Comprehension

[Peela]

My dd14 has just finished two state tests for Science and Social Studies. These are voluntary tests on our part, done at home, but I will send them in for grading.

 

What I notice is that this very bright student is not so good at comprehension questions, as in, when given a snippet of information, and being asked a specific question- she is not so good at finding the specific answer and putting it in words. She presumes too much, knowing the examiner already knows the darn answer, and she isn't explicit enough. Or, she misses the point of the question, and answers something vaguely related but not quite accurate. She has no enthusiasm for these things, which doesn't help.

 

I have noticed this tendency before, but she is excellent at oral narrations, at written reports and narrations, at outlining and finding the main point in a narrative. We have specifically avoided "comprehension questions" due to the nature of them- usually they are in the context of taking a literature passage out of context and asking tricky questions about it. We'd rather read the whole book and discuss it, perhaps write about it, outline it, whatever.

 

I guess I presumed the ability to discuss, to write about, general themes, or recall information, or have an opinion, or find the main point, all of which she can do quite well- would mean a child would naturally be able to answer those comprehension questions that schools rely so much on, pretty well. But, apparently not. She would probably pass, but they certainly don't bring out the best in her.

 

What would you do? I am reluctant to put aside, or add to, our schedule which includes a lot of reading, to focus on this issue, but I am wondering if I am letting her down by not teaching her to do what schools do. Any thoughts?

[Nan in Mass]

I noticed it when my older one hit 9th grade and tried to do a formal science program. And when the younger one did Singapore science in 6th grade. History turned out to be a problem, too. Have you seen any of my posts about the transition to high school? I feel like I'm always complaining about this. And it IS a complaint. Comprehension questions aren't like real life questions. We don't have any trouble answering them because most of us have been to school for years and were taught all the unwritten assumptions behind them (the major one being that you have to restate what has just been said as if the asker were totally stupid) so gradually that we don't remember the questions ever seeming strange. If you talk to someone from a different culture who suddenly has to take one of our standardized tests, they will tell you that it took them awhile to get the hang of multiple choice tests. This is what is meant by the "cultural bias" people worry about on the SAT. People give the vocabulary example of a city child not knowing what a regatta is, which makes the problem seem trivial, but it is so much more complicated than this. It has to do with knowing that the "right" answer is really just the answer that is more accurate than the others, that all of one's choices aren't particularly accurate; with knowing the unwritten assumptions behind the questions, like if they say "sponge", do they mean a wet one or a dry one; with knowing that the questions only refer to that part of the answer or situations discussed in the textbook, not in general; etc. It is all very complicated. Our WTM children seem to have the same problems learning how to answer comprehension questions. My youngest son summed it up well, I thought, when he complained that it had taken him a long time to figure out that in math problems, all the children are assumed to be identical, how on earth was he supposed to know that in science problems sometimes they weren't (question about reaction times) and sometimes they were (math sorts of problems).

 

My older son also has the sort of brain that thinks sideways. He tends to give very, very general answers and has to be encouraged to be very specific. I keep reminding him to repeat the question in the answer,h not to drag in anything else, and to ask himself what they are really asking with this question. For awhile it worked best if I made him point to the answer the the question in the book, rather than tell me in his own words. Then I had him point and restate. He needed the pointing part to make sure he really was answering the question. I think he would hear a question like, "What is the boiling point of water?" and think to himself, "Boiling water," and he'd picture a kettle boiling. Then he'd think about that picture for a bit, with the steam pouring out the top. Then he'd give me, "It expands." for the answer. Sigh. Teaching him to answer textbook questions was much harder than with his younger brother, and I am very worried about his CC chemistry class in the fall. He usually knows the answer but he can't give it to you until you make him understand which bit of the information you want him to give you. I've only bothered to tell you about him because your posts are ones I always read because you seem to have the same sorts of problems we do, sometimes, and similiar sorts of goals, and that makes me wonder if you are facing the double problem I did with my older one: both inexperience with textbook and a brain wiring that doesn't make that sort of question as obvious to them as it does to us. I've been worried enough about this issue with my older one that instead of simply having him take some of the SAT subject tests to prove to colleges that he did indeed learn something in high school (in case they don't want to take my word for it), I'm having him take some classes at the local community college. He's successfully done speech, drawing, basic computers, and composition. Next year he does pre-calc and introductory chemistry (the one for people who haven't had high school chemistry). So far, not being the best at answering comprehension questions hasn't hurt him. We'll see about next semester. He's much better now than he used to be. He's definately a later bloomer, academics-wise.

 

The good news is that you don't have to work on reading comprehension to fix this problem, since it isn't a comprehension problem. It is just an experience-with-textbook-questions problem. It took about half a year of doing textbook science questions orally with me correcting and explaining why I had a different answer, before my youngest could answer them as well as I could. Even my oldest had improved enormously in that time. Then it takes a bit longer to learn to do a longer written answer to a more complicated question. Unless you are wired like my oldest, it doesn't seem to be a big deal. You just have to choose a textbook and actually DO those comprehension questions, instead of narratives, for a bit, something we put off for a long time. I'm convinced that narratives/summaries are better, especially for younger children, so I don't regret the way I did things. Comprehension questions are stupid. They are at best a bad-but-better-than-nothing way for a teacher to assess what a class of 30 students is having trouble with so he knows what to re-explain. I have to tell my children to pretend they are stupid to answer some of the questions. They excell at thinking of situations in which the standard answer wouldn't be true and wondering if the textbook writer meant that situation. I keep saying, "Well, which is more likely to occur? Which is the situation discussed in the book? That is the one they probably mean." And then sometimes I'm wrong, too. Ug.

 

It is all very bothersome. But at least, for me, it is now only bothersome, not a major worry that I've done something drastically wrong and made some very bad educational choices for my children. What helped me most was a few conversations with some of the students at the community college who had done most of their previous education in a different country. For some reason, that gave me more faith that my own children really did know the material we had covered, even if they gave bizarre answers to those textbook questions. The whole thing has given me a new sympathy for those mothers who say their students just don't test well. Before, I thought if you knew the material, of course you could answer the questions. Hearing my children explain why they gave the answer they did has made me appreciate how much isn't specified in a questions, and how many possible answers there really are.

 

Ok - so now I've written a book. Sorry! I just remember how scared I was when we hit the point you are at, and want to reassure you. I hope you are more confident than I am and don't need all this GRIN.

 

-Nan

[Mad Jenny Flint]

I am noticing subtle hints of this with my 8th grade son. We have not done things in a "question-answer" kind of format, either, and it did scare me a little that maybe it meant something was wrong with my teaching.

 

Thank you.

[Kendall]

Nan,

 

Did you have an arguments about the answers to the science questions when you would go over them? Did you approach it with your son as a these are bad questions that you have to learn how to answer? I discovered this last year with my 2nd in 8th grade doing Runkle Geography. He definitely has trouble taking a textbook and answering questions. I assumed he wasn't comprehending and I'm still not sure he wasn't. I also, didn't do any of that kind of work until last year and have been feeling bad, but then again I didn't do a great job the earlier years listening to him narrate or discussing with him. My oldest is a natural test taker and so this has been new to me and is very frustrating.

[8filltheheart]

Peela,

 

I know you said you didn't want to add anything, so this might not be helpful. But I have a child that prefers the big picture to the nitty gritty details. One program that I have used that we enjoyed that encourages the skills you are describing without being designed to go after the skills you are describing ;) is Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings. The questions are detail oriented, but my kids have really enjoyed doing it.

[Peela]

NAN, THANKYOU SO MUCH!

I feel very encouraged by your post, I really do, thankyou for taking the time to write it. I feel you understand completely where I am coming from.

You are right- she doesn't need help with comprehension, she needs help with how to answer stupid comprehension questions that are often ambiguous, unclear, and treat the child as if they are a moron! I can see what you mean by all the cultural assumptions, and why also I find it strange that this bright child cannot answer them- I was brought up on them and learned how to answer them. I learned to please the teacher, learned what they wanted so I could give it to them. My kids are more straight than that! They DO argue with the answers, they do find oblique answers that could be correct. Thats a good thing, surely? :)

 

OK, so I will probably have to give her more practice in answering them, but it's ok, because I have a better idea now of what to actually focus on so I think I can integrate it more into what we are already doing rather than having to take up some new curricula.

I do outsource for this child a fair bit, and will continue to- so I will look out for something that will help her in this area over the next couple of years, where I can have someone else give her the feedback. It seems important for this child.

 

Thanks again!

[Peela]

Peela,

 

I know you said you didn't want to add anything, so this might not be helpful. But I have a child that prefers the big picture to the nitty gritty details. One program that I have used that we enjoyed that encourages the skills you are describing without being designed to go after the skills you are describing ;) is Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings. The questions are detail oriented, but my kids have really enjoyed doing it.

 

Hi momof7,

We have done LLfromLOTR! Its wonderful, isn't it? The thing is, we did it mostly orally together, partly because the kids were only 11 and 13, so I quite likely accepted a whole range of answers from the kids and just shared the one I felt was more accurate (or the one from the answers). I am not sure how much it helped with this issue- possibly it did but I didn't notice at the time because I wasn't really aware it was an issue then.

 

The thing is we do a lot orally, lots of discussions (my two kids are close in age) and I think that that hasn't helped for this issue, although it allows us to cover a lot more work- this child probably needs to learn to write down her answers in sentence form and check back to the question, see if she has answered it.

Thanks for the suggestion though...and, I am glad you enjoy LLfromLOTR too!

[Nan in Mass]

If I were trying to grade based on those questions, the inability of textbook writers to write good, clear questions would be much more of a problem. Even textbooks that I have liked, like Conceptual Physics, have questions that are badly written. I don't really blame the writers; they probably don't have the oportunity to try out their questions on students before the book goes to print. I just wonder how many bright, imaginative students out there are getting half the problems wrong because they see more possibilities than their classmates. I especially wonder about the young ones. "The teacher gives Sue two marbles and Jo three. Jo gives one marble to Sue. How many marbles does Sue have?" Three what? Marbles? Have when? Beforehand? Now? Afterwards? What if the marble rolls out of Sue's hand? Before she picks it back up or afterwards? Or there is the answer that my son gave when he was little: I don't know. When I told him of course he did, he said, "No I don't. It is impossible to tell; it doesn't say how many marbles Sue has at home." No wonder some children are confused about math. And math is much less ambiguous than literature or science or social studies! You have to know the teacher well to be able to answer some of those, especially if the teacher asks questions that involve judging someone's actions. I'm glad I'm homeschooling!

 

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Then I figured out that I had to ask them to explain any answers that were different from the book answers BEFORE I said their answer was wrong. Especially after we had a few questions where I said they were wrong, explained my right answer, and then noticed the book had a different right answer LOL. Part of the reason we keep (or try to keep) to a schedule is that it doesn't give my children (or me) any incentive to just keep quiet when they don't understand something. We'd all be more inclined to just say "huh?" internally and keep moving forward if there were any chance of getting finished with our schoolwork faster. And because we have to discuss and explain everything, everything takes us much longer to do than other people. I've learned to double other people's time estimates for curriculums. Sigh. It is very frustrating sometimes. We have worked out a modus operendi by now, and we've been doing it long enough that I can see that my children are indeed being educated, but it definately isn't a standard US public school education. If I weren't trying to connect up with standard US education (in the form of college), I wouldn't worry about teaching my children to answer badly written textbook questions GRIN. It only is a problem because my children probably aren't going to be homeschooled their whole lives.

 

-Nan

[MaryM]

As Nan in Mass said: "The good news is that you don't have to work on reading comprehension to fix this problem, since it isn't a comprehension problem. It is just an experience-with-textbook-questions problem."

 

This is EXACTLY the same experience we had and the same solution we pursued. IT's a matter of learning how to "read" these darn tests and once that becomes clear then they soar.

 

Mary

[Nan in Mass]

 

 

Warning: This video does an excellent job of making you doubt your educational decisions. I love it, but it always makes me worry.

[Carol in Cal.]

My DD is JUST like this, and I, too, have not wanted to put any time into it.

When she was in second grade, I saw the answers that she gave on the CA standardized reading comprehension test. It was obvious to me that she was answering out of her knowlege of the whole books that they were excerpting, rather than out of information from that one passage. At the time, I chose to be proud that she had already read these books many times (one of them was "The Wizard of Oz") and remembered them well enough to use that information, however tragically wrongly, to answer stupid questions on a dumb test.

 

Now that she is 12, she is better at these kinds of tests.

 

What have I done to improve this without taking too much time?

 

I've used the Spectrum test prep books every year as a test taking supplement, spread out over about 4 weeks, not very much time each day.

 

I have also jumped on 'fill in the blanks' and short answer homework from a very few curricula--All American History, which I have only partially used, and Science Explorer. This way I make her go back to the text itself, rather than to her overall impression of it.

 

DD is outstanding at doing summaries, but her extensive practice at this has led to her also feeling pretty put out when she has to concentrate on someone else's view of what is important. She is way too empowered by WTM, darn it! So I just present this like a puzzle to be completed, rather than something of real academic merit.

 

I have to say, though, that summarization is inadequate for higher sciences; so I do consider the somewhat bogus reading comprehension work to be on the verge of contributing to the development of a necessary and useful skill. With higher science, kids have to learn all the material and really own it and use it. The digging to find answers procedures for standard reading comprehension work are crucial to studying and mastering high school science.