Re: TOD and writing (formerly: smart boards)

September 10, 2004

In a message dated 9/9/2004 7:23:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

beat4girl@... writes:

He can say what he wants to

write but when it gets to the paper it is not what he said. I guess

that is processing too. The school psychologist suggests he use a

computer for writing at school and they have 5 in each class so he

can use those. He also has trouble copying from the board to his

paper or from the book to his paper. Writing definitions to spelling

words is a NIGHTMARE! So I am trying to teach him more keyboarding

stuff.

Elaine,

You could be describing my son there. Especially Ian in 4th grade. He failed

just about every vocabulary test that year because he could never get the

definitions off the board and into his notebook. The teacher thought that

giving him (or me or the SpecEd teacher) the list was " babying " him. It was a

horrible year. So, I am going to ramble on a bit about how our TOD worked with

Ian to help with those issues. I credit her with knowing the things we could do

to address his needs. He was struggling so badly.

Our son also has a processing speed issue, and probably an attentant

processing issue as well. It has never been investigated the way his hearing

loss

has because we found ways to work with it. Or should I say around it?

Memorizing " math facts " was incredibly hard and he struggled throughout 3rd

and 4th grade to memorize them.He still doesn;t have them memorized. He is a

terrible speller and nothing has ever helped to improve that and we're not

sure why. The funny part is he cannot grasp the spelling of words he learned

before he started to get vocabulary and spelling lists. Those he seems capable

of remembering. It's the simple words like " turn " which he always spells

" tern " because to him it should be spelled that way. (Thank goodness for

spell/grammar checks.)

He also had a terrible time writing. He'd struggle for hours trying to write

his thoughts. We found that if he could get himself organized the writing

would flow better. So, The TOD had us start using webs -- those odd graphic

organizers that look like a bunch of circles connected by lines. He lay out his

thoughts and from there worked up to being able to write an outline. Then

he'd do a first draft, then a second and as many as it took to get to the

final.

Eventually he was able to just write an outline. But honestly, the web works

for him and he sometimes still uses one when organizing his reports.

We used this process for everything from a single paragraph to a 5 paragraph

essay, something 4th graders are supposed to be accomplishing. Now he's a

freshman in high school and he has imprioved so much. But I'm not kidding when

I say that he spent hours every night working on some writing assignment.

When originally speaking with our TOD to establish the kind of help Ian

needed, we found that his problems are common in D/HOH kids. She was ready to

address the issue, where the SpecEd people were clueless. She taught him how to

use the webs. She worked to develop his outlining skills and organize his

thoughts.

The SpecEd teacher thought the webs were " inappropriate " for him. She hated

the spelling study games, hated the jeopardy-like vocabulary study game. They

didn't fit what the standard solutions were for a child his age. He'd missed

learning some very basic writing skills before he was getting appropriate

services and he needed those skills. The TOD found the way to give him the

skills without teaching him at a 2nd grade level. That is my point about a good

TOD. He/she is looking for what works for that particular D/HOH child, not

what formula should be used for all 4th graders. (Please pardon my bias here, I

know there are good SpecEd teachers out there, but the ones we had were

absolutely horrible -- rigid and ineffectual.)

She also introduced something called a Dialog Journal. It was an ongoing

writing assignment but it was designed to be fun and informal. A simple

composition notebook (those bound black and white ones) in which they would

write

letters to each other. They'd pick a topic to start, like Boy Scouts, and Ian

would tell her about what he did while camping. She would then write back,

modeling his mistakes back to him but corrected. She did not go through it with

a

red pen and corrrect him. It was correcting by example and practice. He

would get extra points for correcting his common mistakes, and ones for using

new

vocabulary. And an occassional point or two for getting spelling right, (but

that was never a goal for the journal).

The journal was to get him writing. I would tell him to talk as he wrote

because he could always express himself speaking, but when it came to writing

down the same words, they'd get lost. So, he'd talk to himself as he wrote. I

encouraged it. He'd say what he wanted to write, then he'd say it as he wrote

it.

At first he'd struggle to get 2 paragraphs written (5th grade). By the time

he was in 6th grade he'd be writing at least a page. He could do 2-3 on a

weekend. By 7th grade he only wrote in the journal on the weekends and would

fill 5 pages or so. The journal all but disappeared last year, 8th grade.

The journal was like writing letters, something that as a society we don't

do very often any more. We pick up the phone, dask off a few sentences in an

email, add a couple words to a birthday card. We don't write that much

anymore.

He writes on the computer (talking to himself as he types.) He'd write a

first draft and print it out double spaced. Then one of us (usually me) would

edit it. I'd circle words and write " pick a better word. " Or I'd draw an arrow

to a sentence and write things like " why? " and " who said that? " and " tell me

more " and " more details " and " more description. " In 5th grade it took at

least 3 drafts for him to write a 5 paragraph essay.

And sometime, like for a book report, he'd just get so tired. He'd work for

a while every day for days in order to write any report. So, I'd say " you talk

and I'll type. " I would type exactly what he said. If he said " red and blue

and yellow and black " I'd type it. And when he read the printed draft, he'd

say " you know better then to write 'and' all the time. You need to use

commas. " And I'd say, " You never said 'comma,' you said 'and' so I typed it. "

That

would make him think as he spoke, seeing the commas in his head as he told me

what to type.

It was a helluva lot of work for this kid to learn to write. But the best

thing I ever told him was to write like he talked. One we got words flowing

onto the paper, he could edit it to be more exact, more scientific, more correct

-- whatever was needed. But first he had to get the words moving.

And he had to get past his own fear. He thought he wrote badly because he'd

be criticized harshly for his efforts by his 4th and 5th grade teachers and

the SpecEd teachers. It turns that his wry sense of humor will come across in

his writing when he relaxes. We had to get him to the point where he would

stop trying to write and just do it. It was really REALLY hard work.

Best -- Jill

September 10, 2004