Next question: curriculum for this?

[Catherine]

My youngest ds is almost ten. He has had VT, which helped his reading and co-ordination tremendously. I thought he was dyslexic before VT. When we had his tested by a neuropsychologist, he said he has a high IQ but is "profoundly" dysgraphic, with very low working memory and slow processing. Math and writing are our biggest challenges, and here is my question: how perfect does copywork need to be to "work"? He is in the last ten lessons of WWE2, and his narration and dictation have improved a great deal, and he's mastered what's been presented so far in the book, EXCEPT for copywork. Example: today's assignment looked like this: It was a wild country and little traveled, but the Glass Cat knew every path.

 

He wrote: It was a wild country and litte traveld, but the (no cross on t)glass Cat knew every path.

 

I can almost guarantee that he would have done it perfectly if I had dictated the sentence. His dictated sentences are usually very good.

 

I know he has trouble keeping the image of the correctly spelled words in his head while he writes, because when I ask him to look at the sentence later to look for mistakes, he usually finds them.

 

Should I move him along, work on it more, use a program that helps him with visualizing? I've considered this before. His performance is not *terrible*, maybe because he's pretty good at compensating? Any guidance appreciated.

[almondbutterandjelly]

I believe you are *technically* supposed to catch the mistakes your dc is making while he is doing them (If I am rememebering the instructions correctly). Of course, who wants to be hovered over and corrected constantly while they are writing? My suggestion, though, would be to make him correct his errors. Right after he finishes, you check his work, circle his errors, and make him correct them. Unless you have some compelling reason for not doing this? I know my dc hates to make errors, and hates to have to correct them, so tries extra-hard to be right the first time. I also encourage my dc to check her work for errors before giving it to me.

 

I would continue on with WWE. Sounds like it's working well, really, overall.

[PeterPan]

Sometimes the problem is the material he's copying. His mind could be wandering. He could have that material in his head, then he looks down at his paper, thinks about the robot he wants to build, and it's gone. It may be that copywork, which is afterall rather mindless for many kids (in one eyeball and out the other, at least in our house) isn't going to improve his spelling or punctuation the way it does for some kids.

 

Copywork grows up into typed work. I'd have him write his narrations and then type them. Voila copywork, but something he's more interested in. And yes, I'd do more dictation and spelling to work on that.

[RamonaQ]

Personally, I would ask yourself what the goal is with copywork. I think for a kid with low working memory, the ability to read and " hold" the sentence in memory until you transcribe it will be a HUGE challenge and possibly something that they just don't have the ability to do unless they have enough underlying skills.

 

If your goal is for the child to learn grammatical conventions, then I, personally, would teach those explicitly, then hold the child responsible in controlled writing (meaning simplistic copy work focused on a single skill and dictation, with you repeating anything they forget, possibly word by word) until they have demonstrated mastery. Then I would extend transfer into free writing.

 

But, again, I would focus on a single skill at a time ( in the case of your copy work--proper nouns, spelling rules)

[Dobela]

Some people with dysgraphia never are able to do copy work. Or to do it well. I would at this point, and with his age, begin teaching him typing and let him do copywork by keyboarding.