Written Expression

[Guest guest]

My apologies for double posting this but I want to pick as many great brains as

possible! : ) I’m looking for ideas to help get her thoughts down on

paper.

I sent an email to one of my favorite bloggers http://hannigans.blogspot.com

to ask for advice about this. I’m just going to paste a portion of that email

here.

We are really having a hard time with this. I’m so happy with the gains we have

seen this year in reading (fluency and comprehension!), spelling and even math.

But getting some constructive thoughts down on paper, oy vey. I don’t even know

where to start. Anything she tries to write on her own ends up more of a list or

random words scattered across the paper. Her language is pretty good but

occasionally leaves out articles or prepositions, etc. I’ve been trying to get

her to write sentences with her spelling words. She can formulate an idea pretty

good. For example : teeth. She might say, “I brush my teeth.” Then I encourage

her to add may, can or should. Then she will say, “I can brush my teeth.” OK, I

think we’re ready to roll, but unless I remind her of each word as she is

writing the sentence she can’t get all that down. She might end up writing 2 or

3 out of 5 or 6 words. Or she may change it all together and leave out the word

we were originally writing about. Perhaps her focus will shift to the word brush

and she may completely forget we were talking about teeth. Maybe she is just not

ready for this but I feel she should be able to do this. She can write, spell,

read and the language is there, so I’m not sure what puzzle piece is missing to

pull this all together for her. Can you recommend any prerequisite activities to

lead into the writing. I thought about writing some sentences and just leaving

out random words for her to fill in the blanks. Another thought was to type out

some sentences and cut the words apart for her to put in order. Do you think

these activities would help? Any ideas?

Hope