HELP - strategies for kid with verbal/sequential memory issues?

[Matryoshka]

DD18 (well, tomorrow ;) ) just started a summer job at a maker space type place that has summer programs for kids.  She's supposed to be teaching various robotics programs and other programming stuff like Minecraft mods.

 

Her bosses there have given her pretty much no direction.  No lesson plans, what they expect her to cover, no tips on how they want the material presented, nor early access to some of the materials so she can work with it herself.  But that's not the immediate problem...

 

This first week she's got a Lego Mindstorms class for which one 12yo has signed up.  It's becoming apparent he has some fairly significant learning issues, especially with verbal expression (he can't explain back, either talking or in writing, what he's learned or what he wants to do with the robot), and spacial issues (left/right - she says he can walk a hexagon or draw one, but if he tries to explain how the robot should move to make one, he turns it in the wrong direction most of the time).  He also seems to have some sequential issues - like putting the instruction that's first at the beginning.

 

She says she has had some luck getting him to remember by pointing to the icons - like "which instruction did we use to make the robot do this?" - he'll have no idea, but if he sees the icon he can pick it out.  He also remembered some other thing by the color but not the name.

 

She's trying all sorts of different angles to get this through to him, and I think she's doing a good job trying different strategies (having him walk the hexagon, getting him to identify the color), but she's not sure how to make sure if he's really 'got' it - there's only so much pointing and colors can get her.

 

Any other ideas for her?  I told her it might be a blessing that he's her only student, though she may have a point that if there were another student who 'got' it, he could follow along...  I've never had to teach a kid like this, and I think she's already tried all the stuff I would have come up with...

 

This class is only for a week, then next week it's another class (Minecraft mods) and new kids...

[wapiti]

What an interesting situation - I agree that it's a blessing that there are no other kids.

 

I would try to approach this through the kid's strengths if possible.  He may be an extreme version of a stereotypical VSL with sequential weaknesses.  I would try to teach - a bit more than simply present - the big picture first.  It would be much easier to remember the details of a sequence when there is context.  I don't know Mindstorms well enough to suggest what that might look like.  If we think about, say, levels of an outline or decision tree, if she could lay out the steps visually within task categories, that might help.  Perhaps there could be a diagram that he could refer back to when he forgets the steps.  Mindstorms is taught so widely that I wonder whether there might be teaching tools on the web, even...

 

ETA, to be clear, something needs to be written/drawn for the kid.  Lego is really good about providing pictorial directions though those are usually sequential.  If she has some of those, maybe look at them in reverse order before starting in a forward direction.  What would be especially helpful is a single sheet that shows the major things involved so that he can visualize how all the steps will fit together.

 

ETA again, I like kbutton's idea of icons!  Visual.  Try not to tell him anything without also writing/drawing it.  (Realize that I have no clue what's involved in Mindstorms.  My ds13s, one of whom has some verbal/sequential weaknesses and is 2e, had zero difficulty with a Mindstorms class at school last semester, but his weaknesses may not be nearly as extreme as the individual child in question.  For my ds, what this sometimes looks like is "in one ear and out the other" because he's so busy thinking about something, such as what was said a minute ago, that he missed what was just said.)

Edited June 21, 2016 by wapiti

[kbutton]

I would continue to have him walk out his route, but I would make paper icons for every icon available in the programming interface (maybe more than one for commonly used directions), and have him actually layout his route with paper icons as well as walk it. He might have misidentified in his mind what an icon means or something like that.

 

Basically, he'd program twice--once with paper icons, and then he can put it into the robot. They can troubleshoot by comparing the paper to what he programs and what the robot does. Before programming on the robot, he could number (in pencil so they can be reused) the paper icons in case he drops them or something. It also lets them refer to each step by # when they are reworking things.

 

HTH. I've only done tiny bits with Mindstorms.

Edited June 21, 2016 by kbutton