Yr2 DD absolutely hates writing

[HauntedLittleLunatic]

She is a really good reader.
She is a really good speller
She is really good at number work.

She just hates writing with a passion. We are sat trying to do homework. She knows what sentence she wants to write (I go swimming lessons on Sunday but I wear a green hat) she is just having a meltdown. Getting down from the table as often as she can as a distraction.

She seems to have had an exponential increase in homework this year - particularly written - on a weekly basis she has spellings to learn, handwriting patterns to do, a book "report" to do along with a weekly "homework" task and 3-4 reading books.

She is having a meltdown. I am goin to have a meltdonw.

Help me please :(

I go swiming lesons

There is scope for 3 corrections here: go to, swimming, lessons.
There always is in children's early writing, as I said. Even with spellers who are good for their age.

Perhaps her last teacher used to correct most of them?

I realise there is scope for corrections in her work. There always will be. Even at 35 my lecturers correct spelling and grammar on my essays! I have not at any point tried to say that she is perfect - just that I am happy with her spelling/punctuation etc. for her age.

She had 3 teachers over the course of the last academic year (long story) but based on the work she bought home and marked homework I don't think any of those errors would have been corrected, only incorrect capitalisation and full stops (which were her targets).

They very much promoted the fact that as long as spelling was a good phonetic attempt then it was deemed acceptable - therefore I am happy with the spelling in those sentences (even tho I know that without the double letters the I and E make the wrong sound - but although they have taught about long vowel sounds when you have a 'vowel-consonent-e' pattern at the end of a word I am not sure that they have extended it to 'vowel-consonent-vowel' within a word so wouldn't appear wrong to her IYSWIM).

I think the missing to in the sentence was laziness....less to write if she misses words out! Actually IIRC when she originally wrote that sentence I think it was "I go swimming" - which would have been a perfectly acceptable, if short sentence. I asked her to make the sentence more interesting (thinking she would add something about what colour hat she wears or similar) and she added the "lessons on Sunday" which made the first bit iof the sentence wrong for the context.

Obviously her reluctance to write is impacting the content and structure of what she writes, but if she dictates a sentence then she has the write words etc. she just won't write it because it is too long. I dont want to "write" her homework out for her as that defeats the object of her literacy targets.

I will try the dictating thing though. I am obviously trying to reward her (with verbal praise and food normally) for completing a small task (e.g. a line of handwriting).

I will try and look at her posture when she writes.

I will try and see her teacher. Obviously her sentences are very short and I thinkshe should be moving on from that now (correct me if I am wrong - I would have thought at the begining of year 2 a sentence structure like "I go to swimming lessons on Sundays and wear a Green hat." is more at the expected level than "I go to swimming lesson on Sundays."). (not sure whats going on with my own punctuation there

My target for her would be to "stretch" her sentences
www.mpmschoolsupplies.com/p-16361-stretch-a-sentence-chart-gr-1-3.aspx

Cool. That is what I was trying to get her to do with the swimming one. I will talk to teacher and see if we can work on that even if it is at the expense of number of sentences.

We can add more sentences in a couple of weeks.

This is realy interesting, especially the OT stuff mrz.

Could the teacher set a word target/sentence target?

How about having a 'bank' of connectives that she has to use to build her sentences and each time she 'withdraws' one from the bank she earns herself two minutes of special play time? That might encourage more interesting sentences?

I play a game with my students where they have a picture that one can see and the other can't, and the one that can had to write a description of it whilst the other draws what the other writes? Could you play that game with her?

The teacher setting a target related to quantity was what I was going to ask for.

The other ideas are also something we could try.

Thanks for all the ideas it has been really helpful for me to try and think about root causes as well as practical solutions. I think the next step is to talk some of these through with her teacher.