MidnightHM Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 I'm helping a friend over the summer. Their son will be 8 next week and just failed 2nd grade. I'm good helping with most things but I'm stuck on one problem. I've started WWE 1 with him. On day 2 is the first narration. He could not answer a single question about the story. I reread it to him and nothing. His answers were completely unrelated to what I had just read to him. Any Ideas on how I can help with this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syllieann Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 You could have him do it in smaller pieces if it is a memory issue. If it is an issue of having the will/ability to focus on something that doesn’t fascinate him you could have him choose a short story he is interested in and narrate one paragraph at a time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixpix5 Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 I would also gently suggest your friend have their student evaluated just to rule out any learning challenges. Failing 2nd grade and being unable to provide any details about something read to him would have me at the pediatrician getting referrals. Hearing, vision, and learning assessments...preferable a neuropsychological exam again, just to rule out. No sense frustrating him if there is something going on. He also is on the younger side so it could be he needs more time to mature. I would say that now is the time though. 3rd grade is really a pivotal point with a heavier emphasis on reading to learn. You are a great friend to be helping her out ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidnightHM Posted June 23, 2018 Author Share Posted June 23, 2018 9 minutes ago, nixpix5 said: I would also gently suggest your friend have their student evaluated just to rule out any learning challenges. Failing 2nd grade and being unable to provide any details about something read to him would have me at the pediatrician getting referrals. Hearing, vision, and learning assessments...preferable a neuropsychological exam again, just to rule out. No sense frustrating him if there is something going on. He also is on the younger side so it could be he needs more time to mature. I would say that now is the time though. 3rd grade is really a pivotal point with a heavier emphasis on reading to learn. You are a great friend to be helping her out ? I'll bring that up to his mom. We have been focusing on reading and math up until now. He's reading at about a 1st-grade level and his math was about there as well. (By common core standards which is what his school follows) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweet2ndchance Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 How are you asking him to narrate? I've found some kids (and even some adults) need the act of narration broken down into the most basic pieces before they can be just asked to narrate, or tell back, and give a coherent answer. Instead of saying "Now tell back to me what I just read." I would try asking him even simpler questions and see if he can answer those. Tell me who was in the passage I just read. What did they do in the passage? Where did this passage take place? When did this passage take place? (If applicable) Does the passage tell us why this character did what they did? It can be helpful to write their answers down for them to see. Then the first few times, you may have to walk them through putting all that information together into a narration. Write this down for them to see as well. Most schools do not teach narration so it is entirely possible that the child has just never encountered this type of teaching and just needs a little help to understand the goal. If breaking the act of narration down and modeling doesn't work, I would go down to the sentence level and see if they can tell you the 5 W's of a second grade appropriate sentence. If they still cannot do it, then I would say it is time to start seeking evaluations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidnightHM Posted June 23, 2018 Author Share Posted June 23, 2018 33 minutes ago, Syllieann said: You could have him do it in smaller pieces if it is a memory issue. If it is an issue of having the will/ability to focus on something that doesn’t fascinate him you could have him choose a short story he is interested in and narrate one paragraph at a time. The lesson we did was one paragraph (about 6 sentences). Next time I'll try sentence by sentence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidnightHM Posted June 23, 2018 Author Share Posted June 23, 2018 3 minutes ago, sweet2ndchance said: How are you asking him to narrate? I've found some kids (and even some adults) need the act of narration broken down into the most basic pieces before they can be just asked to narrate, or tell back, and give a coherent answer. Instead of saying "Now tell back to me what I just read." I would try asking him even simpler questions and see if he can answer those. Tell me who was in the passage I just read. What did they do in the passage? Where did this passage take place? When did this passage take place? (If applicable) Does the passage tell us why this character did what they did? It can be helpful to write their answers down for them to see. Then the first few times, you may have to walk them through putting all that information together into a narration. Write this down for them to see as well. Most schools do not teach narration so it is entirely possible that the child has just never encountered this type of teaching and just needs a little help to understand the goal. If breaking the act of narration down and modeling doesn't work, I would go down to the sentence level and see if they can tell you the 5 W's of a second grade appropriate sentence. If they still cannot do it, then I would say it is time to start seeking evaluations. WWE starts with basic questions about the story then asks them to say one thing they remember from the story. The passage was from Little house in the big woods. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 The earliest narrations we started with were repetitive stories where the same/similar action was done over and over: The Three Little Pigs The Golden Goose Cinderella (older version with the tree rhyme, not a godmother) The Little Red Hen The Three Billy Goats Gruff Goldilocks Jack And The Beanstalk Simpleton stories (often Simple Jack or Simple John or something, but nearly always the goal is to get the princess) There are hundreds of variations of these at the library, but the goal is to hear the repetition and be able to use that when telling back. Often you can find things like story cards or cutouts to attach to popsicle sticks for the child to play act it out. The child only has to remember a few basic things: setting, characters, single action, goal. And if a kid is already somewhat familiar with the story, even better. It takes the pressure off as they're learning the new skill of telling in order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisa in the UP of MI Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 One of my kids didn't click with the specific question-based narrations in WWE. He does better with just a regular telling back of what happened in the passage. Have you tried that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwik Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 Maybe try sentence by sentence. Then when he has that try reading the questions out first. What are the school doing? I have never heard of an 8 year old failing but surely if the did there woukd have been significant intervention and at least starting the testing process during the last year or two? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted June 24, 2018 Share Posted June 24, 2018 11 hours ago, MidnightHM said: I'm helping a friend over the summer. Their son will be 8 next week and just failed 2nd grade. I'm good helping with most things but I'm stuck on one problem. I've started WWE 1 with him. On day 2 is the first narration. He could not answer a single question about the story. I reread it to him and nothing. His answers were completely unrelated to what I had just read to him. Any Ideas on how I can help with this? Well, I'm just wondering why y'all think it's important for him to do this. I would think that the most important thing would be his reading and math skills. It would seem to me that WWE is completely different from anything he has ever done. Perhaps it would be better to do something like Writing Strands, Level 2. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Peanuts Posted June 24, 2018 Share Posted June 24, 2018 The WWE approach to narration did not work well for my DS9, who has language issues. As I began homeschooling him 2 years ago, I realized that his reading comprehension was not where it should be...and certainly not where it needed to be in order to use WWE. He does much better with stories that deal with the here & now, the concrete, rather than trying to picture what happened a long time ago in the wilderness. So, it may be that your student doesn't have the reading comprehension skills to picture historical stuff. If he hasn't experienced it, it's hard to ask him to imagine/picture it. The way I addressed it with my son was to ditch WWE and go with a program that focused specifically on reading comprehension issues (in my case, Visualizing & Verbalizing by Lindamood Bell.) This curriculum is fairly pricy, though, so perhaps you can substitute with non-fiction or realistic fiction early readers. I had my son draw pictures to go along with the text, which quickly showed me what he did & didn't have in his knowledge bank. (Fish = yes! Kelp forests = no! Ok...let's Google kelp forests & see if this will help you understand the story better.) Another approach that has helped my DS with narration is to use IEW's key word outlines. I let him jot down 3 important words from each sentence and then have him use those words to tell back the story to me. This approach, coupled with his illustrations, has been a huge help! Caveat: It takes us 2 days to narrate a 5-sentence paragraph because we spend about 20 minutes on Day 1 doing the drawings and then 30 minutes on Day 2 developing the outline & doing the actual narration. Hope you find something that works! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwik Posted June 24, 2018 Share Posted June 24, 2018 Ellie is right. Reading is probably more important than writing. Would something like Kate Snow's addition facts that stick be his level with maths? Or the Math Mammoth topic book with manipulatives. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElizabethB Posted June 25, 2018 Share Posted June 25, 2018 With many of my remedial students, I have found that they did better in all other areas after their phonics was remediated, which usually takes a lot of nonsense words when coming out of public school teaching that includes sight words. It's like something clicks in their brain. I would work through my syllables program with plenty of extra nonsense words, either with the phonics concentration game or with extra lists of nonsense words. https://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html So, I would focus on basic phonics and math and getting that up to speed first, it should make the rest easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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