Tutoring Spec Ed student in writing skills-ideas appreciated.

[trishee]

Hello-I am tutoring a Grade 10 student who has some difficulty in expressing thoughts coherently and succinctly in written form. I'd like to devote a number of lessons to improvement in this area. I see him an hour per week - no homework.
I think I've added value in our previous lessons, supporting him on novel study and grammar, but I'm just not sure what approach to take here. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks very much.

[Paulclem]

Hi,

There are a number of things you could try - though I am unsure of the level of your student.
For basic students, I use a language approach - they say what they want to write, and this can be scribed or recorded for them to write themselves. It's their work - just recorded in another medium first before transmission onto the page. The idea is to get them to appreciate the link between speaking and writing. Later they would need to focus upon the differences and move to a more standard style.

There are basic planning methods that help students to organise their work, if they are more adept. I explain that the job of writing consists of generating the idea, physically writing, organising the writing, spelling , grammar etc. This is too much to do at once, and so first sketch out word/ phrase notes on what they want to write. Stress that spelling is not important at this stage as it can be checked later. I have found that spelling and grammar causes undue anxiety to get it perfect first time. They need to get over this.

The next step is to organise the notes/words into a relevant order. This could be via a simple mindmap. When they know in what order they want to write their ideas, then they focus upon each part and write a rough draft. Stress that spelling and grammar checks come later when they look over their rough draft and transfer it into a final draft.

In an hour, not much is going to be produced - depending on the level of your student, but it is the process which is important, and which can be developed into longer pieces over time.

If your student is more advanced than this, then a more complex mindmap, or a set of lists on different aspects of the topic can be used. A colleague uses post its to scribble ideas and then physically organise them into a significant order.

[Dinkleberry2010]

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