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Is it a learning difficulty, or an attitude/effort issue, or just her personality?


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Now that dd is in 10th grade and the work is getting harder, she is struggling. In many areas she does well and enjoys learning, but there are a few specific things that are very difficult for her:

 

     1. Reading carefully. When reading a test question or instructions for an assignment, she just skims and then is very frustrated that she "doesn't know what to do." If I talk it out with her, that helps. She loves to read novels, but not assignments and questions!

 

     2. Thinking. She's great with the concrete, but if asked to think and come up with her own analysis of history, or apply a math concept to an unfamiliar problem type, or identify a story's theme, she's done/frustrated/AWOL. Again, if I talk it through with her, she rallies.

 

     3. Handling frustration. When she gets at all frustrated (which is many times a day), she just spins her wheels or wanders around, accomplishing nothing. She can spend 5 hours on 1 hour's worth of assignments and still not finish.

 

If the subject/task is very concrete, she enjoys it. If it's abstract or there isn't one "right" answer to find, see 1, 2 & 3 above. I know how to tailor the work to suit her style, but I worry that I'm just dumbing it down and not preparing her for college by doing this. At some point she will have to tackle courses that aren't designed just for her. So I'd like to help her move forward. But what am I dealing with: attitude, or aptitude?

 

ETA: Don't know if this is pertinent, but she is a very vague speaker, using lots of pronouns and generalizations (He put the thing over there) rather than being specific (Dad put the book on the table).

 

ETA: And, she does well on our annual standardized testing.

 

Thanks for any help or insight.

 

Wendy

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Have you tried giving her specific frameworks within which to consider questions, or even specific techniques to use? The aim would be to take a 'teach her how to fish' approach where you eventually don't need to coach her so much any more. 

 

For example, with skimming over the assignment question, you could suggest that she first quietly read the question out loud, two or three times if needed (that would force her to read it all) then underline the most relevant words. Draft an answer, then go back to check that the underlined concepts have been covered. Also make sure she is totally clear on what all the most common wordings (eg 'compare and contrast') are asking the student to do (sounds simple, but not all students pick them up without explicit teaching).

 

Similarly, with the frustration issue, you could try teaching her several strategies and seeing what works for her. Perhaps she doesn't realize, or rather hasn't internalized, that everybody experiences challenges and frustration, and that there are lots of techniques that can be used to overcome this. If she likes reading and research, you could even give her an assignment to identify and evaluate such techniques.

 

It's impossible to say from your post whether she has a diagnosable learning difficulty or not. She may have, but then she may simply be asking you to clarify everything because she finds that easier than thinking things through herself. I would certainly pursue professional evaluation if the above suggestions don't make any difference.

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How is her reading? If she skips small words or guesses a bit, that can cause these types of problems. Give her my nonsense word test and my quick screen reading grade level test. If she has trouble with the nonsense words or is reading below grade level, I would have her work through the things on my how to tutor page.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/readinggradeleve.html

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/howtotutor.html

 

If it is a focus problem and not a reading problem, would work on slowing down and understanding and focusing, with incentives for correct and focused work, and this CAP Reading and Reasoning book might also help:

 

http://classicalacademicpress.com/reasoning-reading-level-two/#.U1h0Ksu9KSM

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You wrote that  'She's great with the concrete thinking'.

But what you quite likely mean by concrete thinking?

Is linear thinking, where thinking is done through a beginning to end process.

In a logical step by step process.

But their is also non-linear thinking, where thinking uses a back and forth process.

A way to introduce this, is instead of going from the question to the answer?

Is to start with the answer, and then look back at how it was arrived at?

Also importantly, when looking back?

Introduce some changes, and look at how these changes will effect the answer?

 

With working out what to do?

We can approach this from different directions?

If we begin with 'what to do'?   Then we can develop ways to get there.

But if we begin with the 'working out'?

It is more of a trial and error process, to eventually find a way to arrive at the intended outcome.

How do we get there?

How did we get here?

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Thank you, Isabel; I will try your great suggestions. I love the idea of her reading instructions out loud, then checking back to them with the finished assignment. And I do talk to her about how learning new things is hard for everyone, not just her.

 

Elizabeth, she does skip small words! I notice on math tests, especially, if there is a "not" in the questions (which of these theorems can not be used...), she skips the "not" and answers incorrectly even though she knows the information. I will try your tests, thank you.

 

Geodob, by "concrete thinking," I mean that she is better with factual information than with ideas. Think of the stages of development -- at 16, she's still in the concrete stage (memorize the state capitals) rather than the abstract stage (was the Civil War about slavery or states' rights?).

 

I hope this isn't too much information, but she spent her early life (ten years) in many different foster homes. She came to us at 10, we adopted her at 12, and have been homeschooling her since then, 6th grade to 10th. She has made steady progress in all areas, but I think she still hasn't crossed that developmental bridge into abstract thinking; she is a few years "behind" (don't like that word, but you kwim). So, I think I might have just answered my own question about why she is frustrated, lol. Thanks for making me think that through, Geodob!

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Since she came out of the public schools, she was almost certainly taught to read with some sight words and other whole word things. You are going to need a lot of nonsense words to remediate. With my remedial students, I like to have them stop all outside reading for at least a month and focus on nonsense words, syllables, and words in word lists. Then, when guessing has significantly decreased, you can add back in reading sentences and books and stories. Read her work for her during this period. It is worth it in the long run, the remediation is much quicker if you use nonsense words and limit outside reading.

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