Ability to Stay on Track while Writing

Below are some recommended strategies to support the ability to stay on track for writing.

Please review these techniques to identify what may be the next best step!

• Reduce the need for multi-tasking in writing by encouraging the student to focus on only one step of writing at a time. For instance, on the first day, the student could be tasked with generating a set number of ideas that could be written in brief phrases or recorded. The next day, the student’s assignment could include sequencing the ideas and creating an outline. The following day, the student could be asked to generate sentences about each part of the outline. On the last day, the student could be asked to add in detail and consider rules of grammar.

• Consider alternatives for written responses when possible. Writing is often frustrating for many students because it requires a lengthy period of sustained attention and involves heavy working memory demands. By reducing writing, you will help the student get their ideas out of their working memory more quickly. When writing is not essential to the task, explore other ways the student could submit responses (e.g., make a video or audio recording).

• When the student must produce a written or typed response, consider how they could get their thoughts down on paper as quickly and effortlessly as possible (e.g., dictation, word predictive software).

Many Google Chrome extensions and apps have been developed to help students stay on track. These could be found in the Chrome web store or App store. If you are suggesting that a student use one of these tools, make sure that you explicitly teach the student and/or caregiver how to use the feature. Depending on the student’s needs, these may be helpful:

• Mic Note by Micnote.audio (audio recorder and notepad, allows voice messages to be shared with teacher)

• Flipgrid by Flipgrid (allows students to create and share short videos)

• Read&Write by TextHelp (provides text-to-speech, speech-to-text, word prediction, and collects highlights from the document to help with summarization)

• Grammarly by Grammarly.com (provides spelling, punctuation, and grammar checks)

• Hemingway Editor (helps you edit writing to make it clearer and more concise)