Underachieving

[wheniwonder]

My extremely bright 9 year old Summer baby (youngest in her year) is seriously underachieving in her literacy lessons, primarily in her written work. She has an astounding vocabulary but seems to have a block when it comes to getting thoughts onto paper.

Anyone have any experience of this or tips to help with this please?

DS had/has this.
We started doing "free writing", recommended by mrz.
It's very simple. Give a topic. Just write down whatever came into your head without worrying about spelling, neatness, grammar, structure, etc. Just concentrate on keep writing without stopping for 1 minute. (my ds does 3 minutes instead.)
At first, ds didn't get it, so I've done it myself in front of him to show how it's done. Also told him it's ok to write something like "I can't think of anything", if he is really stuck.
He used to be kept in during breaks to finish his writing work, not anymore.

Does she use a computer? If so try getting her to type her work and see if the volume she can produce is better. It may be more appealing to type than write for her. Talk with the SENCo at school for help to support her in school too - if the computer works at home she may be allowed to use a laptop in school for example. BBC dance mat is a good and free to use typing teaching program you can use to help with keyboard skills.

I think freee writing would be the way to go. Some children really worry about being perfect and see the challenge of writing too difficult. If she can write whatever she feels without fear that something isn't perfect, it might help.

Any activities to help reinforce the muscles in her hands - playdoh, decorating cakes, doing sand castles, cutting, tracing, painting the drive with water and big paintbrushes, etc would really help with control. My DS used to love doing mazes from some of the maze books you can buy and in the end he would draw his own mazes.

Also, you could encourage her to make lists - lists of birthday presents that she wants, lists of food that she likes, lists of her top ten teddies names, etc. Writing short words instead of sentences can sometimes be helpful and also good fun, I remember my DSs playing restaurants and writing down our orders for drinks and food - just for fun, not to be marked by anyone with a red pen!!

Thank you. She has no trouble with the physical act of writing or ANY sort of crafting. Glitter and glue and empty boxes are the bane of my life! and she loves a list. Its about distraction I think and getting the actual words to flow. Will try free writing though.

We made a topic box, write down random thing(simple things like "summer", "rain", "dogs", etc) on a small peace of parer, fold it and place it in the cardboard box. He picks one a day.
I've seen huge difference after about a months. Ds enjoyed it because it was so quick and simple, no pressure. After a while, it really start to show the difference. Now he can write perfectly structured paragraph withing few minutes about random topics.

We used to play games when we were walking long distances as I didn't drive.
One of the favourite was one where you changed something each time. So:
I had an apple.
I had a tasty apple.
I had a red tasty apple.
I found a red tasty apple.
I found a red tasty apple in the grass.
I found a red tasty apple in the long grass... etc.

The children loved it and it did help their writing, which wasn't actually the aim of the exercise (which was to get from A to B without complains of being a long way or tired!)

Writing for a purpose?
E.g. little notes in a card to granny, cards to friends, shopping lists, note to daddy about when we're back, note to friends on how to look after the hamster etc
We even got the older kid writing bedtime stories for her sibling.

Oh, yes Witchend, we have done that too.(also recommended by mrz, I believe).
We always ended up making silly sentences. It was so fun. Also good exercise for memory training, imo, because you have to remember long long sentences in the end.

My daughter is slightly younger, yr 2 but she also struggles with this.She has amazing vocal ideas but that doesnt always translate to the page... shehas got better this year
Something her school did for the last creative writing piece was to have the children voice record what they wanted to say and then they copied it down on paper...
Obviously we dont see this work but will be interesting if there is any difference when i do see everything at the end of term!!!!

She may be dyslexic -

Other traits are unorganized
Day dreamy
Lacks focus and attention
Difficult to write the words
Etc

Green, My ds has first 3 traits. He is very unorganized, day dreamy, and lacks focus and attention when he isn't interested. He is not dyslexic. He is hyperlexic. Yes, it could be anything.