opinion please-4th grade parent-again

I’d experiment at home with the same level of material and types of questions used at school. Is there a difference in how well he can answer if he 1. is asked by you 2. reads it himself 3. has time to organize his thoughts.

One technique I sometimes use with college students is have them write down their answers to questions I ask. This gives them time to think and improves class discussion. So most people do better with 3. The question is how marked is the difference.

If he does better with time then he clearly can understand and comprehend orally. That is an important piece of information.

If he doesn’t do better with more time, then I would try to see if repeating the question makes a difference. If that doesn’t help, I would try to see if rewording the question makes a difference. Both of these would suggest a processing issue as well. But just as important, they both would indicate that it is not comprehension that is the problem.

Just my parent dectective at work.

Beth

i personally think the teacher is at fault if she cannot find a better way to assess your son’s comprehension, i said assess, cuz asking a question is a test not an instructional tool

and from all of your posts, scriabin, i have a feeling your son is quite intelligent with no comprehension issues at all and you sound like one bright lady to me

when he is ready to talk i believe he will, and talking in class is not a way to assess his comp, and using it as a way to test is just plain mean

remember when the teacher asks a question, she is immediately in test mode, asking a comprehension question does NOT teach comprehension skills,

i think i would faint dead away if i actually saw a teacher doing something besides being in constant test mode, modeling comprehension skills is not adequate in my book, these kids need active involved comprehension activities where they can learn the skills so that when these skills are needed in hard text, they are already in place,

forget the stupid teacher scriabin, you are beating a dead horse, this teacher has it in her head that your son is disabled, YOU are never going to change her mind, and asking an oral test mode question to you son is the lowest level of teaching there is

in my opinion, comp skills should be taught in reading materials that are at least one level below their reading ability
or even lower

using the PG philosophy, teach hard skills with easy words,

forget trying to please the teacher, just do fun stuff with your son at home,

some day some good teacher is going to recognize his worth, and then he will shine,

my oldest son was painfully shy, we held him back in 1st grade, if i had one more teacher tell me he is tooo shy, i would have choked her

my son is now 21, and an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon, he is also a teaching assistant lecturing to halls with as many as 200 students, i guess he is not shy anymore,

so keep it in perspective, make sure you son has hobbies, good hobbies, like making web pages, magic or whatever,

get him thinking and creating at every opportunity,

make him solve problems, that is one reason i like the computer for kids, it gives them an opportunity to figure out stuff,

if he get stuck on the computer do not help him, tell him to solve the problem and then show you when he has solved it

school will never provide your son with what he needs and that is good one on one instruction, fill in the gaps yourself

libby

Thanks Libby. I appreciate what you said. It s amazes me. My daughter spent most of Elementary in an advanced pull out reading group. Since it was presumed the children already knew how to read, they were expected to do all the reading at home. Of couse at home she got 1 on 1 attention, where I listened to her read aloud and helped her to correctly sound out any unknown words. The teacher went over the meanings of the advanced vocabulary and spent all her time on comprehension activities. My daughter sometimes complained of downright overkill in this area. They also got sheets on synonyms and antonyms..etc. In the regular reading groups, since the children are presumed to need reading instruction, they sit and read silently to themselves with no feedback while the teacher works with other groups. Nothing having to do with reading is ever sent home. (I usually run down on day one and get a library copy) There is no discussion of advanced vocabulary, and limited or occasionally no discussions of the books, because the groups only meet once or occasionally twice a week and the teacher’s time is divided between 4 reading groups. Since the advanced pull out kids are all doing the same book, they get book discussion 5 days a week. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

When my daughter was younger, around eight, (now 20) the big hype in the media was that all children needed was parental attention. After yet another of these statements on the TV, I asked her what she thought and she said flatly that she got way too much parental attention. (She has a wicked sense of humour). So after that we constantly threatened her with even more parental attention, causing her to run away screaming.

Test your son on quick question-answer — read something together, a page or so, and ask him simple questions, like where the characters were going or why they had to go there, etc. Can he pop out an answer immediately, or does he take a few seconds to think? Also watch him in other group situations such as church or scouts or sports or whatever — does he pop up with answers in a group question situation, or is he the strong silent type?

This was an issue mentioned in one of my few education classes that was worthwhile; teachers do *not* wait long enough for an answer. If somebody doesn’t shout out or wave a hand frantically in less than a second, the teacher talks over them, either asking another question, reformulating the questioon to be easier, or answering it herself. As a teacher, I’m afraid I do this too; it is really hard to stare down a blank silence. But if you are a student, it may take you a second or two to come up with a good formulation of your thoughts. So the usual class discussion rewards the fast and glib, not the deep thinkers. I have gone back to really, really traditional going around the table taking turns to try to avoid the worst of this, where some students never talk.

I would *not* tell the teacher he has a processing problem, because that would just reinforce her already negative viewpoint. Rather, I would suggest to her that he needs time to get his speech in order (placing it as a speech issue rather than a mind issue) and ask her to wait two or three seconds to let him formulate his answer.

Your comments about groups are exactly what I have been saying for years — if teachers complain that they are so short of time to teach, how can it possibly be better to divide that time in three or four? And then, when they threw out the basal readers and brought in “whole-language” and literature-based curriculum, one of the noble goals was that we would no longer have those rigid reading groups …

victoria wrote:
>
> .
>
> >
> This was an issue mentioned in one of my few education
> classes that was worthwhile; teachers do *not* wait long
> enough for an answer. If somebody doesn’t shout out or wave a
> hand frantically in less than a second, the teacher talks
> over them, either asking another question, reformulating the
> questioon to be easier, or answering it herself. As a
> teacher, I’m afraid I do this too; it is really hard to stare
> down a blank silence. But if you are a student, it may take
> you a second or two to come up with a good formulation of
> your thoughts. So the usual class discussion rewards the fast
> and glib, not the deep thinkers. I have gone back to really,
> really traditional going around the table taking turns to try
> to avoid the worst of this, where some students never talk.
>
Funny you say this. I have always said when it comes to memory my husband has a high speed IBM. The man can go through entire episodes of jeopardy and get every answer instantly. I on the other hand, in the memory department, I have a 90 yr old librarian with an old fashioned card catalogue. I frustrate my husband sometimes when I can’t instantly remember facts.Somehow I get by.
I tried having my son reread the sentence containing the word dolefull from the page the teacher asked him to read.( he did not know the meaning of the word dolefull when the teacher asked him-Granted, this is his 2nd time reading it. The sentence is “Then he crawled on hands and knees over to where the cowboy was now sitting dolefully on the carpet, his horse rein looped around his arm, looking too miserable to move.” First he said “its some type of action word…he was sitting”. He walked away for a second and then came back and said “depressed”. I said before, I didn’t know either when I read the question after reading the whole section. When you take written tests you get to go back and reread for details and think about things.

> I would *not* tell the teacher he has a processing problem,
> because that would just reinforce her already negative
> viewpoint. Rather, I would suggest to her that he needs time
> to get his speech in order (placing it as a speech issue
> rather than a mind issue) and ask her to wait two or three
> seconds to let him formulate his answer.
>
Never fear, I would never say processing problem because I don’t think that he does. I only consider it as a possibility. Difference in responding style. Thanks for the advice. Excellent way of wording it. >