One to the best purchases we made this year
was a combination printer/copier/scanner.
Today I copied off my son’s social studies test.
(He is allowed to bring it home and we have our
own copy of the book at home.)
I am able to make all sorts of notes on my copy,
including the answers so if and when DS asks
for help I can be ready.
Then I go to the book and use wide yellow
highlighting tape so he can find the answers
without having to wade through oceans of
wavy black and white type.
You can mark on this tape to further clarify
the information within the highlighted block.
I’m teaching him to locate content by accessing the
glossary and the index. Also scanning chapter headers,
vocab words and pictures (for a generic subject like sheep,
which is not referenced in the index or glossary - we look
for pictures of sheep or farming. We found it under a
header - Everyday Life.)
Anne - who was able to answer 9 out of 14 questions
on the Renaissance
before going to the text, do I get a gold star?
Re: printer/scanner/copier & removeable highlighting ta
DS has to put his answers in DS-speak, which can
lead to some pretty insteresting insights from the
21st century to the 15th century.
He is so floundering in this class. They dropped
him into regular ed without any accommodations
or aide help. It took a long time to work together
so he could have some success. Luckily his
language teacher also teaches social studies and
he really likes her classes.
My feeling about his dyslexia is two fold.
1. He needs to have instruction in how to decode and
spell.
2. He needs to be taught strategies to cope.
Unfortunately sped was a disaster this year
due to a young and disorganized teacher.
But, next year, the fellow looks good, DS and I went
and interviewed him. We are crossing our fingers that
he is still there in the fall. Sped, in our district, can
be a very unstable affair.
Anne
This sounds great, *if* he’s remembering this stuff. I’ve had students who would find those key pages/sentences and write answers and could not even read what they were writing. Let’s just say their background knowledge did not improve. This is the kind of accommodation that can be helpful, or can be dangerous if it’s enabling a student to “pass the test” but not really learn anything.
Hey, if you can *spell* Renaissance you get a gold star!!!
Sue — who’s really answering your post for random surfers, since I”ve read too many of yours to believe you’d let your kiddo just copy ;)