Self esteem?

In one night!!!!! That is overwhelming for any child (and parent).

His assignment should have been modified.

I’ve tried this with my son.

We find the information.
I read it to him.
I ask him questions about it.
I write down his answers.
We type it up ‘together’ on the computer,
he gives me suggestions as we go along.
Then we practice reading it out loud.

But I agree WAY too much for one night.

Anne

You’ve gotten some good suggestions for how to help your son by getting him past the language problems but without doing it all for him;. The more he’s participated in the writing part of it, the more likely he’ll be better able to read it in class if he has to — especially if the last thing you do is have him practice reading it. I assume it wans’t supposed to be too long, being a one-night assignment — but if I assume wrong, then I would have him practice reading the main points (which he could highlight) and then he could say “well, here are the main points” (yes, you’d want to have called the teacher so she didn’t insist on reading the whole nine yards). But since he’s the only one looking at what he’s reading, nobody’s going to be checking every word — as long as he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about it will be fine.

It does sound like there might be some modifications in order — tho’ it could be that the modifications are that you read the info to him, etc. and let him dicate to you. Another option is to introduce him to screen-reading technology (one option is from the Hawaiian Education Literacy Project — HELP Reader
http://www.pixi.com/%7ereader1/index1.htm) There are more in the LD INDepth section of LD OnLine under “Technology.”

If the teacher’s interested, http://www.resourceroom.net/myarticles/barriers.asp lists some strategies for keeping reading and writing problems from keeping a kiddo from learning…

A model or picture instead of a written report could also be a way for him to show the knowledge he learned about one of the 13 colonies. Afterall,this isn’t a reading or writing assignment,correct?

Correct, it was a history assignment. How many days until summer vacation? LOL

All I KNOW is christmas vacation is exactly 14 days from now…..:-)

Another thought- as I go through this “all in one night” garbage with my eighth grade son- I would give the teacher the benefit of asking whether this really was a one nighter. I can’t tell you how many times I have had this struggle with the boy- who isn’t disabled but is HORRIBLY disorganized- and it turns out that there was a week or ten days and it didn’t blip on HIS screen until she said that it was due tomorrow. If she is doing it right you have a path of conversation with your son- and if not there is a path of potential conversation aabout planning and communication with the teacher.

Robin

Good point, Robin. We struggled to get our son’s English essay done in one night so it could be turned the next morning (Tuesday). It was due on Tuesday all right — the following week.

If it was a one-night assignment, it was ridiculous. I hate Internet assignments. It is never quick to haphazardly use a search engine to find the quality of information you need for an assignment, especially if you let your child do the searching. Then after searching for an hour and printing all the stuff, then you get to sit down and start the project. Gee, that’s fun. Those assignments really bug the liberal in me. What about the families who don’t have a computer at home?

When we get into a situation like this, I end up driving a lot of the project so make it gets done as efficiently as possible but I try to make sure he’s actively involved with me. I “drive” the computer, but he gets to pick the words I search on. Or if we aren’t required to identify the source, we just skip the Internet entirely, and use our encyclopedia CDs. A good tip for working on a project like this is simply cut and paste appropriate paragraphs from the site into temporary document. (Personally, because our child is dyslexic, I think me picking which paragraphs to cut and paste is a perfectly acceptable work reduction. He gets enough reading when we move on to the next step.) Then after we have enough content stored I say, “How can you reword this sentence to make it your own sentence?” As the last step in the process, have him dictate (you type) what he wants to write as the introductory paragraph so he’s creating the most important paragraph entirely from scratch. That makes the last thing he worked on entirely his own.

Although I live for our next school break, I myself am counting the days till graduation—and our son is only in 7th!

You could try to address some of this in his next IEP as best you can. I spent many hours and many years “helping” my own dyslexic son with his research and his writing and certainly it is injurious to their self-esteem. They want to do what is asked of them and they want to do it well but their skills are not yet up to the task.

I tried to help my son maintain his self-esteem but continually explaining to him that what was being asked of him was the problem. In the ideal world, assignments would be tailored to his learning needs but in the real world that is school, assignments are given out to a group of students with a rather sink or swim philosophy. I commiserated with him on their unfairness of this.

Knowing I was on his side seemed to help. I’m sure it helps your son too.

Thank goodness Christmas vacation is around the corner, exactly how I feel?

So how much are they helping him with his reading and writing to
remediate these areas of weakness? Is it agressive?

His help with reading and writing is not aggressive at all. Last year they used the Wilson Reading Program for about 6 weeks and I saw a big improvment. I ask at his IEP meeting to have that used at least an hour per day, and was told NO WAY. They said it was to time consuming and required one on one help, and they didn’t have the staff for that.