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2nd Grade Reading Comprehension


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I am currently using Story of the World and Writing With Ease with my 2nd grade son. Both of these books offer a lot of review questions to check reading comprehension. My son is really struggling with this. A lot of times he pulls answers out of no where that have nothing to do with what we have just read. I have tried having him sit with me and follow along. I have tried letting him move around while he is listening. I have also tried giving him something quiet to do with his hands while he is listening. None of these seem to help much. 


 


My son has high functioning autism, so his understanding of things in general is sometimes different than a "normal" kid. I have to reword things and repeat things to him quite a bit. His ability to recognize and read words is very good though.


 


Can anyone offer some suggestions on how I can help him with this comprehension issue?


 


Also, instead of asking him all of the review questions at the end of the reading, can I ask him questions as we are reading instead, or does he need to learn to retain the information until the end?


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I expect others will respond with more suggestions but I wanted to mention something regarding your last question.  When I am reading with the kids, we pause to discuss the material all the time.  I don't bombard them with "review questions" or grill them about their understanding.  I make it part of the flow of the conversation.  It has helped them to retain the information better.  I also try to discuss vocabulary that they may not understand as I am reading.  So if I come across a word that I suspect they may not be clear on we discuss it a bit.

 

FWIW, my DD does not retain well with only auditory input.  My DS does.  For DD, I frequently have to review extensively with her and re-read passages for things to stick.  She is 14.  She does not do well with pre-recorded books at all.  I realized that she did better when I was reading to her because I do pause, I do discuss, I do point out words that might not be clear to her.  All of those things DO help her.  Maybe those things could help your son, too.  The bottom line is, your child may just not do well with only auditory input, so besides the above you might look at trying to tie in something visual, maybe documentaries pertaining to the same thing, or doing projects that pertain to the story so he has a visual reference.  Those things have also helped DD.

 

Good luck and best wishes.

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I am currently using Story of the World and Writing With Ease with my 2nd grade son. Both of these books offer a lot of review questions to check reading comprehension. My son is really struggling with this. A lot of times he pulls answers out of no where that have nothing to do with what we have just read. I have tried having him sit with me and follow along. I have tried letting him move around while he is listening. I have also tried giving him something quiet to do with his hands while he is listening. None of these seem to help much. 

 

My son has high functioning autism, so his understanding of things in general is sometimes different than a "normal" kid. I have to reword things and repeat things to him quite a bit. His ability to recognize and read words is very good though.

 

Can anyone offer some suggestions on how I can help him with this comprehension issue?

 

Also, instead of asking him all of the review questions at the end of the reading, can I ask him questions as we are reading instead, or does he need to learn to retain the information until the end?

 

 

 

You have described my son completely. He will be 9 on Sunday and is in the third grade, but doing 2nd grade level reading and math. He's very good at recognizing words because he has a great memory, but of course that doesn't make him fluent at all. 

 

When I encountered  the off topic issue, I would try to bring his focus back to the text. My son would also make a big deal out of a little thing in the story. That was actually a little more common for him than to go off topic. He would become very frustrated and tell me I wasn't listening to him, so I decided to stop trying to refocus (as I call it). I now choose to just discuss the story as we go along. We talk about the characters, what they might have been thinking when they did certain things, I always discuss new vocabulary and make it a point to mark the page with a sticky note so we can come back and "pick up" that word for review. I keep my iPad handy so that if I need help with a picture I can pull one up. For example, we were reading one of the Little House books and there was a point in story where they were salting pork for the winter. I was having trouble describing that, so I pulled up a quick picture of what salted pork was. In another book, there was an Egyptian funeral procession. My son has never been to a funeral or seen a procession, so I pulled up a few pictures of processions. That adds the visual aspect that he's missing from picture books now that he's reading chapter books. We don't do it a lot, but at least once or twice during our nightly read aloud time. 

 

We do an oral review of the discussion questions and I find that he does better at answering that way. I do continue to give him written questions. He is doing much better with those than he was, but I try to use both as it helps with expressive speech, so I'm addressing two things at the same time. 

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Perhaps you could begin with a discussion of the review questions?

Then as he reads the text, he can look for the answers to the review questions?

 

Comprehension is about taking the key words and points from text.

The rest of the text, just forms the background.

 

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Well, I wrote a long post, which just got deleted. Sigh.

 

With regards to WWE and SOTW. I suggest putting these away and waiting a couple of years. The narration and comprehension exercises are rigorous for NT kids, but HFA kids are a few years behind in developing reading comp. skills and need explicit instruction to learn them. Or read him SOTW for fun, emphasize the projects and find fun picture books to supplement.

 

At seven, my son could not remember much of what was read to him or sit still for very long. Images he remembered, words, not so much, though he could read very well. It's the executive functioning piece--attention, self-regulation, etc.

 

I enthusiastically second the SRA recommendation. It's very expensive but worth every penny. Think of it as an investment. It's been the most effective thing we've ever used, and I've tried an awful lot. My HFA son is using SRA right now with great success, so feel free to PM me if you want more detail.

 

Other things that have helped:

 

Memoria Press, used a year or two behind grade level. The lit. selections and guides work very well for HFA kids as both are very concrete. The guides emphasize figuring out vocabulary words from context. This is inferencing, something HFA kids need to be taught how to do. (As HFA kids get older, vocabulary acquisition also becomes a problem as they do not learn words easily from context the way NT kids do. Making flashcards helps with retention.)

 

Rod & Staff English, used a year or two behind grade level. R&S presents grammar in an exceptionally explicit, concrete way. It has helped my son understand that if he pays attention to the structure of a sentence, he can understand its meaning better. With R&S, he is learning how to understand why he doesn't understand something he reads and (if he wrote it) how to fix it. Invaluable.

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We have used both of those resources as well and the types of comprehension questions bug me for this exact reason. The questions ask for very specific details of names & dates and often big picture, non-neurotypical thinkers will miss those details but have a completely workable view of the gist of the story. Honestly, I have a history degree from a very reputable university and even we were not asked all that often to memorize specific dates (other than for very significant events). Running timeline in our head and get within about 10 years, yes, but not memorizing dates for every little detail. The main point of history is change over time in various societies and how they interact with each other. Personally, I would change up the comprehension questions to focus more on the main points and see if that helps. You might find that he is retaining quite a bit more than you realize.

 

Another option would be to read him the comprehension questions ahead of time so that he can be listening for the answers. This would not work for my kids because those details bounce around in their brain and are hard to retrieve, but it might work for you if you really want to focus on the details.

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Ahhh, the point is that  HFA kids often remember details and miss the main point, so any reading comp. materials should play to that strength, with separate and/or additional work given on weak areas. An HFA child who is asked for the main idea over and over again may get very frustrated, but will relate back many, many details with great pleasure.

 

I can't speak to MP History. I've only ever done the lit. guides. They give lots of very specific questions and a few "main idea" questions.

 

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Ah, ok. Hm then yes, maybe some additional materials to work on comprehension would be the best bet. My dyslexics are the opposite - good with the main point, bad with the details and that is why they struggled with these particular comprehension questions, but I guess that is not the issue here.

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I am currently using Story of the World and Writing With Ease with my 2nd grade son. Both of these books offer a lot of review questions to check reading comprehension. My son is really struggling with this. A lot of times he pulls answers out of no where that have nothing to do with what we have just read. I have tried having him sit with me and follow along. I have tried letting him move around while he is listening. I have also tried giving him something quiet to do with his hands while he is listening. None of these seem to help much. 

 

My son has high functioning autism, so his understanding of things in general is sometimes different than a "normal" kid. I have to reword things and repeat things to him quite a bit. His ability to recognize and read words is very good though.

 

Can anyone offer some suggestions on how I can help him with this comprehension issue?

 

Also, instead of asking him all of the review questions at the end of the reading, can I ask him questions as we are reading instead, or does he need to learn to retain the information until the end?

 

By all means it's GREAT to ask him questions as you are reading.  It really helps kids if they can build a visualization in their minds as you read too.  With Story of the World in particular, you can ask him to picture events and people in his mind and tell you what it looks like.  Pay attention to his descriptive details to see if they match the story.  

 

Lindamood Bell's Verbalizing and Visualizing program along with the "See Time Fly" series of history books is what we used to work on comprehension while learning history.  You really can use the verbalizing and visualizing methods with any book though.

 

There are lots of programs and methods you can use to work on reading comprehension.. I've got information about V&V and teaching reading comprehension on my website at http://learningabledkids.com/reading/reading_comprehension.htm.

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