How to support Y6 DS with writing

[AderynBach]

DS is at "developing" level with his writing according to his latest report, and predicted to be at "developing" by the end of the year. I'd like to be able to help him with this at home a bit as the school don't seem to be doing very much, in fact his previous report had him at "expected" but they haven't raised any concerns or said why it's been revised or what to work on. Weekly homework tends to be a single grammar sheet which he finds quite boring, so I don't see much of his writing really. From looking at books on parent's evenings, what he produces is pretty inconsistent, and spelling is a bit of an issue, which we're working on.

It's tricky because he has both ASD and ADHD and is quite resistant to parental input so we have to approach things quite carefully and not overdo it.

Slightly irrelevant in a way but we live in a grammar county and he passed the 11 plus; I feel I should add this was without formal tutoring but we did do practice most days over the summer (about half an hour a day) - just wanted to clarify as I know there's the over-tutoring worry, and whether a child will then struggle at grammar school. The only reason I mention it really is because I worry his secondary school will look a bit dimly at a "developing" level so I'm hoping I can help give him a boost in his skills and confidence before September.

He's very bright, has an extensive vocabulary and a high reading age (16) but is much better with concrete things than being told to do a piece of creative writing so I feel we may struggle to do much with this but would really welcome any tips or reassurance!

Ds’ handwriting is awful. He types for creative writing and gets marked using that.

Yes, DS handwriting is awful as well 😄. I understand his secondary school has a weekly handwriting improvement club (so I'm guessing he's not alone in this!) and they also use laptops a lot so I'm hoping this will be less of an issue over time. Would this be a significant factor in looking at his writing "level" now or is it mainly content, grammar and spelling they're looking at?

Unfortunately he hates typing (except at home on an old typewriter!) but I think the fact they will all be using laptops means he'll get over that. He's just very stubborn and particular about things!

I would ask his teacher for more detailed feedback so you know which areas to address. They should welcome the parental support and then you can help him in targeting where needed. I used to work as a tutor and the first step would be to assess.

Thanks @jennylamb1, that makes sense. I'll speak to them after Easter. They do tend to be quite vague but hopefully I can get some useful feedback.

I see you mentioned spelling so a game like this- on Y5/6 spelling words would be good. He can do it independently, it's fun and likely to engage him easily. Could adapt to lower year groups if he has bigger gaps on spelling.

https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/spookySpellings/index.html

Definitely speak to the teacher to get specifics - is it the spelling? The lack of sentence structure variety? The amount being written? The ability to structure a paragraph? This will help you focus on what is needed. The the 'like a ninja' books can be useful to target things e.g. 'write like a ninja'. You may need to give him a specific game plan to help him do what he needs yo when writing at school.

Thanks @Depressedbarbie - useful to have some more concrete thoughts and questions to approach the teacher with, and I think I'll order the book.

@AderynBach

Have you tried a writing slope? If he is struggling with the act of writing that may be affecting his inclination to write.

There are lots of writing aids around eg 'fat' pens with better grip.

I did try both in the past but not with much success.

Would it be helpful to post a photo of his writing? I'm in two minds as to whether it's a bit unfair to put it online, although it's not identifying as such and he won't know.

@AderynBach

My son has ASD and also struggled with anything involving writing. His piece of homework on the Titanic is ingrained in my memory.
They were supposed to produce about a page of A4
He wrote
’The Titanic was a very big ship. It hit an iceberg and sank. Lots of people died’
Which I think we can all agree contains all the key information. I can laugh about it now but at the time it was very frustrating as he just did not get the need for additional details.
To be honest once we decided to focus on what he was good at - maths and science- life was a whole heap better.
I’ve also encouraged my son to see whatever stage he was as a stepping stone to the next thing. In 5 years no one will care what GCSE grades he got. He was never going to get more than a 4/5 in English, but he could get 6/7 in maths and science. I got him a bit of extra tutoring to make sure he passed English, but his main focus was on the other ones.
He is now at university doing Computing.
I think my point is, see your son as an individual, don’t focus over much on what he ‘should’ be doing but what he can do and build on those strengths

Hello! Year 6 teacher here.
Writing is assessed by using this TAF and you have to have evidence of all the statements - it used to be best fit back in the day but no longer.
In my experience, children who aren’t yet at ARE (age related) tend to struggle with spellings and with basic punctuation. the composition comes from things we do in class and there should be evidence of them writing dialogue and narratives as well as a variety of other styles and genres. Your child has to have evidence of spelling the Year 3 and 4 statutory spellings in their work Spellings before we can even look at the 5/6 words which they’d need to be expected. 56 words
Their punctuation has to be mostly correct and be the full range of ks2 punctuation (semi colons, colons, inverted commas, parenthesis etc)
It also has to be independent - not from teacher direction or from using spell check on a computer. Bloody frustrating honestly S it turns a lot of children into tick box robots who shoe horn a colon into a sentence without caring what the sentence is. But such is life.
There are allowances which can be made for children who have a specific weakness - dyslexia or EAL children who struggle with tenses / word order but they’re really child and moderator specific in my experience as to whether they can be accepted. Oh and handwriting! Because in secondary they really seem to care about that (spoiler - they do not)

@Margaritawithlime Thank you, this is really helpful.

In my experience, children who aren’t yet at ARE (age related) tend to struggle with spellings and with basic punctuation.

This is probably accurate for DS but it's odd, in the piece of writing I was debating uploading, which was a short questionnaire, he does things like not put a capital letter at the start of an answer to the question which he 100% knows to do. There were a few quite basic spelling mistakes including spelling 'went' as 'whent'; again he absolutely wouldn't struggle to spell the word if asked so it's more like a very rushed/careless approach which I'm thinking is because he doesn't find the task interesting so struggles to concentrate.

A lot of the issue IMO is that he simply doesn't enjoy the writing tasks, it doesn't provide the right type of mental stimulation and at the same time, perhaps struggles with the freeform nature of it. I'm just not sure how I can help with that because it's so embedded in his personality.

On the limited evidence so far, he seems to be one of those kids that actually does better in exams as the pressure seems to switch on that ability to focus properly.

(Obviously spelling a word out of context when asked and using it accurately in a piece of writing are two different skills, but I'm still scratching my head a bit at 'whent'.😁)

@Ted27

Which I think we can all agree contains all the key information. I can laugh about it now but at the time it was very frustrating as he just did not get the need for additional details.
To be honest once we decided to focus on what he was good at - maths and science- life was a whole heap better.

This is where I'm at with it as well really, just having a mini panic atm that on the evidence they have, DS is not at expected standard for his age. English clearly is not his thing but it does concern me that he needs to get up to that level and be confident with it, and ultimately get a respectable English GCSE grade before he can 'move on'. Even then, it's such an important life skill and he's hugely into history, which will require good writing skills if he takes it forward academically. I don't even want to say that to him though because he'll just dig his heels in and decide not to be interested in it anymore!

Not being expected in year 6 will not automatically lead to not being able to get a good GCSE grade.

Year 6 expected includes spelling, grammar and handwriting. If these are weak, you can't be at expected.

GCSE does not work in the same way. You get spelling and grammar marks separate to the main marks, which are predominantly for how you analyze the texts. Therefore if your analysis is excellent, you can mitigate for poor grammar and spelling.

Give him interesting and meaningful writing tasks. Do expect him to do the basics in these, like capital letters. Keep encouraging his reading, as this will help him to analyze texts. Don't panic or overdo it!

This sounds like a few children in my class right now. I KNOW they can spell particular words - sometimes for example they’ll spell things right in their English books but not in their topic (history / geography ) and vice-versa. I also have few ‘whent’ and ‘whith’ cropping up. Bad habits definitely and often rushing to get things done. It’s much harder to unlearn something so if they’ve fallen into a particular spelling pattern it’s hard to re-learn the right one. Also, you’re probably right - he hasn’t found his ‘thing’ to write where he really bloody cares about someone reading it and understanding what he wants to say. Hopefully secondary school will inspire him and he won’t be turned off writing. I really try and encourage my children to write because they have something to say and not get hung up on the technicalities because if they start to think they can’t, they often won’t and that’s such a shame.