Best advice?

[cdrumm4448]

My nephew is struggling with literature in 9th grade (public school). He just does not infer well. Is this developmental? He's a struggling reader, so would voracious reading help this problem? Are there any materials I could get for him? Thank you!

[mom@shiloh]

I'm not really sure.  I have a son about that age who also seems to miss inferences, and he's always been a voracious reader.  It may be a developmental thing, but I haven't noticed it as much in my other kids (I have six children older than him).  I know there are certain ages where kids make huge developmental leaps, so it's possible that it will happen, most likely not simultaneously with a physical growth spurt.  

 

In other words, I really have no idea, but I'm curious as well.  

[cdrumm4448]

Thank you, anyway. He's very frustrated!

[Clear Creek]

I have never used the product, but Inference Jones is supposed to help develop a student's ability to draw inferences from a piece of writing.

[PeterPan]

My nephew is struggling with literature in 9th grade (public school). He just does not infer well. Is this developmental? He's a struggling reader, so would voracious reading help this problem? Are there any materials I could get for him? Thank you!

Just for your trivia, this is a good post to make over on the LC (learning challenges) board.  You might get a totally different mixes of responses, since not everyone there comes over to K-8.  I know I don't very often.  Anyways, to differentiate out the inferences and the reading issue, I would try him with a short passage that *you* read aloud and see how he does with comprehension and making inferences.  For a 9th grader, I wouldn't precisely say that making inferences are developmental, but they can be part of a larger problem.  Has the school already had him eval'd or made an IEP?  It could be as simple as he's spending so much energy trying to read that nothing is left to devote to comprehending.  You can even have a physical problem, such as eyes, behind the reading problem.  He would go to a developmental optometrist with COVD to get screened for that.  It's where I take my kids and something I would definitely do for someone I cared about who was having school problems that could possibly have vision going on.  They can do a regular exam (costs the same as any other eye doc) but *screen*  for the extra stuff.  That would be a great thing to do, just to catch if there's a physical reason for the reading problems.  They'll sometimes also screen for EF (executive function) issues, and a ped can certain screen.  It may be the school has already eval'd him and there's info you don't have, again that has more explanations for the reading problem.

 

So that's the first thing, to sort through what's causing the reading problem.  Then you differentiate what he can do for comprehension, inferences, etc. if you read it aloud vs. if he reads it.  Indeed there can be issues there, and you can go to SuperDuper or Linguisystems to find materials meant for working on that.  Sometimes what you've got going on though is part of a larger problem (low processing speed, remnants of a speech problem, that sort of thing).  That's why I go back to asking what evals were done.  Evals will help you target the problem and make sure you're working on the right thing.  

 

I wouldn't be bashful about wanting evals, not at that age.  If he hasn't had them done, I would get them done.  When people ask if something is developmental, what they mean is will it go away if I wait, and the answer is no.  At this point, he should not be having these issues.  I would pursue evals.  You can start at any of those steps and work forward (vision, ps, ped, whatever).

[cdrumm4448]

Thank you, Elizabeth. I do not think he has had evals done. I will ask today as we are going to their house for Thanksgiving. He really does appear to be making a valiant effort. It is not defiance, or stubbornness. So, I think the evaluation idea is a great one. Keep you posted!

[ThatHomeschoolDad]

DW's colleague (middle school English teacher) said she's starting to use this site.  I haven't checked it out yet, but I trust her judgement, so definitely worth a look.

[kbutton]

I second seeing whether he can make inferences when they are not dependent on having him do the reading. Inference Jones is a good resource. A lot of comprehension I've seen seems to have many "gotcha" questions that are subjective (I remember a reading comprehension question my son had in 2nd grade that four adults couldn't answer, working together). Inference Jones somehow manages to make sense and not be very subjective at all even when requiring a student to read between the lines. The answer key explains the thinking as well as the actual answer. There are two levels--grades 3/4 and grades 5/6. The biggest difference between the two levels is the length of the passages and the difficulty of the reading level, not necessarily the difficulty in the inferences themselves. Longer passages have more details to sift through and remember, but that's about it. Also, the student is expected to refer back to the text, not just read it and try really hard to remember when it's time to answer the questions.

[Hunter]

I use a few lessons from an OOP workbook to teach the IDEA of inference to students, so they even know what it is. As a child I didn't know what was even expected from me, when presented with the "hard" questions. When I talked about those "hard questions with no answers" adults just shook their heads and said, "Yes, I think I know what you mean and they are hard." No one EVER used the word "infer" with me or explained what I was supposed to do with examples.

 

When I was out of school and read on my own, I naturally inferred. But when given a test, I approached the material differently, looking for key words in the text, while skimming as fast as I could, getting more and more scared as the minutes ticked by.

 

After I present the TECHNIQUE using very low level materials, I don't continue to teach it. Either students are natural inferrers or their not. Similar to how we are talking about inferring vocabulary in the vocabulary thread right now. I'll add the link when I find it. I think you might find the thread helpful.

 

EDIT: here is the link.

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/495472-vocabulary-failure/?p=5330220