Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Homework Help for Dyslexic Challenges, Awkward Letter Formation, Letter Reversals, and Spelling

Here are some great tips to help your struggling reader. You can sign-up for homework tips through Stowell Learning Center too.


Filling out worksheets is a breeze for some kids, but for those who find writing or spelling slow and laborious, a simple homework worksheet can take aaaallllll afternoon.

Students with graphomotor challenges (difficulty printing or writing in cursive) often find the lines on worksheets too short or too narrow for their uncoordinated and ballooning letters

If they are going to write legibly on the lines provided, they have to write each letter very intentionally and carefully, so even if they know the content, it will take them far longer than their friends to complete it. Often, kids with these kinds of challenges get overwhelmed and exhausted.

For students with dyslexic challenges, awkward letter formation, letter reversals, and spelling (which may have to be erased and corrected over and over) can make a simple worksheet seem to take forever, and the real learning in the assignment, the content, may become completely lost.

If your child fits one of these scenarios and your dining room table is the scene of nightly meltdowns over worksheets, you may want to get your child's teacher on board with the suggestion below.

 
Share the Writing
Tackling Worksheets When Writing or Spelling is Slow and Laborious

***Make sure you arrange with your child's teacher to use the following procedure.

Agree to have your student be responsible for writing the answers to a portion of the questions (for example, 2 out of 5), and then you (the parent) write the answers to the other questions as your student dictates.

This allows your child to take her time and write carefully and neatly on the items she writes, developing good habits.

It's important that students be responsible for part of the writing so that she knows that she is capable. She should know that the amount of writing she will do is being reduced so that she can focus on neatness and spelling.

Her best is expected!

Sharing the actual writing reduces the stress on students and allows her to focus more on the content. By having less actual writing to do, she can create better habits because she will not feel penalized by the amount of time it takes.

She will feel better about her work product because her own writing looks neater, and she might just have a little time left at the end of the day.

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