My son, in 10th grade, was tested as dx w/ mild lds (dysgraphia, for one) in the third grade. Since then he has done much better than anyone predicted and is currently thriving in a private school for gifted kids. Difficulties, however, still occasionally rear their head, the most recent being an English teacher who insists students memorize long speeches from Hamlet, John Donne poems, etc. No matter how much my son attempts to do this, by reading/writing/speaking the passage over repeatedly, or listening to it for hours, he still has very marginal success, at best.
Any ideas/techniques that might help? He is becoming increasingly frustrated and upset.
Thank you!
Re: memorizing Shakespeare
Thanks for your reply… yes, he has successfully negotiated alternative assignments in the past. In this case, however, the passage they were assigned to memorize was 34 lines!
Re: memorizing Shakespeare
Has he tried acting it out as he speaks? Seen the video of the play to put it in context?
If all else fails, well, you can fail sometimes. He can go and stumble through as many lines as he has in his memory, apologize to the teacher for blanking, and take whatever grade. This one type of assignment should h=not have a huge mpact on his whole year grade.
Re: memorizing Shakespeare
Right - if she likes assigning this stuff all the time, he can try to improve from the previous time with each successive attempt, keeping in mind that of course there are more factors than pure quantity. Then he can be ‘winning’ (and learning) even if he’s still not ‘passing.’
Do they have any official accommodations? Especially with a ‘barter deal’ - something that would be *more* work for most students, but less for him?
At The NEw Community School, they *did* have students memorize 8-10 line chunks of Shakespeare; it really is a good skill to have. However, it was once, maybe twice in a year and they realized that most of our guys really coudln’t stick 10 lines in a conveyor belt, and spew them back later (and then forget them forever). Their brains aren’t put together for that function; they don’t have that kind of xerox machine in the “all-in-one” machine that the brain tries to be. (I’m thinkng of those fax, phone & copy deals at Office Depot :)).
Is it in him to be selectively defiant - to accept the consequences for simply not wasting his time and, say, memorize the first four lines of whatever is assigned (or whatever will take a reasonable amount of effort - and maybe the first two and the last two would make more sense)… when it’s crunch time, to do what he’s got and take the grade?
I assume he already knows to learn one line first - or even a phrase at a time - and learn it well, then first and second, then the third, (then go back and do second & third), and if he’s a visual dude to make it a well-dramatized scene in his mind and over-act the words.