I’m looking for help. I have a new 6th grade student who is reading on a late first grade level. He is the only student in my room for science and social studies. I am looking for materials to parallel our 6th grade social studies curriculum but on a much lower reading level. I know the curriculum includes Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Anyone have any suggestions (text book, reproducible books, on-line activities, etc.)? Thanks in advance. Pam
Re: Social Studies
“Guest” is right — it would help an awful lot to know just what this studetn’s issues are.
One thing I did for social studies was choose the KEY terms and surf for good images of them — these are great for making activities where a student identifies things and says how he knows that’s what it is. (I was doing roaring 20’s and Great Depression, so it was easy to have a picture of a soup line and a picture of a flapper — “Is this from RT or GD? How do you know?”… different students had different expectations as far as whether they had to answer in a few words, a complete sentence or a short paragraph.)
Re: Social Studies
If the student is reading below grade level but can comprehend the grade-level material, don’t water the information down to meet the reading level. Read it to him, have him write (copy) key words down or do 2-column note taking: Right hand column is for main ideas and left-hand column is for details. You prepare the work sheet and an overhead or your own copy. Start out with a mostly-filled in worksheet, and as you read aloud, have him follow the reading and fill in the worksheet together. Keep breaking the reading into short sections followed by brief note-taking. Gradually increase the amount of details the student must fill in, but you supply the spelling for his oral answers by writing it on your copy and he writes it on his copy. At the end of the unit or section, come up with a culminating activity involving speaking or art to express his understanding. If the child has to take tests, use the notes he has written to study by giving him the main idea and having him supply the details orally or vica-versa. His written notes may prompt his response if he can recognize the words. Usually the first few letters will prompt the memory even if he can’t usually decode that word in context or in a longer piece of writing. This also helps improve the reading.
If you are looking for adapted text with good content, try Steck-Vaughn or AGS, but I don’t think you’ll find reading levels lower than 4th grade with good content.
Fern
thanks
Thank you all for taking the time to respond. Fern, I’m placing an order with Steck Vaughn. I’m sure the reading level will be high, but my student is constantly surprising me with words he can read (I think he’s done a lot of guessing in his day … we’re working on that) and the information he retains. I like your ideas on note-taking and I will incorporate them into what we are already doing. For my part, I was scrambling to find materials for this student, came across a wonderful website for history and would like to share:
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/education/index.html
Thanks again. Pam
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Does he have cognitive or learning disabilities? In other words, do you need to modify the curriculum because of cognitive issues? Or just accommodate for the learning disabilities? Your answer impacts the ideas that we may have.