| Well, here we are again, at the end of another school year. D has finished first grade, and the summer awaits. How does it go so fast? I kind of fell off the wagon after Christmas with my posts about our curriculum and journey through first grade, so I will sum up the year in this post. Warning: it could get long-ish and sound like some complaining, but I find it good for me to get it out. I really am not all that dissatisfied, but we have some work ahead of us nonetheless. So, here goes... For anyone reading who is not familiar with our schooling arrangement, we are using a Christian homeschool coop/PSP that provides two days a week classroom instruction, chooses the curriculum, generates lesson plans and report cards, keeps a cum file on each student, and files the private school affidavit on our behalf with the state of California, among other things. This is what I refer to as "the coop" and "the teacher" is the coop classroom teacher for first grade, who is a really sweet and knowledgeable lady who tries to accommodate everyone. Ok, really, NOW here goes... After we came back from Christmas break, the coop changed up the lesson plans a little bit and took back the hands on science as a classroom activity. I was disappointed with this, because we really needed it here at home with my seatwork-averse oldest child. We enjoyed doing the activities one day each week at home while it lasted. Then the writing assignments accelerated. My Father's World is a great curriculum, but I think that the classroom teacher added to the intended workload when the lesson plan was created. I believe My Father's World intended for the kids to simply journal what they learned in their bible reader each day, gradually getting a little longer as the year went on. There is a "bible notebook" for just that purpose, with about 5 lines for writing and a blank area in the upper part of the page for drawing a picture. What I mean by "journaling" is that we read and discuss the story, and the child writes freely a few sentences (2 or 3) about the story and draws a picture... having fun with it... not being so "schoolish" and demanding. What we ended up doing was: write a rough draft of 3 to 4 sentences, edit/revise the rough draft, write the final draft neatly in the notebook, draw the picture... all in one day... repeat for next day's assignment... 3 to 4 assignments per week. YIKES! When you have a child who has struggled with writing from the outset (Kindergarten penmanship and copywork were a real bear to get through) and does his copywork literally One. Letter. At. A. Time. as opposed to whole words at a time, writing 3 to 4 sentences at least twice and then a drawing in one day is too much. None of this was done during the classroom session at the coop except some prewriting for the first assignment of the week on Mondays. All of our other work at home suffered because of it. I felt so bad for him. It would take hours just to get the rough draft done, let alone edit/revise and write the final draft and a picture. By the time he got to the picture he was so burned out that it was stick figures in pencil. No color, no creative expression, just get it over with. Needless to say, his mark (from the coop teacher) in art for the end of the year was "meets beginning expectations". He is a very creative boy when he is not burnt out, he had no opportunity to do art just for the sake of enjoying art this year. Towards the end of the year, some time after I had made our struggle known to the teacher and the administrator, they did reign back the writing to two assignments per week for those who could not do four, but still required the rough/edit/final process. This helped a little, and I started taking the rough draft as dictation for him but the final draft then became copywork, which he abhors. He literally takes it one letter at a time and frequently leaves the table mid-word (mid-syllable, even!) when he wants a break. I think we may be looking at a case of dysgraphia. Normally people think of dysgraphia as illegible penmanship, but it's deeper than that. In our case, it seems to be that he can write neatly (as can be expected for a first grade boy) and form his letters properly during a penmanship lesson or when doing copywork carefully... but as soon as he begins writing freely (story summary, creative work, etc), he does not form his letters with the strokes in the proper sequence or direction in a lot of cases, and the more words he writes the messier it looks. "O" begins at 7 o'clock and goes down-around to the right and back around, rather than beginning at 12 o'clock or 2 o'clock and going up-around to the left and around. Lowercase "p" begins with the circle first and then he decides which side to put the line on, which often causes a reversal and the letter "q" comes out instead. A lot of this "back and forth" in the order of strokes across the page makes writing a real effort for him. And it's not because he was taught wrong or doesn't know how it's supposed to go... it just comes out that way! To the end of (hopefully) working through some of these issues over the summer and prepare to move on to second grade, where I can only assume the lesson plans will continue to accelerate in writing, we are doing two things over the summer: First, I am investing in the curriculum from Handwriting Without Tears (HWT). The coop has added this curriculum in for Pre-K and Kindergarten beginning next year, so I purchased everything from Pre-K readiness up through First Grade printing. (My middle child, H, starts Pre-K in the fall, so that's why I bought beginning with Pre-K). I plan to take D through the Kindergarten level really fast to re-teach letter formation and then through First as much as we can do over the summer. I have only read good things about HWT from my research, some of it testimony from moms of dysgraphic children. Of course, it will only address his letter formation, but anything to make it easier for him to write!Of course, dysgraphia is my unprofessional diagnosis of the problem. The only place I have been able to find locally to get a full professional workup from an educational psychologist charges $2500 and it's not something that insurance covers. However, every article I've read on it speaks volumes about the issues we are dealing with. So, that has been our big struggle, and part of the reason I have fallen off the blog wagon. There has just been no extra time! In more positive news: D took his SAT10 this year, and although it is supposed to be a "throw away" year for standardized testing, I am glad to have the benchmarks it provides. His reading and language scores were above grade level compared to his peers in private christian schools nationwide, and everything else was within his grade level. I know many homeschoolers frown on standardized testing, but I felt it was one more documentation of his progress that was unbiased, and would prepare him for test taking in the future. So, that's where we have ended up. Hopefully I will have more to blog over the summer. For now I am taking a big sigh of relief and taking a few days break to regain my sanity! ~ |
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| Posted by DonnaC |
| You wrote:
Of course, dysgraphia is my unprofessional diagnosis of the problem. The only place I have been able to find locally to get a full professional workup from an educational psychologist charges $2500 and it's not something that insurance covers. However, every article I've read on it speaks volumes about the issues we are dealing with. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have a friend who has 2-3 of her 4 children with learning challenges. She has sought help through Scottish Rite Hospital. (We live in the DFW metroplex in TX.) I think either it is free or at best on a sliding scale, but they can give you some help. For my friend, they did seem to be "geared" for the public schooled child, but the information they provided still helped my friend. I hope this is helpful! (Saw your comment post on scripts on the Company Porch and wanted to see your blog. Very pretty!) In Him, Donna C http://donnac.com |
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~June 10, 2009
<em>Untitled Comment</em>
See you tomorrow!
Love,
Carla
Edited by DragonflyPrincess on June 11, 2009 at 11:54 AM