Finding answers in the book

Finding the answers in the book may be related to his other problems or it may just be that he isn’t adequately familiar with the material. Generally, open book tests require that the students be just as familiar with the material as closed books tests. Students, especially his age, don’t always realize that and may go into the test “cold”.

Does he have trouble finding the answers to science questions at the end of the chapter? If not, I would suspect he simply isn’t familiar enough with the material, especially since tests have time constraints.

“Finding answers in the book” is something I”ve seen a few too many teachers use as an easy way to boost kids grades without having taught them a thing. I’ve watched students find similar phrases — in some cases, words they were incapable of reading (I was curious. I checked.). THat kiddo would still get an A on that “test.” YOur kid, on the other hand, would fail.

While it’s possible that open book tests are being used here in better ways than that — letting kids have access to factual details to free them to show their understanding of connections between those facts and applications of those facts in various situations, or other ‘higher-level-thinking’ skills, it doesn’t sound like it since he’s finding *the answer* in the book, not information to help him put an answer together.

Does he know the stuff and is having trouble with the words? If that’s the case, then it’s the “accommodation” that’s wrong here (in this case, it’s a true “dumbing down” — we’ll let you sit and look up the answers and copy them). Having somebody read the test to him at least, and possibly scribing his answers, would better serve that purpose.

I suspect it’s not that simple, though — it sounds like this is a very text-oriented teaching methodology. Read the chapter, find the answers, Spit back the words that aren’t at all connected to anything you know, and possibly haven’t been for years. Some kids can at least memorize & regurgitate enough to pass; some even actually hold on to the knowledge enough to remember some of those words and use them. The kids that started out with a good foundation and maybe some good comprehension strategies are just merrily making connections with those words to vivid ideas they already know, so the words are coming alive and sticking in their minds. They aren’t necessarily any smarter than your kid — for your kid it’s like memorizing nonsense syllables, which is a whole lot harder.

ONe possible solution is to work with the teacher to make better accommodations — *reduce* the amount of terms he has to know, let him draw what they mean or interpret pictures instead of words, words, words.

There’s an article about language issues and content courses at http://www.resourceroom.net/myarticles/barriers.asp

STrictly pragmatically speaking (hope you’ve read this far) — there are strategies for “finding the answer.” Find the biggest word with the weirdest letters and scan for it. Figure out whether or not the book is as dumbed down as some of them are, and actually asks questions in the order the material was presented so you know if you find one ansewr, the next one is a little bit forward in that chapter. Look through the chapter for bold-faced words and see if any of them are in the questions. No, it’s not to be confused with learning — what do you think school is for, anyway?

The questions are from the end of the chapters. I believe everyone in the class does the same activity, so it is not a case of dumbing down specifically for him.
They recieve a grade in the book for what they call an open book quiz.
They also have a formal test on the same material, after they cover three or so chapters.He recieves modifications on those tests. They read the test to him in a small setting.They take out the the incorrect answer in a multiple choice question, which is most similiar to the correct answer. They turn what would have been a fill in the blank questions, to true and false.Other than that all they would tell me is they look at the test given to the other children and revise it accordingly.
He usually does a little better on the formal tests, but those tests are modified and review.
Finding answers in the book
Author: Mo
Date: 05-30-01 11:35

Any thoughts would be helpful.
My son is in the fifth grade. He has been diagnosed ADD, he is learning disabled, and has a hearing loss for the time being. He is scheduled for surgery on June 8th. After that I plan to get an evaluation for CAPD.
I am not getting anywhere with the school.He is in the mainstream and has resource room for thirty min. a day. Science and SS are modified.
Organization is very difficult for him. If I hear that he needs to be more responsible or they just don’t have the time to help him one more time……. I am going to scream. He tries very hard and is a real sweetie.
I have tried to be very observant this year to discover where exactly my son’s difficulties lie, so I know better what to ask for.
In doing that ….one thing really stands out…..he has failed every open book test this year in Science. He is not able to locate the answers in the text. He can read just find. When I ask him what he thinks is giving him a hard time he replies” I look and look for the answer but I can never find it so I just guess”. Sometimes he tells me that he thought his answer WAS right.
What would you suggest I do for him over the summer that will help him with that?
Thanks much,
Mo

Yes …He does have trouble fiinding the answers in the back of the chapters.Those are the questions that they use and I believe they refer to them as Quizes…. they are allowed to use their books. After a few chapters are done and some worksheets, they have the Unit test. Those tests are modified and he usually squeeks by. What brings up his grades are reports that he gets our help form at home, homework, and some classwork (Although I don’t know if he was self sufficient or not) He averages Ds mostly , then sometimes hits the low Cs depending on what type fo grades have been factored in at that point.
So does it seem reasonable for me to have him read the material repeatedly so he becomes more familiar do you think? (If we can get past the math homework for the evening that is)
Thanks for your help
Mo

Thanks SueJ,
I accidently hit the post button.

I have a fifth grader who is not LD and a second grader who is. Putting the two together (not a picture I look forward to) I would think repeated readings would be a disaster. I can see the tears at my house already. My daughter often gets the questions to tests ahead of time and then has to compose answers to study. I would think about working with him to answer the questions in the back of the chapter to in effect do the same thing. He then would be much more familiar with the material.

Also, I would remember that this particular method of testing may not occur again. It seems to me that he is having to do under pressure what my fifth grader does at her leisure.

I’d suggest that this kind of teaching isn’t working for your son. It’s such a shame that schools teach science this way - out of a book alone. Your son and many others would benefit from hands-on work around the concepts being taught. If all they’re doing is reading a chapter, answering the questions at the end of it and then taking a test on all if it, well, some kids just don’t learn that way.

I wouldn’t have him read it again and again. I’d try to help him learn it. To really understand the concepts that the book is covering. That way he wouldn’t need to go through the book for the answers - he’d know them.

If that’s not practical, then I’d just make sure I worked with him when he was answering the quiz questions at the end of the chapter.I wouldn’t let him on his own. Go over those quiz questions with him again before he takes his unit test to refresh his memory.

Good luck.

Thank you for the advice.
It’s so confusing at times… whether to help or not to help. We have always helped him. The school implies that he gets too much help and and he will never learn to be responsible. I said that “we have two choices as parents, help him or let him fail”.
Once you decide that you will not let him fail….then you have to figure out the best way to help him.
Thanks everyone for your help!
Mo

I’m not a teacher or any kind of expert, but with your son’s suspected CAPD, I wonder if he is not able to comprehend well what he is reading, even though he can decode the words. That would explain why he can’t find answers even with an open book. He might not understand fully both the question being asked and the text in which the answer is found. Has he been tested recently? Just a thought …

Andrea

The testing was finalized January 2000. I don’ t really understand what the multi factored evaluation is really telling me though.He was in the fourth grade 2000.WIAT ,12/15/99 and 1/5/00, his lowest scores were Math reasoning (79 Standard Score , 08 %ile, 2.1 grade equivalent) and Written expression ( 85 Standard Score, 16 %ile, 2.1 grade equivalent).
Differential Ability Scales 1/10/00 to 2/7/00. General Conceptual Ability =102 and Percentile =55. His marks were for Verbal were 89 Standard Score..23 Percentile, Non Verbal 113 Standard Score……81 percentile. On a Diagnostic Subtest his recall of digits were a 31 standard score ….03 percentile.Listening Comprehensin 80 Standard Score….09 percentile ..1.9 grade equivalent.
Explanation was he has noted deficits in math reasoning, written expression, and listening expression. Significant 24 point discrepency between verbal and nonverbal reasoning.
I am the only one that is suspecting CAPD due to the fact that he has had an undiscovered hearing defecit most of his little life. I am just looking for answers really. My gut feeling from working with him evryday(Regardless of the nonverbal reasoning score) is that he does not comprehend what the question is asking and he also does not comprehend what he is reading.
Any suggestions on how I can have that determined/diagnosed and what I can do to help him over the summer?
Thanks a bunch,
MO

Ok, it’s not quite as bad as I thought :) — for survival purposes, those ‘tricks of the trade’ might be able to improve a few grades here and there. (Not that it’s particularly good — I bet he’s far from the only kiddo there who’s not learning much at all as far as understanding science goes.)

A low digit span score but a good ‘listening comprehension’ score sometimes means you’ve got a kid who can remember what he understands and can make connections with — and usually make *good* connections and do all that lovely higher level thinking (which of course, is *not* revealed by true/false and multiple guess questions). However, that velcro mind may turn to teflon when it’s “stray facts” that aren’t connected — or stray terms and phrases. Kids that are stronger in the performance than verbal areas often fall into this category — they don’t have the natural verbal instincts to make those little squirts of words make sense.

I’d see if I could get a hold of next years’ texts and try to learn the basic concepts and key terms — and really understand them, with visual examples. Start the year with the main ideas and then the fragments will have something to stick to. And that’s the approach I’d take to learning in general — figure out the big picture and the most important stuff, build a framework and add to it.

I would only say as a parent of two LD children myself, and also as a schoolteacher, I encourage my parents to help whenever they feel called to. Many of my colleagues disagree with me but I think that advice on the part of teachers is poorly thought out.

Whatever happened to the day when it was acceptable for parents to help children with homework? Nowadays most of my collegeages expect parents to see the homework gets done - but not to help the child in any way. I don’t see the commonsense of that because with some kids the reason they don’t do the homework is simply because they don’t understand it or it’s too hard for them to do.

Why should a parent stand by and watch a child struggle or fail? What message is there in that? Are not families supposed to be supportive of each other?

My colleagues say if a parent helps then they can’t “judge” the child’s work. They say it’s not fair to other children. They say if they see what a child can’t do then they know how to gauge their teaching for that child.

What nonsense that all is to my observation. I never see my dear colleagues “gauging” their teaching to any one child. No one including me has time for that sadly.

The equation of homework with responsibility also bothers me. Children do not choose to go to school as I choose my job. Children cannot negotiate their homework with a teacher as I negotiate my responsibilities with my employer. Children are not paid for their work as I am. School is not a job. School is not the same thing as adult work. If it was, a kid could quit. But as we don’t let them quit, they just shut down and fail.

You need to make your own decisions but when my colleagues who also were my son’s teachers told me to let him do his work on his own, I would smile and thank them and go home and help him with his homework whenever he wanted.

Boy, I will climb right up there with you! I agree.

To me, homework is to help the child learn. Not to learn wrong.

Homework is also a great chance for us parents to know what our child is learning and to be involved in his education. I use this information to tie into real life situation by bringing it up at later times. That way, your child is constantly learning and not just learning for a grade.

Keep it up, girl! ;o)

Donna