Good Evening Parents/ Guardians:
I hope you all have had a chance to enjoy/ take advantage of the unseasonably warm temperatures we've experienced lately. It was quite unusual to be wearing a short sleeve jersey early this morning on a mid-October bike ride. I'm thinking my short sleeve mornings are numbered!
I wanted to share a helpful guide for parents (and teachers) that I came across online. It offers information and advice for parents related to learning disabilities in written expression. I think many of you will find it helpful.
Many of my students this year have goals in Written Language. With my background in English, I feel that helping students with their writing is a strength of mine as a special educator. I have found that many 3rd and 4th graders need extra practice on the conventions of written language: capitalization, handwriting, organization, punctuation and spelling (C.H.O.P.S.) I find myself asking questions like, "What does the beginning of a sentence need?" and "What kind of sentence is that..what kind of punctuation does it need?" in order to help students self-edit their writing. Another obstacle that many students face relates to the amount of writing that they are expected to do in the upper elementary years. I explain to my students that they must get into "3rd/4th grade writing shape" just as a runner must get in shape to run a marathon. One writing drill that I have just begun to use is a word count free-write activity. The idea is to encourage students to write as many words as they can in a set amount of time without worrying about writing mechanics (CHOPS)...we can correct those later (and learn how to self-edit). What I did today with a few different groups was give the group a starter sentence to copy down in their notebooks. Then I gave them a few minutes to brainstorm verbally how they might proceed with their writing. Finally, I gave them a 5 minute window in which to write as much as they could. When time was up, each student counted up their words and charted them on a bar graph. I was pleased with the enthusiasm of the students. To reiterate, the purpose of this exercise is to build writing stamina. One "side-effect" is that the students did make numerous mistakes in mechanics, which is great, because now I have the opportunity to teach editing skills with authentic 3rd/ 4th grade writing...perfect for the next lesson!
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Here is the guide:
Difficulties in Written Expression
A Guide for Parents
What is a learning disability
in written expression?
A
learning disability in Written Expression is diagnosed when a child’s writing
skills are significantly below the expected level for the child's age,
intellectual capacity, and education.
Is it common?
The exact number of students dealing with this disability
is unknown, but it has been estimated that 3 to 10 percent of school-aged
children may have a disability in written expression.
Signs & Symptoms
Children with learning disability in writing have
difficulties early in grade school with spelling words and in expressing their
thoughts as compared to the average performance of their peers. Their spoken
and written sentences may contain a large numbers of grammatical errors and
poor paragraph organization. Children will often make errors in writing even a
short sentence. For example, they may fail, despite many reminders, to start
the first letter of the first word in a sentence with a capital letter and to
end the sentence with a period. Or they
may consistently make the same spelling mistakes, even after several
corrections.
Common features of written expression difficulties are:
Spelling errors, Grammatical errors, Punctuation errors, Poor paragraph
organization, Poor handwriting
Treatment
The
most effective mode of treatment has been found to be individually tailored,
one-to-one expressive and creative writing practice. Most important to
remember, though, is that keeping your student motivated to write will allow
him to continue working and practicing his skills. This can be the most important part of
creating long-term success. Finding ways
to make writing engaging and interesting will allow your child to demonstrate
his knowledge and strengths.
What can I do?
1. Get involved! Don't
ever hesitate to talk with your child's teachers or other specialists whenever
you feel it may be necessary to better understand what can be done to help your
child.
2. Look for and encourage your child's strengths, interests,
and abilities. Help her use these to compensate for any limitations she may
have. For example, find a topic that
your child is interested in and work with him to write a story or article about
it.
3. Encourage your child to be the “family reporter” and help
create a family newsletter to send to friends and relatives.
4. Help her correct mistakes by
showing/demonstrating to her what she should do.
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As always, please contact me with questions or concerns whenever the need arises. I look forward to meeting with several of you during parent/teacher conferences. Due to my split schedule, I will be unable to attend some of the conferences. In those cases, I will be sure to let you know ahead of time and I am happy to set up an alternate time to meet if you would like.
All the best,
Patrick
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