'Overwriting' Student's incorrect case letters/reversals

My son’s teachers have done this with him too but it doesn’t seem to upset him. Since it does upset your son, I would simply tell her not to do it—that you know she is trying to help but that your son doesn’t learn this way. Then think about what would help him. With my son, going back over what he has written helps. He has a hard time integrating the tasks of writing, spelling, grammar, ect. with his thought process. I have made clear that instruction in the like will not help—resource room was suggested for exatra help—he knows it, but just can’t do it all at once.

I don’t think a fifth grader should be pulled out for this reason and I wouldn’t allow them to do this. He probably needs to be typing, although that will not resolve all the issues.

Beth

That is one of my personal pet peeves. That technique’s never going to help my kid spell better (even if he saw how to spell it correctly today, he won’t be able to spell it tomorrow). It’s only going to screw up his self-esteem.

That was my protective mother view of it anyway. My son said it actually didn’t bother him. He just ignored it. (Confirming once again that it has no value.) And since he said that, I tried to make myself ignore it, too. Had other major battles to fight.

How does your son feel about it now, in 5th grade? Does it still bother him?

What’s an ISSP anyway?

Thanks — I needed that! It still REALLY bothers him — just a personal sore spot I think. He is one that wants to ‘blend in’ and does NOT want anyone knowing he ‘needs help’, especially this year when he feels the teacher is ‘on his side’, and he is getting his work done like everyone else.

ISSP is ‘In School Support Program’ — help for anyone who needs it, even without an IEP. I’m not sure if the ‘Grade 5 ISSP teacher’ is just an aide, or if she is actually SPED trained — but with my son, rapport and respect are EVERYTHING if you want his best effort.

The most maddening thing is that, if they had ASKED me about this before speaking to my son about it, I would have suggested that we have Mr. S ‘sell’ him on whatever they want to do — I KNOW it would have been more favourably received! But that is part of the long story…

sounds like the issp person was unaware of any special needs your child has— and since there is no IEP she would need to be well trained and sensitive to LD-type issues to have handled this differently—which sadly, many school employees are not, especially aides who are relatively low paid and untrained in most districts. I am always surprised when teachers “ask” a child to do something when they are really demanding that he do it— that’s a cardinal rule of teaching and parenting that you don’t offer a choice when it isn’t one!

I do sometimes write corrections over — it kind of depends on the situation how much correcting I do. I prefer to discuss the writing with the student and have him correct the errors as I point out the places to him, but this takes twice as long as the original work and is only feasible in limited situations. Your ISSP should be able to do this at least now and then.

We went to a meeting with my daughter’s teacher at the beginning of Grade 6. She gave us a little speech about the wonderful “new” methods they were using, and told us that they did not correct spelling and grammar in the students’ writing. One courageous father stood up and said “You’ve had them in school for six years now; when *are* you going to get around to teaching spelling and grammar?” He got a standing ovation, and the new teacher looked a bit sick (all to the good, many of us felt.) The point is that many kids simply don’t know that these are issues; nobody has ever corrected their work so they don’t see why they should worry. Some of us do some major correcting, especially at the beginning, to make a point that yes, it *does* matter. Your son may be a special case — but if you don’t have any IEP or other official info, the person can’t be expected to know this off the top.

Personally, I always correct in pen. And I put a mark through any blank answer, in pen. Having been burned by more than a couple of kids who just changed the pencil and then claimed it was my error, I make sure there is no ambiguity.

Yes, your son should get positive encouragement. But making mistakes and correcting them is a fact of life. This is a battle where is setting himself up to lose more and more as time goes on and school becomes more challenging. He really needs to learn not to identlfy correction of his school work with an attack on him as a person; I have seen kids who carried this attitude into high school and even college, and it is a setup for continued conflict and never a win. He should be re-writing a corrected copy if it is a major assignment. The erase-erase -erase habit does not help learn from one’s mistakes, just to hide them and pretend they never happened. If he learns to cross out errors and write the correct version above, then he can look at the difference and possibly learn from that.

I fought for two long hard years to get an IEP for my fourth grade daughter for just this reason. I didn’t want to have to “start over” every year to get the new teacher to understand that no amount of “taking her time”, or “trying harder” would make her handwritting any better. The child simply cannot write, and it’s not for lack of trying. Now, we have no issues with grammar or spelling (as long as she can say the words out loud as she writes them for the test), and have been told she “has an excellant command of grammatic rules”.

We have her type her work both at school and home whenever possible, and she has a resource teacher in the classroom to help for those times when it isn’t feasable. This has helped a great deal.

My 5th grade child’s writing is correctly only if that was the point of the assignment. He realizes he is doing it incorrectly and would like to do it properly BUT we have decided to spend our time and energy on learning the material and remediating, not rewrites. This would never teach him anything, anyway. It is not how he learns.

As to the aides—bless their hearts but they need more training. The aide in my son’s class happens to walk down to the offices with a child at the same time my son goes there for speech. She had taken it upon herself to stop him and “clean him up” ie straighten his hair and shirt, retie his shoes. DROVE HIM NUTS as is is very sensitive to touch. And that’s in his IEP—she wasn’t aware he had one.

It is so handy to have this forum for support! All was explained last night when we met. She IS SPED trained but VERY young and eager, and her previous placement was MR kids…bingo! Now that I’ve met her, I can see that along with the overwriting, she did not establish rapport because of the way she speaks to him. Very nice, but her tone…well, as a Cub leader I have decided that some people speak ACROSS the air to children, and some unfortunately speak DOWN to children from a great height…this is not necessarily intentional. Some children are more sensitive to this than others — my only child, in a large extended family of people who believe as I do that ‘a person’s a person, no matter how small’, is more sensitive to it than most, especially while at school. This teacher is a lovely person, but needs experience I think.

We chatted and I brought up the fact that the overwriting is something that bothers my son. She turned to him and said, ‘But honey, I do that to ALL the children!’ as if that made it ok and it should not bother him…again, like the aide mentioned above who messed with one child’s physical appearance, it is hard for some people to remember that children are PEOPLE — not partial people, or unfinished people, but PEOPLE! Especially in 5th grade, we are due some respect for our personal feelings when expressed — but I would not expect a very young, inexperienced teacher with no kids of her own to know this. Some are born knowing it — others must learn! (gee, just like academic skills!)

Plus, I think it is an occupational hazard for teachers to lump children in various broad categories and ‘process’ them using standard techniques and responses — you can be perfectly competent for 25/30 kids a year, but just because you are not a superstar who gets all 30 perfectly, does not mean you are not a great teacher. I fully admit that my kid is more unique than most…

Victoria, I DO agree with you — for older students. Anyone with sped training, having seen my son’s writing and spelling, would be quite clear that he is visual LD, and I am VERY well known at the school — I know my child was discussed with the ISSP before she went into the class. We only have 4 grade 5 classes — it is not a huge school. This speaks to my essential reason for avoiding an IEP in our system. My son had total reading failure in Gr. 1, and his teacher was convinced he was ADD-inattentive. After all, she has one of ‘those kids’ and therefore knows ‘those kids’…a lovely lady also, but WRONG.

I took him to a private school summer program where he was taught Spalding by a ‘Victoria Type’ teacher (spell that ‘Excellent!). She, and a tutor she referred me to, warned me against the SPED stream for my son, in our local system, and this matched what we learned with one of my cousins, the only one who HAS been through the ‘SPED’ stream in the last 20 years. All that I saw in the next year confirmed that they were correct!

Being that his ‘type of kid’, while not ADD-inattentive, is quite common in my family, I have full confidence that we are on the ‘right road’. When he gets to high school, I DO want his work corrected — but not his ‘from the board’ notes, while he is trying to copy them, by someone well-meaning but somewhat underinformed as to what should be done…

Thanks again to all…I’m sure I handled this better because I had a couple of you ‘with me’ when I walked into the school…