Last time I checked we're in an area marked 'red' on the map, as in, poor viewing. Which is unfortunate, since we have a lake to the west, so, the view shouldn't be obstructed by buildings/mountains/etc. I'll check again before bedtime to see what the forecast is. On the bright side, an excuse to not get up super duper early is good too. Edpo! :banghead: What do you do with a 5th grader or entering 6th grader or w/e who can read (does an above grade level job on non-fiction reading comprehension tests), but who reads super quickly, often seems to just not read stuff at all when you ask him to, and if you ask him questions about it often can't answer because he "doesn't remember"? I suspect some mild dyslexia - he mostly just has a ton of sight words memorized (easy because of ASD?), and while he *can* sound words out, it's a struggle, and he very, very, very much prefers not to. But either way, I have mostly been reading things out loud to him and the other kid, other than just books they read for fun and the occasional reading comprehension stuff with multiple choice questions etc, but he's really getting to a point where if I tell him to read something I need him to read it, not skim and forget, or fail to read it altogether. He struggles with writing, so telling him to take abundant notes isn't going to be a popular option. I just don't know what to do though... I can't read stuff out loud to him for the rest of his life, and even then he's been getting more and more spacey where it'll turn out he's just been daydreaming when I ask him a question (but at least more comes across then when I assign him stuff to read). So, I don't know... the attention-issues, the sounding-things-out-avoidance combined with reading superfast and forgetting, and the struggles with writing just make me :willy_nilly:. Most texts don't come with comprehension questions, for every little thing, so while he does great when given a list of questions like that (and he will look back at the text to find the answer), I just don't know... coming up with a zillion questions per page would take a lot of my time. Or maybe I should assign more outlining and summarizing even though he struggles with writing (his writing isn't as bad as it used to be). And I don't want to let him just narrate texts back to me because he'll just say he doesn't remember, and it just becomes a whole lot of conflict and time-consuming. Basically, I think he often just zones out while reading and doesn't notice he should stop and go back and reread what he didn't absorb unless there's a question about it. Probably should have him write more summaries and outlines and similar things.

You hear that Jean? Just don't sit on SWB et al.

I doubt most people care about how much I or others weigh.

If you cut off a couple of limbs or so.

There are also plenty who still don't have a firm idea after plenty of years of college, switching majors a bunch of times, and being in their mid-30s. :banghead: Nixpix mentioned that teens often used to work in the family business. Obviously that's not a realistic option for most people, but doing something entrepreneurial is an option for some kids in their mid-teens (so long as they have an adult who is willing to deal with the legal contracts, or can somehow get a judge to emancipate them). Also, you *could* just go back to homeschooling them... it just wouldn't be high school, but you could fill the days with the same things you'd be filling the days with otherwise, no? Realistically, I think this is a big part of the "seeing college as high school" the authors have. If the kid doesn't like it, well, too bad - it's not like you'd let your 15yo drop out of high school if they didn't like it either (well, most people wouldn't). I guess the only difference is that the college can kick your kid out for having a low GPA, and a public high school can't.

Yeah, they just give you a score for spelling, if you do that optional subtest. No spelling skill a, b, etc. Like I said, everybody seems to like the ITBS more, but since I have to test for our state, it'd probably be a bad idea for me to give a test I'm not 'qualified' :001_rolleyes: to give.

Yes. Been pretty edumacational today. We even used the microscope for the first time.

You could order two tests, and just administer the math from one and the language arts from the other... cheaper than paying a psych.

I would not use a test that was normed about a decade and a half before I was even born (n/m the kids) if the goal was to compare kids to their peers. In fact, I wouldn't use anything from the 20th century. Anything past the year 2000 is probably fine. Aside from w/e changes may have happened to academic standards in the past almost 50 years, really old tests are also more likely to have questions that expect the kid to be familiar with different things, like rotary phones instead of cell phones, so that a gimme question can become a history question. I don't find the scoring for the CAT/TerraNova hard to understand at all. That said, everybody seems to like the ITBS/Iowa better, so, I'd probably go with that one. I have no clue, since we can't administer that one, since neither of us has a college degree. I'm pretty sure that for both you can choose to do either the basics (language arts & math) or a more comprehensive version including science and social studies and with separate scores for spelling etc. My kids have done the 2005 CAT/TerraNova with all the subtests the past couple of years. With all the subtests it takes us about 4-5 days, though you could do the entire thing in 2 days (but why??? more likely to have the kids score badly because of exhaustion/boredom). If you're not sure if you want to do all subtests, I'd order the entire test, and start with the basic sections, and then only do science/history/etc if you still feel up for them. We use Seton, and they'll send you the test with Spring/Winter/Fall norms depending on when you order the test, unless you specify you want it normed from a different part of the year. If you do school year round, I'd probably just go with w/e part of the year you're in. I doubt it matters all that much anyway. ADAM and DORA iirc are tests that keep giving you harder questions to decide what grade level you are for skills, as opposed to the CAT & ITBS for which you pick a grade level and basically just get questions roughly at that grade level. I've never used ADAM/DORA, largely because we do have to test in our state, so, it'd just be even more testing.

Now if only you could get him to turn some water into wine for you to sip on during those days...

It's an adaptive test, so if you answer stuff right, it will give you harder questions. DW (who took it in 2001, so it's been a while, but it's still an adaptive test) said it had some hard questions on it, more than just "basic academics", and certainly more than most 9th graders would know without any test prep. I'm not really seeing the advantage to releasing the scores to the military at this point, other than to make the teen happy, so, odds are I wouldn't. If there had been more time, maybe. ETA: I wouldn't trust people on 1800-numbers who "think" something, but aren't sure.

In theory, 16 hours consisting of four 4-hour courses should be roughly as much work as 15 hours consisting of five 3-hour courses. That said, some people find some things easier than other people (i.e. some people might spend a lot less time on a 4 hour calculus class than on a 3 hour history class, or vice versa), and the more separate courses there are, the harder it is wrt executive functioning. Which is one reason I hated my first semester of 4+3+3+3+1+1=15 hours. Four 4-hour courses would probably have been easier (but, the one 1-hour course was a university requirement, and the other was a lab that was a major requirement but took for.ev.er, way more than the 1 hour it was supposed to be). I do *so* much better with just one or two classes in a short session than with more in a longer session, so taking 15 hours in 8 weeks of summer, spread over two courses in 4 weeks in summer I and two courses in 4 weeks in summer 2 is much, much, easier for me than taking 15 hours spread over six courses in 16 weeks in a fall semester, despite being twice as many credits/week. I seem to have some executive functioning issues though.

I read her comment as "if you have an NT kid with roughly average intelligence, you'd probably be able to get the kid into college-level courses if you push them and have them do 6 hours of seat work year round starting at a young age", not as "all 14yos in college must have been tiger-parented". Now, I'm not going to make a guess as to what percentage of kids could be ready for college-level work at 14, other than a significantly larger percentage than currently are, though I do agree with iirc 8Fill that at some point brain maturation will be a limiting factor that you can't address by just spending more time on academics. In NL it used to be 6 years immediately following high school (now it's 3 years undergrad and 3 years grad, I think, so, basically same thing), and you could start early - when I was in high school I knew a guy iirc 2 years older than me who started at iirc 15yo? Extremely unusual though, and I think he might've set a record for the university he attended - not sure; I didn't know him that well. Last I knew of him he was about to graduate and contemplating what to do - I think he did apply to do a residency in pediatric medicine, but I think he was also contemplating maybe getting a second degree in (child) psychology before continuing on with medicine.

Too many edpos without warnings! :willy_nilly:

This. I wanted to take 9 hours my first semester, but because of scholarship I had to take 15 (well, 30 in one year, but they wouldn't pay for summer classes). I was concerned about a 1 hour class, but I didn't want to go up all the way to 18 hours to play it safe because 6 classes seemed enough to try to juggle at once. I ended up dropping two 1 hour classes (the one I was concerned about and a 1 hour lab class that took 20 hours/week) and a 3 hour class because the grad student teaching the 3 hour class was just terrible, putting me way below the necessary hours. Then, in Spring I took 19 hours, which I did manage to pull off, but that still left me behind, requiring me to pay out of pocket for a summer class. It's awful to be behind the curve, trying to catch up. I did pass the summer class too, despite getting ill but then I just felt completely burned out in the Fall, and disillusioned with everything, and ended up dropping all but two classes, one of which I ended up ignoring at some point as well, so I passed only one class. Then, of course, I was in an even deeper hole for the coming Spring, and I ended up flunking everything by simply not attending after the first couple of weeks. So, I did lose that scholarship. Now, for full disclosure, I probably shouldn't have lost it, since I should've been able to keep it if I'd managed to deal with the paperwork needed for a medical or other withdrawal (I qualified for two different kinds), but I couldn't, so, I don't know. I still don't have a degree. In retrospect, I wish I'd just started college with 9 hours instead of trying to deal with that scholarship - that free money wasn't free, far from it. Obviously, I was in a different situation than most people starting college (had only gotten to the country 8 months earlier to get married to my spouse, who was giving antipsychotics during my first Spring semester (the 19 hour one) for an acute bipolar mixed state, after which I got diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and depression and got meds for that, etc). So, there was a lot more going on than for most people... I just really hate the pressure that the scholarship added with the required hours and the GPA. So, I'm sure it's all rainbows and sunshine for plenty of people, but you're right, sometimes it's not, and when things start spiraling out of control, it can just add to the stress and make it so much worse.

What is he majoring in? I'd probably pick the one that would be remotely possible to spin as being useful to his future career (sometimes I can come up with some relevance even if it's pretty far-fetched). Other than that, definitely look at the syllabi and rate-my-prof and stuff like that. Maybe take it during summer at the CC or something so it's only like 4 weeks long. And triple-check that he doesn't need a lab sciene (unless he already has a lab science). I don't think I've ever seen a degree program that didn't require at least one lab science.

And libRary. My 7yo still struggles with that one sometimes.

Is this too soon to forget a math concept? It's never too soon to forget a math concept. :leaving: :nopity:

As if college is a hobby for a 43yo unemployed empty-nester without a college degree. :banghead: But anyway, good to know - like I said, I wasn't planning on waiting until the kids were in college, but this is an extra incentive to finish before they start college.

No, I meant if DW were to lose her job and we were to end up being a zero income family again, college savings for the kids would go to our living expenses before our families would help, or before we'd qualify for food stamps (because they don't allow you to have more than a piddly amount in savings before you qualify)... but anyway, that was before you reminded me that we should actually qualify for unemployment if that were to happen. I'm pretty sure that the only way our families might contribute to the kids' college would be by maybe letting the kids live with them at low cost, or by us inheriting some money. The latter is more of a possibility on one side, and the former more on the other, based on age and location. But cash assistance for college is not going to be forthcoming otherwise, I don't think.

I don't know, we're going through the course on Amazon's Signature Channel, but I don't think they have the guide book (also, I'm not 100% sure if it's the 2nd edition... I think it is). I have sometimes paused the video to discuss some things, for example, last time, when it came to research and they mentioned reading abstracts etc, we went to PubMed and looked at an article there.

That reminds me of an audiobook we just finished listening to: "Dr. Elias Mako has devoted his life to New York City education and is an inspiration to every single one of us." From: The Hypnotists, by Gordon Korman. It's a good book, and if you've read it, you should get why I'm putting that quote there.

It's harder to drop out if you're a minor though, with parents monitoring your homework, and making sure you walk into your classroom and don't leave until the lecture is over, etc... :leaving: (I obviously think coercing your kid to that degree is a bad idea)

Also, not being picky, and being able to make connections between how the things you learned in college would be useful in the job you're applying to, even if the job doesn't scream "this is an obvious job for an x major".

Yeah, see, I wouldn't go that far. For one, I don't think the career prospects of someone with a math bachelor's degree are that minimal, though a lot of the jobs would be quite different than the job of a math professor, so, I'd discuss whether the kid would be interested in other jobs like that if math professor were to not happen. Likewise, I'd explore something like public policy or a military academy with the kid who's interested in history, war, and governance and the like. Based on everything in this thread, I'm kind of skeptical if the girl really decided she was more interested in math and science or if she just got the message that history is just a hobby.