Social Studies Vocabulary Words

What makes a kid able to match the words to the definitions, but seemingly unable to come up with the definitions on his own? And why to only a finite group of words, when he can do it with all the others?

The human brain is an interesting place. This task is asking two different things of him. When he matches the definitions to the word, he is not being asked to do total recall. He is prompted by the sight of the definitions and the words. They act as clues.

Total recall is a much more challenging task for the human brain. It isn’t a better task - it’s just harder. If someone asks you “is the capitol of New York Albany?… it’s easier to remember that it is than when someone asks point blank -“what’s the capitol of New York?”

As to why he can remember just so much, well, there is a limit. You can pour water into a pitcher but eventually the pitcher will overflow. Your son’s brain - as all our brains - can only hold so much of this stuff for any one test. My own son can memorize up to about 20 words and their definitions but add 10 more and he can’t do it. How many words and their definitions could you memorize at once? 40? 50? There are limits and he’s finding his. His limit will grow as he gets older usually but there are people who have limits to what they can retain for tests. Just like computers have memory capacities that are broad but limited - so do our brains. It’s broad but yet has limits.

Any test given and taken is always a gamble. Know that he put forth good effort and did his best. What more can we ask that we’ll get?

Oh, I’m not at all suggesting that he isn’t putting forth good effort… I know he is. I was just surprised at HOW easily he was ably to match them up when he had both pieces.

I was aso curious why he was having trouble with this particular list of words when he has had no such problem with similar length lists of vocabulary words from language arts. It seems to me that if we could figure out why those seem to be so much easier (as in we NEVER even go over them, and he NEVER misses any) it could be an important clue about how he learns.

Karen

I don’t know exactly why his memory is better for lang. arts than soc.studies, but I do know that on a more personal note,I am more able to match up words to def. than to come up with the exact def. itself. I also do better on mult. choice, something that presented a problem in school when I was put in an advanced math class I was in no way prepared for. Context clues help with matching, and sometimes a person can tell the right answer on mult. choice because it looks ‘right’.

The reason I say is that I passed math subtests on the college standardized tests when I never even took the classes(differential equations, calculus) because I had an idea of what the answer should look like. In fact I am very poor at math. However, any test where I have to come up with a list or explanation is much harder. Like ‘name 4 features of a mountain’, I could only come up with 3.

I am not dxed nld, I have been dxed add/inattentive, along with a passive/avoidant personality type. I have looked at the nld web sites and think it actually describes me pretty well but at my age I am not too worried about pursuing diagnoses(I’m 38).

Perhaps, if you see a strength in a particular way that your son takes tests, you could have his iep state that tests will be given in that particular format. I hope I helped some.Best wishes.

Just a suggestion, my son has the same problem. We would study and he would know everything, then take a test and fail. When we studied, I gave him the definition and then choices. So to remedy this problem, I had it written in his IEP, that all tests should be mulitple choice. I feel he knew the material and shouldn’t be penalized because he couldn’t find the right words. It worked, and most teachers don’t have a problem with it. Of course there will always be those teachers who have that idea, that kids aren’t really learning disabled, just lazy. Now my solution to that problem would be, that every teacher should have to raise a learning disabled child, but since that isn’t an option, you have to do what you feel is best for your child.

Hmm. What’s different about the lists from the LA class and the Social Studies class? There would be the answer.

If the length of lists are the same, what about the length of the words?
And what about the words themselves? How are they arrived at? Are the LA words taken from something the kids are reading? And what’s the nature of the Social Studies words? From where does that list come? A textbook or not?

I’ll have to see what the teacher did on this test, (which is the firt real “test” in Social Studies) but I know that last year the teach always provided a word bank for fill-in questions. Odds are that the questions will be in various forms, so since he knew about 75% cold, if the words were evenly mixed into the different parts of the test, it’s unlikely that he’d have to do written answers without support for more than a couple of the ones he doesn’t know as well.

I think the likelihood is that he’ll actually get a pretty good score on the test without any modification. It’s hard to argue that they should make accomodations on a test if he ends up with an 85%… I’d rather same my energy for bigger issues.

In my son’s case, however, the fact that he can’t come up with at least an attempt at an explanation of a term makes me wonder whether he really DOES understand the term, as opposed to just having memorized a dictionary definition. I’m more concerned that he understand the concept than whether he can memorize or not. And with NLD kids, it can be tricky to determine that, since they tend to be good at spouting back information. (his definitions are often verbatim from whatever dictionary he looked the word up in)

Karen

The length of the lists and the length of the words are comparable. The LA words come from the novel they are reading in class. The SS words, for the most part, come from their Social Studies text book. They were given the words at the beginning of the unit, and told to look them up and write the definitions in their SS notebooks.

My guess is that they are harder for him to remember because they are out of context. That’s why, instead of having him just memorize definitions, I’ve been trying to have conversations with him about the words, how they’re used, and then using them in sentences.

Karen

Hi Karen,
I’m not a special educator, but since I have NLD, and do some substitute teaching, I’ll take a stab at what I think might be going on here. I think it’s a matter of “recall” as opposed to “remembering”. When your son sees the words or definitions in a bank, he can quickly recall what belongs with what, because he has a cue. However, REMEMBERING definitions is much harder because it requires him to produce an entire “package” of information…not just part of it. If he can put the definitions in his own words, they may be more meaningful to him. He may need to “process” certain words more than others in order for them to make sense and take hold in his memory. Just out of curiosity, I would like to know how “basin” was defined. It’s a word that can mean different things, and I’m wondering if somehow that fact is complicating his ability to understand and remember. Those of us with NLD can be so darned concrete in our thinking,that we sometimes head down the wrong road without knowing it. Would you mind posting the definition he was supposed to learn, and any others that you want to add? Thanks. JJ

Karen,
NLD children have trouble connecting words with pictures. Perhaps your son does not generate a picture for the SS words as easily as he has with words he has more experience with. Would a picture of a “basin” help him to remember it? Al

Your guess sounds right to me. Words from a book and words from a social studies textbook would be different. Context would be very helpful.

Hi JJ,

I think you’ve come very close to explaining what’s going on. It does seem to be close to what I’m seeing. Certainly I think it helps them to talk about the words and “process” the definitions into his own words.

The definition for “basin” was something like “a depression in the land surrounded by higher land.”

He just brought the test home last night, and he did get a 90% on it. (85% plus 5 for answering the extra credit question) As I suspected, there was a word bank, so I’m sure that helped. Where he lost credit was when he had to come up with something out of whole cloth. (for instance, one question was to give two examples of natural resources, and give two reasons why they are important. He had no trouble coming up with natural resources, but his explanation of their importance was very weak.

Karen

I doubt that it would. I geographical basin is pretty hard to draw or take a picture of, and I’m not sure how much it would help anyway. His visual-spatial skills are his weakest area.

Also some of the terms he had trouble with don’t lend themselves to illustration. For instance, he consistently had trouble coming up with the definition for “degrees” (as in longitude and latitude) even though he could give you the word in the context of a conversation. (BTW, he used it right in the test because he was not asked for direct definition, but had to show in a sentence about longitude and latitude that he knew what degrees were)

Karen

Hi Karen,
Glad your son did so well on the test! I think Al was on to something when he suggested a picture might be helpful. A few years ago I bought Walter Pauk’s book “How to Study in College”. This book has lots of good tips that can be adapted to younger students. One point Dr. Pauk makes is that we remember things that are somehow outrageous. With your son, a sketch of a giant basin (as in sink) full of bubbles, placed on a map where the geographical basin lies, just might be enough to help your son link the word basin that he understands, with the word basin applied in a new way. Both are depressions that can hold water. One is made of dirt and surrounded by dirt. Maybe your could picture a filthy giant washing his face in the water of a geographical basin. Those of us with NLD don’t always benefit from pictures and visuals, but when they help make something that seems abstract seem more “real” they can be useful. Of course, we’re all different, so what helps one might confuse another! Keep looking for what works with your son, and I know you’ll both get through this. Good luck. JJ

Even — perhaps especially — if visual spatial isn’t his strength, a visual connection can help, especially if he has to do some thinking to get there. Actually, basin’s a great word to use to target the way different words can mean different things — but often from the same basic idea. So a sink or a bowl can be basins — and then imagine that bowl getting bigger, and bigger, and turning into dirt and getting grass on it… though probably the size of a geographical basin might be beyond his visual imagination, it could help him process not just the dictionary definition, but the big idea behind it. Getting him to think of all kinds of things that could be basins (or find them through the course of an evening) would be a real challenge — but worth trying.

Thanks! I’ve been out of town for a few days, so didn’t see this until today. Interestingly, I was discussing this with his SPED teacher, again, more so that I understood it than because it was a big problem. In regards to the specific term, “basin”, she pointed out something else that had never occurred to me… most kids these days don’t know the term basin as in “wash basin” or whatever. So they don’t have any frame of reference to help them remember it.

She also made another interesting comment. She said that the other thing you have to keep in mind is that if a cup is full, simply pouring more water into it won’t make it hold more water. Sometimes a kid’s brain has simply reached the limit of what it can absorb at that moment, and you just have to wait until another point in time to reintroduce the material.

One way or the other, he seems to be getting enough of the material to be doing fine, so I won’t worry about it too much!

Thanks again!

Karen