Writing Difficulty-Dysgraphia

I find myself shaking my head a lot in utter disbelief when I talk to parents about what’s happening with their children in school..

I also find myself being more and more outrageous in ways that I would probably not have been in my younger years. This week to a mom who describing what was taking place in school for her very special needs child, I said to the mom, “Is it ok if I use inappropriate language?”

“Go right ahead,” she smiled and responded.

“WTF,” I exclaimed in plainer language.  “Are you kidding me?”  (Thankfully, she laughed.)

This was in reaction to a writing sample the mom showed me of her severely learning disabled son who barely could write a complete ,  sentence no less an essay (which was being asked of him).  What triggered my reaction was on the top of his submitted writing for English class (he was 15) was the teacher’s critique with the comment that his writing was, “not in MLA style.”

In case you’ve forgotten English 101 from college, as noted in Wikipedia:

“MLA (Modern Language Association of America) documentation is used in scholarship throughout the humanities, especially in English studies, modern languages and literatures, comparative literature, literary criticism, media studies and related disciplines

“MLA Style???????”

Seriously???

I continually return to sports or related skill analogies in the work that I do with kids and my explanation to parents.

“We need to be in a zone of reality,” I start with the mom.  “If a person is asked to lift 50 pound weights because that is the norm for 10^th grade, that’s all well and good, but if the person is barely capable of lifting 10 pounds, what then?  Do we tap our foot and moralize that “you need to be lifting 50 lbs.’ because that is what most your age can do.”

It’s patently absurd, yet I see this in different versions on a regular basis.

Whether the child is officially labeled “dyslexic” or “learning disabled” there needs to be a reasonable match between the child’s capabilities and what is being asked of him/her.

As a parent I would suggest that you try and be as vigilant as you can with regard to the work being given to your child.  If it seems like the trend is work that is in the child’s frustration zone (i.e., beyond the child’s capabilities), then you need to send it back with a note attached that what is being asked is fundamentally unfair.

I don’t think you can react to every assignment and you want to be careful not to overreact, but if you have double-checked yourself and made sure you are being fair in your request, then you are your child’s best advocate to sensitize the teacher as to the issue of what your child can or cannot do.

Copyright, 2019 www.shutdownlearner.com
Questions or topics email Dr. Selznick.  Not in the South Jersey area? For a free 15 Minute Consultation, contact Dr. Selznick: email – rselznick615@gmail.com

To purchase a signed copy of  “What To Do About Dyslexia: 25 Essential Concepts” & Dr. Selznick’s other books and to receive blog updates go to https://shutdownlearner.com.

Open-ended writing can be dreadfully difficult for school-struggling children.  On so many levels, they find the task to be overwhelming.

For those who are struggling, the more common classroom writing tasks that encourage the child to write as he/she feels is problematic.  The typical “write about your weekend,” is a classic open-ended prompt that struggling children have no idea how to proceed.

To address writing problems, schools typically recommend occupational therapy (OT).  While OT serves certain purposes, for the vast majority of children with writing issues the remediation given by OT typically centers upon the motor-aspects of writing and does not address the more challenging aspects of the writing process.

In short, they find the whole process overwhelming.

While this is a drum that we have been beating for number of years, there are no signs of any changes taking place on any meaningful level and the ongoing demand to just keep writing persists.

With the structured approaches the children are taught at very basic sentence levels. The remediation needed is long and laborious.

They practice the writing of a simple sentence until they have mastered the basic concept.  For example, the children are taught that every sentence has a triangle which represents the subject of the sentence, as well as a square, which is the action or the verb.

Simple sentences are generated.

The children  play    . 

Once simple sentences are mastered,  more complex sentences can be practiced and generated.

(The happy children played in the school playground after doing their schoolwork.”)

As different sentence styles are mastered and internalized by the child, he/she can work on the concept of one paragraph containing a topic sentence and four or five supporting sentences.

This processes is highly sequential and based in skill-mastery in order to develop fundamental writing skills.

The approach is clearly in opposition to the more popular, open-ended approaches that are the norm in schools across the country.  These sequential approaches that are so crucial are often criticized as depriving the child of creativity.  They certainly do not tend to tap into the child’s imaginative processes.

However, when the child is unable to understand the components of writing a basic sentence, this lack of understanding clearly impacts any potential creativity and their ability to communicate effectively in writing.

Having assessed thousands of kids in my career, I am continually struck by the challenges children face when it comes to their writing.  At a very basic level, they have little to no idea what goes into the writing of a sentence, no less a paragraph or a more involved and complex essay.  For children who are on the dyslexic/LD spectrum, their writing problems are profound.

For children who are on the smooth road and who seem to have little problem with the writing process, business as usual in school is fine for them.

For the children of concern, the ones on the rougher road, we need to find alternatives to help them become fundamentally literate.

Just telling them to do more of it is unacceptable.  It’s like handing a kid a tennis racket and telling them just play the game without showing them how to grip the racket or how to hit a forehand.

The fundamentals need to be taught directly and practiced over time to be internalized.

Copyright, 2018 www.shutdownlearner.com
Questions or topics email Dr. Selznick.  Not in the South Jersey area? For a free 15 Minute Consultation, contact Dr. Selznick: email – rselznick615@gmail.com

To purchase a signed copy of  “What To Do About Dyslexia: 25 Essential Concepts” & Dr. Selznick’s other books and to receive blog updates go to https://shutdownlearner.com.

Open-Ended writing is usually not difficult for children on the “smooth road,”  the ones without the myriad of variables leading to school struggling.

For the “Smooth-Roaders” their sentences are complete and varied in style.    There is flow to their written stories generated and logic in their paragraphs.

With open-ended writing, children are given some type of prompt, such as, “write about your favorite trip,” or “write about your weekend.”

It is open-ended, because it can go in any direction.  The idea is that the children will tap into their creative selves and be able to express themselves on paper.

However, for those children on the rougher road, the ones with a variety of learning problems, open-ended writing is brutal on many levels.

Here’s an excerpt from a writing sample of an 8 year old writing about his favorite vacation:

“Uurvl is a ghat pls for a sekal reris.  At first jassit park miat besley but the seord time you go it is cool…..Evening no it’s the slisy rias in the park it goes with Dr. serrl!  Thes saren is call serrl laanring.  Lastly, I’ll talk about the qrslins.  Tars go lef and rert and lef and rert and, you get the ideas. There are sehal rrenis why I love going to uurvl.”

Or there was the 9 year old who wrote a story to a picture that he had drawn:

“Once aqha time ther was a boy namd levi he lived in a hog house and it was so mosh fon. and he livel in lll borenrom lahe.  And he had loss of frahs and naders.  The End.”

In screenings of their cognitive and intellectual capabilities, both of these kids demonstrated at least average cognitive potential.

Neither child was classified or receiving any type of service or official accommodation under a 504 Plan.

When the parents questioned what they should do they were told by the school to “read to your child.”  There was also the veiled suggestion of putting the child on medication, “even though we are not doctors.”

For these children, reading to them or medicating them will not accomplish much relative to their fundamental inability to write.

Continuing with any open-ended writing will be particularly problematic,  as they have no concept of what a sentence is and their spelling is severely impacting their thought process.For them, the concept of what represents a basic sentence is not something they have been taught or internalized and they are in need of intense, focused remedial instruction,

I usually dwell in metaphors or basic images that help to put things to parents in down-to-earth terms.

The metaphor of taking them back to the shallow end of the pool is fully applicable.  They need to spend a lot of time in the shallow end of the pool (writing simple and basic sentences) and then incrementally moving out beyond, one baby step at a time.

Instead of encouraging creativity and “write what you feel,” they need to practice at the most simplistic levels building on a logical sequence of one skill leading to another.

_______

To purchase a signed copy of  “What To Do About Dyslexia: 25 Essential Concepts” & to receive blog updates go, to https://shutdownlearner.com.

Copyright, 2018 www.shutdownlearner.com
Questions or topics email Dr. Selznick.  Not in the South Jersey area? For a free 15 Minute Consultation, contact Dr. Selznick: email – rselznick615@gmail.com

In my office I sometimes feel like I am in an outpost of the galaxy.  Messages come in periodically informing us of things going on in the schools, such as, “All the kids are now getting Chromebooks for writing.”

Out in my corner of the universe, I just scratch my head and wonder how something like Chromebooks is really going to help kids who struggle to learn how to write.

I see the use of Chromebooks as fun and they probably help kids become more technologically literate (not that they really need it, as most of them seem pretty literate as far as technology goes), but how does it help kids become competent writers?

For the 60% of those that I referred to on the positive side of the bell-shaped curve, Chromebook or even a  nubby pencil and paper can probably work fine for them in terms of being able to generate a solid paragraph or a three paragraph essay.

A second grade child who had no learning problems recently wrote this as part of a classroom exercise:

“Shells work great with mulch.  Mulch is wood, sand and mussel shells that go over the dirt to keep the soil wet and keeps weeds from growing.  That is what happened at the end of the story after Grace asks about the shells.”

The words were nicely spaced and there were clear punctuation marks. (The writing was completed with a nubby pencil, I might add.)

Contrast this with Charles who was also a second grader, writing about something funny that happened in school. When I asked 8 and a half year old Charles to write a story that had a beginning, middle and end  about something funny that happened  in school he told me, the following:

“When my totoere read what I root it made me lauhg so hard I could not stop”

For the kids with learning problems, those in the 30-40% group, neither Chromebook nor paper and pencil are effective medium for them since writing is hard no matter what.   Whether it’s old technology (a pencil with an eraser was at one time a cutting edge technology) or modern technology like a Chromebook, without direct instruction the child will be at a loss as to how to organize his/her thoughts into a solid paragraph.

Direct instruction means that the child will be directly taught discrete skills that will be practiced to mastery.  For the first child who wrote about mussel shells and mulch, it looks like she has a pretty good grasp of sentence and paragraph structure.  This child can already engage with open-ended writing.

Not so, young Charles.  For him, focusing on simple sentences for a while would be a good way for him to go.  Let him master writing basic sentences and after he’s done that he can write more complex sentences, ultimately leading up to the writing if a paragraph.

Takeaway Point

Sentences can be practiced on Chromebook or with an old school technology like paper and pencil.  It really doesn’t matter. What matters is recognizing that kids who struggle with writing, need patient, direct instruction to be practiced over time to mastery.

For a free 15 minute consultation with Dr. Selznick, email contact@shutdownlearner.com.

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Those  of you who have been following Shut-Down learner for a while know that I have a bit of an obsession with kids’ writing.  It’s true.  I am endlessly fascinated by the writing samples that they generate.

When I look at a writing sample, usually I know immediately whether something is going on with the child.  Somewhat like the courts ruling on obscenity (“I know it when I see it.”), the same is true with writing.  (“ I know a problem when I see it.”)

Unfortunately, most of the standardized writing tests on the market are pretty useless to me.  I don’t find them to be particularly helpful or reliable, so I prefer to obtain what are called “informal,” or non-standardized writing samples.  For my purposes informal samples are very helpful.  They give me insight into the level of struggling.

Here’s one from young Aiden, a spunky 10 year old boy receiving no remediation who came in to see me recently.  I asked Aiden to tell me a story about something funny that happened in school.

The Game

Once I was playing on the playgrown then I heard a group of people lafing.  So I went over to the, ang sed why?

They seid because of a game.  One purson ses what’s doing.  The purson sess eating chocle. The other pusron ses whare you get . then the purson seas dogy droped it.  Then they all lafed.

Aiden’s parents were frustrated to hear something they had heard every grade, “Spelling doesn’t really matter.  He can use spell check.”

Years ago, a neurologist I held in very high regard, Dr. Martha Denkla, said to about 500 of us sitting in the audience in her down-to-earth way,  “It’s like these kids with these problems (i.e., reading, spelling and writing) are not tuned in to the language – somewhat like not having an ‘ear’ for music.”

Yep, Aiden’s playing some pretty screechy music here and he doesn’t even know it.

To him, the words as they are just fall out of his pen and somehow land on the page in whatever form they are  in and whatever combination of words  or letter order.

Going forward, to make any inroad , Aiden needs to be brought back to easier levels to  learn the “notes and the chords.”  Then he needs to put them together in little tiny phrases, leading to simple sentences, to lead to more complex sentences and the writing of a coherent paragraph..  The Aidens of the world need to be taught directly and explicitly.

It’s slow, hard work, but I don’t know any way around it.

Takeaway Point

Aiden’s 10.  There’s still time.

But as Yogi said, “It’s getting late early.”