DS(8) is doing well at school and his teacher has no major concerns but he struggles with writing. He says it's too hard and it takes too long. He's quite upset about it - he's been in tears about it several times already this term. Both last year and this year his teachers have commented that his compositions are really interesting, use a wide vocabulary, are well punctuated etc. but that they are too short. He says he always tries to express himself as briefly as possible, so that he won't have to write so much. While this has given him excellent precis skills and a promising future as a sub-editor(!), I'm wondering if there's anything we can do to help him.
I mentioned it to his teacher the other day and she recognised it as an issue he has but didn't think it was a problem because he's still doing very well. She did say she'd have a word with the SENCO to see if she could think of anything, but I haven't heard anything back.
Some of the trouble, I think, is that he doesn't form all his letters correctly and he doesn't hold his pen how you are supposed to. But I don't know how you change habits like that when you've been writing for 5 years (he's in Y4). We've tried ever since he started writing and wasn't doing it right, but with very little success. He's beginning to do joined-up writing but he's still at the stage where it's much slower than printing, so he usually prints.
I thought keeping a diary might be a stealth way of getting him to just do more writing at home, but he didn't want to do it, exactly because it would involve more writing.
When I was learning to write in the mid 1970s we had these beautiful pattern books where you practised the strokes that made up the letters - he might go for those but I don't know what they were called or whether modern letter formation is the same.
So any suggestions for things that might help him very welcome. Sorry for long entry - writing lengthily is clearly not a problem he inherits from me (maybe I should get him to precis this post).
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Ideas for helping DS(8) write more quickly and easily
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Lovage · 19/01/2015 09:59
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