Yr 2 DS doesnt do enough writing

[Flojo1979]

My DS vis 6, and in year 2. His teacher has expressed concern as he cannot be moved on in Literacy and other areas as he doesnt do enough writing.
In 'big write' where they get 50 mins to write up a piece of work they have been learning the week prior, he does approx. 20 words, thats less than 1 word every 2 mins. He can write and is very clever, hes motivated but within seconds drifts off in to day dreaming (he says hes thinking about what to put ). Should I be worried or is the teacher just fussing over something he'll grow out of?

This piece was written by one of my Y2 boys during a Big Write

The Centaur is a very rare, magical creature.
A centaur has the body of a horse and the head of a man. Its body is magical and to be a true centaur you must be made of lightening bolts and thunder booms. Most centaurs are a beautiful rich chestnut colour.
In the wild some centaurs live in forests while others live in large cornfields.
When they gallop they send out showers of tiny splinters that leave tracks. They hunt for food at night to avoid people who hunt them. Centaurs have been tracked and killed almost to exstingtion because their blood is very magical and poisonous.
If you are very lucky you might catch a glimpse of one by moonlit steams, but be careful because they are very bad tempered and fierce.

It is the same as I thought, (can you forgive my mistake? the big write could have been different to big writing...things do come and go quickly, as I'm sure you would agree) I completed the training with Ros Wilson a while back, but for my (majority) struggling boys, it was a long time and to allow them to meet success the title would be geared to success....I also did as Ros suggested at our training, use special music, lights, etc to make it feel different and creative....each Friday the whole school undertook the session at the same time, but mainly I think I started my rant post shocked by the title snails...

I would imagine the class have done lots of non chronological report writing leading up to the Big Write (probably in prep for SATs)

because the DfE don't like to pick inspiring subjects for writing

'free write' would be fantastic. But that's not what the 'big write' we've come to expect consists of. Instead its on a set topic - in Yr 1 there was lots of 'retelling traditional tales' - and often only part of it. Yr 2 its been a bit better and they've had a picture to describe.

Yes, there are lots of 'requirements' like describing words, timing words, extended sentences etc. However, that really doesn't help at all when your son is bored silly by the concept of retelling the story - because in his mind its already been told so what's the point of saying it again? He might be fine if you said tell me a different story about a dragon or a knight - but telling the first third of George and the Dragon is just of no interest.

I don't like using "retellings" for Big Writing personally. This year we've done instructions How to trap a goblin (we read Spiderwick) Setting description of the House character description Bilbo Baggins (we are currently reading the Hobbit) A holiday advertisement to visit Neverland (GOSH Peter Pan week) ...

mrz - how many of the boys in your class struggled to produce anything in that free writing session, despite it sounding fantastic, well-prepared, engaging and using great educational theory?

My point is not that teachers need to be better. It is that the "system" does not provide sufficient flexibility to suit all children's learning needs at age 7 - and it is often boys who get to feel stranded.

www.amazon.co.uk/Write-start-Programme-Perceptual-Handwriting/dp/1855032457/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336246383&sr=8-1

This is a good resource we saw success with in regards to actual fine motor/handwriting problems....

OP, I hope/am sure your son will come into his own in literacy in his own time and sounds like you do things with him home to keep his enjoyment and hopefully in year 3 things may start to unlock for him...

Mistlethrush - first third of george and the dragon in year 1.... Poor children, sounds hideous but your later posts suggest like your DC is on doing well now and enjoying literacy.... :)

Gentleness agree on the system and boy completely, but that is a whole other topic....

But just quickly there are many many many many examples of some teachers (not all, I'm not teacher bashing) and many classrooms and curriculums not being suited to boys... The evidence is stacking up that we are doing a lot of boys a disservice...

Anyway I'll stop before I rant away, but as a teacher I have now started my phd on researching boys in the primary classroom after seeing a lot of boys squashed into small boxes they were desperate to bash out of.... :(

I have one boy who regularly produces very little work without scaffolding because he hasn't got any ideas on any subject. We work very much on the premise that if you can't say it you can't write it ... and he can't. It helps to start him off with an opening idea.

Gentleness unfortunately these children are going to have to complete a long and short piece of writing in the next few weeks on subjects decided by the DfE not the teacher and it appears the OPs son is being prepared by his teacher for one of the topics.

Yep mrz - that what I find so shocking and the reason I'm getting concerned about my own kids! Sorry - I know I am taking this thread off topic....

So, the pp who talked about encouraging love of literacy at home had it spot on - potentially boy friendly books - non-linear, well-illustrated, topics that interest him. Purposeful writing - just useful messages round the home maybe - whatever suits his character.

Blogginmama - so interested in your dissertation!

Interestingly our boys out perform girls in writing

Mrz from reading lots of your other posts and this one, you should know what a great job you are doing and it's fantastic that your boys are doing so well :)

I'm fortunate to work for a head who puts his belief that every child should be inspired by learning before "playing" educational politics and some excellent staff who enjoy making learning interesting and fun.

Bloody non-chronological reports have ruined my weekend 3 weekends on the trot. DS (y2 June birthday) has ASD and dyspraxia and hates writing. This weekend we have tried a different slant and I have given him my netbook to do his 2 paragraphs on dinosaurs. Took him 2 hours of moaning but it got done. Tomorrow he can copy it out. He just can't get the ideas out without worrying about his (poor) handwriting, missing out words and then having no room to fit them in, no spaces etc. I took the spell and grammar check off and he did OK and was even able to check his own work back which he can't do normally. Much better than last week's effort and a lot less screaming .

That's one of the things that I find so frustrating about the whole thing - ds can always tell you about things, has a fantastic vocabulary (sometimes surprises me) and amazing imagination - luckily with a teacher that's seen and encouraged his potential to help get passed the daydreaming, fidgeting and disturbing others stage and get something down on paper, that side has become more obvious in his writing.

However, Yr 1 I am positive that I was marked down very soon as a pushy mother with a pfb only, and DS was marked down as being a spoilt only whose parents could see no wrong in. That effectively meant that there was no point at all in making any fuss about it.

In fact, whilst we were specifically asked to practise (/ rehearse) the story of George and the Dragon in preparation for their big write, we instead talked about what the dragon looked like - what it was sitting on and other things it was doing when not involved with St George (just so that we'd talked about something on the same sort of subject even though not the 'actual' thing we were meant to be doing).

He managed this:

Diosaur world
Ankylosaurus
A ankylosaurus means fused lized. It was a herbevours that was armored. The dinosaur had two rose of spikes,two rocky horns to pretect its eyes,armored plates and a club like tall. The only way the dinosaurus can atack a ankylosaurus they could of fliped it over because it hd no armor on it's tummy.
Spinosaurus
Spinosaurus means spiny lized. It had a curved spine that makes a sail. A spinosaurus proply ate plant abd fish but it was a carnivours(meat eater.) The sail was for getting girls nd for cooling down because it was tropical and boiling.

Love "the sail was for getting girls" - mummy getting out of explaining about finding a mate

BTW Mrz, that has to be a L3 Y2 piece of work that you posted. It was fantastic :)

Whoever thought non chronological reports was a good test for Y2 was a sadist!

were argh!

DS did big writing in yr2 but still never produced copious amounts.

This weekend (yr3) positively most pain-free and fastest ever written homework: Write instructions telling your alien visitor how to make a sandwich. Worksheet suggested use firstly etc so he happily wrote out a page-long list of numbered instructions...and then went over the page and continued. - Am thinking bloggingmama has hit nail on head !

Lazy boy here too. DS is end of July in Year 2. Teacher recently spoke to me about her frustration (that I share) in that DS is more than capable of writing to L3 standard when someone is telling him to wirite more but when left alone he writes no more than 5 lines and can't award more than a 2B. Reading this thread I do feel slightly better that my son is not on his own. I am hoping the writing will just click with him and he won't spend most of his time thinking about what to write and actually just write it down.