Playing catch-up with writing

[Toska]

My 14yo dd has been homeschooled since K and will be attending PS for high school this coming fall.  She really struggles with writing and I want to find the best way to get her ready for 9th grade english.

My ds also went to PS this past year and english was one of his struggles.  He had trouble moving from summarizations and fact reporting to analytical writing.

My dd has completed WWS 1 but her assignments generally meet the rubric in the most minimal fashion.  My dd loves to read but prefers middle grade novels such as Harry Potter and Holes, so she found the reading selections in WWS quite difficult.

What would you recommend to get her prepared to write in high school?

[PeterPan]

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Revolution-Advancing-Thinking-Subjects-dp-1119364914/dp/1119364914/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1588854776  Here's a book that is popular right now for writing instruction. It focuses on sentence expansion and language, which might address some of your dd's needs. 

Have you done achievement testing to know where your dd where your dd is? Many kids read at a lower level for pleasure, and I agree the samples in WWS are pretty stiff. So it's hard to tell just from that whether there's a disability or whether she just likes those things. I would be wanting some data. 

Have you looked at a more typical, thorough writing program like a SWI from IEW or Jump In? Either of those would have really clear instruction on the structure of writing.

If there's a family history of dyslexia or you suspect more going on, then sure step up to intervention/therapy level materials. Many kids with ADHD (a pretty common diagnosis) would need help with executive function and understanding structure. ADHD can also affect reading comprehension. 

https://mindwingconcepts.com/pages/methodology  Here's something to get you started on the connection between narrative and expository writing and why someone might be able to "narrate" but not see how to transfer that to other types of writing. Mindwings/Story Grammar Marker has lots of free material on their site if you search around, with youtube videos, free pdfs on their blog, etc. etc. Thememaker is their expository manual. 

https://www.evan-moor.com/daily-6-trait-writing-grade-1-teacher's-edition-print  This is *not* therapy level, but it is very thorough and good at teaching the structures and building the concepts. My ds has SLD Writing/Reading/Math with an IEP. He didn't have the *language* to do writing for a long time, but now he has more. So now we're literally doing "catch up" as you say, and I have him doing gr 1-4 of this series in parallel. I don't know that that's a good fit for anyone else, just saying it fits him. The series goes through grade 8, so you'd have some flex to jump in at say a gr 6 and work forward. You can see almost the whole book online in their samples, so it would give you a good sense for what very thorough instruction can look like. I would not put her into a level that seems hard, if that makes sense. I would look for what she could really understand and do. Each week covers the same topics across the grade levels, so you could do say grades 6 and 7 or 7 and 8, doing two lessons a day from each grade. In that way you'd get through the entirety of both books in 12 weeks, hitting your goal of being through something by fall. It's high structure, so they're going to be using graphic organizers, etc. You could fiddle around yourself with graphic organizers and not get to the same place as easily as having one well thought out, progressive curriculum. I'm very impressed with it.

So, fwiw, my dd has a very hard time with writing. She's diagnosed with ADHD, which affects your Executive Function. So she needed help to see structure, organize, and hold her thoughts, yes. Also however it turned out she had issues with *word retrieval*. We did psych testing and that's where we learned about her poor word retrieval and low processing speed. We were able to do some things like metronome work and digit spans to make it easier to hold her thoughts while composing. We got her software like Inspiration so she could map her thoughts and convert them to an outline. (You can also get free mindmapping apps to try, like Popplet.) We let her USE TECH. Always typing, everything typing. If your dd can't type and type well enough to get her thoughts out, personally, I'd put some effort into typing. We really liked Mavis Beacon, and we ended up switching my dd to a different keyboard layout (Dvorak) that helped her finally learn to type. 

My dd is in college now, and writing is STILL a bear. She had great ACT scores btw. That's what to me, I think just look at the data you've got and see what is making it hard. If it's dyslexia holding back the reading, then yes writing issues would be common with that. The SLP behind the MindWings/Story Grammar Marker materials was working in a dyslexia school. If it's ADHD like my dd, you need a lot of clear instruction on structure. I've bought/used other things over the years (Paragraph Writing Made Easy, Jensen's Format Writing, Jump In, WWS, Abeka's high school english sequence, on and on), but I'm really keen on the 6 Traits Daily Writing right now. It sort of gets in on that basic level of writing as communication, writing as a narrative act, and it makes sure they have something to say and gets it into a graphic organizer so what they actually write by the end of day 5 of each week is sensible and coherent and hitting the goals. 

I don't think I would worry about being on grade level so much as just taking some steps forward. 

-typing

-understanding structures--workbooks, Mindwings/Story grammar Marker, IEW

-making language easier--Writing Revolution, Killgallon workbooks, etc.

-achievement testing to see if there are significant issues with reading

Edited May 7, 2020 by PeterPan

[Toska]

Thanks for all these ideas!  My dd has taken some state required testing, but there always seem to be issues on the with the testing.  One year it got cancelled due to tech issues and another year the testing was only partially completed.  She usually scores average to slightly below average.  We do have some ADHD in the family and one known dyslexic but i am pretty sure this dd does not have dyslexia.

We deal with some level of school refusal for writing because she thinks it is “boring.”  One issue we have is the amount of editing/ proofreading makes writing feel like it is never complete and she has trouble seeing her progress.    I like the look of the Evan-Moor so far.  The workbook style may be motivating for her.  She can type, but needs to bring that up to a better speed.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Toska

[73349]

Two free typing websites that have helped my DS are burningcargo.com and nitrotype.com . You make an account, so it tracks your progress.

It may help your DD to keep a journal, which she writes in for a specified number of minutes a day, just to get thoughts flowing better. If she can't think of anything to write, she can write, "I can't think of anything to write," etc., until she thinks of something. This would be intentionally not read/graded, but required.