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how long to keep working on letter formation for 2nd grader


caedmyn
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My 7 yo is dyslexic, probably severely (or at least a good bit more dyslexic than his three older siblings who are all dyslexic).  I do not think he is dygraphic, but he does struggle with letter formation.  We did two years of HWOT and moved on to copywork this year.  He doesn’t struggle with the copying, but generally starts his letters at the bottom and writes them in the wrong direction (for example, with “a” or “d” he draws the line from the bottom going up, and then goes back to the bottom and does the loop from the bottom up).  I don’t know if I should be coaching him on proper letter formation with every single letter, or if I should just let it go since his writing is legible.  Picture is of the copywork page he finished today.

image.jpg

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That's astonishingly nice handwriting! I would keep doing what you're doing. If you want to add more, you could do activities for directionality, like little grid drawings where he pays attention to where he's supposed to start and stop or tracking exercises for directionality. If they did an OT eval, they'd probably find something like that. But wow, what beautiful handwriting. Is it painful or tedious or slow for him? Honestly, my ds12 couldn't write that. We're working on it, but that's just exceptional compared to ANYTHING I've ever seen in my house from EITHER dc.

https://www.therapro.com/Developing-Visual-Motor-Integration.html  An example of grid drawing and paying attention to the starting points. I'm doing it with my ds right now. You can find similar free pages to print.

http://www.cdfieldtrips.com/03RR1show/index.html  Shh, but I pulled screenshots of the samples from this and printed them because the vendor never mailed the product and seems to be out of business. They have several books for directionality, alphabet, etc. 

Does writing seem to be on a path to be functional for him? Are you wanting an OT eval? Did you get retained reflexes integrated? Does he have other midline issues?

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DD15 (dyslexic) had very perfect handwriting like that when she was in first and second grade. By fourth grade, her handwriting was almost illegible, and it's still sloppy today.

Why? My theory is that she was actually drawing her letters when she was learning to write. So she was not thinking about the sounds that they make, or the words that she was writing; she was just carefully forming the letters, as she saw them on the page. Once she started writing her own words and thoughts, she was not able to both execute the handwriting and figure out spelling at the same time, so her handwriting turned into a scrawl.

The school did give her SLD written expression in fourth grade, by the way.  But her dysgraphia is a product of the dyslexia. I have a son who also has a dysgraphia diagnosis, and his writing issues are completely different.

I think that whatever work that he can tolerate at this age to get the handwriting more automatic would be worth it, so that when he is a few years older, he won't have to think about letter formation as he thinks more and more about spelling harder words and longer sentences. But if it is a trial, and he is resistant, I also think that it's not worth turning it into a battle.

Both of my kids with dysgraphia have sloppy handwriting now as teens, and it really isn't a big deal, most of the time. So much of their schoolwork is done on a computer. When they do have to write on paper, their teachers don't mark off points or seem to care at all when things are sloppy. Now, if I were still their homeschool teacher, it would drive me crazy, and I would want them to be able to do better. But for most people, having poor handwriting is not going to be a big problem in life.

So I'd say it's your call. When my kids did handwriting work in early elementary years, I did not strive for them to make things perfect; as long as it was legible, I counted it as okay. But in our household, the battle to get them to slow down and try harder did not pay off in better effort on their part, so I didn't push.

Just expect that handwriting to get worse over the next years and don't be surprised. You might want to think about moving on to cursive to see if that is easier for him.

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So, my youngest had gorgeous handwriting when she was doing copywork and handwriting instruction.  Beautiful writing that she couldn't read a word of.  She could read type written text, but only sorta kinda her own printed work, and despite four years of cursive handwriting instruction and attending a Catholic school that was SUPER DUPER into cursive writing, she never learned to read a single word written in cursive.  (She can, however, compose in print and could read her own printing by third grade or so.  Print is obviously the more functional form of handwriting for her, no matter what my cursive first inclinations might be.)

So, my question would be, what is the level of functionality?  Can he independently compose in handwriting?  Can he read his writing?  If so, I would continue to do it.  However, occupational therapists will tell you that for MOST kids, by second grade you aren't going to get them to change the way they form letters.  This might be less true in a homeschooled kid who has not been doing lots and lots of unsupervised writing in kindergarten and first grade, however.  If he can independently create letters and read what he writes, then I would continue coaching in proper letter formation, at least for another year or so.  If he can do neither of those things, I would start at least experimenting with typing and speech to text instruction, even if I also continued to work on handwriting.  

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8 hours ago, Storygirl said:

Just expect that handwriting to get worse over the next years and don't be surprised.

Yup, I have some early writing from my ds that was surprising, and it went down, down, down. It's basically nonfunctional for him. I do think the VMI=visual motor integration is the issue, because his scores on that came back wicked low. We're doing that therapy workbook I linked, and it's amazing how much doesn't click in his mind. So we'll see. Typing also works on VMI. 

The way to bust through the formation issues would be to move him over to cursive. I'm not saying it's in reach either, but just saying. http://www.cursivelogic.com  This is the program I got. I'm just doing everything I can for VMI *first* to get him in a better place.

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On 12/17/2020 at 12:00 PM, caedmyn said:

 He doesn’t struggle with the copying, but generally starts his letters at the bottom and writes them in the wrong direction (for example, with “a” or “d” he draws the line from the bottom going up, and then goes back to the bottom and does the loop from the bottom up).  

If he always makes his a or d the same way, I would not correct it. You have to backtrack over the stick portion whether you start and the top or bottom. Proper form is about avoiding fatigue/stress and being efficient. If you want him to learn cursive, he can learn cursive formation separately. Forming letters the same way every time builds memory and efficiency. If he’s consistent, and he’s not doing connected writing for cursive, it serves the purpose.

If he forms an a or a d several different ways, that is a problem because it’s not automatic and efficient.

My dyslexic kiddo also didn’t really learn to read cursive for a long time. We did cursive first, and he could write it for years before reading it. He’s just getting better at it in 7th grade, but he did compose very, very misspelled stories in cursive early on while copy work was difficult for him. He’s not always consistent with himself, lol!

DH is not dyslexic, but he still feels like writing=drawing. His sister is pretty profoundly dyslexic, so I assume DH carries some traits without the full diagnosis. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/17/2020 at 11:39 PM, PeterPan said:

Yup, I have some early writing from my ds that was surprising, and it went down, down, down. It's basically nonfunctional for him. I do think the VMI=visual motor integration is the issue, because his scores on that came back wicked low. We're doing that therapy workbook I linked, and it's amazing how much doesn't click in his mind. So we'll see. Typing also works on VMI. 

The way to bust through the formation issues would be to move him over to cursive. I'm not saying it's in reach either, but just saying. http://www.cursivelogic.com  This is the program I got. I'm just doing everything I can for VMI *first* to get him in a better place.

I have to say, that print looks really nice!

Otherwise, just posting to concur about introducing cursive. We worked with an OT for quite a while on my child's terrible print from somewhere in second to mid third grade and managed to get it from "diagnosably dysgraphic" to "bad". Never really managed to fix letter formation, though. 

But cursive has been a different story. It allowed him to start completely fresh with a system that makes it actively difficult to go too far wrong, as far as letter formation goes. He's somewhere around average now, and shockingly, I can't immediately tell his copywork from his younger sister's. Never would've believed that was possible in the days when she could produce far more beautiful handwriting as a kindergartener than he could in second grade.

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