[Reading Comprehension -- at what point does this matter? Is there a remedy?]

Oooh, that reminds me of another book!

 

The Way They Learn by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

 

And since you mentioned stubborn...by the same author...

You Can't Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded)

 

It looks like she's come out with a middle school book as well, but having not read it yet, I don't know how much would be specific to public schoolers versus generally applicable.

[Reading Comprehension -- at what point does this matter? Is there a remedy?]

I wonder whether you'd find any helpful advice in this book:

 

Parents Who Love Reading, Kids Who Don't: How it Happens and What You Can Do About It

 

This is one of my favorite books about encouraging reluctant readers.  It doesn't really get into remediation of learning challenges, but addresses kids who have mastered the necessary skills without finding the enthusiasm / motivation to read on their own without being forced.  I can't guarentee that you haven't already tried everything, but perhaps you'll find something new or at least encouragement.  It's free on Kindle Unlimited right now, and fairly common to find a copy in libraries.

[What Colleges Do Not Accept Latin for Admissions]

I have friends who had it come up somehow...I think perhaps their child may have had an ESL class on his high school transcript, after they sent him to public school, and may have been lacking the necessary credits or grades in the standard French, Spanish, etc. that people normally take.  Probably unlikely to come up for a homeschool graduate with a parent-created transcript that doesn't say ESL on it, but it might if you were trying to qualify for foreign language exemption by specifically mentioning native language fluency, particularly if the native language was not studied formally in high school for credit and/or if the native language is not one commonly studied in the US.  

 

Sorry to get so far afield from the original question about Latin.

 

[Reading Comprehension -- at what point does this matter? Is there a remedy?]

I agree with all the recommendations regarding getting an eval. I'd be concerned about that by his age, esp. when it's not compensated by a strength in listening skills.

 

Some possible curricula to peruse once you figure out what's going on:

 

Writing With Ease Level 1...Can he do the narrations?  Those are a pretty gentle and methodical introduction to listening comprehension/memory.

 

Listen My Children from Academic Therapy Publications....This is what I used for auditory memory for the child who started out below WWE1.

 

Lindamood-Bell materials...this brand is most famous for LiPS to help children with dyslexia or speech disorders, but they also created a bunch of products for reading comprehension.  One of them is about helping students be able to visualize what they are reading/hearing so that they can comprehend and remember it as more than random meaningless strings of words.  Perhaps that may be where things are breaking down for your son. Perhaps it may be one of the other aspects that I'm forgetting right this moment.  There are several different products there.

[What Colleges Do Not Accept Latin for Admissions]

Yes, oral fluency and a native-English accent is easier to pick up before the teen years, so while I would be VERY proud of raising children who are bilingually literate, I would try to arrange more English-speaking activities with native speakers for the tween before that window of opportunity closes.  Even watching more t.v. for the listening skills might help, with the closed captioning turned on if necessary at first to provide the written words as support. There are some good educational programs that may relate to the subjects you are studying for school, which would help with academic spoken English.  Perhaps calling friends from co-op on the phone or on Skype might be another option for adding more social spoken English  with native speakers while at home.

 

Some students who speak a language other than English at home will be required to take the TOEFL to prove English fluency for college admission, but usually there is a presumption of fluency based on the number of years in the country.  Children who have been here since elementary school are likely exempt or excluded from TOEFL, but it's worth looking directly at colleges in the same manner as this thread is collecting links.

[General academic expectations for Middle School (5th-8th) -- What do you expect?]

I should add...my list of goals is what I'm thinking as a baseline minimum of the competencies that I think middle schoolers should have before entering high school. Some children will hit those goals earlier than others.  I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with regentrude that there is no point in spending three years reviewing fractions for a child who mastered them in 5th grade.  I think there's a lot of freedom in how to explore all of those subjects in greater depth rather than sitting around, and it doesn't have to be just advancing to high school work.  Middle schoolers still like projects...they can have fun creating displays and experiments and exploring niche topics.  There are always more books to read, more creative writing to explore.  Things like the middle school newspaper/magazine curriculum Cover Story would be a great project for writers.  I wrote my goals in the sense of "Here are the competencies that would benefit an incoming 9th grader to have."  Beyond that, keep exploring rather than regurgitate elementary school.

[General academic expectations for Middle School (5th-8th) -- What do you expect?]

These are very, very broad, but my goals for middle school:

 

1. Study Skills...learning how to outline, take notes from written and spoken material, becoming self-aware of learning styles, finding effective ways to review material, learning to manage one's own time with increasing independence, learning to manage test anxiety if it exists in regard to standardized testing, knowing how to calculate an average grade, knowing how to use graphic organizers, being able to break down larger projects into smaller steps...I don't mean for a 5th grader to have mastered all this at once, but I'd like an incoming 9th grader to be fairly solid on these skills rather than spend the high school transcript years learning them as a trial by fire.

 

2. English...solid outlining skills as mentioned in WTM, ability to type, ability to express oneself comfortably in writing, being able to write multiple paragraphs...Again, I don't expect a 5th grader to write a term paper, but I'd like an incoming 9th grader to have written something long enough to require transitioning from one paragraph to the next in an organized manner, such as comparison-contrast essays.  Most of high school will be spent learning to craft good academic writing, so not asking for perfection here...just wanting to spend middle school transitioning from the simple paragraphs of elementary to being comfortable expanding to greater lengths.  If that means using speech-to-text software and an advanced spellchecker to compensate for dysgraphia, for example, I want that practiced in middle school, so that it's ready to go in high school.  Reading--making sure the child is comfortable reading for information, comfortable reading novels, and starting to talk about plot, characters, conflict, etc. Again, that might happen in elementary for a strong reader, and analysis will be refined in high school, so not a huge goal...but if it still needs work, middle school is the time to make sure reading skills, grammar, spelling, etc., are strong enough to handle high school or else that appropriate accommodations have been decided upon and practiced.

 

3. Math--solidify advanced arithmetic such as fractions, decimals, percents, exponents, etc., in addition to the basic four operations.  Start on pre-Algebraic reasoning.  Start on Algebra I for advanced 8th graders, but most of middle school is polishing off arithmetic.  I can't tell you how many struggling Algebra students I've met who primarily flounder on fractions.  The bridge to understanding fractional equations and coefficients is having a very solid understanding of the hows and whys of fractions in arithmetic.

 

4. Science--Knowing the scientific method and how to write up a lab report/design an experiment...an actual experiment with a control group, a variable, a hypothesis, etc., as opposed to a demonstration.  Having been introduced to all major branches of science at least once.

 

5.  History--having been through history, both world and American, at least once.

 

6. Foreign Language--having been introduced to the sounds and vocabulary of at least one foreign language, having fun with it before buckling down to study grammar more formally in high school.

 

7. Art--knowing the color wheel, having used most mediums at least once, having been introduced to perspective, exploring digital art

 

8. Emotional and Physical Health--learning to problem-solve social situations with greater understanding and independence, maintaining self-esteem, knowing all the basics of the types of choices that teens may face in terms of drugs, alcohol, smoking, romantic relationships, peer pressure, etc.  I think middle school is the time to fill in any gaps that might have been missed in discussing mature topics with younger kids, or might have gone over their heads as too far in the future.  I mean, it's an ongoing conversation rather than a one-time lecture, but now is the time to recognize that kids grow up and need to make the right decisions for themselves.

[Help with ADHD middle schooler?]

A few quick things that jump out at me:

 

If you decide that an evaluation through the public school would be helpful, they are federally mandated to provide that evaluation if you request it in writing, even as a homeschooler.  States vary as to whether the schools have to provide any special services after the evaluation to students who are not enrolled  (in some states, homeschoolers can access special needs services such as speech therapy, etc.), but the evaluation itself must be provided to anyone whether enrolled or not, in all 50 states.

 

About not being able to tell you her favorite part of a book....that might be a personality difference rather than the ADHD.  Take a look at some Myers-Briggs websites on the difference between personalities that have P instead of J in their system, particularly ENFP, ESFP, INFP, etc.  Maybe give her a personality quiz to take from a reputable site...see what it says.  For most types with a P, trying to quantify "most favorite" out of many possibilities is overwhelming, and weak executive function probably exacerbates that.  You'll get a much better response if you ask an open-ended question that allows more of a brainstorming response than an evaluating response..."What were some of your favorite scenes?" instead of "Which scene was your favorite?"  If that's still not getting a response, you might try getting more specific..."Were there any scenes that were disturbing, or where you couldn't wait to find out what happened next?" or go through a checklist of elements in a plot summary: "Who was the main character? What was(were) the main problem(s) the character had to solve? How did that problem resolve in the end?" 

 

When you want to work on analytical skills, start with having her brainstorm a list first before trying to put it in order, and stick to something that can be backed up with evidence.  For example, "Who were the bad guys in that book?  What did they do to be evil?  Who do you think was the worst?"  That leads her through making a list, gathering evidence/criteria, then evaluating....that's the skill you're really looking for when trying to promote decision-making...teaching her to evaluate evidence/criteria to reach a decision, when a decision needs to be made.  She's going to get to it through her strength in seeing all the possibilities first.  "Favorite" doesn't have specific criteria to be analyzed, and P personality types really can be too enthusiastic to narrow it down from "I liked the whole book." It's not a defect so much as a difference...strength in reserving judgment in order to see all the possibilities rather than strength in making quick decisions.
 

My favorite hands-on or visual curriculum that's fairly scripted:

Math-U-See...the blocks helped once I convinced my 10yo to use them, and surely your mom can put in a DVD. The pages aren't colorful or anything, but they are mercifully short and to the point.

multiplication.com or Times Tales

Winston Grammar

All About Spelling...sadly, both Winston and AAS require the teacher's time/focus, but they are scripted, and can be done 15min/day each if you break up the lessons.

I have a friend who raves about Rainbow Science being accomplishable, with experiments that can get done without planning ahead because of the lab kit.

Donald Silver's Interactive 3-D Maps for American History

 

Now, we paired the 3-D maps with Sonlight's Cores D and E for reading, and written output was primarily the multiple choice aspects of the workbooks in the earlier versions (in the pre-2013 cores...The Story of the USA and American Adventures). We aimed for multiple exposure to main events...make the map, read a novel, watch a video if available, do a workbook page if available.  Took forever, but she retained it, and the novels helped her care more than a textbook.  If she isn't engaged in reading the novels at that level, Homeschool In the Woods has some hands-on history materials that look great, but I'd worry about your mom ever getting them done.

 

Other favorites:

good old Writing With Ease...this worked well for helping dd to listen/summarize...we started with the level 1 workbook at age 11 since we'd never done WTM before, and it's scripted

Daily Grams...not terribly interactive, but relatively quick and independent, so therefore usually held out for the 5 min before the attention caved in.

Bravewriter...this I think would help her develop her writing voice...perhaps if you did a few projects a year with her, perhaps even let her use a speech-to-text app if she hasn't learned to type yet....probably also not something your mom will do consistently, but maybe she'll be interested in a project or two...it doesn't have to happen often to still be better than never, though.

Dance Mat Typing...it's free, and silly, and hopefully learning will help speed along the writing process

 

 

Curriculum won't fix root causes, but it's a place to start seeing whether something might meet needs better.  Kids vary, though, so I don't know whether our favorites would work for your child, and I haven't used the majority of what you already own to have a clue how it compares.  Maybe see if anyone can come up with some strategies to apply in general.  For example, trying to interrupt hyperfocus on a book in order to ask comprehension questions more frequently.  I have my ADHDer stick a bookmark in her assigned book at the place where I want her to stop and talk about it, to keep her from reading straight through to the end and forgetting the middle.  We try to have some mindless physical task to do while listening or sitting, like playing with putty.  If she has good handwriting, then taking notes might help her stay focused, but that might not develop for a couple more years.  Let's see...we alternate sitting vs. doing.  So, while we try not to have too many transitions than interrupt her, I try to insert snacks/meals/chores/projects between subjects that require reading/writing because doing two sedentary tasks in a row increases the odds of tuning out, unless they're very short.

 

Good luck!

[Is AAR a full year, or 1/2 year?]

I don't think you can count on it progressing at a steady pace, honestly.  Reading skills don't always fit into a box where each skill takes the exact same amount of practice to master.  It's nice to get into a rhythm, but I think it's best to just set an approximate length of time and play it by ear as to how many days it takes to finish a lesson comfortably.  Some lessons will take longer than others.  I've had kids whiz through short a in a flash, then need a ton of extra slow practice to get the hang of silent e, then work at a moderate pace through some vowel teams, etc.  We just put in a good effort...something like 2-3 easy segments, or 1-2 harder segments...then move on to the next subject. I monitor for attention/comprehension in deciding when to call it a day. I like to finish enough to feel like they accomplished something, but not so much as to become weary or bored, as that won't get retained as well.  If you are always pressing to finish a certain amount at an even pace, I feel like you might overlook the bumps in the road where a lesson needs to slow down or speed up to be more effective according to how the child is doing with the material.

[Not so impressed with AAS 1]

Eh, I'm not so sure about starting with Level 2 for a child with dyslexia/dysgraphia as a general recommendation. It's possible for a child who has already successfully done the bulk of Level 1 in other programs, which many 7yos have, and possibly the OP's son....but starting with Level 1 is how we found out that my 10yo had been memorizing spelling lists as sight words for years, with virtually no ability to segment the sounds.  And that was my child whose dyslexia was mild enough to be silent reading on grade level by using context clues.

[RTI and PS ???s]

At any time, a parent can always make that formal written request for an evaluation. Schools are not supposed to put off an evaluation for the RTI process if the parent has made that written request.

Unfortunately, schools do not communicate this to parents. Parents will talk to teachers and/or make a verbal request for testing and not know that a verbal request is meaningless.

 

 

This!  I know several parents who have gotten stonewalled at this stage of the process, who have tried to request an IEP and were told that the school had to do RTI first, because "that's how we do things here."

 

It has also been my experience that if you have a student with mild disabilities who is hard-working and/or above average intelligence, it can be very difficult to get the school to proceed with the IEP process...if the response to intervention is that the child isn't failing miserably, there is generally no motivation for the school to care whether the child actually thrives or whether the child passes by the skin of his or her teeth with extreme effort and time spent in tutoring that may not use methods relevant to the disability.

 

There are legal protections regarding the timeline on which an IEP must be processed after a written request, but I've heard people told things like, "We don't test for that until after ___ grade." "We don't test for that until the child has been in school for __ months/years." or "been in the RTI program for ___ months."  I honestly don't think that all of those responses were given after verbal requests.  I think parents have to be very aware of the difference in process for a written request by parent, and have to make it known that they know their rights to a full evaluation.

 

 

[The "Matthew Effect": Is 3rd Grade Make it or Break it?]

The downside of testing for us was that the school was very careful to avoid the word dyslexia.  That was a real obstacle to learning how to remediate properly...feeling like we'd done the testing without getting the answers we needed. Part of it was a 2E issue...not wanting to spend money on a child who was capable of scraping by with fewer accommodations if they left that word out of their conclusion.  But it's the only thing that explains the classic quirks that you can hear in her oral reading and see in her spelling, and even the rote memory issues in math.  I'd have started with Barton instead of AAS as soon as we left the school system, if only I'd known then that it was indeed mild dyslexia. 

[Math for DD dyslexic... Help please]

Yes, this is for my artsy child. She gets extremely frustrated with math very easily and shuts down if she doesn't understand the concept quickly. :( I have to be very careful not to push in any way. Life of Fred would be fun! DD tends to struggle with remembering what step to do, or she'll forget to read whether it's + or - and then do the problem incorrectly due to forgetting to check. 

 

Math U See worked well for my child in that it gave her time to master each concept before bringing in the review.  It does have review each week, just not on every page.  She HATED Saxon because of the way the problems skipped from type to type on every single page. She felt like she never had enough time to get the concepts down before it threw something else at her the next day.  And doing just a handful of new problems each day before the lesson devolved into mixed review...it never felt like enough practice on the new item, and felt like some of the review was tedious...that which wasn't dreaded from never having been mastered the day/week/month before. 

 

Math-U-See breaks it down in very small increments, like doing the addition and subtraction fact families one at a time, then learning multi-digit addition without carrying, then with carrying, then subtraction without borrowing, then with borrowing, etc.  And gradually increasing the number of place values.  The sequence is very logical, including miscellaneous topics such as geometry, time, measurement, etc.  They're introduced as close as possible to related concepts...for example, minutes on a clock are introduced shortly after the concept of counting by fives has been mastered.  It's never a huge leap from one lesson to the next.

 

Both of my children who melt down in frustration over getting math wrong tend to do very well with MUS. They still have the occasional bad day when I make them redo a couple problems due to ADHD types of mistakes, but they generally understand the concept from the video and feel like they're being given a fair chance to get it right on the worksheets.  The worksheets aren't long, and have a lot of white space to keep the numbers from crowding together.  For multi-digit problems, though, I print out some graph paper with squares large enough to accommodate their handwriting...that helps keep everything lined up properly.  Still, MUS has the best spacing/font that we've used in general.

 

My child who gets bored easily and masters things quickly tends to skip to the test after only a page or two of practice. My child with dyslexia who struggles more with rote memory tends to do every page just to be sure, and during single-digit multiplication we supplemented a lot of extra practice in every way possible.  But even that child was able to skip through a few lessons quickly at various levels.  We started all the way back in Alpha despite being older, and finished it within a few months, then slowed down in Beta to get the hang of working the problems without forgetting any steps, then crawled through Gamma because of the multiplication facts, then sped back up in Delta surprised to discover that division really isn't so bad after so much hard work in multiplication.  Then fractions and decimals start to get more conceptual, so the rest of the elementary/middle school series isn't so bad.

 

MUS is good about making it all visual/kinesthetic, which is a strength for most dyslexics. 

[The "Matthew Effect": Is 3rd Grade Make it or Break it?]

I agree with the majority of posts, but wanted to bring up something I don't see mentioned. 

 

For my own child with dyslexic tendencies, she was falling further behind in school in 3rd because of the way they did things.  Struggling to memorize harder and harder spelling lists on grade level rather than taking time to fix the foundation of being able to segment sounds at all?  Melting down over multiplication and division because even some of the addition/subtraction facts were still shaky, rather than taking time to fix that foundation? I can absolutely see the Matthew Effects at play there, because there was no time for proper remediation while still fitting into the one-size-fits-all box of public school.  But now that we've been homeschooling several years, she's a bookworm who is relatively confident in math.  Still can't spell well, still isn't quite caught up in math, but making steady progress instead of getting further and further behind.  We have rebuilt what the school system almost destroyed in terms of confidence and foundational abilities.

 

The thing is, it DOES take at least a year to make a year's progress with a struggling learner in many cases, while peers are also progressing.  Sometimes there are developmental leaps, but often progress is hard won.   At some point, I had to resign myself to the fact that we are going to be doing math and something related to dyslexia year-round for the rest of this child's school career because we have a long way to go.  If we try to limit our homeschooling to 180 days like the school system, we ARE going to fall further and further behind, because remediation takes time.  Our best chance at "catching up" is to keep plugging away at it for more days per year than the average student.  I'm sure we'll continue to need some burnout breaks here and there, but progress in her areas of disability are going to be slower and harder and that's just life. So, we do our best with the time we're given.  And if we fail to get to AP 12th grade Calculus, but manage to squeeze in Algebra and Geometry by working through the summers or adding a gap year, that's a hell of a lot better than throwing in the towel in 3rd grade. 

[Do you give your ADHD kiddo less work to do?]

Oh my goodness, this is SO TRUE! (of myself and my two kids, LOL! Only my dh understands time!) I will have to tell him this quote! 

 

 

 

YES! Meta-cognition is a huge part of what we've worked on over the years. Love how you put it--the one goal is to get them functional. 

 

 

Interesting, how does this work?

 

My youngest saved up for a Kindle Fire--and then she discovered how to use it to dictate all of her papers (and even add in paragraphing, punctuation etc...) and email them to herself so she can just revise on the computer. It's been a huge time-saver for her.

 

Oh!

Can I ask what she uses on the Fire for that?  We have a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad, and I was just gearing up to figure out what kind of apps or software we need to start doing this.  So far, we've tried the Windows speech-to-text on the laptop with rather ridiculous results no matter whether I use the built-in mic or an external mic.  If the Kindle does it more functionally, that would be awesome. 

[Meeting requirements for science with lab....]

For one year that I helped with high school science at a co-op, we found that Knowledge Box Central has some authorized Apologia notebooks that include pre-written lab reports.   The materials and procedure are provided pre-typed for you, and then headings for filling in your own hypothesis, observations, conclusion.  I tried to make them record those categories for at least one per chapter (so, about every other week) even if they were just drawing their observation. 

 

You could probably find other curricula with templates like that, or make your own.  For a student with dysgraphia or similar challenges, I might even allow the observations to be photographs when possible.  But I'd want my student writing a hypothesis and conclusion for most experiments, even if the conclusion is "My hypothesis was correct."  I mean, I'd like to have higher standards, but for a student who is either going to write that or leave it blank, I'd rather see that than nothing.

[For those with Christian children, how have they handled living on a secular campus?]

To better address your original question of how I dealt with the stuff around me...I joined a youth group (Intervarsity, Campus Crusade, etc., I went to both and then picked the most convenient one) where I attended bible study and a prayer group, I joined some other activities based on common interests, I formed some study groups with other people in my major.  My inconsiderate roommate wasn't actually home all that much, and common etiquette even amongst those who were having guys over was to give your roommate a heads up...I probably spent some extra time hanging out with friends or in the computer lab or library by clearing out as soon as I saw her in the building, lol, but seriously...she wasn't a homebody, so I mostly had the room to myself.  And we both requested different roommates the following semester.

 

Religion really wasn't a topic of contention amongst my professors. I had one who seemed biased, but I just wrote my papers on neutral topics for the most part.  I did know a few biology majors who were "forced" so to speak to write about how one class of animals evolved into another. So, they wrote their papers with "evolutionary theory states that..." and would then go on to draw the comparisons and contrasts their professors were looking for.  God did create similarities between various types of animals. Think of it like an artist, a potter who might make an entire series of similar pottery each with a new innovation in design for aesthetics or practicality.  There is no need for Him to have started over from scratch for each, and the infinite variety is even all the more amazing. The fact that science tries to categorize life from simplest to complex is to be expected. How else could we keep track of so much?  You don't have to believe in the same root causes in order to learn the theories...you can still learn an incredible amount of detail from a non-Christian biology professor while personally believing that it was all intelligently designed.

 

Nobody ever pressured me to drink or anything either.  I got invited to a couple parties where drinking occurred...cast party for a play, non-office-sponsored Christmas party amongst co-workers at my summer job...everyone respected my decision to have a soda. I stayed as long as I could stand it to be polite, left if I smelled anything airborne.  Honestly, observing a bunch of drunk people while sober isn't all that entertaining.  I usually enjoyed the beginning when people could still carry on a conversation that made sense, and left soon thereafter.  Again, similar to seeing my roommate's idea of dating...it didn't persuade me to experiment. Quite the opposite.  Most of my good friends spent most of their time engaging in activities where I felt more comfortable.

[For those with Christian children, how have they handled living on a secular campus?]

I think in some ways, the secular colleges can be safer in that risky behaviors are out in the open, personal choices. My roommate the first semester drank like a fish and frequently brought her boyfriend back to the room...and let's just say that occasionally overhearing them behind the room divider did not increase my respect for her whatsoever nor tempt me to experiment in a similar manner. It was disgustingly disrespectful that she didn't make sure I wasn't in the room (I think she might have been too drunk to remember to check). But at least she was home, and not trying to sneak around outside or something at a religious campus with a curfew and a ban against visitors.  If things had gone horribly awry, if some guy she brought home had turned violent, she would have had the right to report it to the RA, dorm security, or the campus police and enlist their protection against ever seeing him again. Her boyfriend(s) seemed to be normal, nonviolent, nothing bad happened that I know of, and I know that there were unreported incidents of date rape at our secular campus amongst other students, but just saying, if we examine the hypothetical situation of what all could go wrong on a casual drunk date, at a religious campus where the girl would likely be expelled for breaking curfew in the first place...I feel like that's a more dangerous set up where a predatory date might feel that much more invincible against getting caught and prosecuted, because the girl has a vested interest in not reporting anything to the authorities.

 

The vast majority of my friends were not into partying and casual sex at all...we went to an academically challenging institution, and most of us actually studied hard, got involved in wholesome activities, went to a campus youth group or local church if Christian, etc.  But we had to seek that fellowship.  It meant something to us.  I grew a ton in my faith by seeing the faith of others who actively sought to include God in their life at a secular college.

 

On a religious campus where chapel attendance is forced...I think people can take it for granted. Or actively rebel against it.  My friends who went to the strictest religious campuses were often the ones who rebelled the hardest.  Many students who go to religious colleges have been placed there by their parents, not allowed to attend a secular college.  That doesn't guarantee that the students themselves are Christian...just that their parents think they are, or wish they were. Some of my Christian friends who chose such places felt very alone, ironically.

 

At my secular campus, there was nothing to rebel against. Keeping my faith was a personal choice, and that's the stage that college students are at.  I met people who were deeply devout, I met atheists, I met people of other faiths, I even met some "Christian" cult members, which was a valuable lesson that has helped me screen for healthy/unhealthy churches to belong to as an adult...everything was out there in the open for me to see, so there was no desire there for me to rebel just to see what else existed.  I knew my options, and living faithfully held the most appeal. 

 

I can't guarantee that your child will choose the same, but I think that a tightly controlled environment sometimes pushes kids away simply because it goes against their developmental stage of needing to choose for themselves.

[What accommodations do you make for your young dyslexia/dysgraphia/dyspraxia students?]

Handwriting Without Tears has a new typing program for young children on their site....Keyboarding Without Tears.  That might be something to start her on so that she can eventually become good enough at typing to compose with programs that anticipate the spelling of words.  I don't mean that she'd be typing that well in a year...I'm talking long-term strategy...just starting the typing program while still doing handwritten dictation and copywork, and then letting her type compositions further down the road when she gets good enough at it to have the epiphany that it's easier than handwriting.

 

Another place to get permission to scribe for her is www.bravewriter.com. Click on the Jot It Down stage, and look for the podcast link.  There's a very convincing talk about how and why to support your child by scribing.  Then if you listen to the rest of the stages, you can see the progression to greater independence. I think for my child with dyslexia/dysgraphia, greater independence may ultimately mean using speech recognition rather than handwriting, but there will come a day where she owns her writing in the same manner as students in the later stages.

 

Now, if you appreciate the Bravewriter philosophy enough to use her materials, I will say that for copywork / narration / dictation I greatly prefer Writing With Ease and First Language Lessons.  I think they're much better done than the corresponding materials from Bravewriter...the Arrow, the Boomerang, the Wand.  I'm sure there are people who feel the opposite way about it, but since we're here on the Well Trained Mind forum, I'm going to be clear that I do prefer WWE for that aspect of writing development.  However, I think The Writer's Jungle and the Jot It Down book, and the others named after other stages...I think those provide some very good guidence in terms of supporting writing composition.  I think that may diverge a bit from classical philosophy, but the stages make a lot of sense to me, and I feel like I'm neglecting composition trying to hold off with just WWE until the logic stage. So, I use both.

[What accommodations do you make for your young dyslexia/dysgraphia/dyspraxia students?]

I haven't read all of the replies yet, but I will say this...being the scribe can be the difference between having a student with dysgraphia generate an imaginative, detailed sentence, or generating "I like cats."  Or more likely, "I lik catz."  

 

One of the reasons we started homeschooling was seeing that type of decline in my child's writing when we got a teacher who pressed for her to write everything herself by hand for the practice. She had been giving wonderful lengthy answers orally, and was open to talking about higher-order revision...as in, let's try rearranging this paragraph, let's try saying it better, etc.  Suddenly, she started limiting her answers to only what she could spell and the least number of words/letters, and that was NOT progress.

 

In my experience of seeing her grow older with accommodations, and having taught struggling students before becoming a homeschool parent, kids with a solid foundation of appropriate accomodations can transfer what they've learned into making do to some degree when accommodations are not available, especially if they are working hard on remediating skills on the side--handwriting practice, occupational therapy, Orton-Guillingham phonics remediation, etc.  But kids who've gotten into a rut of limiting their self-expression, thinking, trying, etc. because it's just too hard without any accommodations...it's very hard to fix that.  It's very hard to help them rediscover their voice and create the DESIRE to speak/write with better vocabulary and more complex sentences.  It can be done, but it is so much easier to help a child venture out into trying to spell it on their own when they already have the experience built up of being used to NEEDING big words.

 

The kids I taught with the worst no-mercy, sink-or-swim backgrounds would turn in paragraphs like this:

Dogs are cool.  I have a dog. His name is Fred. He is brown. I like my dog.

And then they would argue with me that was a perfectly acceptable paragraph because it has a topic sentence, three details, and a concluding sentence, and every sentence has a subject and verb.

 

My kids who'd had a lot more "crutches" to lean on would be waving their hands in the air for spelling help or asking to use the dictionary, and would end up with something like this:

 

The best type of pet to have is a dog.  First of all, dogs are more friendly than cats.  My dog, Fred, always greets me at the door, but my cat, Sasha, ignores me until she wants to be fed. Dogs are also less maintenance. Instead of having to clean a litter box, you can take your dog for a walk and enjoy the sunshine!  Also, who ever heard of a cat that could scare away thieves?  Some people like cats but dogs are so much better.

 

You can work really, really hard to drag more detail out of the kid who wrote paragraph one, but believe me it is easier to work with child #2 who has a solid idea of what a quality paragraph can look like.  Tweens and teens really do appreciate independence and blending in, and most will work to shed accommodations if they progress to a point where they can do so without sacrificing too much speed/quality.  And if they never reach a point where they can produce great writing without speech recognition or such...well, would you rather read paragraph one as their best effort?

 

 

 

[Favorite science for children with dyslexia?]

We've done a fair number of documentaries.  There was one year we watched a LOT of How It's Made, How Did They Do That?, etc.  And we have watched virtually every animated science show ever made in younger years.  But for reporting purposes, I feel better about listing a curriculum and including those as extras, rather than writing up a plan declaring that we're going to base the year on documentaries.  I worry about leaving gaps by organizing the year according to whatever topics a documentary series happens to cover...I feel like it would be a disservice to my science-oriented kids to not give them the broad overview of how it all connects together by using some sort of curriculum as a spine. I definitely want to collect ideas for documentaries to give them a chance to learn about topics in specific detail and depth, but in my mind I see that as branching off a general understanding.

 

I don't know. Maybe it would be better for my child to get hooked on documentaries in an ideal world. It's very difficult to take any sort of approach that leans toward unschooling, child-led, etc. where I live.

[Favorite science for children with dyslexia?]

 

BJU fills in terms and things my ds might not catch if we were just reading books.  Because of his language issues, he benefits from repetition.  The BJU repeats words over and over and over for whatever the emphasis is of the lesson.  For his language issues, this is fabulous.  So it gives me an option for days when I don't feel up to something AND it's more effective than it would be for me to read him books (because of his language problems).  

 

 

That sounds very helpful!  My oldest is great on concepts, but struggles to be conversant on a subject due to word retrieval/pronunciation. It doesn't help that she's probably already misread the terms in anything she's read silently and thus has the word stored incorrectly to begin with. So yes, something with audio that repeats the vocabulary over and over would be more useful to us than just a library book mentioning it once and done.  

 

So many of our "this would be cool!" ideas have needed to give way to "this would be doable!"  I appreciate you know what I mean about making compromises.

[Favorite science for children with dyslexia?]

OneStep, I might go with Supercharged Science.  Have you ever used it? Do you find that it explains things systematically enough to give kids a good foundation, or does she enthusiastically wander off on cool rabbit trails to the extent that kids miss the main idea?  We've watched some of the free lessons where she hawks her wares, and it was hard for me to get a good sense of whether the paid material would be solid and interesting, or flashy but scattered.

[Favorite science for children with dyslexia?]

OhElizabeth-- Hmmm...I haven't looked into BJU's online options.  I have friends that hate BJU and A Beka materials, but that may be more of a religious vs. secular issue than a comment on format.  I tend to be leery of school-based curricula myself in the sense that I don't want a curriculum that is designed for classroom usage with a heavy written load of seatwork, but if you find BJU online to be reasonable in that respect, maybe I should at least give them a closer look to see whether they'd meet our needs.

 

 

I agree about hands-on.  Mine are definitely kinesthetic learners.  I've given serious thought to just buying a book of experiments and going from there.  But I don't want to create gaps by neglecting to read theory.  And I live in a fairly strict state, so I try to declare somewhat standard textbook choices when possible.

[Favorite science for children with dyslexia?]

Heathermomster, which science texts are you finding on Learning Ally?  Any of the homeschool ones, or are you using public school publishers? I let our Learning Ally membership lapse because we were finding most of the literature to be better recorded professionally on CDs from the library or Audible downloads for about the same price when I added up our year...but I'm starting to regret it for the books that haven't been recorded elsewhere.  I might have to look into renewing that for next year if it means having science be more doable.  I just can't afford to pick something they don't have, buy two textbooks, mail one in, and wait for the recording to be produced, if we can't figure out what they have already that would be something we could get ahold of in print as a viable curriculum for us.