How can I help my year 8 ?

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

I received his report yesterday and he has predicted 8/9 GCSEs but is tracking beliw this grade for English. He has atrocious hand writing, barely legible. He has also decided to forget he knows how to punctuate correctly. I’ve contacted the teacher to ask if it’s the handwriting that’s affecting his grade and I’m awaiting a reply.

What can I do to help hand writing though? Surely it’s completely imprinted at this stage. He was made to do cursive in primary and says he now cannot do anything other than cursive and it’s basically a scrawl.

8/9 GCSEs is great! My DS is exactly the same with his writing. You can't read most of it. I have told him over and over to remember his punctuation. He's just not interested in anything academic. He's just done his Yr 7 assessments. He's bordering on SEN as he has issues with stress and concentration. He won't let us help him. I don't know what to do.
Anyway sorry that's no help with your situation. I wonder if you could give him some reasons to write stuff down like the shopping list. I try to do that with DS. I think the problem is everything is on phones now and they don't get the opportunity to actually write with a pen except when forced to!
Good luck!

They have already given grade predictions in year 8? Seems quite early.

Cursive handwriting is what you want for speed in exams so I wouldn’t be trying to go back to non joined up. How much of his classroom work and homework is on a screen vs on paper? I do think the move to screen based notes has affected handwriting skills, for some more than others.

However it’s definitely worth waiting for the teacher’s reply before trying to address this because it may not be the handwriting anyway.

They put them on a flight path from year 7 based on SATS and CAT scores so he is meeting most of those targets which refer to those GCSE grades. Only if he continues on that path however and in English he is tracking below. His handwriting has certainly been highlighted by the English teacher and I have highlighted it myself. No actual intervention though so I’m floundering.

Can he type quickly? It is possible to get consideration for exams, but it has to be shown that it’s the normal way of working and there are tests to assess writing speed. As he’s year 8, there would be time, so I suggest you contact the SENCo and see what they suggest.

He is on a waiting list for some sort of intervention and had sat on that for a few months now. He would be delighted to be able to use a laptop so I’ve mentioned that again in my email. Hopefully I will get a reply at some point.

I was in a similar situation with my now Year 11, this time last year. His English y10 mock came out at a 3. Both his English teacher and I (KS1 teacher) and I had had ongoing concerns about his handwriting and SPAG and his Geography teacher mentioned missing 'easy' marks on a question where SPAG counted. English teacher suggested trying to get him a laptop, but he was very reluctant, so agreed to some tutoring with a focus on handwriting and grammar. (I have tried handwriting practice over the years but he won't work for me! 😂). Y11 mock came out as an 8 for lit and a 6 for lang.

There are handwriting tutors, they help them practice legibility when writing quickly. Or occupational therapists.

Without jumping to conclusions, have you spoken to the sen coordinator or has he been looked at for dyspraxia, dysgraphia or dyslexia?
For his handwriting to be really impacting, I'd be surprised if there wasn't something there. Via the sen coordinator you'd be able to get adjustments in place to support him (laptop, scribe, extra time) that might make a big difference.
My son is dyspraxic and really struggles writing long pieces, he is fab at punctuation when he has to spot mistakes or answer questions on punctuation but he cannot punctuate his own writing as he goes. He also has atrocious handwriting, gets a really sore hand and generally needs support in that area. Luckily he is diagnosed and has a full suite of interventions including touch typing lessons, a laptop and a ta to help him plan.
As your son is clearly incredibly bright across the board, I'd be super surprised if he's just "not good" at English, it sounds to me more like he needs some support and the sen coordinator should be stepping in to support here even if he has no official diagnosable need, he clearly has a unique challenge in this area that doesn't reflect his overall ability.

I’m certainly wondering about a tutor, I’m glad it helped your child.

I was in touch with the SENCO and they struck me as overwhelmed although they did mention putting him on a waiting list. I mentioned dyspraxia as I think he probably is and they recommended I take him to the doctor.

Can you read his handwriting?
Unless it’s completely illegible, he won’t be losing any marks because of it.
If it’s illegible, speak to the school about using a laptop for exams.

It’s probably 75% illegible. Still haven’t received any response to my communication so will have to hang on for next week or parents evening.

I agree that it could be dysgraphia. Is he weak at spelling too? You can pay to have a formal diagnosis but he also needs an assessment through the school SEN department. I would go back to the school and insist that this is carried out

You can help by backing off and stop pressuring him to be perfect and instead recognize how well he’s done to get the predicted grades he has. Tutor? Dysgraphia? He has bad handwriting. Give him lots of praise and just ask him to focus on his handwriting a bit more.

Still haven’t received a response.

I can see in the last comment someone has suggested I’m striving for him to be perfect - I couldn’t care less about perfection. Don’t strive for it at all. I think if he’s spent the time trying really hard to write a block of text and no one can read it, including himself very often it’s bloody sad and he deserves some help! Hence why I’m trying and failing to generate some help from his school.

He did an English assessment yesterday and asked if he could take a photo of it and the teacher said yes. He sent the photo to me and even though it was much, much neater - I could only read the odd word. I’ll see if I can post some of it on the thread to give you an idea.

I’ve done a screen grab and whilst you can make out a little bit I think you’d agree it’s hard going!

Just to add to the problem he ignores lots of punctuation too. So proper nouns rarely get a capital letter. Questions don’t get a question mark. No commas and no capital letters at the beginning of sentences. I think full stops do happen though.

He knows his SPAG he just tells me he has to write really quickly at secondary and so it’s kind of slowly disappeared to make sure he gets the content down.

Ah that’s a bit like my writing when writing really fast! It’s not actually bad handwriting (well ok I would say that…!) it’s more that the Us, Ns, Ms, Rs, Ws, Hs etc all look the same which makes it hard to read.

Ideally he needs to practise making those letters a little more rounded so that they can be distinguished. But I don’t think it’s the same issue as people with really messy handwriting which can be linked to a motor issue. Happy to be corrected on this as I am no expert.

The sooner he can use a laptop for written assessments, the better. I'm in Scotland so this may not apply but when I was a marker for SQA, any illegible papers were highlighted and returned to Chief Marker. Exam markers don't have time to try to decipher poor handwriting. Poor spag wasn't penalised in Reading comprehension papers but would be in literature essays. I taught a number of pupils whose handwriting etc could have lost them marks, but I flagged them to Learning Support who dealt with it, usually by awarding extra time and the use of a laptop or scribe if necessary

ex teacher

I have seen much much worse handwriting.

at secondary in exams there are no marks for handwriting and as long as the teacher can read it it’s fine.

spag marks are usually a limited number. The content is what matters.

many students who have targets on 9s track below their grade in ks3 because they pretty much have to get close to perfect on all the assessments to be marked on track and cannot ever be marked above target because nothing is better than a 9.

Oh that’s really interesting and makes complete sense. He did say similar to me last night. Same with Science. He lost three marks in a recent test because the word had to be ‘gap’ and not ‘space’. When queried the teacher said it just had to be the exact wording, as simple as that.

You could try https://www.haniafelt.com/ who specialises in handwriting

One main issue is the letters like qgpy that go down arent.
My dc is y9 and below in english but mainly because of never finishing work. So her predicted 7 is only a 5! Is also below a grade for every subject.
Oncredibly annoying and stressful as they only do mini tests so a proper exam and .ine wolud be nowephere near finished.

Imo exams need to be longer. If 25% are getting extra time theres somethong wrong.
On the 90s i almost never didnt complete any test!