science

Can you explain what he’s having trouble with?

There’s an article about “lowering the language barriers” for middle & secondary school content areas at http://www.resourceroom.net/myarticles/barriers.asp

He is having difficulty understanding scientific terms, (e.g., homeostatis, biogenesis)

There are a couple of great articles about this at LD ONLine http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/teaching_techniques/ellis_clarifying.html has some excellent ideas for teaching vocabulary nad terminology. Definitely, teach the roots that are behind the meaning (Homeo — same; stasis — stay… homeostasis is the way an organism tries to keep things like temperature the same). Learning these terms is one of those areas where LD kids tend to try to remember each term and its meaning, and really struggle — and some other kid who really doesn’t know the stuff but can figure out from teh word parts will end up guessing theright answer on a multiple guess test.

LD In Depth “For Teachers” section has that vocab. article and several otehr very good guidelines for teaching effectively. One of the biggest favors you can do is not to overwhelm the kid. Better to really comprehend an important concept like homeostasis than to do 12 assignments that include 40 more terms… but come out not really remembering any of it.

Sue, Thanks for the tip. This should help.