OK, I TRY not to blame the public school system for things, but my daughter never learned to read properly. ARGH! Her reading comprehension is abysmal which is affecting her science. We are using SOS which is mostly reading comprehension. She basically reads a science text and answers questions about it. OK I won't say she can't read, but she never learned strategies for how to deal with words she doesn't know. Her science text has LOTS of words she doesn't know. When she gets frustrated and I try to help her, I find the relevant passage in the text and have her read it out loud to help her find the answer. She just kind of garbles quietly over the words she doesn't know and tries to figure out the answer from the words she does know. That doesn't really work well! So does anyone have suggestions for ways to help her with this issue? She's currently in 7th grade (turning 13 this month... oh goody LOL!) and we brought her home early in 3rd grade. Any help is appreciated!!!
Is the problem that she doesn't know what the words mean, that she doesn't know how to read/pronounce unfamiliar words, or both? My first thought is that I would sit with her and have her read aloud to you. Assess the unfamiliar words and show her how to look them up in a dictionary.
IMO it has a lot to do with learning styles and study skills. Put me in front of an English text and I can fly through it and pick up on themes, characters, settings, all that. Put me in front of a science text, and I have to seriously read slow and think. And, mind you, I was astrophysics major. Does she take notes? For me, rewriting the context was key in helping me understand it. Sometimes just the act of writing it down made significant help. Also on board was repeating the (scientific) process out loud. "So, the heat strips the electron away, which means now the atom has a positive charge. Other atoms with a negative charge are attracted..." and so on. I would (as the student): 1. go through the text and write out a vocabulary list of bolded words, and their definition, and make sure I understand them 2. read the text, and take notes. Outlines are good because they help me follow steps, but sometimes it helps to rewrite the process in the way YOU see it 3. study the diagrams. Talk my way through it. Make sure I understand the steps being shown Once this is all finished, I repeat the (scientific) process out loud (to myself, though she can do it to you) to make sure I understand what is happening. Science reading comprehension is different from English reading. I'm actually a science writer now - I go through and write articles based on doctorate-written research papers in major journals - and I use much of the same process now, albeit in abbreviated form. Also, I should note, for me, underlining important information or definitions, and writing any questions on the side helps me today, because it makes them "stand out." So if she can write in the text, that might help. Again, this is based on my learning style and may or may not help her. Good luck!
My 14yo ds is the same way. Last year when he was in the 7th grade I strated him on the Reading Dective books by The Critical Thinking Co. I started him on the 4th-5th grade book, I think, and he really enjoyed it and it help him with this reading comprehension a great deal. He is still thinking me for it this year. After Christmas he will start on the B1 book for grades 7-8
I'm having the same/similar problem with a 14yo 8th grader, only with state history mostly. She tries to pick a sentence out of the paragraph and call that an answer to the question. I'm going over all her questions and answers with her orally after she's done them in writing, and trying to point out where her (paragraph answer) responses don't really address the question completely. She'll make a statement that is true, but doesn't really answer the question. (An example off the top of my head: "His actions angered the people." What actions were those? ... she doesn't know, has to look it up... Which people were angered? ... all the people. Really? All of them? which group more than any other group? ... uh, don't know ... Why did these actions anger that group? ... blank stare ... ) Suggestions? And she sluffs words she can't pronounce -- she seems to have no concept of sounding each syllable or at least letter-group from left to right to "get" an unknown word, then even after I tell her what the word is, she continues saying it wrong, adding or omitting letters, changing letter order, even syllable order. She's not dyslexic!
Sluffing the word is a good way to say it. She doesn't know how to pronounce the word, and most of the time she doesn't know what it means. I've suggested that if I'm available while she's reading she can ask me what a word means, or if I'm not available she should write it down (maybe write it down in both cases) and either look it up or ask me later. We will see if this improves things. I hate to add too much to her work load. She's already doing more this year than she has in the past, just because she's in a higher grade. But maybe we need to look into a vocab or reading comp builder to add in, or maybe do over summer??
I'm going to look into using Developing Better Reading, which comes from Rod & Staff. It begins with letter sounds, and goes through 5- and 6-syllable words, all in 30 lessons. Actually, all 4 of my big kids could use this. BUT I'm already doing Daily Grams 4 with the whole group, and Sequential Spelling too, which between the two take SO much time during a day! >sigh< It's SO hard to pick what's best sometimes!
I read this earlier and didn't think I had any other suggestions for you, but for some reason I read this again and caught the SOS reference this time. This might help... I haven't used the newer versions of SOS, but it does have a reading voice that will read her assignments to her. This may help if she's an auditory learner. Next, there is a highlighter function within the lesson. If she finds a word she's not sure of, she can highlight it and you can look it up later. OR, she can use the dictionary function in the program and look it up right then. For studying purposes, she can use different colors of highlighting to keep track of notes also. AND, if she has a question about a specific page or paragraph, she can send a note to you as the teacher and you can find it together. That way, if it is an unfamiliar word that is not too important to comprehension of the lesson, she can continue on. But if the other helps don't work, then you know where to go back and help her. (The highlighter function is very helpful with dates and names!) HTH, MT3
The dictionary can be a student's best friend. Both of my kids will study with a dictionary at their elbow, to look up words they don't know. (9th and 10th grade) Online dictionaries also work, if the student isn't comfortable with the print kind or finds it inconvenient and/or slow. As for answering reading comprehension questions, it's important for students to remember, "Who, What, Where, When and Why?" When you're asked "what is this paragraph about?", your answer should include all of the above. It's a mental checklist, but for a long time, we actually had it posted above our work table. It's helpful when you're going over your child's work to point at it and say, "Okay, now, which of the W's are we missing?" The goal is to train your child to be their own critic and editor.
You mentioned she is using SOS, try working with the vocabulary words more, also there is a way to make the computer read aloud to her and have her follow along too. This is what helps my ds 9th grade with comprehension. He told me this year he is having a hard time with remembering what he just read. He remembers concepts, ideas, video lessons really well, but the actual read portions are not as easy as he wants. We are working on this by my reading aloud some of his lessons and he following along. Then I stop every so often to discuss what we are reading. I am trying to form a pattern of his thinking about what is read in visual mode. Connecting things that go together in the Constitution with people and places in history helps for us in other words. Certain words we do not understand in SOS we also can use thier Dictionary in the resources box of the lessons. SOS was made to help us teach so lets remember to use all those wonderful time lines too!
