Motivating Reluctant Writers With Journals

Motivating Reluctant Writers With Journals (and More)! 
Two thirds of kids with AD/HD have problems with written expression, so they don't get credit for what they are truly capable of since teachers can't offer the option of offering oral exams and reports, to every student, and writing is important.  Some students have problems with it because cursive writing never becomes automatic for some children.  Like a stroke victim, they have to consciously "draw" their words and don't have enough working memory (RAM) to be able to think of how to write a capital G along with remembering indentation, capitalization, and punctuation, all at the same time.  Learning to keyboard can help a lot.  When I taught, I was amazed that one student could write 26 pages in their journal, while another student could only crank out a paragraph during the same amount of time.  Anything to help get them in the flow was great.  If my son had to change a sloppy copy into a neat sheet, it was too boring for him to just recopy his story.  He would change it, which would also usually include cutting it in half, so then would have new corrections to be made, which got discouraging.  Scribing for him was not cheating if it helped him at least get credit for his ideas.  He could do an oral report on Samuel Adams and know all about him and answer questions from the class, yet only have a paragraph to turn in on his written report, much to his fourth grade teacher's surprise!  If she had only asked him to turn in a written report she would have never realized he had done so much research on the topic.  This article has lots of great ideas to bring out the best in students and let them know that what they have to say is important and needs to be told.