Writing--what worked (or didn't) for your dysgraphic or dyslexic child?

[Pen]

:bigear:

[RamonaQ]

(1) Remediating spelling with a tutor

(2) Focused work on handwriting (very, very minimal)

(3) Simultaneously, typing and using Verticy to learn composition

[Maverick_Mom]

The Writing Skills series helped a lot.

 

http://www.rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?subject=7&category=1653

 

It was originally designed in part for kids who struggle with the physical activity of writing. So the lessons are short, and in many instances the actual writing required is minimal.

[freerange]

Pencil grips that sto

 

p thumb wrap over, followed by several weeks where I prioritised watching her pencil grip over just about everything else when she was keen to stop using the rubber grip.

 

Art lessons to help with pencil control. Blind drawing has helped a lot.

 

Learning to differentiate between conceptual understanding & memorisation, and not to delay moving on when ready because of the latter -ds was still not 100% on multiplication facts when he started learning calculus.

[FairProspects]

1. 3 years of OT (but didn't solve the problem completely)

2. HWOT

3. O-G based spelling work with AAS

4. Moving to typing, starting to teach writing composition

[Pen]

I found where to get the video mentioned in another thread. (On O-G)

 

http://ncld.org/ld-basics/ld-aamp-language/writing/dysgraphia

 

Still hope to hear from more people who have had successes getting writing capacities improved significantly in their children and what exactly helped.

[fiddle]

Are you asking about the physical part of writing (handwriting) OR about the process/composition of writing? :)

 

For the handwriting, we had some progress after doing the Writing 8 excercises this past year (see Dianne Craft's website). For getting down keywords and the process of outlining, writing paragraphs we started using IEW and I scribe for her. Next year (she'll be 4th grade) we are going to work on teaching her typing. I will say that the spelling & grammar part of writing are slow...tediously slow......but we keep plugging away on those separately in their own programs. Someone here (I think Doodler) posted a link about how right-brained children mature in the writing process much later (more like middle school) than left-brained children. Add to that the dysgraphia and I am going by Lori D.'s motto: "slow and steady wins the race."

 

Paula

[freesia]

Are you asking about the physical part of writing (handwriting) OR about the process/composition of writing? :)

 

For the handwriting, we had some progress after doing the Writing 8 excercises this past year (see Dianne Craft's website). For getting down keywords and the process of outlining, writing paragraphs we started using IEW and I scribe for her. Next year (she'll be 4th grade) we are going to work on teaching her typing. I will say that the spelling & grammar part of writing are slow...tediously slow......but we keep plugging away on those separately in their own programs. Someone here (I think Doodler) posted a link about how right-brained children mature in the writing process much later (more like middle school) than left-brained children. Add to that the dysgraphia and I am going by Lori D.'s motto: "slow and steady wins the race."

 

Paula

Writing 8s and IEW make the most difference with mine.

[Heathermomster]

For handwriting, we used Getty-Dubay Cursive Italics. When DS hit 6th grade, he started to really own his handwriting and was more deliberate in his efforts. He types 40 WPM and has used Dragon speech to text software. When he was younger, I scribed for him. He is presently seeing an OT once per week and I wish we'd done this waaay sooner.

 

For language arts in general, DS had a Wilson tutor for 5 years and is done. We are currently going through the Megawords series for spelling. For vocabulary, we've always used freerice.com, but I'm thinking about adding a vocabulary study. We are presently using English from the Roots Up for Greek/Latin stems and affixes. The cards have been very easy to implement. We also use Winston Grammar and the punctuation portion of Easy Grammar 6. DS has really appreciated us slowing down and really reviewing the material. We spend a few minutes everyday going through Abeka's Oral Language Lessons.

 

DS has studied key word outlining in the past and starts an IEW class on Monday. For the last three weeks, he's been summarizing history and is doing very well. Hopefully IEW will work out.

Edited August 3, 2012 by Heathermomster

[FairProspects]

Are you asking about the physical part of writing (handwriting) OR about the process/composition of writing?

 

I would like to know this too. If you are talking about the physical act of writing, depending on why there is dysgraphia, there might not be that much you can do. Ds completed his 3 yrs of OT, and at the end even the OT was at a loss as to what do to help his handwriting. He met his goals and completed all the strengthening exercises, but the OT had no other suggestions for how to help it get better. He had done all the therapy that should help.

 

The neuropsychs said the only other technique we could try is some automaticity exercises, but they even wrote into the report that that our time would be better used elsewhere. For ds anyway, we hit the point of diminishing returns for actual physical writing despite extreme amounts of time and therapy, and decided that was where we would begin working on writing accommodations like typing and getting a scribe for testing and note-taking instead.

[TippyCanoe]

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Edited November 21, 2012 by Doodler

[Heathermomster]

Doodler, Each time I read about you and you're DD, I feel so happy for your family. Thank-you for sharing...

[TippyCanoe]

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[Pen]

Are you asking about the physical part of writing (handwriting) OR about the process/composition of writing? :)

 

 

 

Both. All. The whole caboodle. As between the two, I am more concerned with the process/composition side. But all of it is at issue for my son, and I think for many people on here as well.

 

In an of itself, he can write in the sense of penmanship (prefers to print, but can do cursive), but not easily or fast enough to allow himself to think about content well at the same time as he is thinking about letter formation--that is, the letters are not automatic I don't think. He can type to some degree as he did a typing program this last year, but that too is not easy for him. I thought of dictation software--have not done that yet, partly because I thought he should learn how to do the manual parts if he possibly can, and partly because I don't think huge amounts of computer exposure are themselves all that good for him. I do scribe sometimes.

 

I thought IEW was rather wonderful and was pleased with what he did with it, but he seems to detest it, so that is rather a battle and adds to dislike of writing, which is not my goal. Then again, perhaps I should just insist on the grounds that it may be needed even if not fun.

 

There are so many mixed and conflicting ideas also, for example, Foundations in Writing which I am interested in, apparently stresses the importance of copywork. OTOH, the link I posted above says minimize copywork for dysgraphic students. WWE type copywork really seemed to do nothing for him. But maybe the Foundations approach with LD students in mind would be better. I don't know.

 

I have been working with Writing Skills with my son this summer, and it is fairly stepwise, which is good, and he does it without a fuss. But I am not sure that his writing skills are actually improving with it.

 

A major problem seems to be that most writing programs that he can even begin to approach are leading to disliking writing increasingly, because he is simulaneously bored by them at a content level, and yet they are too hard in terms of the LD issues.... I recall being at this stage with reading, where materials and programs were at the same time too hard, and yet also too babyish and boring. And then, when we found High Noon with its Hi/Lo emphasis, and its pretty fast acceleration to get from 0-60 mph so to speak, that was the beginning of the winning answer. But for writing, we just don't seem to be finding that winning answer still.

 

Maybe it is partly what Doodler said and it will come later (that was an inspiring "light at the end of the tunnel" post! and I hope we too can get to such a point). Maybe it would be best to let writing go by and large and try to do fun things like Games for Writing this next year and concentrate on other aspects of academics. But I also know the wait and it will come approach as to reading was not a good idea, and I am concerned about doing that with writing. And I kind of think the more and more there is a gap between interest and level--the more the interest level gets High, while the ability level stays Low-- in writing the worse it will get and the harder to "catch up" as was the case with the reading.

[Pen]

My dd was diagnosed with severe dysgraphia at age eleven. Today, at 16, she's going into her first community college classes, having made a perfect writing score on both the CHSPE (California diploma-equivalent test) and the cc placement test. She needs no accommodations.

 

Dd's main issues were visual-spatial and physical. Writing was painful for her, she reversed things until nearly age ten, and much of what she wrote was completely and utterly illegible. She had awful, awful problems with spelling; she didn't punctuate properly until a spate of self-initiated copywork at age fourteen. Her organization was really non-existent outside narrative story form for many years, but from about middle school on she began to improve although we used no formal program, just a ton of reading and talking.

 

However, she had no trouble at all generating ideas or words for putting down onto paper. Within those confines, what worked for us:

 

--OT, VT, and lots of work with fine motor skills.

 

--treating writing as a game, as social communication, as intellectual exploration, rather than as continual academic exercises or teacher-prescribd topics. She loved Peggy Kaye's Games For Writing in the early elementary years. I scribed for her for years, so she could produce plays and stories and songs. I wrote with her, rather than assigning and coaxing/coaching school writing and critiquing it. She loved writing despite not being able to do it!

 

--Jeffrey Freed's visual spelling techniques, in Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World. Truly, this was life-changing for dd.

 

--reading and writing across many, many genres, mixing up writing and drawing, imitating and parodying, keeping the whole approach to writing playful and experimental right up into high school. The idea I wanted to get across was not that writing was a required subject/skill, but that it was a tool that could help her achieve or accomplish things SHE wanted to do, whether that was remembering a to-do list or writing fan fiction or keeping a lab notebook. I didn't want her to dread writing, but to associate it with play, relationships (among ideas and people), and in general wanted to pre-emptively take away any kind of stress or anxiety that her physical issues might have put into place.

 

--talking through papers, actually doing "oral papers" through discussion, every step of the way, without writing much down; charting or listing evidence; web-like pre-writing exercises; a very few short essays. Jeffrey Freed also has a great chapter on right-brained writing, in which parents/teachers model writing an essay, then give over one sentence to the child in another paragraph or essay, then gradually, very gradually increasing the amount the child writes in the joint essays. We did much of this orally, but the idea behind it was really valuable.

 

--minimizing the writing load. I particularly didn't emphasized timed essay practice. When they came up this past spring, I approached them as a game, with specific allowable rules, made it as silly as I could, and dd took on the task with enthusiasm and no stress. She got her high mark on the CHSPE despite having done exactly one single timed essay practice test in her whole life.

 

What didn't work for this particular kid:

--formal grammar (she says it is actually confusing)

--the "writing process" as usually taught. Both dd and dh do most of their prewriting in their heads, think things through, write and speak like books, and in general do not do well with the "write to explore what you know" or "writing as learning" philosophies. Nor do they do well with lots of revision. And that's okay -- that particular model is only one of many ways that professional writers approach their work. The point is to find something that fits with your child's wiring. Requiring the "process" approach would actually have made dd's writing worse, and made her hate it.

 

OK. This sounds pretty close to what I am noticing so far. I am going to try as much of this as I can. That last part that I made bold seems to be exactly what is happening.

 

We have Peggy Kaye's book. I'll look up Jeffrey Freed--a new name to me, thank you.

 

I take it your daughter probably would not have responded well, so far as you can tell, to the Bravewriter course approaches as in the Foundations or Kidswrite classes?

 

I've been thinking maybe having a virtual group to do it with might help him.

[TippyCanoe]

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[Lecka]

I have appreciated this thread.

 

I have been thinking about my son -- and I am going to try going back to the very beginning of AAS, and very slowly (a little at a time), work on drilling him on connecting letter sounds to a written letter. He really can segment words now, but he is not automatic in letter formation, and he is not automatic in linking phonemes to writing a letter.

 

Actually though -- he has made a lot of progress in automatically writing letters.

 

For his age and reading level he is "supposed" to be at the point of dictating some spelling words, and he can segment, and painfully write some out. But I think his real level is back there. At the time he was just learning to segment and blend, he was nowhere near able to write letters, so I skipped all of that at the time.

[PrincessAriel]

Just found this blog post on how one mom handled dysgraphia with her child:

 

http://www.homeschoolconvention.com/blog/dyscombobulation-galore-part-two-dysgraphia/

[TippyCanoe]

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[TippyCanoe]

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