Difficulty with copy work in an older student?

[Caroline4kids]

I am about ready to pull my hair out and I am starting to think that I am failing as a teacher with this child. He is nine years old and his spelling is horrible. He cannot even copy words correctly. He is doing Latina Christana 1 this year and I have him copy each lesson three times during the week. He misses at least 4-5 words each time even when copying directly out of the text! In addition to this he kills the paper with how hard he writes.

 

We have been doing copy work and dictation for years with not a whole lot of marked improvement.

 

I am starting to wonder if there is some learning impairment. What could the problem be if he cannot copy well?

 

He knows all the Shurley English jingles and can parse a sentence quite well, so I know he has digested grammar.

 

I did an oral quiz today for latin and he didn't know hardly anything and yet he had copied the lesson 4 times, worked on his cards, and did the DVD lesson with me.

 

Please, I need ideas or I am going to go crazy. Language arts is just plain hard and I don't know how to help him progress.

[MerryAtHope]

I would have him first read the passage to you. Make sure he knows all of the words. See if he can discuss what it means with you. Talk about hard to spell words or patterns that you notice he has struggled with in the past, whether they are vowel team phonograms or whatever.

 

One thing I found with my son was that he used to try to copy by saying letter names to himself. Trying to spell words and remember what order the letters come in that way is like trying to memorize thousands of phone numbers--it's not a workable approach for spelling. Instead what you want is for him to say sounds while he copies. You want him to work up to syllable chunks and entire words this way. A Language Therapist said that kids who don't have a strong internal auditory voice will be resistant to doing this, but that's a sign they really need this practice.

 

You may find that there are some gaps in his knowledge of phonograms as you do it, he may not know all of them.

 

Just some thoughts, Merry :-)

[Hilary in MI]

I second the excellent thoughts above.

 

I'd just add that some kids have a very hard time looking from paper to paper. It may help for him to keep a finger under the word he is copying. He may have to use a clipboard to hold his "working" paper, as he won't have a hand free to steady it.

[Angel]

I would second the visual processing problems, and also add fine motor skills problems. My dd had horrible fine motor skills issues when she was younger and her paper was always a wreck. She also had trouble copying from the board (when she was in school) or from a book, actually, she still struggles a little with this. It definitely wouldn't hurt to get it checked out. The sooner you know IF there is a problem, the sooner you can help him.

[Alana in Canada]

You tested him orally, yet he had written everything out. That's one modality for learning (with which it sounds like he has trouble) and another for "testing."

 

If you had given him flashcards with pictures of his vocabulary words--would he have been able to tell you what they were?

 

What if you gave him the word--written down--and asked him to draw a picture?

 

There are lots of different "ways" to get the info "in" and the info "out." Good luck!

 

Cathy Duffy's 100 Top Picks for Homeschooling was a great introduction to all this for me.

[MerryAtHope]

I'd look into dyslexia too, trouble copying is classic for that. This site has a good list of symptoms/warning signs and a lot of info in the videos too.

 

Merry :-)

[inashoe]

My ds10 has the same difficulties. I am always amazed how a word can be in front of him and yet he still copies it wrong, and then the second time he copies it wrong in a different way ! :banghead: English, Latin, his spelling is atrocious.

 

Are your son's difficulties with Latin only, or also English spelling ?

How is your son with reading and comprehension ? Mine is an avid reader and I have recently found out that the avid readers can be the worst spellers - they skim and so don't notice the details.

I think you are mentioning two different difficulties, one is spelling (copying) and the other is remembering the Latin words - is that correct ?

 

Remembering the words in Latin :

Do you know if your son is an auditory learner ? If so, then you might find it helpful to have him read the Latin words aloud instead of just copying them. Do you use the Latina Chrstiana 1 CD ? This is helpful for an auditory learner.

 

I have my son go through the flashcards for Latin everyday - all of the flashcards done so far. He is on LC2 so he has to go through all of the flashcards from LC1 as well. Everyday. This is helping him tremendously with retaining the words.

 

Spelling :

Andrew Peduwa of IEW has been helpful in understanding poor spellers. He has a CD about teaching spelling.

 

I haven't even started on dictation with my ds and he is ten - he can't even copy correctly, how can he possibly take down dictation.

 

I correct his Latin spelling when it is wrong, but I don't make him rewrite it. Latin is painful enough for him. I am much more concerned about his English spelling and put more effort into getting him to spell English correctly.

Edited January 4, 2009 by inashoe

[RootAnn]

I would at least look into a visual processing problem. How about learning style? It would seem that he doesn't learn by copying. Have you tried drilling orally, acting out the words, making the words with playdough, other games?

:iagree: Many of the items you listed sound like they could be visual processing issues. A possible Vision Therapy Evaluation?

[Caroline4kids]

My ds10 has the same difficulties. I am always amazed how a word can be in front of him and yet he still copies it wrong, and then the second time he copies it wrong in a different way ! :banghead: English, Latin, his spelling is atrocious.

 

Are your son's difficulties with Latin only, or also English spelling ?

How is your son with reading and comprehension ? Mine is an avid reader and I have recently found out that the avid readers can be the worst spellers - they skim and so don't notice the details.

I think you are mentioning two different difficulties, one is spelling (copying) and the other is remembering the Latin words - is that correct ?

 

Remembering the words in Latin :

Do you know if your son is an auditory learner ? If so, then you might find it helpful to have him read the Latin words aloud instead of just copying them. Do you use the Latina Chrstiana 1 CD ? This is helpful for an auditory learner.

 

I have my son go through the flashcards for Latin everyday - all of the flashcards done so far. He is on LC2 so he has to go through all of the flashcards from LC1 as well. Everyday. This is helping him tremendously with retaining the words.

 

Spelling :

Andrew Peduwa of IEW has been helpful in understanding poor spellers. He has a CD about teaching spelling.

 

I haven't even started on dictation with my ds and he is ten - he can't even copy correctly, how can he possibly take down dictation.

 

I correct his Latin spelling when it is wrong, but I don't make him rewrite it. Latin is painful enough for him. I am much more concerned about his English spelling and put more effort into getting him to spell English correctly.

 

 

I have to say this is most comforting. I have been quite block headed about seeing my children as individuals and I have the abhorent habit of putting them all in one basket. I believe I may have an auditory learner who is on the artistic side--he can copy a picture far better than he can copy words. He would rather have his teeth drilled than drill phonics.

 

Latin is fine for him outiside of copying the lesson and he does have difficulty with both English and Latin, not just Latin.

 

I have to not be so hard on him as he may have something wrong, if not dyslexia strait out. The idea that he may not be processing things correctly did not come to mind until this week. I assumed it was just laziness. I have been a horrible teacher!:sad: However, I can change that.

 

He is a bright boy and this is is why I thought constant copywork would just make it get better.

 

At least "tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it."

[Mom0012]

Caroline -

 

You might try a mechanical pencil so that he won't push down so hard when he writes. It takes a little getting used to, but that has helped my son a lot. If they push really hard like that, it will make their hand tire quickly and they won't want to write much.

 

Lisa

[inashoe]

A quick eval you can do to see if he is an auditory or visual learner :

 

show him a one digit number - take it away, then ask him to repeat it to you.

then show him him a two digit number - take it away, then ask him to repeat it to you - as digits, not as a number, so if you wrote 45, then you want him to say four-five, not forty five.

then a three digit number and so on until he makes an error.

Note the highest number of digits he got to without an error.

 

Now you are going to do the same, only orally.

Say a digit to him, then ask him to repeat it back to you.

then say two digits to him (say this in digits, not in hundreds, tens and ones), so if your number is :13 then say one-three, not thirteen.

keep adding another digit until he makes an error.

Note the highest number of digits he got to without an error.

 

Be sure the numbers are completely random.

Don't use the same number, only adding an extra digit. In other words, if your first number was 6, then don't make your second number 64 and the third 642.

Rather have say 5 as your first, 89 as your second, 476 as your third etc.

 

 

Compare for which method he got a higher score.

 

You will have many other clues to show you if he is an auditory learner. Such as when you read aloud from a book he shows incredible retention of the facts and can narrate back well.

 

We aren't even trying to get Latin spelling perfect. It would be very nice if we could , but he can't even spell English correctly. If your son is an auditory learner, then you could have him spell the words out aloud before he writes it. Andrew Peduwa explains how the letters need to be stored in his brain one by one in sequence and hearing them aloud helps with this.

 

 

Many 9 and 10 year old boys are still struggling with a few basics, such as accurate copying and spelling at this age. Be encouraged that yours is not the only one.

[Peela]

My ds13 is dyslexic and it hasnt really ocurred to me to have him memorise things by writing them- for him, writing takes so much concentration just to form the letters, it would be fairly pointless as a medium for memorisation. However, he has great memorisation and learning ability when we do things orally/aurally. In order to have him move forward in most areas, we have done a lot orally, while working on writing skills at whatever level he could manage.

Btw, he was only diagnosed dyslexic a year ago when he was 12- it could have saved both of us a fair amount of stress to have the dx before then.