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Hi everyone! I am trying to start planning to home-school my 3 dc in the fall. I need advice on my oldest ds that will be going into 7th grade. He has dysgraphia and convergence insufficiency. He has multiple accommodations at school. Most of the teachers have been great about them. All but his English teacher. The one subject he struggles the most in. He needs a lot of help to get him where he needs to be. It has just come to my attention that he doesn't understand all of the parts of speech. I'm not sure how he has managed to hide that this long but he has. The child can't even begin to diagram a sentence. Obviously that will have to be worked on. He also struggles with writing because of the dysgraphia. The visual issues make reading hard so he is getting it from both sides. He also has problems with capitalization and punctuation. I'm not sure if that goes with the dysgraphia or not. He can tell you all of the rules for both but when he writes he doesn't use either. It doesn't matter if he is writing by hand or typing. He doesn't even capitalize his own name. I will ask him to edit his work and will even ask him if he sees something wrong with his name and he honestly doesn't see it. He is very self-conscious about it and is constantly getting down on himself over all of these problems. I think I can help him with some one on one attention. I just don't know where to start. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

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Check out Journey Through Grammarland by Frode Jensen. I am currently using it with my 4th grader who needs something other than a traditional curriculum. The work can be cut down into sections and we do parts of it verbally. This could help him nail down his understanding of the parts of speech.

 

http://www.jsgrammar.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=17&Itemid=31

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Hi everyone! I am trying to start planning to home-school my 3 dc in the fall. I need advice on my oldest ds that will be going into 7th grade. He has dysgraphia and convergence insufficiency. He has multiple accommodations at school. Most of the teachers have been great about them. All but his English teacher. The one subject he struggles the most in. He needs a lot of help to get him where he needs to be. It has just come to my attention that he doesn't understand all of the parts of speech. I'm not sure how he has managed to hide that this long but he has. The child can't even begin to diagram a sentence. Obviously that will have to be worked on. He also struggles with writing because of the dysgraphia. The visual issues make reading hard so he is getting it from both sides. He also has problems with capitalization and punctuation. I'm not sure if that goes with the dysgraphia or not. He can tell you all of the rules for both but when he writes he doesn't use either. It doesn't matter if he is writing by hand or typing. He doesn't even capitalize his own name. I will ask him to edit his work and will even ask him if he sees something wrong with his name and he honestly doesn't see it. He is very self-conscious about it and is constantly getting down on himself over all of these problems. I think I can help him with some one on one attention. I just don't know where to start. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

 

Also post on learning challenges forum, you may find more specific knowledge there.

 

Diagramming is a tool--not everyone does it. With dysgraphia, it might be harder to do than the benefits to be gained.

 

Audio books may help if he has visual problems--he may be able to get some for free or low cost if he has a diagnosis.

 

Typing may help with the physical aspect of writing, or even a dictation program. And some programs will underline things caught as needing capitals and so on. Not capitalizing his own name (etc.) may be an ingrained habit that could be changed by enough repetitions of the right way to do it....even if he were blind and could not see it at all, he might be able to get the motor memory to do it. Are there also memory issues or processing issues?

 

Something like Brave Writer might help with composition aspects.

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This may sound a little weird, but if he is having a hard time with the grammar piece, you may want to look at the First Language Lessons programs from SWB, but go back to level 3 (you don't have to tell him which level, lol). It goes through all of the grammar he may be missing very systematically and builds on itself with lots of practice to train his mind to find the parts of speech.

 

That being said, one of the other posters mentioned diagramming may not be the best choice for the dysgraphia and I can't speak to that because I don't know that much about it. If diagramming would be a deterrent, I just wanted to mention that it is used pretty extensively in FLL, so then you might want to go with something else.

 

 

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