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12yo 7th grader who just doesn't get inferences in her reading...


ereks mom
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She reads on about a 5th grade level, and really doesn't enjoy reading, although I'm working on that. :)

We read a lot together, and I require a lot of independent reading, but when we discuss the stories, I consistently find that the inferences she should be getting when she reads (or listens) are going right over her head. She also has a lot of difficulty with predicting and drawing conclusions, such as when she reads a story and then is asked, "What do you think will happen next?" or "What the character mean when he said ___?"

 

I've also noticed that she HATES doing logic puzzles (the ones my kids LOVE, the kind with the grids) because she just can't do them. She can't "read between the lines" to get information that isn't directly stated. If I explain it to her, she goes, "Oh, I get it!" but she is always unable figure it out on her own the next time we do a logic puzzle. Most other critical thinking skills don't seem to give her nearly as much trouble; she's okay with cause & effect, sequencing, compare & contrast.

 

Help! Do you know of some easy-to-implement (and fun) activities--workbooks, paper & pencil activities, simple manipulatives, and even games--something like Clue, but not as time-consuming--that use that will help her master this skill? .

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:bigear:

 

My 10 year old son is exactly like this...5th grade, reads on a 3rd grade level and just never connects the dots...very frustrating (for him especially)...would love to hear ideas. We purchased Critical Thinking Company's computer version of Thinking Skills level 2 - this was our first week of school and we are starting it next week - I can let you know how it goes - I have my fingers crossed...

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Does she have an active fantasy life? I'm just wondering because I have a 12yo who is a late bloomer, very literal, formally diagnosed ADHD, very childlike for her age. Even her body looks stick straight and flat like a teenaged boy. She still pretends to believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, etc. When she was 8, she believed (truly believed) that the characters in Disney were real and ridiculed her younger sister for believing there were people inside the Micky and Minnie suits. She is also highly creative and make elaborate projects, art, and mechanical things out of garbage and tape.

 

Is she left handed? Just curious.

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my daughter needed help with reading comprehension and inference, so I bought a workbook from Critical Thinking called Reading Detective. I also started her on the Logic Liftoff series. These were inexpensive and not time consuming, and really seemed to help her. Maybe look into these?

hth!

 

pie

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I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but as I recall, it was right around 7th to 8th grade they started asking us to "read between the lines". Some kids infer by 7yo, others are concrete thinkers until somewhere around the 12-13 yo mark. You may just be running into something for which her brain isn't quite ready. I don't think concrete thinkers don't enjoy reading as much, especially fiction. Does she like nonfiction?

 

If she can retell the story and answer questions with info that was spelled out, I'd just gently work with her discussing "imagine you were so-and-so, why do you think you'd want to do X?" and even simpler, "do you think the house in the story is fancy or simple?" Sometimes kids have an easier time approaching that from the writing side (ask questions not spelled out from their stories, so they have to imagine or make up new details).

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Does she have an active fantasy life? I'm just wondering because I have a 12yo who is a late bloomer, very literal, formally diagnosed ADHD, very childlike for her age. Even her body looks stick straight and flat like a teenaged boy. She still pretends to believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, etc. When she was 8, she believed (truly believed) that the characters in Disney were real and ridiculed her younger sister for believing there were people inside the Micky and Minnie suits. She is also highly creative and make elaborate projects, art, and mechanical things out of garbage and tape.

 

Is she left handed? Just curious.

 

She is much more developed physically than most of the other 12 year old girls I know, and she doesn't believe in Santa or the Tooth Fairy. She is right-handed. She is not ADHD; she actually doesn't seem to mind sitting with NOTHING to do. She doesn't like school and isn't academically oriented. She shows no initiative in learning activities. She will do just as little as possible in her school work--just enough to get by so I won't make her do the work over. :( She's not very imaginative or creative--she doesn't do art projects or anything of that sort. She doesn't enjoy reading any kind of books or even watching telelvision. She just likes chatting with friends on the computer and being boy crazy. :thumbdown:

 

My theory is that she has some mild learning issues--I suspect some kind of processing disorder, but she hasn't been tested--coupled with the...well... laziness I previously described. She has been moderately successful in school (mostly a B student) because her mom worked with her extensively every.single.day that she was in public school and private school. (Remember that this is not my own child, but the child of a friend.)

Edited by ereks mom
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She doesn't like school and isn't academically oriented. She shows no initiative in learning activities. She will do just as little as possible in her school work--just enough to get by so I won't make her do the work over. :( She's not very imaginative or creative--she doesn't do art projects or anything of that sort. She doesn't enjoy reading any kind of books or even watching telelvision. She just likes chatting with friends on the computer and being boy crazy. :thumbdown:

 

Wow. Tough nut. I don't envy you.

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Does she have an active fantasy life? I'm just wondering because I have a 12yo who is a late bloomer, very literal, formally diagnosed ADHD, very childlike for her age. Even her body looks stick straight and flat like a teenaged boy. She still pretends to believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, etc. When she was 8, she believed (truly believed) that the characters in Disney were real and ridiculed her younger sister for believing there were people inside the Micky and Minnie suits. She is also highly creative and make elaborate projects, art, and mechanical things out of garbage and tape.

 

Is she left handed? Just curious.

 

All the things I bolded describe my dd12 exactly, right down to creating things out of garbage and duct tape. Although not officially diagnosed, I'm pretty sure she has ADD Inattentive. She also has trouble with the same things the OP's dd has trouble with. She doesn't get logic at all. Poetry is an enigma to her. Figures of speech are taken as literal. She can not read between the lines, understand irony, or pick up on foreshadowing. Most literary elements are beyond her. Asking her to explain what an author might have meant or been feeling completely stumps her. She isn't fond of reading either and I would say she is probably on a late 5th grade reading level as well.

 

I've not seen a huge improvement so far but I've been using CLE Reading, which works on comprehension, poetry, vocabulary, and literary elements. We also just started Logic Countdown by Bonnie Risby.

 

Oddly enough though, she doesn't have nearly as much difficulty with inferences when watching movies. She picks up on many more of the nuances when she has a visual story to follow. I don't think this is necessarily due to an auditory issue but more due to the fact that she is VSL and just processes information better with a visual representation. Being able to see a scene, hear the emotion in people's voices, see their emotions...those things help her "get" the underlying meanings and predict better what's coming next.

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Wow. Tough nut. I don't envy you.

 

Yeah. Sigh... Me either. Below is an excerpt from a chat conversation she had with me in early June. (I have not corrected any spelling, punctuation, or capitalization errors.) I was on Facebook one afternoon when she was also on, and the conversation started when I responded to her status by asking a question about how she was coming along with the summer reading list I had given her about 3 weeks prior to this conversation.

 

HV: i have absulutely no one to talk to and nothing to do!!!!

 

Me: How many books have you read so far?

 

HV: um... a half!

 

Me: Maybe when you're bored, you should read!

 

HV: what happens if i cant get finished?

 

Me: You have PLENTY of time since you're not in school. During the school year, you read a book in a week, and you had homework every day too. So I KNOW you can do it. But it will mean less time chatting and Facebooking and more time reading...

 

HV: oh comon... no fair haha

I don't like reading...

 

Me: So you keep telling me. But you have to read 10 books over the summer.

 

HV: ugh..

 

Me: You should set yourself a schedule. Schedule reading time every day, and don't allow yourself to do anything else during that time. Discipline yourself to not even turn on the computer until you have finished your reading each day. You should read at least 30 minutes at a time, several times every day, seven days a week. You'll be surprised how much you'll start to enjoy reading.

 

HV: trust me... reading is NO interesting in my life haha

 

Me: Reading is the foundation of every subject in school. And it's definitely better than being bored.

 

HV: but i'm living the life i wanna live, and that doesn't include reading

 

Me: So you'd rather be bored?

 

HV: yes, very

 

Me: Then I will just keep on working on it. I'm stubborn too.

 

HV: you will have to work a long time i am very patient, maybe stubborn... but patient

 

So you see what I'm up against. And yes, her mom knows she feels this way, but she hasn't known what to do about it. But she did support me in insisting that her dd do the assigned summer reading. ;)

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From what you describe of her I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps she needs to get her nose out of her electronics and into more books. From what you describe I don't think this is any kind of problem that can be tested for or an issue of learning style. I think maybe this dc just needs to be taught how to really read (I'm not talking phonics here) chapter by chapter.

 

Maybe do some joint reading with Socratic discussion. Think mini book club.

 

Seeing how this isn't your dc I'm not sure how successful you'll be able to be in adjusting her attitude toward her schoolwork. It's hard enough doing the same with my own dc; I wouldn't want to attempt it with someone else's!

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Are you positive she isn't just playing you?

 

I know she's had learning issues since she started school. She's adopted, and her biological parents were addicts, so that plays a huge part, I'm sure. I only started teaching her last year (6th grade). According to her previous standardized test scores (I have copies of her 4th & 5th grade scores), she was at least two full grade levels behind where she should be in all subject areas. After I taught her for a year, she gained one grade level in reading and language, and two grade levels in math.

 

I do know that with me, she will take the easy route and just say, "I don't know" or, her favorite, "I'm confused" when she feels put on the spot--which is often, considering it's a one-on-one situation, just her and me. So I just push her to think, where before, in the classroom, she would just wait until someone else gave the answer. That doesn't work with me though. Part of the problem is that she's never been "stretched", so that's what I do, every day. I never just hand her answers. I make her work for them, and she knows it. So, no, I don't think she's playing me.

 

She's a VERY quiet kid, and very easily intimidated. Her coping mechanism in school was to be quiet and hope no one would notice that she doesn't "get it" and call her out. So it's become easy for her to play dumb a lot, especially when she's unsure of herself. She would ride on the coattails of the other students in classroom discussions, and then when she went home, her mom would spend 4 or 5 hours re-teaching everything and helping her with homework. Since she's been with me, though, the mom doesn't have to reteach everything every evening.

 

She's gaining confidence in every academic area, but there are still those sticking points in her reading comprehension. I do see definite progress, though. I know that requiring her to read 10 books over the summer went a LONG way towards boosting her reading skills.

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From what you describe of her I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps she needs to get her nose out of her electronics and into more books. From what you describe I don't think this is any kind of problem that can be tested for or an issue of learning style. I think maybe this dc just needs to be taught how to really read (I'm not talking phonics here) chapter by chapter.

 

Maybe do some joint reading with Socratic discussion. Think mini book club.

 

Seeing how this isn't your dc I'm not sure how successful you'll be able to be in adjusting her attitude toward her schoolwork. It's hard enough doing the same with my own dc; I wouldn't want to attempt it with someone else's!

 

I agree completely! I've encouraged her mom to limit her computer time, and she did... some. But not nearly enough. I suggested that mom take away Facebook (she's too young for it anyway), but mom says that now that she's homeschooled, that's her only connection to her friends. But I think her "friends" aren't good for her. This girl just turned 12, and in less than a year, she's had probably 10 "boyfriends" that she chats with online. They're all local kids, but a couple of them are 15 years old! I told the mom I see HUGE red flags there, but mom just can't bring herself to put a stop to it because she fears the girl will rebel. She's already been down that road with the girl's older sister, and is terrified of a repeat. Anyway, you see how complicated this whole situation is. And as you said, it's MUCH harder doing all of this with someone else's child. :glare:

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There is a product at Rainbow Resource (maybe other places, as well?) called Drawing Conclusions and Making Inference. It consists of short stories and questions at the first level, which is all I have used. Maybe something like that would help?

 

I'm using workbooks from this series with my DD for standardized test prep. Just be forewarned that it has gone OOP and many of the higher-level books are sold out.

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