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Original poster

Seriously worried about ds's writing - so weak. What to do?

28 replies

nicoleshitzinger · 29/09/2015 12:10

DS has just started in year 7. He's a September birthday, so has just turned 12. His writing has always been his weakest subject and I have to confess we've not really dealt with it at home, just left it for his primary school to work on. My only excuse for not doing it is that we've had a lot of problems with his older sister, and he has a younger autistic brother who's hard work, and that most of my available effort and time has gone to supporting him with his music learning and practice. He's been so resistant to tackling his weak writing that I've not found the strength to get round it.

He left primary with a 4a in his writing, which is not good for a bright child who is one of the oldest in the year. (I'm assuming he's reasonably bright - he's got a high reading age, plays two instruments at grade 5, and got a 6 in his maths SATS with no input from us). I'm flogging myself about it now as the chickens seem to be coming home to roost. He's struggling with homework and getting himself into a real stew about doing it. His sentence construction and punctuation is weak, and he doesn't seem to be willing (or know how) to develop his ideas on paper.

The awful thing is that I was an English teacher for 10 years, and I've simply done fuck all with him to sit down and work with him to address this issue in a systematic way - basically because he's so resistant to being told anything or to being made to stick at a task. It's hard enough just getting him to do his music practice and basic homework, let alone additional work on top of this.

I appreciate the view that children should start being independent with homework and that it shouldn't involve a lot of parental input, but if we don't intervene he would be happy to always do the absolute bare minimum, and do it very badly at that.

I'm now sitting down to help him with his homework every night and every time it's ending up with him shrieking and thundering out of the room in response to being asked to do more than the absolute crap minimum. An example - 3 weeks ago he was set a task to write a diary entry describing a day in the life of a perfect citizen. He started it last night, wrote about 100 words in huge type, and said 'I've done it'. I read it through and there were literally 2 or three mistakes in every line - mainly failure to use capitals, sentencing errors, and missing words. He also hadn't developed any of his ideas at all.

I asked him to print it off and we would go through it and make the corrections together and talk about what more we could add to it. His response was to shout and storm off. Apparently I think his work is 'crap' and it's not fair because he tried really hard. I know that he didn't try hard. Or maybe that he doesn't know what 'trying hard' means. It doesn't mean dashing something off in 15 minutes, not reading it through or making any corrections.

Wondering if anyone else has been in this situation and managed to help their child make big strides with their literacy, and what it would take. I know a tutoring session with a qualified teacher would help, but can't justify the money when I can do it myself - if he lets me!

OP posts:
Original poster
nicoleshitzinger · 29/09/2015 12:43

Re: agreeing length, I think one of the problems is that it's not being specified in many of the homework tasks. I think I need to talk to his teachers and ask them to be very specific about what's required.

Problem is that he'll ALWAYS take the least challenging option. So if the task says 'at least one paragraph' he'll just write one paragraph. If there's an extension suggestions (there usually is) he'll ignore it, because he thinks that's for the 'swotty' children.

OP posts:
Original poster
nicoleshitzinger · 29/09/2015 12:40

"Her dictating to me, I write it down, she copies out. This helped with adding detail as she didn't have to concentrate on thinking and writing at the same time"

I find this really, really helpful.

I agree with what you're saying about punctuation etc, but that necessitates doing the piece quite a long way before the deadline, so we can come back to it separately and address it. Problem is that he's not doing the homework on the night it's set so he's rushing it. I think this is something we'll have to deal with.

OP posts:
TeenAndTween · 29/09/2015 12:28

DD1 struggles/struggles with writing, both the physical aspects and thinking of ideas. Assessed to have dyspraxia finally in y11.

Anyway here are things we tried, all of which helped to some extent:

  1. Her dictating to me, I write it down, she copies out. This helped with adding detail as she didn't have to concentrate on thinking and writing at the same time

  2. Planning work in advance, using bullet points or mind maps. Again she saw the main points and then also the added detail before starting to write. We would review the plan before the writing to ensure enough was included.

  3. Not focussing on both content and spelling/punctuation in the same piece of work. For each work choose one or the other to start with. Otherwise you are nagging about everything.

  4. Agreeing expectation with respect to length in advance. e.g. Must be 200-250 words long.

  5. Discussing how to extend ideas. e.g. using because or for example. Or saying only one point in any sentence, not accidentally saying everything all in one go. basic Point, Evidence Explain really.