Increasing writing output from 9yo

[blondeviolin]

My 9yo acts like I'm killing her when I ask her to write more than a short sentence. It doesn't matter if it's copied, from dictation, or a sentence from her own creation. We were going to be doing R&S 4, but the written work was eliciting moaning and then taking FOREVER.

 

She does have some perfectionistic tendencies and gets overwhelmed with spelling or amount easily.

 

Besides doing MORE writing with everything, is there any way to work on this?

[Ellie]

My 9yo acts like I'm killing her when I ask her to write more than a short sentence. It doesn't matter if it's copied, from dictation, or a sentence from her own creation. We were going to be doing R&S 4, but the written work was eliciting moaning and then taking FOREVER.

 

She does have some perfectionistic tendencies and gets overwhelmed with spelling or amount easily.

 

Besides doing MORE writing with everything, is there any way to work on this?

 

Assuming she doesn't have any actual disabilities that would make it difficult for her to write, then I'd be in the no-mercy camp. "This is your assignment. Write it neatly and expeditiously. No whining." 

 

You can show her exactly how she is to write out her assignments, as well as making sure she reads the instructions correctly, because there isn't always a boatload of things to write, KWIM? It might be to write only the verb phrases and underline the main verb, and you can have her do odds or evens instead of all of them.

 

I'd also have her use a fountain pen and looseleaf notebook paper (it's easier to write on a single piece of paper which is lying on a flat surface). Many children don't like to write because they grip their pencils so tightly they just wear themselves out; she won't be able to do that with a fountain pen.

[Farrar]

Well, I wouldn't personally go "no" mercy, but I think for a lot of kids, you just have to push through and do more... Or, rather, you just have to do more in short bursts. And a fountain pen can help. Or... the opposite direction in terms of technology, but a whiteboard marker can too. Or, other direction again, a calligraphy pen or marker can help some kids focus on the lettering and improve those small motor skills. And it's okay to mix it up and try different implements.

 

If the amount overwhelms her, have her do just a little, but have her do it a lot. Like, have her do a short copywork she picks to start school and a short dictation you pick to end, or something along those lines. If upping her stamina is the most important goal, then think about ways to make copywork lighter or more fun, like joke copywork or copywork about things she's most into. Minecraft copywork or Pokemon copywork or whatever. It doesn't fulfill all the purposes of copywork or dictation (as in the learning from beautiful models goal) but if you have a higher goal of just getting to where she can write enough to do that, then focus on that.

 

I also think freewriting helps kids. Set a timer for ten minutes. She can write whatever she wants (even if it's to complain about writing). The only rule is don't put down the pencil. And then ding, stick it aside and don't even read it.

 

[MerryAtHope]

I did a few things in this position:

 

1, I let my kids express why writing was difficult for them or why they disliked it, and I commiserated. Really, it's no fun doing something that you find really hard. I get that.

 

2, I let them know that some things are hard for me--and sometimes we have to do things that are hard or that we don't like. That's part of life.

 

3, I asked specifically if writing could be easier, would they like that. Yep. Then I said, the only way for it to become easier is to practice. If you work on writing this year, it might not be fun--but by the end of this year, writing will be a bit easier for you than it is now. Not easy--but easier than it is now.

 

4, I set small, achievable goals. If she can write one sentence from copywork, work up to 2. If she can do 2, work up to 3, and so on.

 

Finally, find out why it's hard. Is it physical handwriting (any dysgraphia)? Is it spelling (even copywork is incredibly difficult for a child who struggles with spelling, because they have to look back and forth every letter)? When you know something about the root cause, you may be able to do something to work on that, and then come back to writing a bit later. I found writing was much easier for my kids when they got to the point of having 1000 basic words mastered, for example. Still not "easy," but night and day different from what it had been.

[rebbyribs]

How does she feel about typing?  My oldest likes it for the writing assignments in CAP W&R Fable because it's easy to fix mistakes - no erasing, and it's not a problem to add in a word if she forgot it.  

 

Is the pushback about writing very specific?  How long has it been going on?  Does math also get lots of groans and take forever?  How about chores?  Reading assignments?  I'd be inclined to go with some tough love if she's complaining about everything and often dawdling.  If it's specific to writing sentences, I'd look for a root cause and try to gradually work up to longer assignments.  I'd talk about attitude too, and how to say, "This is hard for me, but I'm going to practice so I can get better at it."

[blondeviolin]

I'd guess a lot of it is spelling-related.  She's a decent speller, but that's not enough for her.  BUT, even if I tell her that I don't care how it is spelled, she still struggles.  She can't seem to get take the ideas she has and put them on paper easily.  She has no problem giving me the narration to write down.  When I tell her to tell me what she wants to write, she can tell me just fine.  But then when I dictate it back to her, it's the end of the world.  It seems as though she hasn't streamlined writing a sentence as even just writing a word at a time, if that makes sense.  Instead she's seeing it as every single letter and figuring out which letters to use, and that is daunting.  (Which, I think, is why copywork is so hard - she still has to write a bunch of letters!  She seriously nearly fell apart when I asked her to copy three sentences this afternoon.)   

 

FWIW, if she asks how to spell a word, I can't even spell it out loud and expect her to be able to repeat it and write it down quickly enough.  My second-grader can do that, but for her I can only repeat up to three letters at a time.

 

She doesn't struggle with reading or grammar concepts or even Latin.  Math is fine if it's straight-forward (no puzzle-type problems), though she does seem to lose her math fact regularly...

[Another Lynn]

After reading your last post, I definitely would not expect her to be able to do dictation yet.  Start with copywork.  If she has to think one letter at a time, so be it for now, but that needs to be copywork, not dictation.

 

Another thought - (any maybe LOE is fine for this too, I don't know) - is AAS.  I only used level one years ago, but I remember that the dictation is from words that have been learned.  So, I think that would be a great way to start dictation with her and have her feel successful with it. 

[formy3kids]

Just wanted to let you know that I have a 9yo ds that is exactly like yours. Writing has been known to end in tears around here. My ds struggles with spelling which is a lot of his problem as well. We are using EIW this year which seems to be working so far because it doesn't demand too much writing for him....you might want to check it out. We struggle more with getting GWG completed because he doesn't like the writing involved in it.

[Ellie]

I'd guess a lot of it is spelling-related.  She's a decent speller, but that's not enough for her.  BUT, even if I tell her that I don't care how it is spelled, she still struggles.  She can't seem to get take the ideas she has and put them on paper easily.  She has no problem giving me the narration to write down.  When I tell her to tell me what she wants to write, she can tell me just fine.  But then when I dictate it back to her, it's the end of the world.  It seems as though she hasn't streamlined writing a sentence as even just writing a word at a time, if that makes sense.  Instead she's seeing it as every single letter and figuring out which letters to use, and that is daunting.  (Which, I think, is why copywork is so hard - she still has to write a bunch of letters!  She seriously nearly fell apart when I asked her to copy three sentences this afternoon.)   

 

FWIW, if she asks how to spell a word, I can't even spell it out loud and expect her to be able to repeat it and write it down quickly enough.  My second-grader can do that, but for her I can only repeat up to three letters at a time.

 

She doesn't struggle with reading or grammar concepts or even Latin.  Math is fine if it's straight-forward (no puzzle-type problems), though she does seem to lose her math fact regularly...

 

Oh, well, if you think spelling is the problem, then of course I'd recommend Spalding. :-)

[mamaraby]

I'll agree with Ellie and Farrar. Except I disagree with Farrar's suggestion about freewriting. I know BW is big on freewriting and its use as a tool for getting stuck writers unstuck, but that's not my experience. I think this is especially true for perfectionists (or at least the perfectionists I know). My ds is a lot like your dd and freewriting reduced him to a puddle of tears. The suggestion to write about anything, even if it was to complain about writing didn't seem to help and pencils generally wouldn't move. And he'd cry. It was a disaster. So maybe freewriting (?), but be cautious because it can backfire.

 

What helped somewhat in the end was going more Ellie than Farrar because I knew he was capable of the writing and it was one part just not wanting to do the work and one part his own belief that he couldn't do the work. The first, well, you're just going to have to do it. The second? That's been a combo of lots of meeting him where he's at. And persistence. And sometimes the computer. And encouragement. So much talking.

 

Which is not to say that we've fixed it all. He'll still freeze up when asked to write something and he'll still get frustrated and cry if he doesn't remember his dictation right away and we have to repeat it lots of times. He still struggles with narration even if it's done orally (unlike your dd) so it still requires more prompting on my part, but he's much better. And his 2nd grade sister is far better at all of the above than he is, but there are things that she struggles with that were super easy for him, IYKWIM.

 

Spalding has been helpful for all three of my kids. So has patience and a little bit of time for him to grow up a bit. On the other hand, if you suspect there's more to her issue, maybe it's also worth it to consider an evaluation (processing speed, working memory, dysgraphia, etc), fwiw.

[blondeviolin]

I don't think spelling is it. It's for sure not helping (and LOE will help). But if it was spelling, it wouldn't be as much of an issue when I tell her how to spell, allow her to use the echo to tell her how to spell, allow her to copy, whatever. She has no problem holding the dictation in her head, even a long one. Whenever she has to write more than a sentence, she devolves into a 4yo. And there is no physical issue. She has always been capable of copying sentences. She never showed issues when those skills were developing. She doesn't complain about her hand hurting and when I ask, she says no... ??? She has no reason to complain beyond the fact that the amount has increased by more than a short sentence.

[Ellie]

I don't think spelling is it. It's for sure not helping (and LOE will help). But if it was spelling, it wouldn't be as much of an issue when I tell her how to spell, allow her to use the echo to tell her how to spell, allow her to copy, whatever. She has no problem holding the dictation in her head, even a long one. Whenever she has to write more than a sentence, she devolves into a 4yo. And there is no physical issue. She has always been capable of copying sentences. She never showed issues when those skills were developing. She doesn't complain about her hand hurting and when I ask, she says no... ??? She has no reason to complain beyond the fact that the amount has increased by more than a short sentence.

 

Well, but earlier you said this:

 

I'd guess a lot of it is spelling-related.  She's a decent speller, but that's not enough for her.  BUT, even if I tell her that I don't care how it is spelled, she still struggles.  She can't seem to get take the ideas she has and put them on paper easily.  She has no problem giving me the narration to write down.  When I tell her to tell me what she wants to write, she can tell me just fine.  But then when I dictate it back to her, it's the end of the world.  It seems as though she hasn't streamlined writing a sentence as even just writing a word at a time, if that makes sense.  Instead she's seeing it as every single letter and figuring out which letters to use, and that is daunting.  (Which, I think, is why copywork is so hard - she still has to write a bunch of letters!  She seriously nearly fell apart when I asked her to copy three sentences this afternoon.) 

 

 

So....

[alisoncooks]

My 9yo acts like I'm killing her when I ask her to write more than a short sentence. It doesn't matter if it's copied, from dictation, or a sentence from her own creation. We were going to be doing R&S 4, but the written work was eliciting moaning and then taking FOREVER.

 

She does have some perfectionistic tendencies and gets overwhelmed with spelling or amount easily.

 

Besides doing MORE writing with everything, is there any way to work on this?

This sounds like my 9 yr old DD.

I've decided that we'll be dropping a lot of our grammar plans for the year, and doing some sort of writing every day. Nothing terribly lengthy, but just enough to get the pencil to paper daily and make it more normal.

[MerryAtHope]

I'd guess a lot of it is spelling-related.  She's a decent speller, but that's not enough for her.  BUT, even if I tell her that I don't care how it is spelled, she still struggles.  She can't seem to get take the ideas she has and put them on paper easily.  She has no problem giving me the narration to write down.  When I tell her to tell me what she wants to write, she can tell me just fine.  But then when I dictate it back to her, it's the end of the world.  It seems as though she hasn't streamlined writing a sentence as even just writing a word at a time, if that makes sense.  Instead she's seeing it as every single letter and figuring out which letters to use, and that is daunting.  (Which, I think, is why copywork is so hard - she still has to write a bunch of letters!  She seriously nearly fell apart when I asked her to copy three sentences this afternoon.)   

 

FWIW, if she asks how to spell a word, I can't even spell it out loud and expect her to be able to repeat it and write it down quickly enough.  My second-grader can do that, but for her I can only repeat up to three letters at a time.

 

She doesn't struggle with reading or grammar concepts or even Latin.  Math is fine if it's straight-forward (no puzzle-type problems), though she does seem to lose her math fact regularly...

 

I wonder if there are working memory constraints (you mentioned 3 letters was about her max, loses math facts, math is okay only if it's straight-forward, she struggles with lots of copywork, struggles with dictation...) Somewhere there seems to be a breakdown in automaticity, and being able to just write letters she hears. Another possibility is an auditory processing struggle, or an issue with dysgraphia.

 

AAS helped us with all of this:

-helps kids think in terms of phonograms and in syllables and then in morphemes (root words). 

-starts small in terms of writing--first just words, then short dictation phrases, then sentences, then more and longer sentences, then some independent sentence writing. The gradual progression helped my kids build fluency, stamina, and confidence in both spelling and in writing.

-gradually lengthening dictations helped my kids build up working memory

[blondeviolin]

I wonder if there are working memory constraints (you mentioned 3 letters was about her max, loses math facts, math is okay only if it's straight-forward, she struggles with lots of copywork, struggles with dictation...) Somewhere there seems to be a breakdown in automaticity, and being able to just write letters she hears. Another possibility is an auditory processing struggle, or an issue with dysgraphia.

 

AAS helped us with all of this:

-helps kids think in terms of phonograms and in syllables and then in morphemes (root words).

-starts small in terms of writing--first just words, then short dictation phrases, then sentences, then more and longer sentences, then some independent sentence writing. The gradual progression helped my kids build fluency, stamina, and confidence in both spelling and in writing.

-gradually lengthening dictations helped my kids build up working memory

 

I'll look into these things. She did AAS for two years. She was capable of spelling the words during spelling time, but it NEVER transferred into writing. She is a strong reader and a strong auditory learner. She could rattle off the rules and phonograms just fine she made it to level four before I decided that it wasn't transferring.

 

She had the same thing with Spalding when we did it last year. She could write the words, rattle off the rules and phonograms, but when it was time to translate to writing, nothing.

 

She mentioned that she wants to do spelling like her siblings (LOE Foundations) so we are trying essentials for a bit. I'm thinking phonetic zoo might really speak to her, though, so I'm going to try and have her do the lists in Essentials a la PZ.

[MerryAtHope]

I'll look into these things. She did AAS for two years. She was capable of spelling the words during spelling time, but it NEVER transferred into writing. She is a strong reader and a strong auditory learner. She could rattle off the rules and phonograms just fine she made it to level four before I decided that it wasn't transferring.

 

She had the same thing with Spalding when we did it last year. She could write the words, rattle off the rules and phonograms, but when it was time to translate to writing, nothing.

 

She mentioned that she wants to do spelling like her siblings (LOE Foundations) so we are trying essentials for a bit. I'm thinking phonetic zoo might really speak to her, though, so I'm going to try and have her do the lists in Essentials a la PZ.

 

That's not unusual--it's an automaticity issue. Whatever you use, you'll likely need to put time into directly teaching her how to edit and correct her work, and use more questions to get her to start applying what she knows. (In AAS, the "word analysis" exercises in levels 3-7 work on this some, but many kids try to avoid it. When my kids tried to give minimal answers, I made them go back through and look for more things to explain back to me. They didn't enjoy that at first, but it's critical to the process--otherwise kids just rely on being spoon-fed information). 

 

To help my kids start to use some of these editing skills, I first worked on it through the dictations. When they made a mistake, I would say, “There’s one spelling error. Can you find it?†Praise if she can find it. Then see if she knows how to change it. If she’s not sure, give a question to prompt, such as, “Can you think of a rule that applies?†or “Sound out exactly what you wrote†(very useful if she has a wrong phonogram, letters in the wrong order, too many sounds, or a missing sound in the word) or, “Can you think of a word that might have another option for one of the phonograms?†Try to lead to the answer by getting her to think it through. However, if she starts to get frustrated, you can give more help and just model the process of thinking of the rule, sounding it out, or trying different phonograms. The basic idea though is not to just tell her which word is wrong (assuming it's a word she's worked on) and how to fix it--she needs to start thinking it through in order to eventually start editing on her own.

 

Make sure to put any missed words back in daily review until they are truly mastered.

 

After she has the hang of editing in dictation, you can start to do this on sentences (the Writing Station or something equivalent). When we started the writing station activity, I would put a light pencil x next to each line that had a mistake, and would again see if my child could find them. Again, praise for any she finds. This is hard work for kids, and you really want to encourage them. Go through the same process I described above.

 

When she has the hang of editing in dictations and sentence writing, then you can start to help her edit outside writing that needs to be polished (not all writing needs to be polished, and sometimes if the subject is science or history, I would choose to focus on content knowing that spelling would eventually come along. Kids can get discouraged if you focus on everything at once–the goal of perfection seems unattainable.)

[Tiramisu]

The OP's dd sounds like mine, but mine doesn't have the spelling issue thrown in. She is in vision therapy now. And while I don't know how this will impact her writing in her schoolwork, it's really made an unbelievable difference in daily life. She's functioning in a much more organized way is how I would describe it.

 

I recently had her evaluated by an OT to help sort out the writing question. She does not have automaticity in her writing. According to the OT, it's her sensory and organizing/motor planning issues that are affecting her ability to write and develop automaticity.

 

And it's not like we haven't worked on it. She's done WWE1-3. She writes letters to friends. She had to answer questions in written form for her religious ed class last year, one or two a day. She did a line of cursive handwriting daily and wrote some basic paragraphs at the end of last year. So we have been working on writing consistently but it really hasn't developed since first grade and now she's going into fourth.

 

I have decided to work on writing this year and then move to typing in fifth grade if we don't see improvement.

 

This is my plan for this year:

 

Dictation Day by Day, Fourth Year (Modern Speller), daily, to help develop automaticity. It's vintage text that includes daily passages of a few sentences for copywork and dictation. I will start with copywork. It's supposed to be a spelling text but I'm not really using it for that.  

 

Daily Grams 4, daily. It requires little writing but does include one sentence combining exercise a day. It's grammar but I'm using this primarily because her sentences are very simplistic and I want her to practice writing slightly more complex sentences in very little bites, hoping by the end of the year, she'll show some growth.

 

Just Write 1 and 2 from EPS, three times a week. These are second and third grade level. I'm starting with the paragraph sections and see will how far it takes her. There is really not a lot of writing in these, but it shows how the writing process works and how paragraphs are organized. There's a lot of scaffolding when they have to write. 

 

Besides the curriculum, dd is working with apps on dh's Ipad to learn proper strokes for writing cursive. When the school year starts, I will have her also do this for manuscript on her Kindle fire. If possible, with manuscript, I think she could get through the alphabet every day.

 

At some point, I'd also like to take two days a week, drop the writing app, and have her do an alphabet race to see how fast she can write the alphabet. I saw this on a writing/OT website that OhE linked for me. It's supposed to promote automaticity.

 

I would also like to do Dianne Crafts writing 8's but I have to be careful not to overload dd.

 

OT is recommending Interactive Metronome, but we'll tackle that once she completes vision therapy.

 

She will not be required to write more than a tiny bit, if anything, for content areas.

 

ETA: Dd will also continue martial arts classes and start gymnastics again. She loves these and they are great for developing coordinated movement.