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Could he take five minutes and look through This Day In History from history.com? There would be items from various time periods so it would be a little scattered...

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I think we just need to be more deliberate about having review materials. I am going to have him do Notgrass, do the student review questions, study those for the quiz, study the quizzes and review questions for the tests, then maybe give him "extra credit" every now and then for answering a question from a previous test. 

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I think we just need to be more deliberate about having review materials. I am going to have him do Notgrass, do the student review questions, study those for the quiz, study the quizzes and review questions for the tests, then maybe give him "extra credit" every now and then for answering a question from a previous test. 

 

Review is great.  But I found that if review was just memorize-memorize-memorize, then forgetting after the test was the likely result.  If your goal is remembering after the test, then I found it worked better to discuss why wrong answers on the quizzes didn't work for that question - was it the wrong time period, was it unlikely that a woman would have taken that role at that time, was that the right colony for that type of leader?  Of course, some test-writers make this easier than others, but when I tutored, I saw too many kids trying to keep too many discrete facts spinning in their heads, without getting the big picture.

 

HTH,

Julie

 

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Review is great.  But I found that if review was just memorize-memorize-memorize, then forgetting after the test was the likely result.  If your goal is remembering after the test, then I found it worked better to discuss why wrong answerson the quizzes didn't work for that question - was it the wrong time period, was it unlikely that a woman would have taken that role at that time, was that the right colony for that type of leader?  Of course, some test-writers make this easier than others, but when I tutored, I saw too many kids trying to keep too many discrete facts spinning in their heads, without getting the big picture.

 

HTH,

Julie

 

 

Oh, when I go over his tests with him I always do that. If I just told him it was wrong he'd argue, lol, so I've learned to be proactive and explain why, and have him discuss it with me. He's actually good a the big picture, it's learning small details, like, you know, names, that is hard. (I have the same issue). 

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The naming issue is an ASD thing.  I would stop trying.  Lots of successful people don't know a lick of history.  If he has a big picture, it's enough.  Honest.  And I can say that as someone who REALLY, really sucks at history.  Don't compound it and make it worse by trying to "fix" it.  If he's enjoying what's he's reading, likes videos, has a big picture, it's good enough.  I would give him access to either the textbook for the tests or access to the list of terms from the study guide.  If he has that list and can pass the test, he sure knows a lot of history.  At that point all you've done is support the naming disability.  It might be he would have to make EXTREME effort to work on the naming (because it's a disability), and it DOESN'T MATTER.  He'll be able to go through college and grad school and survive, just fine.  

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The naming issue is an ASD thing.  I would stop trying.  Lots of successful people don't know a lick of history.  If he has a big picture, it's enough.  Honest.  And I can say that as someone who REALLY, really sucks at history.  Don't compound it and make it worse by trying to "fix" it.  If he's enjoying what's he's reading, likes videos, has a big picture, it's good enough.  I would give him access to either the textbook for the tests or access to the list of terms from the study guide.  If he has that list and can pass the test, he sure knows a lot of history.  At that point all you've done is support the naming disability.  It might be he would have to make EXTREME effort to work on the naming (because it's a disability), and it DOESN'T MATTER.  He'll be able to go through college and grad school and survive, just fine.  

 

Maybe. I'm willing to acknowledge this may be the case. We're going to switch, and he'll have questions and tests to study from. When he's had that before, it did help. Part of the problem we are having is there is no real study guide or what not, so he is really not getting what is the most important information....every word of the text is equally important and that's just too much to remember so he gets overwhelmed. Having questions to answer after each section helps him pull out and identify the more important bits. We are switching science for the same reason, going to Apologia because it does have them make a study guide, etc. 

 

The more I think about it,the more I think it's that, that he can't pull out the important bits. 

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I think, because history makes the most sense when presented chronologically, it would be weird to have a spiral. Also, most people don't focus on memorization much with history since it runs much deeper than simply knowing a date or reciting "two causes for the civil war". Maybe some things are more conducive to memorization - countries and capitols, presidents, kings and queens? But even that isn't necessary for understanding and "doing" history.

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I did some research on retention. It does come from testing/questioning oneself periodically on learned material--spiral testing essentially. This is what programs like Anki are created to do for you. So if the retention is something you want to work on, you could use Anki (free online) to review. You would just input the important information in the form of questions you want to spiral review. He gets on and does it daily. Easy.

 

I wanted control over how much time we spent on particular days and didn't have that with ANKI, so I did a spiral review thing on my own.

 

I have an index card box. As we cover history, I write questions--the important stuff--for recall. If my son can answer the question, it goes to the back (completed/mastered) part of the box. If he doesn't, it stays in the front (working on) section. I add in a few questions for review from the completed/mastered portion each day along with any new material or material not yet mastered.

 

It's working really well. Everything stays fresh. The box takes 5-10 minutes a day, and no one minds doing it. After we got going, the kids are able help me pick out the important questions to add to our review box. So I hope it's improving their ability to sort through material for the important information and ideas, a particular struggle for my ASD kid.

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Maybe. I'm willing to acknowledge this may be the case. We're going to switch, and he'll have questions and tests to study from. When he's had that before, it did help. Part of the problem we are having is there is no real study guide or what not, so he is really not getting what is the most important information....every word of the text is equally important and that's just too much to remember so he gets overwhelmed. Having questions to answer after each section helps him pull out and identify the more important bits. We are switching science for the same reason, going to Apologia because it does have them make a study guide, etc. 

 

The more I think about it,the more I think it's that, that he can't pull out the important bits. 

 

You keep saying this, but I want to make sure that anyone else reading understands that Bookshark 8  actually DOES have a student guide which has a fairly long list of questions for each days' reading. The questions focus on the "more important bits." My son has started typing out the answers to each question on his iPad before we discuss (the answers are in the IG) and it is working well. Many of the questions ask the student to consider why the author claims something, or asks the student for his/her opinion, so it's not just fact regurgitation. Of course you are able to use the guides however you like, but the questions ARE there.

 

For review, what about listening to the audiobooks in the car? The full set of A History of US is available on Audible. Even if you do switch to Notgrass, I'm sure it would be great reinforcement to hear the history of the US from another angle. Books by authors such as Steve Sheinkin also reinforce the narrative.

 

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You keep saying this, but I want to make sure that anyone else reading understands that Bookshark 8  actually DOES have a student guide which has a fairly long list of questions for each days' reading. The questions focus on the "more important bits." My son has started typing out the answers to each question on his iPad before we discuss (the answers are in the IG) and it is working well. Many of the questions ask the student to consider why the author claims something, or asks the student for his/her opinion, so it's not just fact regurgitation. Of course you are able to use the guides however you like, but the questions ARE there.

 

For review, what about listening to the audiobooks in the car? The full set of A History of US is available on Audible. Even if you do switch to Notgrass, I'm sure it would be great reinforcement to hear the history of the US from another angle. Books by authors such as Steve Sheinkin also reinforce the narrative.

 

 

I think it was more that the questions weren't the same kinds of things that were on the tests, and in all honesty that he was not doing them as well as he could, since we were doing them orally. Having answers to grade will help me keep him accountable. We also need more fact regurgitation, as it is the facts he isn't remembering :)  He is good at discussing bias, etc already. It's the facts we need more work on.

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I taught my kids to do T-notes (like Cornell Notes). Over time they learned how to decide what was important to put in their notes, because we would discuss and I sometimes modeled what I would have put in, and so on. For tests, they had a ready-organized resource that could help them study. If they missed something on a test, I would give them credit if they could find the answer in their notes--which encouraged them to take good notes as well. You could also use the notes as a spiral review by going back and asking questions based on those from time to time. Or have your son make up flash cards instead of doing them on notebook paper, and rotate through reading a couple of cards a day to create an easy-to-modify way of reviewing as much or as little as he needs. 

 

If he's going on to college in a couple of years, working through these skills now will be very helpful.

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