Wednesday 15 February 2012

Success!

It was Parents' Evening last week. That was partly a success (brilliant at maths, science and topic with a good general knowledge) and partly not (won't write - not even enough to assess at a level!).

So, I've been on a mission this week. I bought some KS1 SAT's books (despite a life long teacher's hatred - you can not teach 3 years worth of education in 1 book!) - however, with my assistance they have been ideal to discover what Jonathan can do and can't do. And I discovered he can (as I thought) do the technical things without any problem.

The crises have arisen when he's had to write more than an odd word. Even 3 sentences has caused horrendous screaming temper tantrums. He's done it, but it's appeared to be a complete OTT reaction to something he appears to be able to do easily.

Then today we had a half hour journey in the car. I love long car journeys - no escaping from important conversations! We talked over his feelings about writing, and as we were talking and I was chewing it all over in my head, some things suddenly started to stick together. Then I asked, if, when writing, he thought he had to know every single thing he was going to write before he started. "Yes." And if he thought famous writers like Roald Dahl (current favourite) who wrote long books knew every single word they were going to write when they started a book. "Yes."

Well! No wonder he won't write anything of any length! There's no way he can think it all through, retain it and then write it down in a short space of time. This explains why he always says "but I was still thinking" as an excuse to not writing.

He was equally surprised to discover that no-one else does that, and that they make a rough plan before deciding on their writing one sentence at a time, writing it down, reading it back and then deciding on the next sentence! So despite teaching him to think it-say it-like it?-write it-read it back, I'd obviously not made it clear that that was for once sentence at a time, not the whole piece.

So, hopefully now I've worked that out, we can work on things together and get over this terrible fear of writing more than one sentence in one go!

In other news, he's done loads of horn practise this week (and is sounding fantastic), and has read a lot of books (including one walking back to the car from the library, finishing it before we actually got home!) so he's had a really positive week so far.

Super stuff!

No comments:

Post a Comment