Helping a Yr1 with writing

[Swedes2]

My DD spends a lot of time writing stories at home. Her vocabulary is excellent and her stories are creative and full of interesting facts and observations. BUT. Her writing is poor. She often confuses d and b and does S the wrong way round a lot. I don't think her writing has improved at all since she's been at school. Also she doesn't leave any space between words so reading back is impossible a bit of a challenge.

How can I help her improve? I'd be really grateful for any good ideas. I must admit I've been waiting for the teachers to help her with this, but it's becoming obvious that it isn't going to happen. So what do I correct and what do I ignore? I don't want to discourage her story-writing AT ALL so I'm reluctant to wade-in with my untrained advice.

PS What do they do at school all day?

Do you know for sure that the teachers aren't doing anything? Y1 DD has frequent handwriting sessions, but I wouldn't know this from talking to her.

Her letters are fine, but she reverses a lot of her numbers and I know the school HAVE worked on this with her. I tend to point out the odd number that is wrong, but not all the time so as not to disturb the flow as it were.

My ds is in y1 and considered average. He gets a lot of letters like d/b g/p/q muddled which is very common. He writes as little as he can get away with- certainly no interesting facts or observations yet.

He uses full stops and spaces but has atrocious letter formation so I focus on that.

He does a lot of writing at school and even in the 7 weeks since he started Y1, it's looking neater and more phonetically plausible than in Reception.

I'd concentrate on the spacing as that is what makes the biggest difference to being able to read her work back. Dt2 is a bit lazy and a rusher, and we had to stand over him for a while going, finger space, fingerspAce FINGERSPACE dt2!!

I'd work on that to start with and hopefully the letters will start to come with time.

Do you know, my DS is like this. I raised it at parents' evening and was presented with his school exercise books, in which he had handwritten beautifully! It seems concentration isn't as good at home...

carzygraceieuk - That sounds heartening. It sounds as though you know what's going on and you also know he's improving.

I'm not worried about the letter reversal thing, but just wondering how often should it be corrected? If at all.

I have two older sons who went to a v different school, and I must admit with them I let school do all the teaching and correcting which left me with the very easy job of just encouraging and supporting. This school is v v different.

BelleEnd Interesting. I looked at DD's school books at parents' evening and I was shocked at how little was in them.

HopsTheDuck - Yes the spacing is v important. It would feel so nice for her to get the spacing thing.

She will get it the more she reads. Ignore and do not dampen her enthusiasm for her creative efforts.

Letter reversal is normal up to age 7/8 and usually sorts itself out with more and more exposure to reading. Same goes for spaces between words. Sit with her and read books to her so she can see the text as you read, pointing to each word as you go along. Let osmosis do its thing.

How is her reading?

Bear in mind that many countries do not even start teaching children to read until Y1, let alone write.

matanxiety I read to her a lot. And I always move along the text with my index finger and have done so since she was teensy. Her reading is poor, very poor relative to her verbal intelligence. It just hasn't clicked for her at all yet, again she hasn't improved at all since she joined school in reception: she could already read a bit when she started school.

How is her fine motor control? If you do a quick search on here for ' improving fine motor skills' you'll see lots of suggestions (possibly many from mrz, tethersend, poss moondog too).
If she struggles with FMC, her writing is unlikely to improve no matter how hard she tries.

Ah, reading is weak too... dyslexia? [Evil labelling poster]

At parents' evening I asked about dyslexia and the class teacher said she has no flags for dyslexia.

So her reading hasn't really improved at all since beginning Reception? What have school said/done about this? I realise he is still young, but one would expect some improvement in 15mo... especially as she was already starting from an advantage of recognising letters, and linking sounds.

I am wondering about maybe poor eye-hand co-ordination- is this a possibility. Can she thread beads okay? (small beads now, not the cotton-reel sized one)

Have you had her eyes tested at all?

(Forgive me if I'm teaching you to suck eggs here) What are her literacy targets for this term/last term?

Take a look at this.

The DCs used a little ice pop stick to indicate the space between words. It was laborious and the spaces seemed far too big but they got the hang of it.

Can she tie shoelaces?

She can't tie shoelaces, but I feel she would be able to if she had shoes of that type (she would be appalled ). She gets d and b mixed up but then lots of 5 year olds do that. I don't honestly feel she's dyslexic. Ny gut instinct is she isn't being taught at school. I don't think school have noticed she's not really acheiving as they just make stuff up. At the end of reception they had her recorded as being on a reading level way in advance of her actual ability. And a couple of times I've had to ask them to drop a reading level as she could only guess what was in the new books. Again noone noticed.

Perhaps I should get her a literacy tutor? In order to go back through the rudiments of reading and writing. A reading recovery at home sort of thing? Is that worth a go do you think?

mathanxiety - I like the lolly stick idea for spaces in between words. Thank you.

When it comes to discerning backwards/right way round, exercises where you transfer an item from one hand to another or where one hand performs an action and then the other one does something else can help exercise the brain.

Does she have any dolls or teddies with clothes that could be tied closed with a bow? Or could she 'help' you tie laces on your shoes? Weaving strips of paper or lacing toys where you run a shoelace through prepunched holes are also good. Cutting with a scissors too. Here are some crossing the midline ideas. And some more. Puzzles are great for developing the visual sense and the 'mind's eye'. Visual skill exercises here.

For the specific letter reversal problem -- it really should work itself out, but you might be able to speed it along by writing the usual offenders in puffy paint on cards so she can trace the correct orientation, or use cut out sandpaper. You could point out that lower case b can be turned into upper case B whereas lower case d can't do the same trick, or use different colours for the culprits in any alphabets you use at home if you make your own cards with upper and lower case letters.

Again, a lot of children around the world are only at the point of being taught the beginnings of phonics at age 5..

What do you mean by 'they just make stuff up'? Specifically about her literacy, or do you have other concerns about the school?

She's awfully small to be having a tutor Do they do reading recovery in school at all [hopeful]

My DD is a Y1 with awful handwriting. She's an August birthday too, and I can't help think that it just hasn't clicked with her yet. She is that kind of child - she got potty training much later than her brother, but when she got it, she got it, not one accident, ever.

She has extra support at school this term for handwriting, some extra sessions essentially with the TA. She isn't really interested in it at home much, unless I make it fun. So we write cards to people ( Christmas cards will be good soon ) and play a shopping game which has her writing lists and prices and things.

Is she right or left handed?

Some of the things you say remind me of my Yr1 DD. Her letter formation is fine, but she flips b and d regularly, but her spacing was terrible because she couldn't see what she had written. I have encouraged her alot with her pencil grip and also tilting the paper. Incidentally, my DD is excellent with her reading and spelling (teacher's feedback, not stealth boast).

Swedes2 - I got my DD a literacy tutor from the middle of Reception year onwards, for different reasons to yours - school wasn't going to teach her to read in English until after it had taught her to read/write in French, ie not until Y3, and that just wasn't soon enough for me or for her (given that English is orally her stronger language). DD was taught English synthetic phonics in a systematic way, one hour a week. It was, honestly and truthfully, one of my most inspired parenting moments when I decided to get her a tutor! Now she is in Y3, she can read and write beautifully in English (much better than in French!). If I were you, I would get your DD a tutor and make her go through a really good synthetic phonics scheme systematically - you will see, she will make amazing headway. I really rate Jelly & Bean at Follifoot Farm, btw.

Re-reading your posts about your DD, Swedes2, I would be inclined to think that she just hasn't been taught much/properly in the way of phonics and writing. If she is highly verbal and loves writing stories, she obviously wants to be literate. But no-one has given her the technical wherewithal to do it properly yet.

Bonsoir - Thanks. That's useful.

She isn't below average for her age or yr group and so wouldn't qualify for reading recovery. And for that reason, I suspect her requirements aren't a priority. But I feel she's missing some vital input to allow her to move forward. And to be honest I don't know how to help her with it. I think a tutor is the answer.

Really, there are too many children in the class. That's the real problem here.

Where will I find a tutor? Any ideas?

I think it would definitely be worth your while asking the school to detail for you what they do in terms of phonics instruction on a daily basis.

Don't panic if it turns out that they have a good systematic phonics programme in place and that it is well taught. Sometimes it doesn't 'click' with individual children until a later age. It is no reflection on the child's intelligence or aptitude, just a function of biology.