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Help with History Odyssey for a poor writer


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My son's writing, frankly, sucks. :( Both physically and mechanically, he is behind in writing and really struggles with it. He also struggles just to construct a sentence orally (not so much in conversation, but when given a prompt for a summary or narration).

 

We are using History Odyssey, which is great for dd5th. Ds4th enjoys the material but simply can't keep up with the writing. I'm not sure whether I should just reduce the writing he does (for example, if they are supposed to write a summary sentence about each of three different topics, have him just write one) or whether I should just not even bother having him write anything (which will annoy his sister). As much as I think he needs the writing practice, I also think that the frustration of writing is detracting from his ability to retain the material. All his energy is going into the writing.

 

He also hates to draw pictures, because he's not good at it, or I would have him draw pictures and caption them. I've considered trying to find coloring pages, but that's a huge amount of work for me.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Tara

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If there are several writing prompts on that day's assignment, can you have him pick just ONE to research more thoroughly and write on? (It could still be only 2-3 sentences, but he'd have to take more time on that ONE thing.)

 

I'd work with him on oral narrations (a la WWE1 - "What's one thing you remember about that topic?") for awhile and ramp up to "pick the most important thing" for one-level outlines later.

 

My oldest is doing HO Level 2 Ancients this year and I'm having her do all the writing. She was SEVERELY writing phobic ("allergic to the pencil") - but she's gotten so much better. The complaining is still there, but it is amazing what she'll put out when she's interested.

 

What else are you doing to get him ramped up mechanically? (I've read some sort of therapy clay (Play-Doh-like) is really good for improving their hand muscles.)

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You can have him narrate orally, either a la WWE, or as we're doing, CM style. We're starting HO Level 1 Early Modern next week (ds is in 4th), and I'm requiring writing in other subjects as well. Seeing how much he's writing without History or Writing this week, I may consider dropping Writing (Killgallon). He's reluctant to write and not terribly great at it, but not bad either. Mostly he's allergic to effort at this stage of his life (we're working on it).

 

With HO, I'm going to require one or two writing projects, probably starting with one, then building to two at a time.

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Does your son like to use the computer? When my son was not interested in writing I was about ready to pull my hair out. A simple narration he'll write, and I only require about 3 sentences just to summarize what he's learned. But a more detailed report or narration I let him type it up on the computer. If it's a narration for History or Science, I'll print it out and cut around the paragraph and glue it onto the notebooking page. Try that out if you haven't. Even if you have him give you an oral narration and you can write it out and have him type it, or you write it for him and then he can copy what you've written.

 

I hope this makes sense, I'm very foggy minded today.

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