tlcspcarcetc Posted November 22, 2011 Share Posted November 22, 2011 9 year old dd is terrible with this and I have no idea how to help her fix it. She knows the capitalization rules, but she randomly capitalizes certain letters, especially if they begin a word. Most words that start with T and D, she capitalizes. She also capitalizes many L's, even in the middle of words. Yet, at the same time, she forgets to capitalize the beginning of sentences and proper nouns. She knows she's supposed to. It's just like she can't think through so much at once, so she just can't do it correctly the first time. We always go through and edit and she can pick out the ones that are wrong, but I sometimes have to remind her to look at her capital letters. Any tricks to help her with this? It's driving me crazy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walking-Iris Posted November 23, 2011 Share Posted November 23, 2011 I don't know ---but what came to mind is --what if you gave her sentences to correct daily? Maybe one or two sentences with capitalization, punctuation errors etc and then worked with her to correct the sentence and then rewrite it. And maybe a sentence editing checklist---"did I remember to start with a capital, use proper punctuation, etc etc.?" Maybe a review with a grammar program? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrself Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 :bigear: My 8 year old does this all the time too. My oldest is dyslexic, the 8yo is my "regular" kid. His writing is also very messy and he still reverses letters. Thoughts, Mommas? Nicole Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 :bigear: My 8 year old does this all the time too. My oldest is dyslexic, the 8yo is my "regular" kid. His writing is also very messy and he still reverses letters. Thoughts, Mommas? Nicole For this kiddo, I'd want to rule out vision issues by visiting a developmental optometrist www.covd.org . For the OP, I'd probably want to rule out vision there as well, though it sounds like it could also be something a bit more complicated (the sort of thing you'd need neuropsych testing to figure out) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silliness7 Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 9 year old dd is terrible with this and I have no idea how to help her fix it. She knows the capitalization rules, but she randomly capitalizes certain letters, especially if they begin a word. Most words that start with T and D, she capitalizes. She also capitalizes many L's, even in the middle of words. Yet, at the same time, she forgets to capitalize the beginning of sentences and proper nouns. She knows she's supposed to. It's just like she can't think through so much at once, so she just can't do it correctly the first time. We always go through and edit and she can pick out the ones that are wrong, but I sometimes have to remind her to look at her capital letters. Any tricks to help her with this? It's driving me crazy! I think editing her work before she turns it in is all that is needed. Finding her own mistakes and fixing them should also be the trick for improving her first drafts. I would get her to the point where she can edit without your help. Maybe a checklist would help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paisley Hedgehog Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 (edited) nm Edited November 22, 2012 by Shari :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peacefully Posted November 29, 2011 Share Posted November 29, 2011 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freerange Posted November 29, 2011 Share Posted November 29, 2011 Switching to cursive solved this problem for my then 9 year old. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tlcspcarcetc Posted December 3, 2011 Author Share Posted December 3, 2011 Oooh, thanks for all the help. I never checked back and now I see that everyone left lots of info. I have no doubt that dd is dyslexic. She has asperger's as well. She has so much to say, but putting it down on paper has always been very tough for her. That's why I'm really loving the WWE program. I love how it breaks up the thoughts and the actual writing into two separate components. She's not so hesitant about writing now. Sometimes I think she's not getting enough writing. It's hard not to compare her with her 3rd grade peers in ps who are writing paragraphs. DD is still doing wwe 2 and is just now writing decent sentences. She is a phenomenal reader, so sometimes it's hard to believe dyslexia is involved, but I've seen lots of signs in her math (maybe dyscalcula) and in her writing (switching letters around...she typically gets all the letters in a word, but will switch them). Today she was writing the word "slot" and wrote "solt." So, she's already had a neuropsych eval by a psychologist who specializes in autism. Should we be looking into something else too? She has so much trouble paying attention sometimes. She struggles to do work with any noise going on and then we have these mistakes (which seem like careless ones, but I know they are a product of something deeper). She has so much to share with the world, but it just gets all jumbled up when it comes out. So frustrating for her, I imagine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
By Grace Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 My girls do this sometimes...using random capital letters. For us, I know that I was lax about teaching handwriting when they were first learning to write. They mostly figured it out on their own. So now at ages 7 and 9, they still get confused on some letters. So it's just easier, especially when they're in a hurry, to write the capital letter rather than trying to remember how to write the lower-case letter. As some of the pp's have mentioned, if it does in fact get better once students start writing in cursive, it could be because their cursive handwriting instruction is more systematic and thorough than the manuscript handwriting instruction. So they readily remember the correct formation for the lower-case letters when using cursive (and in cursive, we rarely revert to the capital letter as the default like we do with print). So my suggestion would be to do some remedial handwriting review for the letters she tends to capitalize too often. Find some silly poems with lots of alliteration for those letters so she can get tons of practice with those specific letters. Have her come up with her own silly sayings, using the target letters as much as possible. Maybe create some pictures incorporating those letters. There's also a pretty good video that reviews how to write each letter, and could help with review on the whole alphabet. http://www.amazon.com/Steps4kids-Write-Cursive-Brook-Blanchard/dp/B001EMCXE4/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1322886778&sr=1-1 The idea would be to make the lower-case letters more automatic so it doesn't take any more effort to write the lower-case than it does to remember and write the capital letter. That would be my initial focus, anyway, and see if that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SweetMissMagnolia Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 having same issues with my ds 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
missiemick Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 Switching to cursive solved this problem for my then 9 year old. :iagree: That's what I was thinking -- sometimes it's just easier/habit to write certain letters that way. Pretty hard to do with cursive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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