Our student is 18. He has difficulty with reading and writing. He has a Specific Learning Disability in the areas of sensorimotor skills and expressive & receptive language.
He needs a tremendous amount of help in reading. He does these sheets in which the beginning of the phrase is supplied: Congress passed more laws in 100 days than….any other Congress in American history. In other words, he finds the beginning of the phrase on the assignment sheet and the entire phrase is in the chapter. It might be in a slightly different order of words. Then, he simply has to fill in the blank, which is often just the latter half of the sentence.
He needs a great deal of assistance with this. The principal says it is because during his school career he has always been helped, probably as a SDC kid he was in a small class with a teacher and an aide as well. It sounds like “learned helplessness.”
How can we help him to be more independent in doing his assignments from the book? It does seem that when I leave him alone, he sometimes manages to do it fairly well without my help. At other times, he just sits there, griping about how tired he is (he has a construction job in the mornings) and grumbling about how hard the work is. I appreciate that it is challenging for him however I believe he could be more independent.
Suggestions?
John