Mom0012 Posted July 20, 2013 Share Posted July 20, 2013 My son has a lot of difficulty writing. He has an expressive language disorder, so this is no surprise. We've been working on it for years using IEW and other materials and he's made a lot of progress. For the last 4 years, he has taken an outsourced IEW class, but this year he really would have needed to move on to the class that focuses on 5 paragraph papers. If it was just on research papers, I feel he would have been fine in that class. But, it is a combination of that as well as critiques and persuasive essays. He's a very concrete thinker and he's not ready for that. So, what do I do with him? I think he would benefit from continued practice with summarizing, like WWE does, so I thought I would have him summarize an article in the newspaper each day since he loves to read the paper. I also can see with him that it is very important that he have a good, solid outline before trying to write his paper. He is very knowledgeable in history and a number of other areas, but even with topics he loves, and knows well, he cannot write without an outline. Actually, many of the assignments he's had over the last couple of years needed to be treated like research papers because he is not able to write from his own knowledge bank. I don't understand why that is. He can thoroughly tell me 5 causes of the Civil War, but he cannot write about it at all without researching it. Even if he is asked to write about something very basic like comparing boats and cars, he cannot do it without reading about cars and boats, and then making an outline. So, goal number 2 is to continue to work on multilevel outlines. What else should I work on with him? I could have him do a few research papers, but I'm not sure what would be the best use of our time. So, Goal 1 - summarizing Goal 2 - multilevel outlines Goal 3 - ??? Research writing practice Goal 4 - ??? Thx! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grantmom Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 Do you think he has become too dependent on the outline? Or do you think that because of the expressive language disorder that he needs that structure to translate what is in his brain onto paper? If you think it's the first, maybe you could try helping him slowly wean off of needing the outline. Or if you think he really just needs it for now, maybe there are ways that you could help him learn to shorten or expedite the process of making the outline, or some tips or tricks to help make it a smoother process. I have been listening to the podcasts on the Brave Writer, by Julie Bogart, and I really like a lot of what she says about how we help our children learn to translate what is in their brains onto paper. She talks about it being a process, and that it's okay for us to help them through it. She has some books and courses and also seems very available and says to email her if you want to know what would work best for your student. You don't say how old he is, but maybe he just needs more time to develop that area, with help from you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom0012 Posted July 21, 2013 Author Share Posted July 21, 2013 Do you think he has become too dependent on the outline? Or do you think that because of the expressive language disorder that he needs that structure to translate what is in his brain onto paper? If you think it's the first, maybe you could try helping him slowly wean off of needing the outline. Or if you think he really just needs it for now, maybe there are ways that you could help him learn to shorten or expedite the process of making the outline, or some tips or tricks to help make it a smoother process. I have been listening to the podcasts on the Brave Writer, by Julie Bogart, and I really like a lot of what she says about how we help our children learn to translate what is in their brains onto paper. She talks about it being a process, and that it's okay for us to help them through it. She has some books and courses and also seems very available and says to email her if you want to know what would work best for your student. You don't say how old he is, but maybe he just needs more time to develop that area, with help from you. Thanks so much. He is 13 and will be 14 in the early fall. He is a rising 8th grader. I know he has to have an outline to write a decent paper. I do think it is because of his lds. He is going to be reevaluated in a few weeks because I am beginning to think the expressive language issues, and other glitchy issues I see, may actually be a symptom of low working memory. I don't think he can pull all the information he needs from his brain and then hold it there to organize it. That's why I think the outline is helpful and that I need to expand on his skills in this area. I have been helping him for years in one way or another. I also have a friend of mine, who is an editor, come over and work with him to refine his paper every other week. She makes him work hard and doesn't just give him the answers. I don't have the patience to sit with him for 2 1/2 hours and discuss his paper in a positive way like she does. I'll have to check out the Bravewriter podcasts to see if those give me any ideas. I'm also going to pull out my TWTM book and see if there are any tips there for me beyond narration, summarizing and dictation. I guess working on dictation might be helpful to him as well. We dropped that some time ago because of the frustration, but maybe he'd be more able to do it now. I pulled him from the class because I really want to work on more basic skills that will make it easier for him to write. Now that I'm trying to come up with what I need to do with him, I'm afraid I don't have enough and I don't want to waste the year since we are so close to high school. I've considered WWS because we did about half of that last summer, but then it started to get hard for him. I might give that another go if I can't figure out what these basic skills are that I need to work on with him. Thanks again! I will definitely check out those podcasts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 I have had struggling writers. Fwiw, they have managed As in college writing, but they still form outlines. Not sure why outlining is something he needs to abandon. Some people really need to organize their thoughts before putting pencil to paper. Has he mastered paragraph writing? Sorry, I sorta skimmed bc I am Ina hurry. If he hasn't, that is where I would stay until he has. If he has, I would work on small booklet type assignments for now. They help them break down larger topics into individual topics without needing intro, conclusion, and transition sentences. Then, take the little booklets and help them write the intro, conclusion, and transitions to form a cohesive report. (Examples my kids have done would be on Mars or about a ecological web or the life of Alexander the Great, etc) Break down each step and provide him w/direct instruction of the skills required. He'll get there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom0012 Posted July 21, 2013 Author Share Posted July 21, 2013 I have had struggling writers. Fwiw, they have managed As in college writing, but they still form outlines. Not sure why outlining is something he needs to abandon. Some people really need to organize their thoughts before putting pencil to paper. Has he mastered paragraph writing? Sorry, I sorta skimmed bc I am Ina hurry. If he hasn't, that is where I would stay until he has. If he has, I would work on small booklet type assignments for now. They help them break down larger topics into individual topics without needing intro, conclusion, and transition sentences. Then, take the little booklets and help them write the intro, conclusion, and transitions to form a cohesive report. (Examples my kids have done would be on Mars or about a ecological web or the life of Alexander the Great, etc) Break down each step and provide him w/direct instruction of the skills required. He'll get there. Thank you! That encourages me to hear that I am on the right track with the outlining. I feel like he has mastered the paragraph. The IEW class he took the last two years focused on writing different types of paragraphs. He knows about making an opening sentence, building on that and then a clincher sentence. He makes transitions, but doesn't always make the best word choices. Now, his individual sentences are not always great because of the language issues and we continue to work on that. That's a primary thing my friend did with him. Though, he can actually be quite poetic at times. One of the reasons I pulled him from the IEW class is that I felt the stylistic techniques were really starting to bog him down and interfere with him writing good sentences. (He had a huge checklist with tons of different stylistic techniques that had to be used for every paper.) He wrote much nicer things when he did WWS last summer. Maybe in addition to the other things I was planning on working with him, I will just continue with paragraphs and see if he improves. I know somewhere on these boards is a post about how you progress with writing with your children. I will do a search for that this evening. Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoverdavid30 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 Let him write stories about things and topics he enjoys. I started a "Stories When I was A Little Boy" that got my girls interested in writing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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