Extra time in exams or keyboard for DS?

[Fridayschild]

DS has always found writing very hard physical work and as a result is not writing enough in his exams. School are suggesting a meeting to talk about either extra time or a keyboard. Does any one have any views or experience of this?

He is in year 5 at a prep school and could use a keyboard for common entrance. What about GCSEs?

Unless He's as good a typist as my DSIS* won't he need an extra time and a key board.

• DSIS used to type for a living, she can copy type and talk to you about something else. It's most unnerving.

School boy typing isn't going to be as quick as writing.

He would need to do a touch typing course over the summer. I have a friend who is an occupational therapist and she says they are available for children, mainly aimed at dyslexics.

If he can get his speed up then definitely the keyboard route. There are also software programmes that will learn a child's writing style and suggest words which again will increase his speed. Ask for extra time as well. Universities are now looking at allowing people to type in exams as it allows students who struggle with writing to show what they have learnt.

Thanks!

Ds has had extra time and a computer since he was diagnosed in yr 9. Basically they tested him and his typing peed was faster than his writing speed. No need to be copy typist speed as generally you are writing for yourself and not copying. But yes all the various packages help increase speed, as does time and practice.

Thank you, I will gear up to pushy parent mode and see if there is any chance of both!

A good touch-typing course now would be a worthwhile investment. He needs to be able to type faster than he can write, and to do it fluently enough that he is thinking about what he is writing, no where his fingers go.

He also needs to use it in the classroom (for everything that involves extended writing tasks) and have good organisational skills to put his work into suitable folders and to remember to back it up. So quite a bit to get used to. If he can do this, then you coukd use exams in Nivember as a practice.

Will he be sitting pre-tests?

DS has both keyboard & extra time because of dyslexia & severely slow processing skills. His typing speed was poor in year 5, but by the time he did CE, he was fast enough to complete his papers & that's without a touch typing course!

My ds learnt to type in about y5 - helpful for him as he's very dyslexic. However, he's just done GCSEs and opted for extra time instead - he gets 50% or 30% and a reader - as he prefers pen and paper. He did both as normal classroom practice so he could choose closer to the time. He finds keyboard distracts him from learning apparently.

Ds1 has just done GCSEs and for essay based subjects used laptop and had 25% extra time so it's not necessarily an either/or decision

When his writing is legible it's painfully slow - he had to do a typing test to prove that it was faster for him (would have been hard for it to be any slower ...) and he has processing issues which mean it takes longer for him to organise his thoughts on an exam situation

Ds2 has dyspraxia and uses a laptop all the time so his touch typing is amazingly fast - he uses a keyboard in exams but hasn't so far been given extra time and probably won't in the future

Thank you all for these further comments.

Yes, there will be two pre-tests on our current thinking. He will need to write his science paper for common entrance but the current school tells me he can use a lap top for the pre-tests.

DS is unlikely to get extra time. There seems to be no issue with the processing skills, just the maintaining focus on boring old school work writing it down . His writing is slow enough at the moment to qualify for extra time, but only just, and school think he will get fast enough to lose the extra time in the next year or so. I'll keep an eye on that though.

FWIW school will lend him a laptop to use in class and he can use my laptop at home, so we have a zero cost option to trial for a term if he gets up to say 20 WPM over the holidays. The carrot will then be his very own laptop at Christmas time if it works for him. I am sure we get exams in the autumn term in year 6 because there will be pre-tests for some boys in January.