It has been fascinating to watch Ayden Jane work on learning to express her thoughts on paper.
I am happy to say that she can form great complete sentences in her head. She totally gets what a sentence is and attempts to express herself in complete sentences. She is also doing well with spelling. She spells well phonetically so short words that follow the rules are not a problem. She does not do great spelling (nor great reading) sight words but it is coming. All very first grade things.
Now, when you sit with her and she attempts to write a sentence you start to really understand. She just has a really hard time holding the whole sentence in her head and then doing all the little pieces to make that whole sentence come to being. The first word is usually good. It is spelled correctly and generally there is a space behind it. Then the next word will usually have most of its letters but the space behind that word disappears and a trail of a few letters from the remaining words is tacked on.
Last night we worked on it and I told her I could see the first word 'Here' and the space, but read the rest of the sentence as one long word. I asked her where the other words were. She looked at me confused. I asked her to tell me her sentence and then tell me how many words it has. She did it orally with no problem. So I told her to look at her paper and tell me how many words she wrote. She looked and then started to giggle. "Why does my brain stop working when I write my sentences?"
She erased the line of letters and I watched (and helped a little) as she completed the whole sentence. As she finished a word she would recited her sentence to herself again and it would take a minute to figure out what word she should be working on. Then she would try take a minute to use her finger and try to figure out where the word should start. Generally, by this time she didn't remember what word she was writing and had to start reciting her sentence again.... and repeat.
I was amazed both by how hard this process is for her and her perseverance to stick with it until the very end.
I am happy to say that she can form great complete sentences in her head. She totally gets what a sentence is and attempts to express herself in complete sentences. She is also doing well with spelling. She spells well phonetically so short words that follow the rules are not a problem. She does not do great spelling (nor great reading) sight words but it is coming. All very first grade things.
Now, when you sit with her and she attempts to write a sentence you start to really understand. She just has a really hard time holding the whole sentence in her head and then doing all the little pieces to make that whole sentence come to being. The first word is usually good. It is spelled correctly and generally there is a space behind it. Then the next word will usually have most of its letters but the space behind that word disappears and a trail of a few letters from the remaining words is tacked on.
Last night we worked on it and I told her I could see the first word 'Here' and the space, but read the rest of the sentence as one long word. I asked her where the other words were. She looked at me confused. I asked her to tell me her sentence and then tell me how many words it has. She did it orally with no problem. So I told her to look at her paper and tell me how many words she wrote. She looked and then started to giggle. "Why does my brain stop working when I write my sentences?"
She erased the line of letters and I watched (and helped a little) as she completed the whole sentence. As she finished a word she would recited her sentence to herself again and it would take a minute to figure out what word she should be working on. Then she would try take a minute to use her finger and try to figure out where the word should start. Generally, by this time she didn't remember what word she was writing and had to start reciting her sentence again.... and repeat.
I was amazed both by how hard this process is for her and her perseverance to stick with it until the very end.
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