Using Visual supports for writing

Last Friday we held a workshop here at Sommerville and invited SENCO's teacher's and teacher aides to participate.  My colleague Donna and I presented on teaching reading and writing to Children with Special Educational needs. This was well received by all who attended.

As part of my presentation I reiterated to importance of using visuals with our students.  I also demonstrated  how to use Colourful Semantics and showed the progress students have made using this programme. In my previous blog posts, I shared more information on Colourful Semantics, so please have a look.

In this post, I would like to share a WOW moment we had with one of my students who would not engage in writing. We have been using 'Who, doing what , where". Here are some visuals that we used.

This student , who has very complex needs, was not engaging is any form of writing, but after many attempts at using 'Draw and talk', as explained in my previous blogs and engaging the student with real experiences, the students attempted to write ' I want to go to the beach hotel". This was a huge moment for the student and celebrated by all.

He had gone on holiday and we used the 'real life experience' to encourage him to write about his holiday. He was not motivated to write independently, so we used the photos from his holiday and asked him what was happening in each photo. We also used , 'Who, doing what" This is what he said. I added it to clicker sentences and the student was able to put the sentence in the correct order. He felt really proud of his work and wanted to share it with his teachers and family.

Investigation of handwriting vs device

Hypothesis 2-Handwriting VS device

I will look at if I simply use a device as a motivator to do writing, then will this be enough for my students to form a simple sentence, or would other skills need to be taught.

This is a writing sample of one of my Yr 8 students who has language delays and is not motivated write. I wanted to see how she constructs a simple sentence using pictures as prompts.

This is what she wrote.

She said I hate writing, I want to use the computer. She was given the same activity and she was allowed to use the computer. This is her independent writing. 

Over the next few weeks, we worked on punctuation and verbs.  We also worked on forming simple sentences, understanding the parts to a sentence. I assumed she knew this, but it had to be taught. We also used an editing checklist. She was encouraged to spell check. 

This was her writing sample thereafter.

There needed to be explicit teaching of these skills in order for her to succeed. She was very excited to see no red lines and that her writing "looked right".

Description of students

Description of my students

2.Describe how and why you have selected this challenge of student learning. Locate your inquiry in the context of patterns of student learning in Manaiakalani overall.

The target group of students I am focusing on, are at all different levels. They have different challenges that I am going to look at. I will use the developmental writing scale to see how my students progress.

Meet my target students  

• Student 1 - Is six years old and has Down Syndrome. He has also been diagnosed with moderate ASD, Global developmental delay, conductive hearing loss, hearing aid in both ears, Hypermetropia-wears glasses and dysphasia. Student1 is in a Year one class and has significant language delays.  He is mostly non verbal, in a one on one sessions he may share an experience about his weekend. He is not motivated to write due to his delayed language and  poor fine motor skills. He is just beginning to learn how to use a device. 

• Student 2 - Is eight years old. He also has Down Syndrome and moderate ASD. He has hearing loss in one ear, he has one hearing aid and wear glasses. He is in a Year 4 class and has significant language delays. He will sometimes attempt to write a recount about his weekend. He requires lots of prompting and motivation to get started with his writing. A reward system and a range of targeted resources is needed in order for him to complete a writing task. His lacks of motivation is due to his poor fine motor control and his language delays.

• Student 3 - Is eight years old and he has Autism, English is second language and he has Global developmental delays. He is in a Year four class. He has significant language delays and is not motivated to write. With support and targeted resources he will attempt a simple sentence about an experience he had. He still misses out the little words and always starts his sentence with 'His name'. He is confident on a device, but due to language delays, he needs constant reassurance before he can record a word.

• Student 4 - Is 11 years old and has Down Syndrome, Global developmental delay, conductive hearing loss,  and dysphasia. She has significant language delays and is in a Year six class. She needs lots of  motivated to write and she will only write if she had an experience. Due to her poor motor control and language delays, she finds writing difficult. She is only starting to learn how to write on a device.

• Student 5- Is in a year eight class and has intellectual disability. She has extremely low adaptive functioning, serious Receptive and Expressive Language disorder and probable Neurological Disorder. Due to poor motor control and language delays, she finds writing difficult and is not motivated to write. She is aware of the fact the she is working at a much lower level than her peers. Even though she is very confident on a device, she requires a range of prompts and supports in order to construct a simple sentence.

My students struggle to focus for extended periods of time. They are not very motivated to write and require lots of motivation to get started and stay on task. My hunch is that if I focus on extending their 'on-task' behavior with strategies to manage themselves then they will improve their writing. Over the course of the term I will share the strategies I am using to increase their on task behavior. 

Using the developmental writing scale (see previous post for scale), this is the current level that my students are working at. (Beginning of year)
Student 1	Level 1 - drawing
Student 4	Level 5- One  intelligible word
Student 5	Level 6- Two or three intelligible words
Student 2	Level 7- Three or more intelligible words
Student 3	Level 7- Three or more intelligible words