How to help Y1 (6 year old boy) with WRITING?

[Giuliettatoday]

Hello,
my ds2 (just turned 6, Y1) is reasonably bright although definitely not 'gifted' and likes maths at school and construction toys. But he is not confident at all with his writing. Btw reading has also not quite 'clicked' yet, he reads ORT stage 4 easily, stage 5 with encouragement.
This lack of confidence affects both the actual spelling of words but also finding ideas what to write.
It's not a problem of fine motor skills, he can physically write, not particularly neatly and sometimes he doesn't write the letters correctly as learned at school, but I think that's more a matter of (lack of) practice.
At school, they're expected to write about a story or fairy tale they've been read and have talked about, sometimes watched on a video - at least partly.
They're not expected to get the spellings right, just encouraged to write as they think the word is spelled.
Ds complains that a) he can't think of how to re-tell the story and b) he doesn't know how to spell the words and insists if he doesn't know how to spell it he won't write it.
If I sit down with him at home and do it bit by bit and give him a lot of guidance (eg. 'what did the king do next?') he does come up with sentences. Then he wants me to write the words down and he copies them. I encourage him to do it on his own(eg. 'which sound does the word start with?' etc.).
He is quite happy to do this at home and proudly shows it the teacher the next day.
But he feels he can't do it without me! He wants constant help otherwise he refuses just because he thinks he can't do it/will make mistakes(although I'm sure he could and I never ever tell him off for making mistakes, quite the opposite, I always praise his work!!).
Now at school he often refuses even to try despite the fact that the teachers are v. nice and encouraging, he sees his friends doing it - on the other hand this might make it even more difficult for him if they're writing loads and he struggles.
I think it's more a lack of confidence than anything else.
He's in a rather good state school with commited teachers but there are 30 children in class so not much time for the teachers to give the children loads of individual attention (which I feel is what he would need, ideally...).
What else can I do to help him? I try to read to him a lot and also try to find out what they're doing at school (which is not always easy I have to say) to be able to read the stories at home with him and talk about them.
I have to say he's bilingual (and yes, I also read in the bilingual category on mn) and surely this makes it more difficult for him as he lacks certain words that would be standard for an English child, however he was born here and has always attended English nursery schools then school.
Would be grateful for any ideas, also (if you have) book/workbook recommendations or internet links on how to make writing fun for children, but still this needs to be clear, not too fussy. His older brother does Kumon English but ds2 only wants to do Kumon maths (which he does happily). Sorry this was long but wanted to give a bit of the background.

Can he tell you the story - as in, speaking, not writing - confidently? If any hesitation, confusion, difficulty with structuring, etc. when he's telling the story out loud I'd focus on that before the writing.

Someone on here found a board game which involved each player picking up a handful of assorted story elements (on cards) and having to tell a story using them. I thought that sounded great practice.

Once he feels completely at ease telling a story out loud, then you can try writing down "headlines" just, leaving the more detailed writing to follow on in due course.

We have a brilliant game called "The Never Ending Story" that helped both mine with their story telling. I don't know if it's still available - we've had ours 8 years and I think it came from a charity shop, but you could make something similar - it has a lot of pictures of all sorts of things and cards with happy, sad, angry and scared faces. The way we play it, we take turns to pull out a card and tell a bit of story, and if we pull out an face card, we change the story to match the "emotion" Lots of fun (for the first half an hour or so!).
BTW Guilietta, have you thought of seeing if you can be a parent helper in the classroom? That might give you a better idea of what he actually does at school. Oh, and my bilingual nephew also found writing difficult - he got confused with the different sounds in his two languages and so was worried about making mistakes. But he's now in year 2 and has completely caught up with his peers.

I'm not sure I can exactly advise on this, GiuliettaToday, but DS3 had similar problems. I tried various clever ideas for sorting out the problem, none of which seemed to work very well, but then one day I found he'd written a story in a little "book" made by folding up sheets of plain paper. So don't give up hope - sometimes things just fall into place - and do leave paper and writing materials lying around.

(He still makes a fuss about homework, or anything I ask him to do, mind - the difference is that I know he can actually do it, which takes the pressure off).

Does the school have a teacher esponsible for EAL children? It depends on how many EAL children there are in the school but their will be a budget and that will be for supporting EAL children. Sounds like an EAL issue to me. Keep on doing everything you are doing and do it in your home language too if he is more confident in that one. Progress in writing always follows progress in speaking which is always worth remembering.

Thanks for all your answers so far.

Bink: yes, sometimes he has trouble telling the story even without writing it down, particularly in English. Must make sure we talk about stories more, so far I've mainly 'just' read to him, but then he was never keen on talking about stories...

Blink & katelyle:
Will try to find a game or similar material, as he likes games. If anyone knows particular games and where I can get them, please do let me know! Couldn't find 'the never ending story' on Ebay but will do further research.

katelyle: I can unfortunately rarely go in as a parent helper, as my youngest son is still at home and for obvious reasons they do not allow toddlers in the classroom. I agree that helping is very enlightening but so far I've only been able to do it once when my inlaws looked after ds3. Hopefully I will be able to go in more once ds starts nursery, but by then ds2 will be in Y2 and I want to help him now.

spudmasher: An EAL was for some reason never mentioned, maybe because ds was born in the UK and has always lived here and has also been to one private and the school nursery. He also had (and still has) selective mutism so that's another big hindrance. He does talk to his friends but rarely to adults he doesn't know really well.
I thought that writing would be less of a problem as he doesn't have to talk when he writes. But I realise it is. School is great in supporting him re the Selective mutism thing but nobody has specifically mentioned the EAL. I feel a bit like a very demanding parent if I mention that to school (as they're already doing quite a lot and also supported ds1 who has different problems very well) but will do some research.

It's very difficult to me to stick to my language (German) when practicing with ds2 as obviously he cannot read and write at all in German yet and I really have to try to get him writing. And it seems he's particularly having trouble retelling a story in English.

Again, thanks for your input and will come back to see if there're more answers later.

Just thought of something else... ask the school if they have ant sequencing cards you could borrow. They are sets of cards with a series of pictures on them. The idea is that you muddle them up, the child has to look at the pictures then order them in the correct sequence. This can then be used to support an oral retelling of the story. Start with three card sets then work up to about 5 cards in a sequence. The subject matter can be dull though e.g. getting ready for school.....

not ant sequencing cards, any sequencing cards. Blimey, and they let me teach??!!

Giulietta, good advice here. I was thinking about Consequences myself, too.

My ds was/is like this too - he's in Yr3, so cat64's experience is heartening. As well as talking around stories when reading, I also make sure that my ds knows certain familiar stories thoroughly - fairy tales & Aesop's fables work specially well for this; if you're a churchgoing family Bible stories would be ideal too - and then I get him to retell them to me (or to his little sister, that works very well - she spots instantly where a bit of vital information has been left out). Then later on you can do things like change the ending, or the setting.

ds was like this at 6. I eventually asked for an assessment and it turned out he was dyslexic. This may be worth investigating.

He struggled with letter formation, expression (on paper), and had dreadful handwriting.

The assessment threw up the fact that he did have fine motor skill problems which were not evident in day to day life, and had gone completely unoticed by everyone. Boys often struggle with handwriting, and massaging thier palms and hands for 30 mins each day is supposed to help.

Ds is now in Year 8, and handwriting has improved dramatically in last year. I think it is just a practice thing, he does a lot of writing now!

I think they all develop at their own pace and your ds will get there eventually, but it may be worth having an assessment as from what you say his confidence is being affected.

Hope this helps

This is common amongst at least 20% of my Y1 EAL class (esp. the boys).
The things we do to encourage them are as follows:
lots of speaking (in English) and listening activities. Getting the child to speak to you, modelling the sentence back to them etc. Even sitting with a book and not reading the words but 'let's tell the story of this book by looking at the pictures'.
Many children also freeze a bit when faced with the empty page, or at the concept of committing something to paper. Wipeable whiteboards are great for this because somehow it is not so serious psychologically for the child if they make a mistake. We also do sentence frames, where there might be a picture and then below a 'fill in the blank' sentence.
Familiar traditional tales (gingerbread man, 3 little pigs etc) are good too because they are easy to re-tell. Read together, re-tell it together, have him re-tell it, act it out, (fun to be the wolf!) etc. I know that these are not specific writing activites necessarily, but it will help with forming sentences in his head and also with the 'beginning, middle, end' concept of stories, which will help him in his writing. He really needs to be able to say them before he can write them.
We also do things like give pictures of CVC objects (consonent, vowel, consonent eg. cat, hat, zip, pot etc) and ask the child to form the word out of letter tiles and then ask them to write it. That can then be extended by putting that word in a sentence, verbally or in writing.
Another thing is sometimes we have students write a series of simple sentences over a period of time. Eg. day 1 would be 'I like the dog'. Day 2 'I like the cat' Day 3 'I like the ....' etc. Week 2, I play in the park, I play in the ... etc. I know it sounds boring, but it gives them a sense of sentence structure, and also a security that they can form a simple sentence.
If I had someone unwilling to commit anything to paper, I would probably start doing some shared writing together (commenting all the time on it) and then give them one of those CVC picture cards and say, "I want you to write the first sound of this for me, I just have to go and see so and so, I will come back in a minute" Big praise when they have managed 1st sound independently and carry on, building it up until they can write the whole word independently.
Also, how good is his phonics? Being able to spell well is very phonics dependent. If he knows his letter sounds really well, that will help him writing words.
Bit of a ramble, but hope it helps!

Just a plea - to parents and teachers on here. Please don't expect too much of them - they're only little still and in lots of countries wouldn't even be in formal eduaction yet! Boys in particular have huge amounts of energy and a matching huge need for exercise that sometimes gets forgotten in the need to meet targets, pass SATS and so on. And (oohhh controversial point coming up!!!!!) I sometimes wonder whether the classroom environment puts too much emphasis on the traditional "girl" strengths, like sitting still and being neat and using fine motor skills. My ds will happily sit at home and write (wildly inaccurately!) lists of the names of footballers on his Shootout cards, but he finds it hard to write what he's asked to write at school. He had to rewrite The Three Little Pigs last week, but he didn't want to because "Miss R's got the book already - she read it to us. Why does she want lots more of them?" They will get there - just give them time! And maybe think of ways of engaging their interest. What's wrong with letting the boys write about football or Power Rangers or whatever instead of a one size fits all task. Sorry about the essay - I got carried away!