Writing
Writing is something that can’t really be avoided especially at a young age where schooling is involved. I experienced various different things to work around, none of which were major after the initial teething stage but were frustrating nonetheless as a child. I think a point I struggled with came from teachers seemingly getting frustrated with my repeated mistakes despite them correcting me a multitude of times. Unfortunately, I think it was a case of “if you can’t see a problem, there isn’t one”. I can’t fault my teachers at the time though, as I didn’t exhibit any signs of odd behaviour and was an intelligent child. It may have just appeared that what I was being taught just wasn’t sinking in. This often led to me writing out the same thing time and time again in a very “old school” writing on the blackboard kind of way, which for reference didn’t help me lol.
I think the best way for me to give examples of the different methods I used, is to give a written description of said hurdle and how I found a way to overcome it. If it’s possible I’ll throw some pictures in too, although they may be crude so try not to judge me too harshly by them ;)
I think the best way for me to give examples of the different methods I used, is to give a written description of said hurdle and how I found a way to overcome it. If it’s possible I’ll throw some pictures in too, although they may be crude so try not to judge me too harshly by them ;)
Writing in a straight line
Now that may not sound too difficult, but as a child a jotter with no lines was a challenge. I’d start out fine but as I worked across to the right my sentence looked like it had just taken a jump from a high dive. So, even when I managed to fix this on later lines I still had to follow that pattern to some extent. Obviously the best way to remedy this would have been to draw a ruled line but that wasn’t always viable. As a result, I found the best means of keeping my writing straight was to put two dots on my page, one at the left and the second on the right hand side of the page. I was pretty good at judging their alignment so I managed to get my hand writing looking right. If anyone were to really struggle then I guess as many dots as needed could be added with them being removed as their judgement was improved.
Writing Speed
My biggest issue with the speed I would write at (and to this day unless I remind myself) is the sacrifice of neatness. I think it’s fair to say that I have an obsession with neatness, which leaves my written work close to immaculate, but on the other hand pushes me past the amount of time I would preferably like to spend on it. This would hinder me as a child as I would often compromise the amount of work I could produce to make sure it was the neatest I could do. I had to realise that the handwriting quality wasn’t a reflection of the quality of the work itself. When I knew I was going to be copying work up I also had to make sure I kept my writing speed up and the quality down as it wasn’t going to be the final piece that was being marked. A good exercise I found to help with my writing speed was to listen to a song that I didn’t know and try and write down the lyrics. This would take my mind off the neatness as the pacing of the songs would dictate it.
At times I simply couldn’t manage to get everything written down in a class/lesson that I would need. This became a problem when trying to catch up on my work at home as I’d be missing information that I needed to complete it. A way to try and avoid this happening was to ignore starting the work for a few minutes and write all the questions out that needed to be completed. Depending on the schooling system and the teachers/tutors involved, things such as a written handout of what has been covered in class can be useful if writing out the questions doesn’t prove useful. Even a Dictaphone recording of the lesson itself can work as a memory jogger. I would (and still can do to this day) sometimes read a question and believe I had fully understood its meaning and happily set off on my way to answering it, to find out I’d completely misinterpreted it. Because of that, I found for the sake of simply asking for clarification if I was at all unsure, it could save me a HUGE amount of time that would be spent on re-writes.
At times I simply couldn’t manage to get everything written down in a class/lesson that I would need. This became a problem when trying to catch up on my work at home as I’d be missing information that I needed to complete it. A way to try and avoid this happening was to ignore starting the work for a few minutes and write all the questions out that needed to be completed. Depending on the schooling system and the teachers/tutors involved, things such as a written handout of what has been covered in class can be useful if writing out the questions doesn’t prove useful. Even a Dictaphone recording of the lesson itself can work as a memory jogger. I would (and still can do to this day) sometimes read a question and believe I had fully understood its meaning and happily set off on my way to answering it, to find out I’d completely misinterpreted it. Because of that, I found for the sake of simply asking for clarification if I was at all unsure, it could save me a HUGE amount of time that would be spent on re-writes.
B's,D's,6's & 9's
So B’s and D’s can be a stumbling block for most kids, but I managed to add 6’s and 9’s to the mix. As I mentioned previously, this would be one of the times when the teachers would get me to write each one out time after time. In retrospect, I don’t think this helped me as I was simply mimicking what each one was, I wasn’t actually learning each of them as seperate symbols. To try and get them to stick, I had to separate the two groups, the numbers from the letters.
The way I separated the numbers was to think of them in relativity to my age and count the sequence up in my head from 1-10. As I was giving myself a visual reference I could associate 9 with the number 10, the only number with double digits. Even if the logic doesn’t seem the greatest, it worked for me and helped me differentiate between the two. As for B and D, this was the harder pairing as these were the two that I had the most difficulty with. In the end I borrowed a technique that was already in place within my classroom: We had an alphabet print running around the walls of the classroom with pictures accompanying each letter. I struggled to take the letters in because the associating pictures were very generic and I had no interest in them; however, as soon as I added a picture relating to one of my interests, the letter stuck in my head much easier until I no longer needed the reference I’d created.
The way I separated the numbers was to think of them in relativity to my age and count the sequence up in my head from 1-10. As I was giving myself a visual reference I could associate 9 with the number 10, the only number with double digits. Even if the logic doesn’t seem the greatest, it worked for me and helped me differentiate between the two. As for B and D, this was the harder pairing as these were the two that I had the most difficulty with. In the end I borrowed a technique that was already in place within my classroom: We had an alphabet print running around the walls of the classroom with pictures accompanying each letter. I struggled to take the letters in because the associating pictures were very generic and I had no interest in them; however, as soon as I added a picture relating to one of my interests, the letter stuck in my head much easier until I no longer needed the reference I’d created.