Writing - need some help to improve writing skills

[rrbrigi]

Need help with writing.

We just had a parents evening for my son who is in Year1. He is doing fine; the teacher does not have any concern. He likes math, reading, but he does not like writing so much. Every night he asks me to read a story to him, and he reads to me at least 3-4 times a week.

The teacher mentioned (and I noticed too) that he should concentrate on his writing more. Basically if I look his writing in the school it looks different (lot worse) than the work he does at home.

When we do his home writing (not too much just a few sentence in a week, because he does not like writing) at home, before we start he always tells me what he needs to remember for a good writing (capital letter, point, finger space, use the sounds and write nicely). This is the first step. Then he needs to think about the sentence what he would like to write, how many words is in the sentence, if he knows how to write those words. Then he start to sound out the first word and when I say good he writes it down, then the next word, next word until we finish the sentence. All I need to do to say 'good, perfect, you can do it, etc...' then the sentence is ready and perfect as it should be (with nice handwriting and correct spelling). But he never wants to write more than 1 sentence at a time. If I ask him to write a little story or 3-4 sentences, he does not want to do it and find out something to escape from writing. Or if I force him to write more usually we shout each other, because he does not want to concentrate. It seems that he does not have any idea what he would like to write, but I do not know why. I read a lot to him, he reads a lot, and he is so chatty about thing what happened in the school, what he saw on the TV. He has a very good imagination, so he can tell stories to me about anything (dragons, knights, animals, etc...) Also I think he is afraid of writing, because it takes a long time, he needs to concentrate on lot of things (spellings, capital letter, point, finger space, nice handwriting, etc) and he thinks he cannot cope with it. This thing is getting worse and worse.

His writing in the school is not readable, sometimes he missis capital letters, point or put them in the wrong place. He misspells words that he can spell perfectly at home. He does not keep the line. The teacher asks him to write in the school every day and sometimes he needs to finish his writing task from the previous day.

I need some help, because I have no idea what is the problem or how I can help him. He likes computer a lot, so if you know any games on computer or Ipad that helps children to learn to write I would try those.
What else I can do at home to help him? And how I can help him to write more sentences or a short story?

He doesn't like writing and finds it difficult. And it's no wonder. He has to focus on making his writing all the same size, how he forms the letters, remembering finger spaces, punctuation and thinking about spelling. And that's before he even has to worry about what to write!

Others will no doubt come along and suggest that you should encourage him to write shopping lists, or letters to grandma or design his own comics to capture his imagination. My personal experience if if your DS doesn't want to write then you will still end up getting cross at him and these subterfuges will not work.

Year 1 is still really really young for getting the mechanics of good handwriting, punctuation, spelling.

What I did find useful with my non-writing DS is to tell stories together where you say a line then he says a line - then you can work on vocabularly, sentence structures and just give him ideas without it being a battle to put it down on paper.

Talk for Writing

Yes. I think so it is too much to ask from him in Year1. But that is what they do in school. They already join their letters; they spoke about describing words and verbs in the school. They listen stories (e.g.: about Noah's Ark, or Owls) and they need to write a story about it. They do need to do all of the things in their writing that I wrote earlier (capital letters, finger space, nice writing, and thinking about spelling). They also need to think about the meaning of the sentence. E.g.: he need to think how he can make his story more exciting, or think about other words to write instead of good, or which verbs he should use in his sentence. They already learnt the question mark, and the signs that you put in front of the sentence if someone speaks (I forgot the English name). So from his school work I think they are already over to write shopping lists.

But he do write shopping list at home, or little stories on a piece of paper (2 sentence max), or bubble speach. The main problem when he does not sit down and concentrate on his writing I cannot read his work, I just can guess what he wanted to write.

Well if he already writes at home that's half the battle! I think you need to think about what you are focussing on. If you want to improve his handwriting, then just work on his handwriting. If he's having to think about 6 other things as well, then it makes it harder.

He seems to be expected to run before he can walk. If he is still at the stage of having to work at making his letters legible, remembering spaces between letters, keeping to the line, thinking about where capital letters are needed and sounding out the letters to be able to spell the words he needs to write, then it is a rather tall order to expect him to re-write stories he has heard in class, make his story exciting, use interesting vocabulary, concentrate on verbs, join his writing and use speech marks (inverted commas) to punctuate direct speech.

He must be feeling overwhelmed. I think it might be better to concentrate on the basic things before proceeding to the more advanced.

I think several of us have 'talked' before about your child . . . !

I worked twenty years as a Teaching Assistant in primary schools, but am retired now, so a bit out of touch. But it seems to me that the 'Gove' demands might be reasonable for some children, but possibly not for the majority.

To help 'reluctant writers' when I worked with less able Yr2 boys, they would dictate their stories to me, and I would type them on the computer. As I am a touch typist, I could pretty much keep up with their dictation, and they enjoyed seeing their words come up on the screen as soon as they had said them! This encouraged them to write very much longer and more interesting stories, than they could have managed alone.

If you have access to a tape recorder, or a phone or some other recording device, could he try and dictate and record his stories? This method allows a child to get his ideas down, without the great effort of writing. He should then be able to think of several sentences, and possibly use some really good words. But as CecilyP says, this is a big challenge for a Yr1 child.

It is probably best to not put TOO much pressure on him to achieve all these things, but just to take little steps at a time. If he can dictate and record his sentences, he can try and write them out at a later time. Come September, he will probably be moving to Yr2, and you will be surprised how he will mature and progress as the months go by.