How can I help Ds improve creative writing

[TheWordsmithsApprentice]

DS is 11 (primary school) and has ASD. He is not working at the same level as the other kids in his class, he has difficulty writing, both physically and putting words on paper.
Rather surprisingly, he sat down and wrote a story for me yesterday. 5 sides of A4, he writes 3-4 words on a line.
He said this morning that he had difficulty with punctuation; there are no speech marks, rarely uses capital letters in the right place and often misses out full stops. This I know how to work on. Spelling also.

His story is along the lines of:
There were too bears , one called Tim and the other Tom. Then Tim said to Tom I’m hungry me too. Then Tom said let’s steal a picnic oh yes said Tim. And then they set off. After two hours tim and Tom found a picnic spot. The family got scared and Tim and Tom looked at the picnic and ate until they were full and ran away. And they ran until sunset. They were tired and slept. On the next day they ran more and stole cake from a box on the picnic table and then ran more and at lunch time they were hungry
That’s the first 2.5 pages, the second half is basically a repetition.

I don’t know if I should just leave it. I don’t want to risk upsetting him, on the other hand, he is going to need to write stories at school this year.
How do I go about helping him improve?

Does he read a good amount? Short fiction - adventure books, novels... I wouldn't be sooo worried about punctuation especially if he's somewhat behind for his age group, but his vocabulary seems fairly limited.

He needs to be learning lots and lots of new words, and they all come from reading. The more he reads, the better he will write (in principle).

First he has done this off his own bat in the holidays.
So praise don't criticise it.

Second - can he do 'better' stories if he dictates them rather than having to think about writing at the same time? Then you can work on creativity separately to the mechanics.

Can you play sentence expanding games with him?
The cat sat.
the cat sat on the mat.
The tired cat sat on the red mat.
The tired cat sat on the soft red mat for two hours.
Whilst the sun was shining, the tired cat sat on the soft red mat for two hours.

Would he be better off with a laptop?

Read to him or use audio books. Ensure he has a good knowledge of fairy tales, myths and legends because the structure of these will show him how to write a story. Point out a story has a beginning, a middle and an end and go from there. You could get him to model, for instance, Jack and the Beanstalk only set in modern times. Is there a giant or is the giant representing fear? This might be a starting point.

He's 11. I wouldn't critique what he's writing at all at this stage. Just encourage his creativity and praise him when he writes stories.

The grammar will come as he goes along. The risk of trying to shape what he's doing is that it becomes a task that he has to do and he resents doing it.

Your lad sounds wonderful. I'd be very proud.

Yeah, I'd echo pp. Lots of reading and audio books to help with vocab. And also, some reading together so that you can gently point out things. Like see what the author did there! Isn't it clever/funny/sad. Or, wow, that's an interesting word. Can you think of any other interesting words/words that could be used instead. Etc.

Also, does he have a thesaurus? My almost 10 year old quite often dips into his.

It sounds like a good story tbh! Adventure, peril, creative to call the bears Tim and Tom. I like it!

On thing that has helped my DD is looking at pictures in books and getting her to explain what she thinks is going on, so describing how the people look, the colours in the pictures, if he thinks someone is happy what names him think that (facial expressions, body language etc). I’ve found the more she can describe and infer from her own reading the better her descriptive writing is.

Also don’t read books with him that are too advanced, check his ability to decode the words, his understanding of what’s happening and his ability to draw conclusions or make inferences based on what’s written - actually being able to read the words is a small part of literacy, the other bits will help his creative writing.

I also use story dice to help my DD think of stories verbally which she can then write about.

Find something that engages him to read. Keep trying, set time aside for reading , ie read for 1/2 hour before tv goes on or whatever until it becomes a habit. Could be a graphic novel or funny book, there are loads of books aimed at his demographic. Maybe go to library and choose a few.
Could get him to write stories about things he's interested in? Dinosaurs, sci-fi? Super heroes? Animals? Or get him to describe an Xbox game or adventure? Recreate a tv program he likes?
Key is he needs to be interested in the subject

He doesn't like reading fiction at all. He will under duress, but resists. He will read fact books to us and spends hours looking at them. We've never been really sure if he reads them or just looks at them but he must read parts them because he was telling me all about air bladders and buoyancy (totally mispronounced and took me a minute to figure out what he means).
We read fiction to him every night ~30 mins.

but his vocabulary seems fairly limited.
That's what struck me. He has a much wider vocabulary when speaking.

First he has done this off his own bat in the holidays
It's not the holidays, they went back this week. The deal is he does 30 mins of main subjects over the week for his screen time at the weekend!
Would he be better off with a laptop?
He's not allowed one at school, I did argue for one and they let him try but he has difficulty with the physical aspect of typing.

Can you play sentence expanding games with him?
That's a brilliant idea. We have a story book with one like that in and they both always loved it! They could potentially even do that together.

I do have a massive thesaurus, but they've never looked at it. They have the storytellers' dictionary which he often sits and flicks through.

He loves looking at comic type books like Asterix and Tintin, because he's a very visual learner. But we've just had a message from his TA to ask I to stop giving him those and get him to read "proper" books instead

Oh story dice! I bought some of this to take away this summer but we had to cancel our holiday. Good idea.

I would definitely try decoupling the creative side from the writing. My DD1 has dyspraxia and it helped her a lot. She dictated an answer, I wrote ir down. Then I dictated her answer back to her and she wrote it thinking about the spelling and punctuation.

I recently bought Story Dice from Tiger for DD10 (also ASD and has a strong creative side), it means her stories are the most random things I’ve ever read

That’s really unhelpful advice from the Ta. All the information shows that reluctant readers benefit from graphic novels. The pictures give them clues and are more visually interesting than lines of text. Keep on with the graphic novels. There are lots out there and the fantasy element of a lot of them is good for developing imagination.
It also could be with contacting a speech and language charity like Afasic for some help with his speech.

@TeenMinusTests

First he has done this off his own bat in the holidays. So praise don't criticise it.

Second - can he do 'better' stories if he dictates them rather than having to think about writing at the same time? Then you can work on creativity separately to the mechanics.

Can you play sentence expanding games with him?
The cat sat.
the cat sat on the mat.
The tired cat sat on the red mat.
The tired cat sat on the soft red mat for two hours.
Whilst the sun was shining, the tired cat sat on the soft red mat for two hours.

Would he be better off with a laptop?

Exactly. What is the school going. What is his reading age. Is any English tutor a possibility. My youngest is 7 with an EHCP in the main for English and word processing but he can do capital letters and full stops. The cgp guides are good but we do them over and over - so he has done 5 English workbooks for aged 5-6 6/7 etc skills builder etc Just noticed his English capital letters, knowing a noun etc are all much better but the handwriting is shocking so when we finished the next English book and he gets home from his holiday next week he’s got the reception cgp handwriting books to do alongside year 1/2 English.

Mine is a little younger than yours but don’t be afraid you go back - if the ks3 year 7 is too hard go back to year 2/3 and work up. If after one activity book you don’t feel that he’s got it - either go back a year younger or get another one of the same age pm me if you want more help as this is my daily life!!

Has it got an ehcp? Mine can not do more than 20 mins so we do 15 minutes work 15 minutes play but he thinks it is play we sit on the floor with a bean bag I say dog and throw it to him he says brown dog and throws it back I say big brown dog and he says big brown fluffy dog and just change it up. I’ll probably get flammed on here but I do 2 hours a day in holidays and weekends (common exception spellings etc ) and we do minimum of an hour a day in term time but it’s working was 2-3 years behind and now is 4-6 months behind his peers

Sorry what is the school doing? 1-2-1 support applying for EHCP extra English tutoring or if you can afford it get your own

I teach autistic children of this age group in a specialist setting.

I teach them a 'formula' for writing a story and practise each element with them through lots of modelled and shared writing.

Opening: main character(s) doing something normal for them. Character description. Setting description.

Build up: character(s) set off to do something 'normal'. Something unusual happens- character(s) shrug it off.

Climax: something dangerous/ difficult happens to characters.

Resolution: story gets back to (potentially new) 'normal.

I find that for autistic pupils, if they can learn a fairly rigid structure for how a story is going to play out, it then frees them up to think more about sentence structure and writing for effect. I teach them a standard formula for an opening sentence too, as just getting started is often a barrier, and to use time connective to move from section to section. Paragraphing sorts itself as each section is one, maybe two, paragraphs.

However, I do sometimes wonder why I bother with all this as they barely write a 'story' again once they go to secondary school.

I can't understand that about taking his comic books away if they engage him. You can build to ones with more words in, and amazing graphic novels. He's seeing creative stories, maybe get him to write a favourite asterisk book as a story?

What is his reading age. Is any English tutor a possibility

I’d echo this if it’s a possibility for you. My DD has complex learning needs and her reading age and comprehension has improved hugely working with a tutor who specialises in complex needs - I’ve also learned how to support her learning, which doesn’t remotely reflect what’s happening for her in mainstream school even with additional support. Half an hour of focussed 1:1 time geared specifically for her particular way of learning, with little and often homework, has made the world of a difference to her.

It's the content that is the most worrying for an 11 year old.
I agree with exposing him to more fiction - that could be audio books, or you reading aloud to or with him. It could be watching and discussing films or tv shows.
Discussion could be around the structure , ask and talk about these questions: What is the main point here, what is the problem? How is it resolved? Who is the protagonist? Why is he doing that? What do you think the writer /director is trying to tell us? And more basic issues around description - setting is an easy place to start. For example, if it's in a forest, what does it look like? What is the atmosphere? what can you see/hear/feel? What sort of trees are there? Any wildlife?
Children with ASD often find imagining scenes really difficult. They don't always visualise, which is what a writer needs to to do. So you can help by talking through it - you don't even need to write it to start with. You could even practice describing actual scenes in front of you. Get him able to visualise and describe detail, and the rest will fall into place eventually.

Id praise him and discuss the characters/story to try to keep his enthusiasm.

It seems like there are several different challenges, from physical writing, to punctuation, to written vocabulary. He's being limited by trying to face them all simultaneously. My instinct would be to try to separate them out, so he can enjoy learning each without being impeded by the others.

I'd give him a laptop so he can produce longer stories without struggling with physical issues. And if his spoken vocabulary is better than written, let him tell stories verbally, maybe even record them if he finds it fun - then he can play around with narrative and words without having to laboriously get it down on paper.

@2reefsin30knots

I teach autistic children of this age group in a specialist setting.

I teach them a 'formula' for writing a story and practise each element with them through lots of modelled and shared writing.

Opening: main character(s) doing something normal for them. Character description. Setting description.

Build up: character(s) set off to do something 'normal'. Something unusual happens- character(s) shrug it off.

Climax: something dangerous/ difficult happens to characters.

Resolution: story gets back to (potentially new) 'normal.

I find that for autistic pupils, if they can learn a fairly rigid structure for how a story is going to play out, it then frees them up to think more about sentence structure and writing for effect. I teach them a standard formula for an opening sentence too, as just getting started is often a barrier, and to use time connective to move from section to section. Paragraphing sorts itself as each section is one, maybe two, paragraphs.

However, I do sometimes wonder why I bother with all this as they barely write a 'story' again once they go to secondary school.

I really like that structure, particularly the showing the character doing something normal!

Would he enjoy story-style non-fiction? Like reading about the adventures of arctic explorers and astronauts?

I'd give him a laptop so he can produce longer stories without struggling with physical issues
He also finds it quite hard to coordinate the fingers to type so switching for a laptop doesn't eliminate physical issues unfortunately.

Yes, I have been trying to get him to think up some "stock" stories. He struggles with the openness of "write 3 pages about whatever you want" tasks.

That’s really unhelpful advice from the Ta. All the information shows that reluctant readers benefit from graphic novels.
I must admit, I thought this too.

It also could be with contacting a speech and language charity like Afasic for some help with his speech.
He's just been discharged from speech therapy after 5 years. They said he has made huge progress and now his difficulties are more linked to general ASD/concentration issues and rather than what they can help with.

Spoken stories might be a great way forward, especially as his spoken vocab is so far in advance of his written vocal. With a laptop, he might be able to dictate to produce printed stories?
If you tell him a story, can he summarise it back to you?
As well as reading to your DS, would you and he be able to make up stories together?
Oracy is seen as important in schools now as well as literacy.
One of our DC has dyslexia and coloured glasses and dictating were very helpful. He now reads Manga for pleasure!