Re-teaching a child to Write

This week I have been wondering how I was going to tackle writing with Carl. His fight with Lyme disease left him with some cognitive challenges...especially in the area of writing.

I have come up with a plan of attack, based on my knowledge of Charlotte Mason's teachings and Susan Wise Bauer's writing programs...and my own experience in teaching my kids to write.

Writing has several components....there is a physical component and a mental component. First, you need to have words in your mind...and then those words need to be transformed into characters on paper, or computer screen.

Then physical act of writing can be a roadblock to a child who has never learned proper mechanics or a child who has had a long illness....and needs reteaching.

Mechanics include penmanship, grammar, punctuation, spelling all the nitty gritty get it on paper details.

The there is the creative aspect...the WHAT to write. At first, that should not be an issue. While mechanics are being learned, creativity should not be expected or set up as a roadblock. This is where copy work, dictation, outlining, summarizing, oral and written narrations come into play. We can not move onto a higher order of thinking without a shored up, solid foundation. When then foundational skills are developed, creative and rhetorical writing can come into play. This is now thinking. We write to think....to try out our thoughts, to convey our opinions, to communicate to an audience...even if that audience is just ourselves.

So, following is my plan to remediate Carl's writing...Other components may be added later on
....
Step 1.....
Copy work.....daily, until he can fluently write 2 full pages...no mistakes...in less than 10 minutes...this is to strengthen his hand back up....and remind his brain about capitalization, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure...etc.

Dictation....to be added in after a couple of weeks....and done on opposite days of copy work...working up to 3-6 memorized sentences at a time...after 2 readings. This is to re-learn keeping sentences, grammar, punctuation in his brain while getting it down on paper.

Outlining/summarizing.....from articles, textbooks, encyclopedia....we will move onto this when dictation exercises become fluid. we will move from easier to harder source documents...then outlining/summarizing from more than one resource and writing a more complicated summary.

When these summaries become fluent, I plan to move onto reteaching the different essay types....including 5 paragraph essays....expository, persuasive, compare/contrast, etc.
I will also reintroduce literary response essays and written narrations in math and science.

Seeing as these were all skills he has already possessed, I do not think it will take too long to move through these steps.

I will probably buy WWS and work through some of those exercises with him...in will need it for my boys in a year or so anyway......

Once we have these basic building blocks back down, I will probably sign him up for a CC English 101.... And work it with him....

So, any comments or suggestions on this plan?

Thanks for helping me work this all out....and for the outpouring of prayers and positive thoughts for my ds. It means so much to us!

Faithe