My HFA son is in 4th grade. We are currently working on WWE 3, after repeating WWE 2 last year. He is really struggling with it. Any copy work he does is fine, but he struggles with dictation, recalling story details, and summarizing. With the recall and summarizing I've tried different things such as having him read it, following along with me while I read, or just listening to me read it while he keeps his hands busy. We've also tried giving him some wiggle activities to do while he reads, so that he doesn't just have to sit still while he is reading. No matter what I've tried, he still struggles to recall details from the story. Since he can't recall details the summarization is difficult as well. With dictation he struggles to hold the sentences in his head. He is ok if they are shorter, but as the sentences have increased in length he is struggling more. I don't know what to do from here. Nearly every WWE lesson feels like a failure because he struggles so much and doesn't seem to be improving. He gets frustrated with himself for not being able to remember things. Does anyone have any ideas on how to help him improve with this? Are there alternative writing programs out there that would work better for a kid like him? I'm open to switching to a different curriculum if I thought it would work better for him.

Thank you everyone for your ideas and input. After looking through everything and doing some reassessing, I've decided to focus on life science with my kids this year. We will probably give chemistry another try next year. I'm excited to have so many chemistry resources to look to in the future.

I am looking for some suggestions on a good chemistry curriculum that I can use with both my 1st and 3rd grader. I bought Christian Kids Explore Chemistry, but both the text and experiments have been boring them to tears. Does anyone have any suggestions of something that is fairly basic and easily understood? We aren't really science minded, so we don't want anything too complicated at this point. I've looked at quite a few curriculum choices and two that stand out so far are R.E.A.L Science Odyssey and Mr. Q's Elementary Chemistry. I would love some input on those and any others you think might be a good choice for us. Thank you!

My son with high functioning autism struggles with reading comprehension. A few people have recommended a program called SRA Corrective Reading Comprehension https://www.mheonline.com/programMHID/view/0076181804. I am planning our curriculum for next year and have looked into it more and am leaning toward purchasing the first level. Have any of you used this? If so, can you tell me a little more about how you use this at home?

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?

Thank you everyone for your input. I am going to post this to the learning challenges board as well as some of you suggested.

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. 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?

Thank you to everyone who has responded to this post. It has given me a lot of ideas on how to move forward. I think I am going to stop worrying so much about his reading repetition and give him more freedom to pick what he wants for free reading. He really loves reading on his own and I definitely don't want to squash that interest. I will still have some say in what he reads for assigned school reading. Right now we are reading The Lion, The Which and the Wardrobe. He used to have an interest in these, but the last few months he refuses to read anymore. I know he had to read one or two of the books from this series with his reading group at school last year and I am wondering if that has something to do with his lack of interest now. It's a shame because they seem like such fun books!

This is my first year homeschooling my 7 year old son, who is in 2nd grade. He is a good reader, but does have some comprehension issues. He loves to read comic books and if it isn't a comic book he loves to read beginning reader books that are about Star Wars. When we go to the library he wants to check out the same books over and over. I am trying to get him to branch out and try new things, but it has been like pulling teeth! I offer him many, many choices, all of which are fun, imaginative stories that seem up his alley, but because it isn't something he is familiar with he turns his nose up. I should probably mention that he has high functioning autism, so this may be part of the reason he is so set on certain things. I still allow him to check out one or two previously read books, so he isn't being completely cut off from them. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get him reading new things? I have another question as well regarding written reading summaries. Once or twice a week I have my son write a short summary about the book from his assigned reading time during homeschool. Is this enough for now, or should I have him write summaries from some of his free reading time books as well? I have been hesitant to do this because we are also using Writing With Ease and Story of the World which give him lots of writing summary opportunities as well.

Hi everyone. This is my first post on the Well-Trained Mind Forums. What an amazing resource it has been! I have a question for those of you using Writing With Ease. I will be using WWE 2 with my 2nd grader this year. We are doing a 5 day school schedule. I know that WWE is laid out for 4 days of lessons per week. I was wondering what those of you doing 5 days of school per week do on the 5th day since there is no formal WWE lesson.