Parent Q&A

Question: How can I help my child with writing at home?

Answer: Provide authentic writing opportunities for your child by integrating writing into part of everyday home life:

· Use a dry erase board for messaging

· Encourage your child to add to a grocery list

· Make letters with wiki-sticks, play dough or a Magnadoodle

· Provide a ‘writing’ place

· Encourage your child to keep a reflective journal

· Be a writing role model

· Start a vocabulary notebook

· Help your child ‘publish’ writing in places around the house

For more ideas, check out Wendy Miller's article, “The Best Ways to Support Writing at Home: Draw or talk about a real life experience”

http://www.greatschools.org/students/homework-help/341-tips-to-support-writing-at-home.gs

Question: What factors do you consider before trying voice recognition?

Answer: If your child's language skills far surpass the ability to produce text with pencil and paper (or computer for word processing), voice recognition might be a good option. Before jumping to voice recognition, standard word processing, and word processing with word prediction should be considered as they are less restrictive supports and could provide the right amount of help to promote independence. Unlike voice recognition, which requires a quiet environment, these tools can be used successfully in a classroom setting.

Several skills are positive indicators for voice recognition.

1. Fairly good speech enunciation so that the computer accurately recognizes spoken words;

2. Ability to formulate sentences ahead of time in a clear, concise manner (without filler words: “like”, and, “um”).

3. Ability to read or recognize incorrect words for self-correction of text.