him edit outside writing that needs to be polished (not all writing needs to be polished, and sometimes if the subject is science or history, I would choose to focus on content, knowing that spelling would eventually come along. Kids can get discouraged if you focus on everything at once–the goal of perfection seems unattainable.)

 

I highly recommend you check out a couple of resources:

• Help Your Child's Memory--this is a free report, and it really changed how I homeschooled most subjects for my kids.
• Since he does struggle with some pronunciation issues, check out this article on auditory processing.
• You may also want to see some of the articles on the Dyslexia Resources page.

HTH some!