Boys who hate to write

[birchbark]

I have a classic boy who hates writing. He loves to learn; he loves reading, listening to the audios, and drawing. But the physical act of putting words on paper? Horrors! And this was starting to affect the quality of his written narrations as they lengthened this year. He would write the minimum number of sentences suggested for the narration. Everything was as bare-bones as he could make it. (Sound familiar anyone? ) No flowery descriptions or interesting phrasing. I was frustrated because he wrote such wonderful narrations last year in CTC. Science narrations have especially suffered because they are new and in his mind you don't "do" narrations for science. Also science tends to be at the end of the day.

This year on Fridays I had him doing a typing program. So a few weeks ago I asked if he'd like to type his narration on the computer. He brightened up at this and proceeded to produce a much improved narration! I am much relieved to find he still "had it in him." He has typed his writing assignments and his science narrations since then and it has greatly improved the quality of his writing and his outlook on writing in general. I realize that younger students still need the practice of handwriting and even at my DS's age I make sure he is doing some everyday. (He is still doing all the notebooking by hand.) But if you have a preteen or older student, try typing if you haven't. It's made a big difference around here and I'm actually looking forward to next year's writing "classes" to see what he is capable of producing.

Julie, I hope you read this because I wanted to share this with you at the MACHE conference. I think I got as far as telling how my son hates writing and then we got interrupted! I wanted you to know that the story had a happy ending.

Here is a science narration of his.

[deltagal]

Birchbark,

What a great narration and success story! Does your son's dislike of handwriting have any impact on his notebook pages? If so, what if anything have you done?

[Heather4Him]

That's wonderful!!

Our 14yog hates the physical act of writing, too. She always asks to type instead when she can. Your son's narration is a great example--I read it to her to inspire her to write in more detail. (She's a very "concise", to-the-point writer, and we're working on getting more style and detail.)

[arstephia]

My 13yo types ALL of his writing and it has dramatically improved his narrations. His typing skills are quite proficient now, so he truly does save time by typing. He has to format the pages to fit in his Rev to Rev boxes so he has become very comfortable with document formatting as well, which is a plus!

[birchbark]

Birchbark,

What a great narration and success story! Does your son's dislike of handwriting have any impact on his notebook pages? If so, what if anything have you done?

Well, we always pencil in lines for him to write on. This helps a lot. He also prefers to write in pen. I will let him do this as long as he keeps it neat. The only problem with that is that it is hard to make corrections. But I guess there's always White-out!

He can write neatly if he wants to. The problem comes in when he he hurries due to his dislike of the writing! If it's really bad, I will make him re-do the assignment. This provides great motivation for neatness!

Most of the notebooking he does really well with. The history narrations can have the problem of brevity I mentioned above. Another RTR user (is it Lynn?) has her son type out some of the history notebooking as well and then they cut it out and paste it in the notebook.

A silver lining to this cloud is that he has really learned how to summarize and be concise. You should see how much info he packs into a very short note on the research postcards!

[mrsrandolph]

So when is it ok to type and when should they "have to" write?

[birchbark]

For my son, I let him type when the main focus of an assignment is composition. Does that make sense? When he is doing labels, science notebooking, Q and A's, grammar lessons not done orally, and copywork, he does them by hand. But when the goal of the assignment is to have him put his thoughts into words, then we remove the obstacle of writing mechanics so that he can focus all his energy on composition.

I hope other experienced moms weigh in here. That is a good question.

[my3sons]

Birchbark - Thanks so much for the happy ending! We didn't get to talk as much this year at the book fair, so I'm glad you shared this here. Typing sounds like a great solution for written narrations for your ds. What a good idea! I'm so glad it is going well, and this is a tip I will file away myself as my ds begins to type.

In Christ,
Julie

[mrsrandolph]

Did you guys use typing programs with your children?

[birchbark]

Did you guys use typing programs with your children?

We are using Typing Instructor for Kids. I had heard it recommended on this forum.