Does this student need a separate writing program?

[Verity]

Hi all - we've had a kinda tough, busy year. We moved less than a month ago to a new town 3 hours away from our old one. We are more or less settled in (though nothing hanging on the walls yet) and planning to start school officially on Monday. We have also joined a co-op that meets once a week starting on Thursday. I joined because I think it will be good for my kids to have more social and intellectual interaction with other children in their age range, and it will give us a chance to meet friends in a new town, and so forth.

 

My oldest son will be 14 in October and is in 8th grade this year. He has Asperger's, is very bright but has alot of trouble with social interaction and with fine motor and gross motor skills. With the job change that caused this move we have better insurance; so, in addition to co-op once a week, he will also be getting into some counseling, a social skills group and I'm hoping to find an OT that can help him with strengthening his body overall.

 

His classes this year are listed below: MUS (finishing zeta, starting pre-alg), Rainbow science (at home and labs with coop), Latin, Logic, listening in on history with youngers and Sotw 4 at co-op, bible study with family and free reading. We will be starting Spanish for Children A in a few weeks, after three years of latin I think that this will be fairly easy for us. He is also going to be in a Thinking Games class at co-op. (sounds fun doesn't it?!)

 

My initial plans were for him to also do WWS2 (I got the first two weeks beta in email this week), but after looking at it I'm not sure if I need another writing curriculum for him. Outside of the issue of what levels of stress he can handle in his life right now (writing is hard for him because he can't organize his thoughts well in his head)...does he academically need writing in addition to Lightning Lit?

Edited August 18, 2012 by Verity

[5LittleMonkeys]

Lightning lit doesn't include writing instruction, and the writing it does include is very light and creative in nature. So, he needs to have something that is moving him forward with building skills and refining what he has learned so far in academic writing. I'm not familiar with Creative Writer but I think it doesn't include writing across the curricula (?). I would, if in your shoes, do WWS at a slower pace or make sure he is writing across the curricula using what he learned in WWS 1.