Developing central coherence

[PeterPan]

How do we do this? Have we already discussed this before and I've forgotten? I've seen workbooks on main ideas and details, but I haven't seen anything that purports to develop central coherence. Maybe they assume it comes as you work on FFC? I don't know.

[Lecka]

https://mindwingconcepts.com/pages/autism-spectrum-disorder

”Build Central Coherence” is on the list associated with narrative development.  It makes sense to because we are asking kids to connect these different parts of a story together into a whole.  

If you still have the Play Project book, Habit # 3 in Chapter 16 is about understanding the main idea through the day, and I think it has great ideas.  

Feature/Function/Class definitely helps.  Play things definitely help.  

That is off the top of my head.

I think pointing out details and explaining inferences is helpful, too.  It’s something I try to do with story time.  

 

[Lecka]

Something I keep in mind..... my son is not really at the top of the skill for interactive peer play.  That continues to develop, and I keep it in mind.  The thing is a lot of materials are written to assume that it’s for a child who went to special needs pre-school and had play skills goals then and mastered up to the highest level back in pre-school.  

Which sure it does go that way with many kids!

But many kids are continuing on with interactive play goals into elementary school and beyond.  This is a reason it’s good for my son to have some time in the autism classroom because he can have time and focus to play with kids who are at or near his developmental level for interactive play skills.  Which does take time away from academics, but it is very needed.  

But anyway — if there is still room to work on play skills, all the stuff that is usually associated with pre-school continues to be very good.  

I am seeing it called “thematic pretend play with a peer” in the Play Project book (it is mentioned with Habit # 3).  

And then it’s not something I am doing, but my son is doing some of this https://www.socialthinking.com/Products/WeThinkersVolume2DeluxePackage

We Thinkers Vol. 2 from Social Thinking, which has a ton with play skills.  And then it’s suggested for ages 4-7. 

But really if kids don’t get to “shared imagination” (or “thematic pretend play with a peer”) then it doesn’t quit being a goal just because kids are older than 7.  

And it’s definitely all pertinent stuff for my son still, and he hasn’t grown out of the stuff aimed at little kids, as far as it seeming like it’s too young to him.  

I do think there are kids who grow out of the materials that are geared towards little kids, though.  But the pre-school Social Thinking stuff is not too cartoonish and it’s not talking about teddy bears, there aren’t things like that that make it seem babyish.  I think he will be in them for a while.  

[Lecka]

https://www.socialthinking.com/Articles?name=Social Thinking Social Learning Tree

It is mentioned on a list here.

I’m assuming it goes together with “G” for Gestalt Processing/Getting the Big Picture from ILAUGH.  It may go along with some of the other letters also?  I think it probably does.

Anyway a quote from that section:  “When reading, one has to follow the overall meaning (concept) rather than just collect a series of facts.”  

So in that sense — I do think that everything for reading comprehension helps.  

I ended up re-reading part of the Play Project book, I and get a lot of good reminders from it.  Just pertinent to reading comprehension — he says to summarize the main idea of every page when reading to kids or ask them to do it.  Sigh, lol.  Really I think I do many/most suggested things very well, but I have got to keep trying on this.  

[Lecka]

Oh!  Anyway — I expect it comes up more with Social Thinking and I bet it is in “Thinking About You Thinking About Me.”  I think I have read that book?  I’m not sure.  

I don’t know exactly how they word things, but to have cooperative play the child has to have central coherence for what is happening as they are playing, I think.  So I think it does tie in a lot with all of the play stuff.

Really — there are weaknesses I see with cooperative play and reading comprehension that I think of as being related to central coherence.

But there’s always 10 different ways to look at things, so I don’t think it’s like it’s just one thing.

I have googled and I am not seeing much of anything — I am curious if other people know of more?

[Lecka]

https://ct.counseling.org/2013/12/processing-the-whole-with-clients-on-the-autism-spectrum/

This seems good?  From googling with “gestalt processing” instead of “central coherence.”  

[Lecka]

https://www.socialthinking.com/Articles?name=Understanding Core Social Thinking Challenges The ILAUGH Model

For whatever reason the “G” is explained differently in this article, and much easier to understand. 

And — it does say it ties into the play stuff, the reading comprehension stuff, the conversation stuff.  

[kbutton]

I think that it's not always social or narrative (though it is a lot of time). I think sometimes it's transferring insights from one situation into another (as in, one of the domains that the TOPS test takes into account). I think sometimes it's missing context clues about cause and effect in some practical way. For instance, a person who has more challenges in life skills, like sequencing steps to do a task, is going to miss important cues for how all of those things play out. I realize that missing the steps is somewhat a central coherence thing, but if someone has some decent practical skills in an area, just using those skills can give powerful feedback.

I would say that of three family members I know (in my home and outside my home) who have some central coherence issues, the strategies for helping vary a lot. One person does really well with learning through doing and with critical thinking exercises--like puzzles from The Critical Thinking Company. This person is strong on deductive and inductive reasoning and on practical cause and effect--if something doesn't work well, we tweak it. This person is also really good about looking up a how-to video or pre-loading information that might come in handy vs. thinking he knows everything and doesn't need to learn new things. The second person does well with talking through the bigger picture--"If you are experiencing this problem, someone else is probably experiencing it too. It's worth bringing up to a boss/teacher/coach..."  This person also needs massive help organizing, and has to be willing to try something new, and then be willing to assess if it's helpful (you have to prove there is a better way to do something--he doesn't just see someone be successful with a strategy and then mimic that person, and this person also often doesn't see time spent in futility, so assessing time spent helps). The third person...I have no idea. I am told she likes to debate things and likes people to give her a different perspective on things. She is the person I know that is most compromised in this area. She has placed people in danger by focusing on some possible phobia whose outcome is cumulative and won't be known for years (if it happens at all) while simultaneously failing to account for something that could have immediate and dire consequences for life and limb. 

[PeterPan]

It's just striking that it's considered a core deficit of autism and yet, as we sit here talking, we can't list a single EBP (evidence-based practice) designed to address it. The ILAUGH thing is a good lead. I've been to the workshop where they talked about it, but it was glossed quickly and didn't make a big impression. It wasn't something they really delved into. The article on their site had references, and going through those seems the most promising. I'm trying to read through the tight print and big words, but it looks like it's debating central coherence in perception and conception vs. reduced generalization. GENERALIZATION is something we could tackle, if that's really the issue. That actually makes sense to me. 

That's why I'm saying it doesn't seem their model is quite workable when it's not leading to an intervention that actually helps us tackle the problem as it appears in narrative language. If you can't define the problem, you can't solve it. So ds is looking at scads of plot details and he has to GENERALIZATION to say what "happened in the middle". That's what I'm seeing, that the biggest gap in narrative language is going to be the ability to connect dots and see relative importance and cohesion, and I'm not sure story grammar necessarily gets you there. (inherent minor details like most stories not actually following it very well)

I'll keep reading.

 

  

[Lecka]

I think it’s just a hard area.

 

 

[PeterPan]

Ok, trying to read through this a bit. 

page 6--"in the absence of a drive for global meaning, inividuals with autism have a tendency to attend to the local level." They then go on to explain that Central Coherence Theory would predict/describe that but not explain WHY. They cite another study suggesting that the level of what you attend to (global vs. details) can be primed, even with ASD.

**I'll also note here they're using visual/spatial tasks, not language. So we could assume the principles carry over, but they're not yet directly addressing my question of how we improve central coherence in reading and writing.

page 7--Ok, this is slightly interesting. They're still going down the perceptual road, not language, and they're looking at studies of whether kids with ASD count large quantities of dots more effectively in arrangements (like dice) or randomly or whether for ASD it makes no difference. Now I'm curious to see how he is. It's saying kids with ASD can fall both ways, with some benefiting and some not, hmm.

page 9--Hallelujah, we're finally moving on from perceptual to conceptual. Apparently there's been little testing on it. Great. Finally get a useful concept that would actually apply (since life isn't lived with little blocks), and there's little data.

page 9 cont--So is chunking lists semantically to improve recall useful? I almost remember seeing this in the Linguisystems EF book or something.

page 10--Now to the good stuff! Plaisted presents her own theory. "...that many of the attentional and perceptual abnormalities in autism are phenomena of reduced generalization, or a reduces process of the similarities that hold between stimuli and between situations." Now THAT is something we can work with! So to improve generalization we need to work on similarities, comparing and contrasting. Boom. And then the kicker she leads into, that if the person MISSES how the things are similar, they'll be processed as totally different things, even though they're related! 

page 11--"acute processing of unique features" vs. processing COMMON features. Whoa, that's kind of profound. So the ASD person is nailing the unique and not catching the common/shared features. She then leads this into two predictions that it looks like she will look at evidence for. 1, predicting strong ability to discriminate (nailing how things are different/unique from the rest of the set even with lots of shared features), 2, bombing at categorizing.

**Ironically, I've only found level 1 categorization materials on Linguisystems in the Spotlight series. You should have concrete and abstract categorization and logically should have categorization continuing through an adult level to intervene on this weakness. I don't see that in the materials I'm finding. Rothstein Intermediate goes farther, but I'm not sure it goes all the way to abstract. I can go back and look at it. To me there was a whole other level it could go to.

**Now my brain is whirling with questions about how working on categorizations and similarities could improve narrative building. It's almost like the voodoo (SLI) stuff the SLPs want to do for comprehension, but it's more like I've seen people saying oh it's a nice thing to do and not saying with evidence that doing it would definitely get you somewhere for narrative comprehension in autism. It's more just been in the vague, it would be nice to do category. Not saying it's lynchpin.

page 13--summarizes her theory that conceptual weak central coherence = poor generalization of similarities. Suggests "that it is often the unique features of a situation that are the least important when trying to make sense of an experience..." and connects that to the need to connect to prior experiences, leading to difficulty getting to the gestalt or gist or meaning. So unique features get rejected by the NT as irrelevant. Hmm.

pages 13-15--in which she falls into the weeds on latent inhibition and habituation

pages 15-16--she says what we already said, that categorizing vegetables won't lead to prototype abstraction. She sites studies linking perceptual and abstract conception.

page 16--"If conception, or abstract thought, derives from perception, and perception is different in individuals with autism in ways I suggest, then it follows that the structure and content of concepts will be quite different in autism." -->narrower categories, less ability to put outliers into categories, more likelihood to toss

page 17--connects to categorizing emotions, something we've been doing with the 6 Universal Emotions from the MW stuff, something I haven't seen anyone else promoting in materials even though it sure makes sense.

page 17 cont--I think she's onto something with this idea that not making the connections (associative exitation) with roots, etc. across the words would make them seem useless. 

page 18--concludes applying it to social

 

[kbutton]

12 hours ago, PeterPan said:

  

 

This didn't translate--is this what you are using page numbers from?

Before I forget, I will mention that The Critical Thinking Company has Building Thinking Skills books that do a compare and contrast with a graphic organizer, and then you name a category for how they are similar or different. Could be very powerful if someone could figure out how to scale the activity to target the level of the student doing it. I wanted to put this as a standalone thought vs. trying to fit it in coherently with my comments (not much time today).

42 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

page 9--Hallelujah, we're finally moving on from perceptual to conceptual. Apparently there's been little testing on it. Great. Finally get a useful concept that would actually apply (since life isn't lived with little blocks), and there's little data.

page 9 cont--So is chunking lists semantically to improve recall useful? I almost remember seeing this in the Linguisystems EF book or something.

page 10--Now to the good stuff! Plaisted presents her own theory. "...that many of the attentional and perceptual abnormalities in autism are phenomena of reduced generalization, or a reduces process of the similarities that hold between stimuli and between situations." Now THAT is something we can work with! So to improve generalization we need to work on similarities, comparing and contrasting. Boom. And then the kicker she leads into, that if the person MISSES how the things are similar, they'll be processed as totally different things, even though they're related! 

2

I sometimes think they don't want to study this because it's so hard. Like, it's not easy to break it out from the other skills, so they don't want to study it. I think they want to come up with things that are immediately useful and leave the harder stuff until they run out of low hanging fruit. (Being a little cynical--sorry!) 

Quote

page 11--"acute processing of unique features" vs. processing COMMON features. Whoa, that's kind of profound. So the ASD person is nailing the unique and not catching the common/shared features. She then leads this into two predictions that it looks like she will look at evidence for. 1, predicting strong ability to discriminate (nailing how things are different/unique from the rest of the set even with lots of shared features), 2, bombing at categorizing.

**Ironically, I've only found level 1 categorization materials on Linguisystems in the Spotlight series. You should have concrete and abstract categorization and logically should have categorization continuing through an adult level to intervene on this weakness. I don't see that in the materials I'm finding. Rothstein Intermediate goes farther, but I'm not sure it goes all the way to abstract. I can go back and look at it. To me there was a whole other level it could go to.

**Now my brain is whirling with questions about how working on categorizations and similarities could improve narrative building. It's almost like the voodoo (SLI) stuff the SLPs want to do for comprehension, but it's more like I've seen people saying oh it's a nice thing to do and not saying with evidence that doing it would definitely get you somewhere for narrative comprehension in autism. It's more just been in the vague, it would be nice to do category. Not saying it's lynchpin.

3

The finding differences thing is something my DS is strikingly good at. I would not go so far as to say that it keeps him from seeing similarities, but he has to have kind of a "willing suspension of disbelief" at times. I think that life has taught him to be open-minded about similarities when he sees differences, and he can attend to/accept similarities IF you tell him that's what you want him to do. (And he will sometimes do it on his own.) I know someone else that kind of immediately does the "But it's not the same thing..." routine as well, but for that person it seems to be an EF thing--not STOPPING and shifting gears.

Being able to categorize those differences or similarities with a label is not necessarily something he can do. I have described in other threads that he cannot make a verbal generalization as a label, phrase, or sentence statement without significant help.

I have to admit that I am at the point where I don't care if my son can do this with narrative, lol, but I do care if he can do this with expository text. Right now, he definitely can see something visually presented to show the similarities and differences and infer them from the presentation (and not just a graphic organizer with labels--I am thinking graphical representations like charts, bar models, graphs, info graphics where things are compared with size, color, positioning, etc.). It's like the visual representation primes his brain in a way that words do NOT prime it. 

While I think this is largely an autism thing, I think there are some people with pretty extreme differences between language processing and visual/practical skills that have these deficits as well. 

I personally think this is the lynchpin for writing with my son--making generalizations about categories and being able to form labels, sentences, and paragraphs based on those generalizations. 

I think SGM still gives more overall scaffolding to get there than having a poor SLP try to knit the various pieces and parts of specific skills together into some coherent whole. I also think that the Critical Thinking Triangle in the SGM is a way for a person to test out their central coherence/generalization/category--it provides a little lab experiment to see if the parts you think are important go logically together. 

Quote

page 13--summarizes her theory that conceptual weak central coherence = poor generalization of similarities. Suggests "that it is often the unique features of a situation that are the least important when trying to make sense of an experience..." and connects that to the need to connect to prior experiences, leading to difficulty getting to the gestalt or gist or meaning. So unique features get rejected by the NT as irrelevant. Hmm.

pages 13-15--in which she falls into the weeds on latent inhibition and habituation

pages 15-16--she says what we already said, that categorizing vegetables won't lead to prototype abstraction. She sites studies linking perceptual and abstract conception.

page 16--"If conception, or abstract thought, derives from perception, and perception is different in individuals with autism in ways I suggest, then it follows that the structure and content of concepts will be quite different in autism." -->narrower categories, less ability to put outliers into categories, more likelihood to toss

1

I think that is one of the reasons that ASD people often think out of the box. It's more like they can't think IN the box, but it can be really helpful too! I think my son hangs on to all of the details on some level (but the similarities may be in the back of his mind), but he has to have multiple passes through a concept in order to know what to do with all those facts. He really does reverse-engineer things to understand them, and I think that is a strength that can sometimes flow out of seeing the differences.

But yeah, not necessarily being able to put all the details back without leftover parts (that shouldn't be leftover) is difficult. Really difficult. 

One thing that helps my son with understanding (but not necessarily the language for it) is to present the same information organized in multiple ways. For instance, he's sorted and dealt with the Real Number System as both a set of nested concepts (nested boxes drawn as a graphic organizer) and as a tree diagram. That really, really had a profound effect on him. We also used colors that were consistent across both diagrams. Wow. He also really, really did well with using Set symbols to describe the categories. It was easier for him than using words. 

I wonder if using set notation to categorize everyday stuff or even abstract concepts would be a bridge to using language. Miquon uses everyday concepts to teach sets. With math, it's based on properties that are overtly taught (if discovery methods are used, there is still a point where the information is quantified, labelled, etc., and the teacher knows that certain concepts all go together in order and as a whole), and then symbols are used. Symbols and language are both abstract. Maybe autistic kids need intermediate steps with something abstract (symbolic) that's not language-based (well, okay, math is sort of language), before it goes to words. And maybe they need even more steps in between of some sort.

If a child truly can't see the similarities, probably none of this works, but I think at least some people with ASD see them, they just are in the background and kind of vestigial until something really unusual brings it to their attention and makes it relevant.

[kbutton]

Grammar also seems to be analytical enough that my son can go from those categorizations to describing them. It's not easy for him, but he can do it if we use visual methods (marking up a sentence, diagramming, doing an MCT four-level analysis).

 

[Lecka]

I think what I am looking for with reading comprehension is a lot lower than what you are looking for with expository text, if that makes sense.  I am looking at stuff that is early elementary and wanting that, as my son keeps getting older.  Although he does make progress!

I think you are at a higher level already, with narrative and focusing more on expository text.  

So it’s not apples to apples!

I have a mental image for what kind of every-day life comprehension that I want, and it’s not to do high school (or middle school) academics, it’s just to understand what is going on in pretty basic, low-stress, friendly social situations that I think my son would enjoy (and does enjoy), and enjoy more with more connection.  

It’s hard to explain but I want him to have enough knowledge and understanding to have a basic comfort level in a lot of parts of life that fit together to be a lot of nice times for him. 

That is a level of central coherence I would like, and to a great extent we are already there, his comfort level and understanding are already pretty good, but every little bit of being more comfortable is extremely meaningful to me.  

I don’t necessarily see getting into abstract language or advanced concepts, but I know from being around people — it is surprising how much people can be uncomfortable, and then what a difference being comfortable or finding a comfortable place or group, can make.  And I think it takes *something* to access those places or groups that are even options to be comfortable.  

 

 

 

[kbutton]

Please keep reading if there is more to your source, and let us know what other nuggets you find. I think that several issues are bound up in this idea and hinge on each other. It would be nice to show this information to intervention specialists and speech people and IEP team members and say, "So what are you going to do about this?" I have been banging the drum for a while that activities related to this kind of processing stop very far short of the abstract level, and that's precisely where it starts to fall apart for my son. Even if he has holes in the lower levels, stopping right in the middle of the most important thing he needs is super, super damaging. And everyone seems to want to do everything EXCEPT work on these skills (the SLP is up for whatever if we can find a way to make it all go together) and when these skills show up as deficient, they kind of change the subject. It doesn't help if they see the out-of-the-box thinking as divergent and only a good thing, not seeing the debilitating side. They literally think that if he can think out of the box, then that is a sign that TYPICAL THINKING is INTACT!!! Or, they see that he can be led (via discussion) to typical conclusions, so he must be able to make those leaps on his own, right? At least SGM says that having to be prompted via discussion means that the student is NOT as discourse level.

I would love to be able to bring chapter and verse and be kind of blunt.

I would even get on the phone with the SGM lady (since she said to call her back when I get my bearings with the materials) and ask her if she has tools for this. She mentions making generalizations, but it's cursory.

I have exactly one source that tackles making generalizations head-on--an old Warriner's English Grammar and Composition book. But it has about three pages on it, and that is it. But it does come right out and talk about how this skill is necessary for parts of the writing process.

[Lecka]

Like — my husband has some very nerdy, accepting pursuits, and yet sometimes there will be someone who just alienates people by not understanding some shared social expectations, and it is just heartbreaking as a parent.  

Literally an example of this is my husband plays Magic:  The Gathering and he will trade cards sometimes, and someone would always try to aggressively trade with him in a way that would be greatly not in my husband’s favor, and then be kind-of huffy when my husband would not agree to the trade.  Well this alienated my husband, not to the point he would be rude about it, but enough to be less friendly.  

And it is just ———— I see theory of mind written all over it, and probably some central coherence with not understanding how “friendly trading” is supposed to work.

 

[Lecka]

I see it taken seriously when there are resulting behavior issues.  

Which is good in its way, but “no outward behavior issues” is a low bar in its way.

But I am glad I see it taken seriously with behavior issues!  

I am kind-of at that age where I don’t know how things go with the next higher age grouping.  

[Lecka]

I have *totally* felt like with my older son, they are used to seeing kids who are doing very poor and got no services or remediation, that they don’t see what it’s like for kids who aren’t doing “as” bad but still can’t be “a success story.”  Or — he is a success story, but that doesn’t mean we ride off into the sunset on a white horse. 

[kbutton]

28 minutes ago, Lecka said:

Like — my husband has some very nerdy, accepting pursuits, and yet sometimes there will be someone who just alienates people by not understanding some shared social expectations, and it is just heartbreaking as a parent.  

Literally an example of this is my husband plays Magic:  The Gathering and he will trade cards sometimes, and someone would always try to aggressively trade with him in a way that would be greatly not in my husband’s favor, and then be kind-of huffy when my husband would not agree to the trade.  Well this alienated my husband, not to the point he would be rude about it, but enough to be less friendly.  

And it is just ———— I see theory of mind written all over it, and probably some central coherence with not understanding how “friendly trading” is supposed to work.

 

I worry about this a little with my son, but overall, he's actually pretty good with perspective taking. It would be on his conscience that he's not making a great trade, but he would have a hard time inhibiting that (hypothetically). I think he usually lands on the side of being equitable, but not always. It's just that if he misses, he tends to miss by a mile. Our first behaviorist (and to some extent, the second) worked on this a lot with my son, but he kind of got to an in-between level where stuff was either too little kid for him or too mature. He's changed a lot this year, so it might be a good idea to get back into the groove of working on some of the social things. 

Having a brother has been good for this--his brother is quite willing to tell him he's not being nice, lol! 

I also see kids who have some ADHD or EF issues that struggle with this too. That knowing vs. being able to make themselves do it is hard.

[PeterPan]

https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/248652  Here, this is up a bit on the Plaisted listing, so it might work for you.

[PeterPan]

Kbutton, set theory would emphasis how things are different, because it's focus is exclusion. (you're either in the set or you're not, sets are created by focusing on exclusions) You would only get there by creating fresh sets over and over with the same data, focusing on similarities, but then you'd be back at the categorizing and associations exercises.

It seems to me, in some ways, to be brilliantly simple. How are two characters similar? How is a character similar to someone you know? How is a character similar to someone from history? How is their emotion similar to something you experienced? This is the stuff where my ds squirms and falls apart, so they're probably onto something here.

I'm also liking what I'm seeing in Writing Revolution as a way to drive connections to be explicit. Go check out the other thread (prime day book coupon) and see the links. Here's the stuff buried online like handouts and ppt hochman site:tapconyc.weebly.com  You've said connections are a huge huge issue and WR is going at them explicitly. 

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Lecka said:

I think you are at a higher level already, with narrative and focusing more on expository text.

Yes, I'm looking at my ds' IEP goals and where he could reasonably be (in theory) over the next few years and what pitfalls various people have had and am going ok, central coherence, having coherence, realizing what the topic is and how things flow, seems to be a big issue. I'm seeing feedback from people about reading where it's an issue. I'm just connecting a lot of dots and thinking how far back it runs, how foundational it is, and how we tackle it. I agree with you though that there's a foundational level that IS applicable to life, to conversation, etc., absolutely.

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

Please keep reading if there is more to your source, and let us know what other nuggets you find. I think that several issues are bound up in this idea and hinge on each other. It would be nice to show this information to intervention specialists and speech people and IEP team members and say, "So what are you going to do about this?" I have been banging the drum for a while that activities related to this kind of processing stop very far short of the abstract level, and that's precisely where it starts to fall apart for my son. Even if he has holes in the lower levels, stopping right in the middle of the most important thing he needs is super, super damaging. And everyone seems to want to do everything EXCEPT work on these skills (the SLP is up for whatever if we can find a way to make it all go together) and when these skills show up as deficient, they kind of change the subject. It doesn't help if they see the out-of-the-box thinking as divergent and only a good thing, not seeing the debilitating side. They literally think that if he can think out of the box, then that is a sign that TYPICAL THINKING is INTACT!!! Or, they see that he can be led (via discussion) to typical conclusions, so he must be able to make those leaps on his own, right? At least SGM says that having to be prompted via discussion means that the student is NOT as discourse level.

I would love to be able to bring chapter and verse and be kind of blunt.

I would even get on the phone with the SGM lady (since she said to call her back when I get my bearings with the materials) and ask her if she has tools for this. She mentions making generalizations, but it's cursory.

I have exactly one source that tackles making generalizations head-on--an old Warriner's English Grammar and Composition book. But it has about three pages on it, and that is it. But it does come right out and talk about how this skill is necessary for parts of the writing process.

See if the link to the Plaisted paper works for you. Might connect your dots. For me, it's starting to make sense, but that may be because I fried my brain. I saw it afresh by rereading my notes there. Really though, it's a total basic pillar of literacy and intervention to relate the text to prior knowledge, personal experience, etc. That's essentially what they're saying you have to do, but they're finally giving evidence for WHY. I thought it was a bunch of hooey and a waste of time.

Thing is, I'm looking at this now and going ok what do you want the result to be? It would take some work to get from working on similarities to getting to connectors (Writing Revolution). You'd get there, but it would be some work. Working on similarities would definitely bump comprehension, boom. 

I think my brain may be fried. 

[Lecka]

I barely even see my son notice character details that are very obvious (even directly stated). At least with books.

I think he does better with tv/movies.  

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Lecka said:

Like — my husband has some very nerdy, accepting pursuits, and yet sometimes there will be someone who just alienates people by not understanding some shared social expectations, and it is just heartbreaking as a parent.  

Literally an example of this is my husband plays Magic:  The Gathering and he will trade cards sometimes, and someone would always try to aggressively trade with him in a way that would be greatly not in my husband’s favor, and then be kind-of huffy when my husband would not agree to the trade.  Well this alienated my husband, not to the point he would be rude about it, but enough to be less friendly.  

And it is just ———— I see theory of mind written all over it, and probably some central coherence with not understanding how “friendly trading” is supposed to work.

 

That's what Pelicano says, that central coherence and EF issues affect the development of theory of mind. So you could focus on similarities and how that situation is similar to another and what the outcome was there and how he could use it to predict or interpret current situation. I think that's the logical implication of this.

[PeterPan]

Just now, Lecka said:

I barely even see my son notice character details that are very obvious (even directly stated). At least with books.

I think he does better with tv/movies.  

He may notice things that aren't on your radar. One time someone told me she sat beside Leonard Nimoy at an event, and I asked how he smelled. She's like HUH??? Well I had studied his teeth for years in Star Trek, wondered if he was a smoker, had noticed the changing of his lines over the years, and figured the smell would tell me something. To HER, probably not the most relevant bit of data. 

And no, she didn't notice how he smelled, lol. 

[Lecka]

Or, I do think he notices some character details, but then to go from the details to “the character is this way” I don’t see, and I think that has to work together with comparing.  

He has to know the characteristics of what he is comparing to, and how they fit together, for it to mean something to him.  

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Lecka said:

I have *totally* felt like with my older son, they are used to seeing kids who are doing very poor and got no services or remediation, that they don’t see what it’s like for kids who aren’t doing “as” bad but still can’t be “a success story.”  Or — he is a success story, but that doesn’t mean we ride off into the sunset on a white horse. 

Right now where it's showing up with my ds (outside possible academics) is conversation. He's talking a LOT now, and he's going on and on and just missing things. And sometimes he'll try to control or act in a scenario not realizing it's a totally different scenario. I just thinking getting to that bigger picture would help him a bit immediately, yes.

Around here, I don't know. We have kids in clubs who are that sort of middle land, doing well for who they are but certainly no one is confused that they have challenges and will need support. And then there are the lower functioning kids who disappear and aren't seen. It's surprising how much you *don't* see those kids who are struggling. After a while they're just gone, not welcome, poof.

[Lecka]

As far as reading, no, he doesn’t notice some unrelated detail or unusual detail.  He just doesn’t notice.  It passes him by.  He is getting less information from what he hears than he is expected to get.  

He does better with pictures, he can tell more from storybooks.  

We are just this year hearing from school that he really knows kids in his class and knows what they like and what they are like, specifically, and not just like “a girl” or “a boy.”

So I think this is something where talking about it with books helps him apply it to real life.  

[Lecka]

Well, for summer, a lot of kids who qualify for ESY go to ESY.  I’m pleased with my son’s program, and he’s not doing anything else this summer besides church.  

He’s also invited to a special needs camp that doesn’t take the more Level 1 kids.  (He is going to sleep away camp in two weeks!)

[PeterPan]

The training by Hochman is $1000!!!!!!!! https://www.thewritingrevolution.org/services/courses/

[kbutton]

32 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

Kbutton, set theory would emphasis how things are different, because it's focus is exclusion. (you're either in the set or you're not, sets are created by focusing on exclusions) You would only get there by creating fresh sets over and over with the same data, focusing on similarities, but then you'd be back at the categorizing and associations exercises.

It seems to me, in some ways, to be brilliantly simple. How are two characters similar? How is a character similar to someone you know? How is a character similar to someone from history? How is their emotion similar to something you experienced? This is the stuff where my ds squirms and falls apart, so they're probably onto something here.

I'm also liking what I'm seeing in Writing Revolution as a way to drive connections to be explicit. Go check out the other thread (prime day book coupon) and see the links. Here's the stuff buried online like handouts and ppt hochman site:tapconyc.weebly.com  You've said connections are a huge huge issue and WR is going at them explicitly. 

Well, when we did set stuff last year, there were focuses on both similarities and differences--there was extensive notation about subsets, intersections, all kinds of things. My DS had to make himself a chart to keep track of the verbiage to go with the symbols. I think there was also quite a bit of using the same stuff to do more than one thing, look at it from different criteria. The sorting exercises we did with the real number system was taking the same information and looking at it multiple ways and spitting it out in multiple formats. Both the similarities and differences in those formats jogged my son's brain toward a point of central coherence. He does this non-verbally a lot of the time, but I think it happens faster and more easily with nonverbal information. I think the sorting process just works better. I think he still notices differences more easily, but those differences translate into practical application and learning more readily. 

Well, I have trouble with brilliantly simple. I make complicated simple, but I am not so great at making simple complicated. I once misread directions (that were not particularly informative to start with) for a writing assignment. I was to discuss the main implications of an assigned text. I wrote a paragraph. The prof expected 2-3 pages (that was the part I missed). But he gave me an A because I managed to say in one paragraph what everyone else said in 2-3 pages. I hadn't really left anything out except the fluff, and he recognized that. I guess when you talk about how characters are similar and different, maybe you are getting sentences out, but I would expect the salient details. My son gives all or nothing--he can't sift the details. He can't give a label or category for how they are the same or different. He can sort those details and maybe even notice them, but the piles would have no abstract way he could discuss them. He would just list all the obvious stuff without making a point, and then he'd be like, "This is dumb, you read the same story--you know all the same bits I do."  And he'd be right--he just restated it all in a different way without getting to the heart of the matter. He wouldn't understand why people want to rehash the details. It's totally possible to answer those questions you are asking and still not have central coherence. I guess that is what I am getting at. [It's also possible, especially when you are new to information, to overgeneralize. I sometimes do this, though I often figure it out and sort it out later. I am often seeing a relationship, for instance, but it sounds like I blurring categories because I haven't yet figured out how to describe the relationship I'm seeing, and some purist takes issue with it because I am blurring lines they don't want blurred in service of extracting that intangible thing I am still sorting out. But sometimes, those distinctions are more insider baseball than something that is super meaningful to anyone else, and it's important to my brain to find that relationship.]

Being able to make statements to answer the questions you are referencing is one thing, but writing them up is totally different, and realizing what bits and pieces another person needs to hear to understand it too is a third thing. I think it's possible to be able to discuss those questions and not be able to put that into writing or to condense it into a meaningful data point or a concise statement. At some point, you have to have a topic sentence (or topic paragraph, etc.) that glues the discussion or list of facts or similarities together with a category (label, thought, sentence, assertion, etc.). It's just generalization scaled to different levels. 

I will look at the connections thing, but I don't know if you and I mean the same thing by connections. 

The updated link works--thanks.

[Lecka]

Going back to some other points....

1.  I don’t think generalization works for me.  In how I think of generalization, you have to notice some details and how they connect into a concept, as part of the process of making a generalization.  That step is what I think of as central coherence.  

I see that “finding the main idea” or “having a concept of what is going on” type thing, to be a problem before getting to the generalization step.

I think they go together, but I don’t think of them as being the same step.  

2. I think that the story grammar stuff is teaching generalization.  It is teaching, first, details of a story and how they can combine.  Then, once that is understood with one story, that knowledge of story structure can begin to grow.

Then that “knowledge of story structure” can be internalized, and then can be applied (or generalized) to new stories.

Then new stories aren’t all encountered as if the child is starting from ground zero.  The child has the concept of “this is what a story is like” to draw on and aid in understanding the new story.  

And, maybe some compare/contrast with other stories. 

So I think the idea of teaching story elements is helpful for central coherence as it pertains to ——— story-related things, like stories, social situations, and conversation.

Which are not every situation where central coherence could matter, but it is something for those areas.  

[kbutton]

To clarify what I am talking about...Warriner's English Grammar and Composition's definition of a generalization (which is what I mean, though I would scale it down to include labels/categories and scale it up to being a series of generalizations, such as an introductory paragraph for a longer work)...

Quote

A generalization is a universal statement about a whole group of people, events, objects, places, or ideas.

Warriner's goes on to say:

Quote

The topic sentence of a paragraph usually states a generalization.

If a student is writing some kind of factual paragraph, sometimes they do not need to make a generalization in order to make a topic sentence, or they might make a really superficial one, state an opinion, etc. depending on the kind of paragraph they are writing. A really good paragraph is one that is taking salient details and then spitting them back in a slightly more abstract form as a generalized statement.

Categories are basically generalizations shrunk to a single word or to a phrase--we do this for outlining sometimes. Textbooks will have subheadings that might be one word, a phrase, or a sentence. Those are often generalizations. Titles and captions are sometimes generalizations, depending on the context of the work.

I think it's probably true that central coherence has to be there to make a generalization, but I do think that a lot of the materials out there do not support making an academic-ish generalization at the discourse level, as SGM would put it. I think what I've seen falls short of that. 

I don't have my SGM book in front of me (the SLP has it right now), but she talks about making generalizations and does not devote much time or space to it. I think she uses it in the same way that I do, though she might talk about it only at the statement level. I have not yet grasped how she thinks a person gets from picking apart the story or expository piece to making a generalizations, but she says that students need to be able to make generalizations. I think she does say that students might need to be taught to do this explicitly, but I can't say that I figured out how that's supposed to happen. My experience seems to be that you can lead the horse to water, but you can't make him drink. This includes instances when the central coherence thing seems to be adequately supported, the material is definitely understood, we are getting RELEVANT details for writing paragraphs, those details are arranged in coherent and logical sentences--it's all there. No generalization comes forth. Much discussion ensues. It's obvious the kid gets the gist, the gestalt, the point. No generalization comes out. Ever. Zip, zilch, nada. 

[Lecka]

Well, when generalizations aren’t being independently made yet, you just keep providing examples and teaching!

I think the idea is the teacher just keeps going over stories and explaining until the student starts to make some independent connections.

And try to prompt/guide students to make connections or respond at whatever level they are capable of.

That is what I have seen. 

It’s one of those things, ime, nobody expects it to happen fast, and small progress is celebrated.  

I would love to hear better things lol.  

Edit:  at the same time, I definitely think kids make gains!  

Edit:  however — for my son it is easy to say — it’s worth it to spend some time on story time.  It’s not taking up a lot of time; it is clearly developmentally appropriate for him; he is getting stuff out of it even if he’s not getting everything out of it I would hope.

If a program just isn’t working out I don’t mean to do it anyway!!!!!

[kbutton]

But that's the thing--he can do it at lower levels and it wasn't being explicitly taught. Then, suddenly, he couldn't. It was shifting from abstract to concrete.

It's like it's assumed that the skill will carry over, and I really do not think it always does.

And no one seems to want to spend the time working on generalizations and categories and comparing things in order to foster that. It drives me nuts. I have been asking for years at this point for this to happen. 

If he can't make a generalization for a paragraph, he can't really write a meaningful paragraph, but the other skills are there, so it looks like he can. But he can't. And then he's not going to be able to do this on a test or any other time. It also makes it really, really hard for him to know how to do any studying with a purpose, outline information so that he can review it, etc. Just about every study skill outside of memorization hinges on being able to extract information and make a generalization with it.  

[Lecka]

That is so frustrating!

Its more cut-and-dry here and more obvious he needs certain things, and then ———— he benefits in other ways even if he may not get as much out of it in some ways.  Like — it is also working on vocabulary and just language, which he needs, whether he is getting other things or not.  

I think if something is not working for you, give it some amount of time and move on.  

I think if a skill is not carrying over, it doesn’t matter that people want it to — it is reality.  

That sounds very frustrating! 

[geodob]

I've been looking at some research, that might be relevant to this discussion?  Which is into what is termed as 'Contextual Associative Memory'. CAM.

To explain this, I'll use a quote from above: "He can't give a label or category for how they are the same or different."

We associate our memory of most 'things', in multiple 'categories'.  What is the 'same or different', are the categories that they do or don't share.  But rather than working on categories?  The reverse approach can be taken?  Which explores the various categories that 'things' are a part of.  

[PeterPan]

1 minute ago, geodob said:

I've been looking at some research, that might be relevant to this discussion?  Which is into what is termed as 'Contextual Associative Memory'. CAM.

To explain this, I'll use a quote from above: "He can't give a label or category for how they are the same or different."

We associate our memory of most 'things', in multiple 'categories'.  What is the 'same or different', are the categories that they do or don't share.  But rather than working on categories?  The reverse approach can be taken?  Which explores the various categories that 'things' are a part of.  

Pair that with the brain scans showing the higher number of mini brain columns and the shorter pathways between them. The ASD person makes a connection, the closest, quickest connection possibly, and isn't necessarily taking that longer, meandering neurological route to make lots of connections along the way. 

Yes, even something really basic like a level 1 categorization book or association workbook will have the kids both assigning to categories AND grouping and regrouping objects into new categories. Thing is, when they're doing that regrouping, it goes back to what you're working on (attributes, functions, etc.), so those have to be solid and cognizant, useable tools. 

So for instance we had an activity with a slew of vehicles. There were bicycles, mopeds, motor boats, row boats, semi, car, sailboat, on and on. You could group them by things used on land/water, things with/out motors, things with/out wheels, things that are fast/slow, things you'd like to own... It's very easy to see how a task like that could be more abstract, looking at emotions, characters from a book, various wars, etc. etc. If you followed that similarities work up with the Writing Revolution sentence expansion, you'd have a paragraph. (these things all______ SO...., these things all ______ BECAUSE...)

But yes geodob, I think you're right that to associate the weakness in contextual associative memory, the tendency of the brain to pigeon hold everything and see it as a totally new, separate situation/issue. How are people working on this? The associations workbooks we've done so far have been pretty trite and obvious after doing the categories work, not really a step forward. And I think like you're saying I had the assumption that I was doing it in SLP stuff, that it was a concept, and that once he had it he had it. It hadn't occurred to me I would need to transfer it over to academia as an instructional tool.

[Lecka]

PeterPan, I wonder if you would like semantic mapping.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/connecting-word-meanings-through-semantic-mapping

I see stuff like this for vocabulary words or concepts.  It is supposed to be good.

I have seen similar stuff with all kinds of graphic organizers.  

It’s like sorting but instead of sorting, a graphic organizer is filled in, lol.  

[Lecka]

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/reading-comprehension-and-autism-primary-general-education-classroom

A reading comprehension article, it mentions central coherence.  

[Lecka]

I like this article, too, about increasing analysis of books with repeated readings.  Lots of good ideas.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/repeated-interactive-read-alouds-preschool-and-kindergarten

[Guest]

Lecka, I find it interesting that I have brought up most of the points on comprehension strategies found in your links in several threads, lately. But, I know, I'm just a mom who prays for guidance daily and puts her main focus, in her spare time, on research. That's ok! I'm happy that you are finding this information, and I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that it proves to be useful for your boy.

All the best,

M

[PeterPan]

5 hours ago, Lecka said:

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/reading-comprehension-and-autism-primary-general-education-classroom

A reading comprehension article, it mentions central coherence.  

This article is interesting, thanks. I think in general I'm looking for explicit instruction with therapy materials because that's what has been getting us a lot of mileage. Ironically, that article is saying what Kbutton keeps saying, that you can teach all the components and still come out with no connections, no sense of causality. The graphic organizers would be pretty tedious for the brief contextualized things we're doing. 

I'm always looking for what the underlying deficit is, what I can build up so these skills will develop naturally. The teacher in the classroom is forced to deal with the grade level tasks, whether or not there's a developmental foundation. I'm trying to dig way deeper. So, for instance, if a lack of causality is the issue, then developing that concept via language work with causal clauses would make a lot of sense. That's what Writing Revolution is saying to do and they're discussing it right now on an SLP list I'm on.

Ds has finally developed a sense of *spelling* by working on *language*, and nobody, NOBODY was saying to me oh work on language and spelling will finally click! It seems so obvious though, in hindsight, now that I'm seeing it happen, that going from phrase level understanding to word level understanding would then click in his brain that he's ready to start manipulating the PARTS of words. So he has started working with the morphology of words, the bits of words, and asking about spelling and noticing spelling. It's really interesting to see, and I think it's because we got his development going. We could have continued to work on spelling with no comprehension (which is what it was before when we were doing Barton, which is why I stopped doing the spelling, because there was no click, no lightbulb, no sense of him wanting to use it), sure. That's what the school and tradition would have said to do. Instead we got him developmentally there to wanting it, and now he's doing it for himself.

So I think the central coherence issues are the same way, that it's easy to want the fruit without watering the root.

[Guest]

My (9-year-old) son, age 5, playing.

I believe you may be confusing dyslexia related challenges with ASD.

ETA: No input from me. I just took the pictures.

[Lecka]

I am NOT sure I am reading this properly, but I think the things you are mentioning are what they are calling microstructure in this article.

I think what they are calling macrostructure is more related to central coherence (as I think of it).

I think the clauses and the word level is SO important and necessary, but I think it’s good to look at doing things for the macrostructure, too, when the time is right.  I think some things that don’t seem good now, may seem good later.  Or he will have a bump and pick things up easier ?  

But I do think, with specifically what you mention back in the first post, I think it sounds like macrostructure is part of it, from what this article says.  

But I’m not sure, lol.  

https://mindwingconcepts.com/pages/language-literacy

Edit:  I looked back and you mentioned going through plot details and seeing which part of the plot is “the middle.”  I think if that is the specific thing you want to work on, then that is what story grammar approaches are doing! 

Or they may just go together, if the clauses are part of the structure.  

This is what I see with my son, though, that he really can understand the word level and the sentence level, and then still have problems with the over-all level.  

I don’t see with him, that nailing the word and sentence level guarantees that result.  

But I do see him making progress with the over-all stuff, but it comes by targeting the over-all stuff.  

So to me I think they need to be targeted separately, success in one won’t automatically transfer to the other.  

But I think a lot of kids do transfer skills when they only had weakness in one area, then targeting that does let a lot of other things click into place. 

But it’s not what I am seeing on this.  

[Lecka]

This is hard to explain, but I have seen gains with my son in the past week.  I don’t know, but assume, that they are coming from his summer program and bumping up to the next higher reading group.

When the teacher explains what she does, it sounds very, very similar to Mindwings.  But she doesn’t tell me what she uses.

And then I am not there, I don’t know what goes on.

But he has made some comments during reading time, the past few nights, that are a real step up for him.  

For my son he has got the lower-level causal clauses and uses them in his independent speech (because they have been goals and he has learned them) so for me — I know that for him, being able to use them in his independent speech, didn’t automatically transfer to reading comprehension for him. 

So mainly I just think — there’s different things going on, and I am concerned that if you don’t look at both parts, you may not see the gains you are looking for.  

But I think if you are choosing a focus for now and want to delay some things, or you are seeing different things, then I understand it may not be going the same way with your son.  

[Lecka]

His comments the past few nights have included saying “so that means blah blah blah” and giving a summary of what has just been read.  It has been simple stuff, but still — in his own words!  

[Guest]

From a study I linked in a thread I started a few days ago:

Quote

"Parents and clinicians already know that the behavioral signs of ASD wax and wane throughout development," notes Elizabeth Pellicano, senior lecturer of autism education at the Institute of Education in London, who carried out the study. "What we know a lot less about is how the cognitive skills of children with ASD change over time. In this study, we found that these skills vary from child to child, and also that some of them can improve over time."

The research, which was conducted in Western Australia, appears in the September/October 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.

The cognitive strengths and weaknesses typically exhibited by people with ASD include difficulties predicting others' behavior based on their thoughts and feelings (so-called theory of mind) and problems regulating and controlling their behavior (termed executive function), combined with an aptitude for detecting parts of objects or small details (also called weak central coherence).

The study assessed 37 children with ASD and 31 typically developing children when they were 5 to 6 years old and again three years later. The researcher explored children's theory of mind by asking children to watch a series of social interactions on video and predict a character's behavior based on his or her mental state. She tested children's executive function by having them take part in problem-solving tasks that required them to plan ahead and show flexibility. And she assessed children's central coherence by asking them to construct patterns from wooden blocks and search for shapes hidden in pictures.

On the whole, Pellicano found, children with ASD exhibited the same profile that's typically associated with ASD, both at the start of the study and three years later. But a closer look at individual children's patterns of performance revealed that not all children with ASD displayed the same profile of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Instead, the profiles of cognitive skills varied from one child to the next: For example, while one child with ASD showed difficulties in theory of mind alone, another child showed problems in theory of mind plus executive function.

Furthermore, although previous research has reported little change over time in theory of mind and executive function skills of children with ASD, this study found that most of the children's skills in these areas improved considerably over time: Most of the children had better appreciation of others' thoughts and feelings, and they were better able to plan, regulate, and control their thoughts and actions over the study's three years.

"These findings are encouraging," notes Pellicano. "They stress the importance of understanding the breadth of cognitive skills -- a set of weaknesses and strengths -- in children with ASD, and how these skills progress over time. A key question for the future is whether there are approaches that can facilitate progress in some of these areas."

Found here:

- Cognitive skills in children with autism vary and improve, study finds

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915080429.htm

Not trying to aggravate you, PeterPan. Believe it or not, I am trying to help! Even though you can't see it. You are misinterpreting things that you read. I am sorry, but if I don't tell you I don't think anyone else will. I am speaking from the heart. I need to leave because I need to focus on my boys again, but it pains me to see that not only are you misinterpreting things, you are also possibly misguiding others. 

I sincerely wish you all the best,

M

[kbutton]

5 hours ago, PeterPan said:

This article is interesting, thanks. I think in general I'm looking for explicit instruction with therapy materials because that's what has been getting us a lot of mileage. Ironically, that article is saying what Kbutton keeps saying, that you can teach all the components and still come out with no connections, no sense of causality. The graphic organizers would be pretty tedious for the brief contextualized things we're doing. 

I'm always looking for what the underlying deficit is, what I can build up so these skills will develop naturally. The teacher in the classroom is forced to deal with the grade level tasks, whether or not there's a developmental foundation. I'm trying to dig way deeper. So, for instance, if a lack of causality is the issue, then developing that concept via language work with causal clauses would make a lot of sense. That's what Writing Revolution is saying to do and they're discussing it right now on an SLP list I'm on.

1

So, the SLP is getting familiarized with SGM materials that we're going to use, and she is being more optimistic about the parts coming together for my son. She says, first of all, that a lot of the parts are there, but he doesn't know where/when to pull them out, and that having one overarching tool from which to pull is going to be meaningful for him. In contrast to "having a graphic organizer for that," the SGM marker gives him the whole enchilada in a consistent way, and then he can say, "This assignment has a subset of these SGM pieces, let me pull those together." They still go in roughly the same order. Some pieces might be repeated or "disguised" as a more abstract concept. But instead of having a series of graphic organizers where he has to generalize a huge list of different kinds of organizers by combining and recombining them after using them in a very specific way each time. 

This way, the tool stays consistent, and he takes parts and pieces of it to suit the situation.

She thinks this will even help with him learning to make labels, categories, and statements of generalizations. 

We do see some areas where we might need to pull in more stuff, but most of it is surrounding "clue" words. So, for reading, he might look for certain clue words in a science text vs. a history text, but those word lists belong in a certain part of the SGM process that stays consistent (either the "problem/attempt" area or the critical thinking triangle). For writing, he would be reversing the process and using those words to make the connections for the reader. 

SGM already has some examples of how the verbs and other clue words change by discipline, subject matter, narrative vs. expository, range of concrete to abstract, etc. We just see that we're going to have to fill in with some of them (other than feelings--they have feeling words readily available). 

Also, the SGM has some pre-drawn organizers that show some of the combining and recombining, but emphasize that you can do this yourself in many, many ways. They just provided some of the more common ones.

I do like the stuff you've posted about The Writing Revolution. I wanted to clarify about that in case it sounds like I"m not looking at it or considering the possibilities. I have actually done some of those kinds of things with my son, and when he sees where they are helpful, he does pull those things out. It's just that doing those alone didn't translate to those gains in central coherence, generalization, etc. They DO contribute to him being able to write stylistically interesting and complex sentences. But, he gets grammar, and he has an ear for language, so I am not sure the exercises do as much to teach him those things as show him that he does, indeed, possess those skills so that he can use them confidently. 

Quote

Ds has finally developed a sense of *spelling* by working on *language*, and nobody, NOBODY was saying to me oh work on language and spelling will finally click! It seems so obvious though, in hindsight, now that I'm seeing it happen, that going from phrase level understanding to word level understanding would then click in his brain that he's ready to start manipulating the PARTS of words. So he has started working with the morphology of words, the bits of words, and asking about spelling and noticing spelling. It's really interesting to see, and I think it's because we got his development going. We could have continued to work on spelling with no comprehension (which is what it was before when we were doing Barton, which is why I stopped doing the spelling, because there was no click, no lightbulb, no sense of him wanting to use it), sure. That's what the school and tradition would have said to do. Instead we got him developmentally there to wanting it, and now he's doing it for himself.

So I think the central coherence issues are the same way, that it's easy to want the fruit without watering the root.

I think this really illustrates Lovecky's point that 2e kids need both the big picture and the details. I would go a step farther and say that sometimes 2e kids work the problem from both the microscopic and the telescopic ends and it clicks in the middle, lol! 

Or, it could be that the spelling in Barton planted a seed, but the "why do we spell" (language is broken into meaningful chunks at the sentence, phrase, word, and even syllable level) needed more contexts in which your son could generalize that it was important. Then, he started to understand those chunks, and it was relevant. But if you hadn't done Barton and at least tried, perhaps, even recognizing the chunks might not have been enough to create an interest. Not sure if that makes sense. But anyway, I think it's good that you were responsive to the fact that spelling wasn't going anywhere and got at the core issue. I just sometimes think that it's often Core Issue Resolved + Who Knows What + More Instances of Both = Results. ?

I think we sometimes just don't know what specific thing will connect stuff for our kids, and not taking things for granted means we can keep presenting a buffet of things for their minds to latch onto.