Since I officially have two students, from now on I will refer to students as "he" instead of the "s/he" mystery. Protecting identities and all that.
This session was a lot of fun with Student 1. Our academic therapist introduced me to the program "Step Up to Writing", a commercial program that is great for dyslexic students because it incorperates many visual cues and is multi-sensory for the planning process of writing. It also changes the linear approach to writing students are often accustomed:
The traditional writing approach tends to go in a straight line: brainstorming/prewriting, drafting, revising and editing, final copy, publishing. However, real writers don't follow that process so rigidly. That's why there are cycle lines around drafting, revising, and editing. That's a continual process. I used the example of Kathryn Stockton writing The Help. She revised and edited her manuscript over 40 times before a publisher accepted it.
The AT brought me all of her resources to put together real writing instruction. Student 1 has worked through the basics of sentence structure, so I felt he was ready to move on to paragraph construction. What I love about the Step Up to Writing program (SUTW) is their "traffic light" approach.
(sorry, I forgot to rotate BEFORE uploading). The basic premise is the first sentence is the thesis or topic sentence (Go = green). The next sentence is a reason or detail supporting the topic (Slow Down = yellow). Then, the student must STOP (red) and explain that detail. Yellow and red cycles repeat as long as the student wants, but I encouraged at least 3 supporting details. Finally, the last sentence reminds the reader of the original topic (green again).
Because this approach is totally new to most students, I used some paragraphs from the program to illustrate what these paragraphs look like. The first, obviously, is not very detailed. I had Student 1 read the paragraph to himself and we talked through the colors. He then read the second paragraph and we again talked through the colors. I then asked which paragraph he thought was better and he said, "Definitely 2" (field notes, 9/20/12). For the last paragraph, I turned control over to my student. He read the paragraph and then on his own marked the sentences with appropriately colors. After he finished, we talked through it, though he did not have any trouble.
Then it was his turn to write. The biggest addition to the writing process, besides the cycle method, is the planning stage. This was the thing that stuck out to me most in my initial research that dyslexic students need. They need some kind of structure to organize their thoughts BEFORE they actually try to draft. I used the two column approach described in SUTW, although I messed it up just a little bit. We'll do it again though and do it correctly!
My student decided to write about the upcoming OktoberFest. Below is his planning outline. I walked him through the steps and afterwards, we again color-coded each step. His supporting details include, fun, friends, and the dunking booth.
Once the outline was finished, he transferred his organized ideas into sentences. Again, sorry for the rotation. The paragraph reads:
Octoberfest is coming up. It is a blast. There are blow ups, which I think you can never get old of. Then there are the games which you can collect all the junk food. Many of my friends go. We hang out there. There is also a dunking booth. There are priest and teacher there. There is always a crowd around the mean teachers. Overall, Octoberfest is awesome.
Still some things to work on...word choice and variation, subject/verb agreement, "say what you mean", etc. For a first shot with a new system, I think he did a good job. After he finished, I went through and color coded his sentences, thinking out loud as I went. All of his original ideas were there, slightly changed and expanded, everything (generally) makes sense.
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