First Grade Writing Demands Overwhelming
This week I met James, age 7 and a half. In my assessment of James, I found him to be extremely bright, with excellent higher level reasoning skills and a lively spontaneous personality. His reading skills were developing nicely, matching his strong cognitive abilities. Yet, James had a very rough first grade year. Openly stating how much he disliked school, James was becoming discouraged. What was the problem?
In a nutshell, James found writing to be an excruciating process and one that he had to face every morning.
For many kids (often the boys) there is a mismatch between their cognitive abilities and their ability to get the words out of their pencil and on to the page.
Open ended writing (e.g., “write about your weekend”) is particularly challenging for these kids. Getting started on the writing is particularly challenging.
This was indeed the case for James.
Dr. Mel Levine in his many books on learning issues points out how demanding the writing process is for kids (and adults). I have heard Dr. Levine say in conferences that writing is the single most difficult process of schooling. Think about it. If you were asked to write about your weekend, consider the many things that would occur for you to complete the task. Some of these would include:
· Visualizing your weekend
· Deciding what aspect of the weekend to discuss (major vs. minor detail)
· Word retrieval
· Word choice
· Spelling
· Fine motor
· Active working memory (concurrently holding information in your mind to act on it)
For young James it was all too much. James would like school much more if could approach writing in more digestible bites. He wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed.
Practicing simple sentences (e.g., “Dogs run.” “People walk) and building on these sentences in a scaffold-like approach would give James a sense of confidence.
I recommend that you get a hold of Diana Hanbury King’s, Writing Skills to learn more about the structured, step-by-step approach to writing development.
Comments
Writing...ugh!
School has been increasingly difficult for our soon to be third grader. As a pre-k special needs teaching assistant, I have a few tricks in my bag, but I was not prepared to deal with my child's ADD, and such horrible writing episodes! Some of them are more managable than others. I have found that unconventional methods work, she was able to dictate sentences to me and then copy them (1 M&M after each two sentences helped too). I struggled to find a way to deal with her disability. It was overwhelming for us as parents. The way I saw it, it was like I was asking her to write in water when they paper was wet and the pencil wouldn't work. Maybe it was like giving her a waterproof pencil redirecting her with the M&M's. We are still being evaluated for ADD, and hope to have an ADD specialist for her by the time we go back it school.
Writing
Martha:
You may want to look into seeking tutors who teach very structured approaches to developing writing. For example, the writing strand of "Project Read" an Orton-based program is very effective. You may want to contact them to see if there are tutors in your community doing this type of work.
Keep me posted if you can find anyone. If not, perhaps i can try and ask around to see who may be doing this type of remediation in your area.
Rich Selznick
Writing
After a long summer of developental testing and the even more painful... Reading the results, we struggled about education for our 8yr old 3rd grader. After two weeks in school and the struggles mounted again, we went on medication to treat ADD. It has improved her life 80%!!! she can write, read, complete her homework... We have gone from nightmares to dreams now. I spent one year debating on whether I would ever choose medication for my daughter. Seeing my daughter full of confidence and not tears, well, now which would you chose? Medication does not work for everyone but with other components like therapy in place how could you not consider it.
We now have a peaceful life back for our family but mostly a happy and confident child back.
Martha Klinger
Medication
Dyani:
I am not sure of the effect of taking the medication together. Please email me your questions at
selznick-r@cooperhealth.edu and I will forward your question to someone who can answer that for you.
Best,
Dr. Richard Selznick
I really liked reading your
I really liked reading your post. It is true that boys usually find it difficult to excel in writing. My 5 year old son doesn't like writing. However, his tutor has taken something that interests him and asked him to write on it. For instance, my son loves to play football. So the tutor asked him to write about why he likes the sport, what team he likes etc. It worked out he was able to convert what he likes into literary meaning. Was quiet fascinating for me to watch this transition.
custom order
5 Year olds and writing
Gina:
Thanks for the comment. It certainly will help to allow him to write about his interests.
I still maintain that asking 5 year old's to do much writing can be problematic. They often aren't equipped for the multiple demands of the task. I see this in particular with the boys, but it is true of many of the girls too.
I would prefer that they practice very simple sentences and master those before moving on to the demands of writing a paragraph or more involved essay.
Many in the field don't agree with me, though.
I'll try and post more on this in the future.
Best regards,
Rich Selznick
Post new comment