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My son is in Preparing with his sister. She is rather gifted, and things come easily for her. My son has some mild learning needs. He struggles with fine motor, especially penmanship. He capitalizes what isn't supposed to be capitalized mostly.

Here was today's problem...FISASO leading to tears from my big 10 year old boy.

They are in the part of grammar where they are learning to write paragraphs by putting sentences in the correct order. The only assignment was to take 3 sentences from the R&S book, put them in order, and write them in paragraph form.

He has written paragraphs before when the sentences were already in order.
The thing is, I saw on his paper that he had written the numbers of the sentences in order at the top of his paper (3, 1, 2). That was the correct order. I left my son and daughter to do the work independently with a word to please only put capitals where they were called for. Sister was done in a flash...all neat and pretty.

When I checked to see what was taking him so long, he was on the 3rd WORD and holes were erased in his paper from so many erasures. It was from putting caps where they didn't belong. His head was on the table and he was crying. "I just can't do it. It's too hard". Isn't proper capitalization important? I don't want him in tears over schoolwork especially alongside competitive sister.

What would you do in this situation?

Shannon Randolph

Shannon,
Hugs and prayers are being sent to you. My ds struggles with writing, but he does the happy dance when he can write in the white board. Are you doing the 1/3 written and 2/3 oral? It seems you need to make some adjustments for his learning issues. Using a whiteboard, allowing him to write in his own student book, you writing on the board, or you writing on paper. Will can circle or erase the mistakes rather than write the whole paragraph since the learning is for grammar, and not copy work. It is not recommended, but I have purchased R&S workbooks. They have a lot of examples and space to put the answers. This provides extra practice if needed, but too much at times.
It appears your dd needs a heart to heart. I have given one to my ds. I have explained how God has placed him on our team and he is to be helpful, kind, and loving to his younger sister who needs extra help. It is a relay event not a solo sprint, and there isn't a win until all team members finish. Sometimes we need to help our teammates or we are disqualified. I expect love, kindness, and a helpful attitude in my family because if we are less than that we are no better than the world.
I pray you find answers and peace.

It sounds like he is struggling with some form of dysgraphia. If he is looking at the sentence and still struggling to get the capitalization right then it most likely isn't an issue of him not understanding what should be capitalized, but an issue of the signals from his eye to his brain to his hand being confused. My ds has dysgraphia and he still sometimes writes certain letters as capitols, it is just how he makes the letters. I also think you need to make some adaptations. With those activities in Rod and Staff I often just let my ds tell me what order the sentences should go in and stop there. If the purpose of the lesson is more understanding what makes a good paragraph then I feel that is enough. If the purpose seems to be to actually write a paragraph then I will let him type it or when he wasn't as good at typing as he is now I would let him dictate it to me either on paper or the white board and I would let him tell me where I should put the punctuation and capitols. How does he do with the copywork exercises in Preparing?
Another thought I had is I don't know if you could have your 2 dc do their grammar at different times, but if that is at all possible I think I would consider it at least on days that are the writing assignments. If he is always comparing himself to his gifted sister he is going to get very discouraged. I have a gifted dd also and thankfully they are 4 years apart so comparison with school work was never an issue, but I know if they would have been doing the same school work that my ds would have really struggled with that.

You've gotten some great advice already.

In our family my oldest son struggles with grammar and writing while my younger son excels in it. At first I only had them do these subjects at separate times, but I have since learned that my oldest does best when he can have 20-30 minutes of my time alone. It doesn't totally stop the tears and frustration, but it certainly helps.
Part of his problem is mild dyslexia/dysgraphia and part is perfectionism. I make some accomodations for the former, but we are working on the perfection 'complex'.

I certainly recommend keeping them separate for grammar. It basically sounds as though your daughter only needs you for the start, then maybe she could go off alone to finish while you work with your son. At least on writing days. Wishing you the best.

You have gotten great advice! Do you have 2 student books? I would suggest ordering 2 student books so that you could have your dd go off to do her work if needed. When my older girls were doing R&S together...this was an issue b/c my oldest excels in language arts. I bought 2 books and my oldest wrote hers out on paper after going over it. She just took her book and went off to work. This was good for her b/c she enjoyed writing it all. My younger dd who does not enjoy writing or grammar would then do a lot of it on the dry erase board with me one on one and then only do what was necessary for paper work.

The advice here from all posters is wonderful! I do think I'd do them separately, as well as shorten ds's writing, utilizing a marker board to break it up, and as LynnH said, weighing the skill that is to be learned in each lesson and not requiring writing if mastery of the skill can be shown verbally. I think Tidbits of Learning makes a very practical suggestion here that would be quite helpful in separating their English lesson times...

Tidbits of Learning wrote:You have gotten great advice! Do you have 2 student books? I would suggest ordering 2 student books so that you could have your dd go off to do her work if needed. When my older girls were doing R&S together...this was an issue b/c my oldest excels in language arts. I bought 2 books and my oldest wrote hers out on paper after going over it. She just took her book and went off to work. This was good for her b/c she enjoyed writing it all. My younger dd who does not enjoy writing or grammar would then do a lot of it on the dry erase board with me one on one and then only do what was necessary for paper work.

Having 2 books, starting off the older dd and sending her off with her work, and then meeting separately with ds is a great idea that probably won't take more teacher time anyway. Having 2 books would help this be a success. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

This has been so helpful! Thanks to all!

Dysgraphia is VERY real. It sounds like he may be struggling with this. I would do as little written work as possible right now, especially when he can do it orally. Let him type things when possible. Limiting the amount he has to write will take a lot of stress away. Then he can focus on writing when he is required to do so. I would allow him to do most of the R&S orally. I did that with my dyslexic ds. It worked very well.
Laura

My son would have died with that assignment. He has mild dyslexia that shows up in spelling and he has dysgraphia. I would have had him number the sentences in the correct order and read them to me aloud. That was the skill being measured. He actually struggles with sequencing so I may have even created a worksheet that would give him more practice at putting the sentences in the correct order. I would not have had him write out the entire paragraph. If I had him do any of the writing, it would have been one sentence just for handwriting practice. More likely though we would have done that entire lesson orally and he would do a separate handwriting activity.

And just for your info: He is enjoying learning cursive as it forces him to not lift his hand off the paper. He forms his letter much better this way and it almost entirely eliminates his issue with upper/lower case confusion. He tends to be artistic and creative and the cursive appeals to that side of his personality.