Boys Writing, or Trying to Write

NAEP Shows Most Students Lack Writing Proficiency

24,100 8th graders and 28,100 12th graders responded in 2011 to two 30-minute writing prompts that asked them to persuade, explain, or convey experiences.

Overall, only 27% scored at or above the proficient level.

Females outperformed males at both grade levels.

In 8th grade, 37% of girls scored proficient or above, compared with 18% of boys.

I am sad, but not surprised. Boys are wired for more instant feedback and gratification, plus a distaste for over-flowery language, or descriptive, stylistic prose. I know, that is a sweeping generalization and would never hold up in a journalistic venue. 

I would have to say, "In my experience..." or "From my perspective.." But this is my blog, a cross between a textbook on teaching and a journal on innovative but very messy learning curves put to paper.

So boys often say that they can "talk to the prompt" but not respond to it in writing. They think it is because it takes longer, grammar is looming, and spelling leaps out to be addressed. While those are all true, what is also roadblocking them is formal register, which I have written about here before. Both school and work operate at two levels: the consultative and formal. Consultative is a mix of formal and casual register. Example: “I can’t accept the assignment the way it is.” I love Ruby Payne's work on this, in her research on poverty. I was helped greatly by studying her books and hearing her speak when I was doing staff development in rural farmlands of CA.

No simple answers. [But I have many answers! - as those of you who know me are aware of]

Many frustrated parents. Homework is a nightmare for these boys who resist writing, and need coaching about communicating in print in the formal register. In my sessions with such boys, we have to talk it out in their own comfortable oral language, then transfer it to paper, putting faith in their powers of working memory, and THEN spice it up with transition words and synonyms for what just came out of their mouth.

"Describe what your math group did to come up with their answer today, in one paragraph." Actual assignment of a 7th grade boy today. And how is this, from yesterday: "Give three reasons why the cultural system of Mesopotamia experienced periodic breakdowns. Explain how geographic features contributed to these."  Geez.

Many of my kids think good writers are those who sit down and write a novel in a day. 

Many analogies are made, every night, by exhausted parents, to their 9-17 year old sons, about long-term gratification in sports, or electric guitar, or even gaming. They are trying to prevent power struggles. Or portray the amount of work and revision that goes into a piece of art, mastering an athletic skill, or fine-tuning a career path. Best analogy to writing assignments? Composing a song. 

I haven't decided what I think of this new book, and this author who claims to have the switch that turns boys onto writing. A colleague went to his seminar this summer, and said it was all very over-simplified, touting giving boys permission to write gross, violent, fantasy pieces, and that will magically make them skilled at writing other genres. OH!  

Really! If that worked, then why teach any genres at all?

BOY WRITERS: Reclaiming Their Voices

(from an interview with Ralph Fletcher, the author)

According to my research, many boys yearn to write what they read--fantasy. Yet for various reasons many teachers are

hesitant to allow them to do so.That's too bad. Teachers often say to me: "But the writing they do isn't very good!" I reply:

"So what? Let them take a crack at it. At least they're engaged."

I think we could find lots of other genres that would appeal to boys including:

--humor especially spoofs and parodies

--sports commentary

--scary stories or horror

--graphic novels or comics

Well, that doesn't seem like it would prepare them to write a paper in college on the history of architecture, or an interpretation of a tort in pre-law. Or even get a decent score on the NAEP test, above.

Hmmmm.

Alphabet Soup

So what does all that alphabet soup mean in a neuropsychologist report?  

I get that question a lot from parents, as they attempt to decipher the recent stapled diatribe on their child's brain processes. I forget how overwhelming it can be to see all that information about your child, and how badly a parent would want to cling to "fixing" it all. 

I tell them to talk to other parents, get online to get definitions of the acronyms, but don't spend too much time online, or you will find yourself sucked into the vortex of mommy blogs of special needs kids. Great reading, but too many pieces of advice about kids you have never met, so it feels thrice removed.

Essentially a report is a document that can help you get your child some help at school, confirm the intuitions you have had all along, and pave a road to reasonable goal-setting. A child with slow processing and RAN Scores (Rapid Automatic Naming) should not spend a time trying to get good at timed tests, for example. 

Also used for an IEE - Independent Educational Evaluation - when the school refuses to do testing on a student for special education.  Districts have to pay for these if indeed a learning disability is found. Most importantly [insert self-promotional statement here], a good teacher or learning specialist will be able to unravel the jargon of a report into an intervention plan. 

Receptive and Expressive Language are what I look closely for when demystifying a child's writing struggles. And, of course, attention and working memory. This is where the "L" of SLP comes in. A good Speech and Language Therapist can be an excellent resource for writing instruction, if they have attended numerous conferences on their own, harvesting nitty-gritty tricks outside of their formal training. Written expression is not in the coursework of the average program.  Good SLPs understand that writing instruction is multi-layered, have read research for fun, and touch deeply into kids who need more than a Socratic approach to writing, aka public school writer's workshop. 

Lots of journaling and ideation and breaking open creative pathways is a perfect journey for adults needing that boost, and feedback on their writing. But children need that, AND so much more. They need sentence drills, almost the equivalent of the fluency drills in well-known Multi-Sensory Curriculums.

Just yesterday I worked on having a student create sentences over and over that had certain parameters set by me, and he has come a long way in our summer work but has a long way to go. So many more things there are to "automatize" in writing mastery than in reading proficiency. 

Alphabet soup to me means getting kids excited about the fact that out of 26 letters we can create a million words.