Comments on: Marie’s Research Project — Includes Various Thoughts About Writing Development, Asperger’s, RDI & Whatever Else Pops Into My Cluttered Mind

By: tara

tara — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:19:07 +0000

You seemed to have covered all the bases and your approaches to help Marie are creative and thoughtful.
I know who to ask for help when it is time for Owen to begin his writing in earnest

I would let your ideas percolate a bit with Marie and see what happens.

By: Angela,

Angela, — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:49:36 +0000

I love the way you are approaching this. As another writing teacher, your step-by-step approach is right on target, teaching her how all the parts work together toward the final project.

The key that you are forgetting is in the very beginning of the post…you have not worked in this way much in the past, having postponed it. Writing is a process to be learned, as it the way to “think” about writing. This sounds as if it is a fairly significant project, with many new skills to learn: outlining, researching with focus, writing cohesively, and transitioning. It might just be a little too overwhelming.

I took a different approach with my LD child, in thinking that repetition of skills, adding more and more to the task over the years would be helpful in this process. I’m all about “baby steps” . We started with small papers at age 10, with very limited focus to learn the “bones” . Each year we added more skills, and went deeper into the process. Each time, she was able to solidly exhibit the skill set she had struggled with previously, adding more. Now, it is old hat, and she needs little guidance.

Maybe you need to take some breaks in between each skill to let her digest instead of making this paper a giant hill to climb. Imagine how it feels to be working so hard, yet time and time again find that your hard work isn’t “right” . She may need more direction in every phase, so that she is learning by example , to turn the process into one of successful steps.

By: Christine

Christine — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:11:17 +0000

I really don’t know what (formal) writing Marie has done prior to this, but it seems to me that for where she is and for what you are trying to prepare her, you are doing a fabulous job of guiding her through this. I think that you aren’t making this a “static exercise” so much as giving her a task, seeing how she does with it and where she needs assistance/teaching, then guiding her through the next stage by giving her the tools she needs. I’m really impressed at how much you know about writing a paper such as this and about how to guide a student through it. I worry all the time about the fact that my kids don’t do any formal writing to speak of and about whether I should eventually (soon? high school-age?) introduce them to more formal writing and how I’ll possibly have any idea what I’m doing. It’s really helpful to see how you’re going about doing this with Marie.