No progress in writing in a term. Any bright ideas?

[joanofarchitrave]

I feel a bit stumped. DS is in year 4 and has made precisely 0 progress in writing this term and is said to be immature in what he writes with bad narrative skills. From something the teacher said, I think he is not getting a lot of active help - he is good at getting on with tasks and well-behaved. Fine - so we need to do stuff. So far, we have decided to plug away at him doing more reading, and also he has enjoyed playing Consequences so we can do that. Just wondering if anyone has ideas as to what else we can do that he might enjoy, that would help his writing (and also his spelling which is dire) at this age.

In the car you could play 'fortunately, unfortunately' just to open up the vocab.

We also have a word of the day dictionary and both boys are encouraged to use the word in literacy that day if they can. Just a bit of fun.

Unfortunately the car was out of petrol
Fortunately Dad had a can of petrol in the garage
Unfortunately Mum had used it for her motobike

Etc etc

See if school will get on board with a reward system so that if he completes more work at home ie weekend diary, he will be rewarded in school.

ooh thank you both! great thoughts!

Is there a chance he rushes through ie can't wait to get it done. You could show him how to do a quick plan in his head so he really gets the beginning/middle/end structure. The four w's may help too - who, what, where, when to encourage building a picture for the reader. When you're reading together discuss the impact that speech has. What I've seen work well is to get some stationery that appeals and to get the child to write a short diary entry about their weekend etc. I used to then respond to it (so they felt they were writing for a purpose) with some basic questions that encouraged more detail. Lack of progress in yr4 is common, the teacher should be planning to address this as it's likely to be a target for their own perf mgt.

What about a penpal to encourage writing?
DD now has a penpal through the wonderful mumsnet and is always keen to write her news to her friend.

A term is a very short period of time to measure progress. A child is expected to go up a national curriculum level in two years. What makes you think your son is making no progress?

I suggesting reading stories to him as well as him practicing his reading. If he is not keen then audiobooks in the car are a great way of improving vocabulary.

My son loves playing Dungeons and Dragons with his Dad and a few friends. His father has got him to write out an adventure script for the four of them to follow.

Another way of improving your son's writing is to site down and give him a boring sentence like

I went shopping.

can be

I went shopping before tea time. (adding a time connective)

or

I reculantly went late night shopping before tea time as I needed fresh milk, cheese and french bread.

and ask him to improve it. If you write the sentence down for him then he can concentrate on vocabulary and less on the mechanics of handwriting.

The best way to improve spelling is lots of reading. Reading also improves vocab and familarises a child with different genres.

Hmm, I would like him to write to one or more of his cousins. Actually, maybe the oldest one would write to him, she is fabulous with small children and maybe more reliable at 23 than the 7-year-old!

write lists for shopping
make a scrapbook or diary of school holidays/ exciting weekend or trips out
encourage writing for fun, maybe write a nonsense rhyme or story about whatever he's interested in, together - dinosaurs, mario, space rockets, anything!! maybe try recording what you want to write before writing it then listening for the sounds that make up each word. make sure he says it, then writes, then READ BACK AGAIN- making sure that all the words are there and it makes sense.
you don't have to be reading whole books with him (although it's good, obviously) he can read beano or the Argos catalogue!!
we play dat games in the car along the line of I spy but it's 2As I spy one person gives the initial letter of a noun, we guess it like normal I spy but then we add two adjectives to it. I spy something beginning with C - chair - comfy blue chair or hard wooden chair or whatever. come up with a few, the funnier or dafter the better.
just make it fun