Unsticking a Stuck Writer

This year’s writing has started off with a bang. Words are flowing from my son, we have yet to see any tears, and he even said that he was *gasp* enjoying writing this year! He has always struggled with writing: both the physical and mental aspect of getting thoughts onto paper could cause a full emotional melt down. So, a big goal of each year is to help him overcome the struggle and just get something on paper. We’ve tried many things, abandoning some and expanding others. Here are the top five reasons we think he’s succeeding so well at this point:

1.       Setting quantitative goals: he responds well to a task of a minimum number of lines verses a timed or qualitative assignment; we then work on polishing up those initial drafts as a completely different lesson – this seems to work for him because he’s not stressed about getting everything perfect the first time and he can concentrate on the mechanics (not the content) when editing, so we’re basically separating out the process into two distinct steps

2.       Writing lots every day: almost every lesson has some sort of writing involved, from taking notes in history to writing a short explanation in math to full paragraphs for lab conclusions – a normal day has about 20 different writing tasks across all subjects

3.       Varied writing assignments: short and long, informal and formal, edited and one-then-done

4.       Reading for example: I upped his reading level for history sources to two grades above where he is – he’s never struggled with reading comprehension so it made sense to expose him to a more formal and complex writing style than most middle school textbooks offer

5.       My writing for example: I write a lot every day – this blog, emails to friends, postings on forums, etc. – to demonstrate the importance and power of the written word

He has a book review blog that gets updated every other week. This is an informal assignment with editing encouraged, i.e. he can use contractions and first person, but he needs to proof it before it’s posted. Just looking back over this year’s versus last year’s entries shows how far he’s come!