Hi,
I read with interest Beth’s and other’s entries re their sons. Like you, Beth, I was active on this board 3-4 years ago and also have a son entering h.s.
I am currently at somewhat low ebb and in need of some encouragement, however.
I am interested in any comments/research/experience with adolescent learning curves and plateaus - I think we may be approaching the latter, I hope temporarily.
My son has done the following: FastForWord, Interactive Metronome, some NeuroNet and PACE (the latter two came last and were done for about 12 weeks, with less discernible impact than the first two programs.
His greatest academic weakness is math. He has some superior verbal scores but a nonverbal WISC-R score or 82, so there is quite a spread. Academically he gets mostly Bs, some B pluses, Cs in French and Bs and Cs in math, depending on the strand.
The past two summers, I have flown him to Calgary, AB, where he has attended the Reading Foundation for math (Discover Math pgm. - the founder, Dr. Stephen Truch, has developed comprehensive reading and math curricula based on LindaMood Bell, Phono-Graphix and other programs as well as his own experience as a teacher and school psychologist. His is an excellent pgm.)
My son had 80 hrs. of math last year, which narrowed his 3 year deficit to a .6-1.5 yr. deficit (depending on the strand) on Key Math testing and got him out of the SLD math class and integrated for the last three units. (He held his own until the end, when he bombed the transformations unit - a hard one.)
He just completed 65 more hours of Discover Math and 25 hours of Visualizing and Verbalizing, but with less dramatic math gains than last time. He still has gr. 7-8 items to cover and needs more gr. 6 (fractions, decimals) work - they moved him ahead in some strands to help him get ready for gr. 9.
He will get 4 more hours of mostly V & V on Monday and 10 more hours of it in October (with a math review of strategies) when a trainer comes east, nearer to my home, for a limited time period. This will at least get him close to the 40 hours Dr. Truch says are needed for there to be a significant carry over for V&V.
I guess I am a bit floored because I had been hoping he would be caught up in math as of the end of this session.
We booked 6 hrs. a day rather than 4 this year, and he seemed to find that pretty gruelling - not much fuel left at the end of the day and some grumpiness that is partly teenage behaviour and mostly the stress of the pgm. Just this week, though. he announced he was finally used to the pgm and wishes we could stay another week (which we can’t).
I asked if he had flat-lined/plateaued, and the answer is no; he is progressing, just more slowly than we would like. I am wondering if I covered enough of the sensormotor stuff with FF and IM and the bit of Neuronet - I don’t think he would be receptive to more of the Pace and NN at this point.)
The conclusion is he needs 80 more hours next year, which is why I am floored. It is a pretty costly undertaking.
He is enrolled in academic classes for the fall (top stream) and applied (tracks to community college) for French and Math. The original plan was that if he did very well in the Applied Math, he would attempt the Academic math in the second semester. This is looking less likely now. All his career interests currently involve university stream math (He and we may need to revise plans here.)
I was interested in Beth’s comments about choice of high school. Ours is a composite school with three streams. I am now questioning my decision to let him do the academic level (which I think would be your honor level) in the majority of his subjects. I do not want to see him discouraged. As I teach in the school, I can hand-pick the best teachers, ensure he gets resource support, and can switch him to the community college track (Applied pgm) after the first semester if he bottoms out.
His gr. 8 teacher felt he can do academic courses if he works hard. He has done fine without inordinate amounts of homework to date.
Any advice re learning curves for young teens or words of encouragement would be appreciated!
Thank you in advance.
PS - Where I live students often do the top stream for gr. 9 and 10 and then switch to the college track stream in gr. 11-12. The learning environment is better and often the courses are better developed.
JanL
Hi Jan,
First, I think it is pretty amazing you have been able to get your son to commit to such an intensive program. We have been working on the NN math program this summer but it has been a bit like pulling teeth—he isn’t always cooperative. He says he has been doing this for years, which he has. But like you, I have a hard time letting things go when I think he could have an easier time in life in the long run.
(Like the rest of NN, this program doesn’t directly teach math but rather the underlying aptitude. We are doing it partly for the math but also because my son couldn’t master the last level of the NN reading program last summer. Find motor sequencing seems to be a big part of his deficits and the math program addresses that at a higher level.)
Looking at your situation, my gut says that little or no progress means you should approach things differently. My experience has been that banging your head against the wall to make progress only brings headaches. It may be, as you suggest, that there are some holes in the foundation that have not been filled. Your son may be past the point that he is willing to do the foundational work anymore. You may have to just accept that. Still, I would think hard about whether the progress you may see next summer is worth the expediture of money (yours) and energy (his). It may not be.
In terms of high school course work, I still don’t understand what the three levels are in your system. My own thinking is I want my son to have the option of attending college but I don’t expect him to be able to compete for the a space in the top schools. Honor courses in the U.S. do vary from school to school. In my daughter’s school, they are reserved for the very top students (almost all kids at her school attend college) while in her cousins’ school they are the courses all kids planning to attend college take. I would not expect my son, or probably yours, to be able to handle anything more than the regular college prep courses, whatever they are called.
Beth