Writing

Both my children struggle  A LOT with writing.  They struggle with the fine motor skills required to form letters.  They struggle with the spacing between words, the size of their letters, the sentences that snake and dip across the page.  They struggle with spelling.  They struggle with getting thoughts from their head onto paper given all those physical hoops they need to jump through.

We encourage them to write shopping lists, write Thank You cards, and do Mad Libs.  Unfortunately, at school they are wading through topic sentences, supporting sentences, adding details, and 7 paragraph research papers.

At one of their IEPs, can't remember whose or when, we expressed our frustration at the huge divide between their writing ability and what was being expected of them.  Either focus on letter formation and ONE coherent sentence, or let them dictate their personal narratives and non-fiction feature articles to someone.  What is the goal here?

And, unfortunately, either because their writing confidence is so low or the subject matter is boring to them or they are just too stressed out to even think, I can rarely get them to narrate to me anymore while I transcribe.  We used to do thank you notes, blog entries, etc. that way.  It was great.  Creativity flowed out of their mouth.  And, then that flow got dammed at some point.  But, summer is here and there is a crack in the damn dam.  Cayla has a story for you tonight.

Spelling Test

Once upon a time there was a cat who climbed an H2O and his name was, Bad People.  Once, once, once, once upon a time, time, time, there, there, there lived an awesome King.  He was so powerful that he could knock down big mountains.  And, he was so powerful he was really evil and bad.  He became evil and bad, basically.

The End

Good

Good

Ahhhhh, here's to summer.  May that crack become a big, huge, gushing flow!