Homework. What is your story? No kid loves homework. I best most don’t like it, but can get it done quickly if they just sit down and crank it out. However, others find homework the most frustrating part of their day. Any child with a learning difficulty sees homework in a very different way. Struggle, anxiety, arguments, defeat. If you are in this space, I am so {SO} sorry. We have been there and I prefer not to go back. Big W was diagnosed with ADHD a little over two years ago. I look forward to writing about our journey with attention disorder when he wants to share it. It is his story, not mine.
I love to share ideas that have helped us. This year {grade 4}, Big W has used the app Dragon Dictation to complete his weekly writing homework. His greatest struggle is getting all of his wonderful ideas from his mind onto paper. His inability to focus late in the day made this process even more frustrating. Dragon Dictation is a very simple dictation app that records your voice and converts it to text. Like any voice recognition software, it isn’t perfect. Big W has found that speaking slowly and enunciating clearly gets him the best results. He can easily correct mistakes with the keyboard and also type additional text.
The quality of his writing has dramatically improved. He is eager to choose great words and descriptive language that he would ordinarily not use if he was physically writing. His voice shines through in his weekly writing assignments. It is the greatest thing since sliced bread as far as we are concerned. To turn in the final copy we can either email his teacher directly from the app or cut and paste from an email to a Word document.
If you have a child that might benefit from this app, I suggest just playing around with it first before using it for homework. Your child might find he doesn’t like it. Also, make sure to speak with your child’s teacher and let him or her know that you would to use this app for homework completion.
Good luck! Shoot me an email {denise@whereisjune.com} if you any questions. I am happy to help if I can!
