Copy It

Introduction

This activity is for the children, who have difficulty in identifying alphabets, have difficulty in copying from the board etc. The activity is good for the child who misses letters in a word or omits some words while copying.

The activities make the child to pause and read the images and therefore this activity improves the concentration. The child learns to pay more attention to details. For these reasons, this activity could be useful for children with attention disorder-ADHD.

The first level is easy as the child is to copy only the normal text. In the second and the fourth levels the child has to copy letters, symbols and numbers. The third level is reading CAPTCHA, a good visual test.

Tips for parents.

If your child has difficulty in focusing while reading and copying this activity may be useful.

This activity can be taken forward in many ways at home.

While dealing with children with learning problems extreme patience is required. It is okay to have a rare outburst. More than giving negative comments, it would be useful to give positive comments. Never forget to point out an area of improvement.

  1. Ask the child to write as fast as possible any written material of his level for only two minutes. Ask him to do self- correction. This is like proofreading. The child can compare what he has written with the text and find the mistakes. As a parent, you do a check and find out whether her/his work is complete. At the end of a week gently point out the mistakes especially mistakes which are repeated. Don’t give instructions like be careful in future, how many times I have to tell you not to make the same mistakes etc.
  2. You can make your own exercises of nonsense words. Just three or four short lines would do for each exercise. Do this activity once in a way.
  3. You can also make your own exercises using symbols, alphabets and numbers.
  4. Use the board occasionally and ask the child to copy from the board.
  5. If the child is in the habit of wrongly copying numbers from the maths question paper, it would be useful to make the child copy figures and symbols from one page to another page. This is better than asking the child to copy the text in the same page.
  1. The internet provides a wealth of information. Search for themes such as copying problems, visual convergence, letter reversals and omission of letters, helping the child with dysgraphia, concentration activities. Mining for information from the net can be a very useful activity for parents!
  2. Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills: An Activity Workbook by Kenneth A. Lane is an excellent book. It gives information and give many suggestions for overcoming many issues in learning difficulty.