SGM people, audiobook, comprehension

[Lecka]

So — my son listened to the entire audiobook for the first book of Guardians of Ga-hoole, The Capture, by Kathryn Lasky.

He liked it, but can barely say anything about it.

Anyway — he is going to listen to it again, and I am going to listen to it with him, and try to help him with the characters and plot.  
 

I have the autism books from Mindwings and have not had them out in a while, but thinking maybe I could try the character traits kind of pages, and plot points.

Anyone have success with an audiobook?

This book might just be a stretch, too.  It is harder than other books he has listened to where I did feel like he had decent comprehension.  

[Lecka]

Well — I have gotten started.  
 

His comprehension is very poor, but he is interested in having me explain everything to him.

And he is interested in this book!  
 

He definitely caught some details the first time through.  

[Lecka]

And we’re back to Goosebumps. I think he has decent comprehension of these, maybe I can still try to do something with him since I got my Mindwings autism collection back out.  

[Rosie_0801]

I don't know anything about your mind wings books, but we've always listened to books beyond dd's comprehension. She has language delays and doesn't expect to understand everything, so it has never bothered her. Of course I'll explain as we go if needed, but of course not everything makes it to long term memory.

[PeterPan]

I haven't listened to the series, but my ds and dd both loved them. The lexile is 800+ for most of the books, but The Capture is 730. Goosebumps are all over the place but averaging 400. What you might do is go here https://hub.lexile.com/find-a-book/search  and use that 400 lexile and put in fantasy or owls and see what else pops up. I've taken to just random, out of the blue searches like that. I've done it a ton by lexile, and now I do it with BARD, putting in any random keyword and "grades" so it pops up books marked for a range of grades, not adult books on the topic. Usually nets me something. Like right now he's listening to a book for kids on astrophysics, haha. But you can put in clowns, fantasy, anything, and then limit it by the lexile and see if it gets you some good finds. 

Or you could see what your library/overdrive has for audiobooks and search that way, again limiting for either lexile or grade level or something. 

So just going through hub.lexile.com limiting to 400 (which then results in a range) and ticking for science fiction/fantasy and then animals, I get a lot of hits. Then I set it to order by page count high to low to get that involved chapter book you wanted. Goosebumps do show up, but there some to be some options. Dogman is on there. Have you done Dogman yet? Honestly, it's worth reading. There are some Rick Riordan done as graphic novels.

So yes, my ds will listen higher than his comprehension. The challenge is that it's probably not just the narrative language but also the syntactical complexity and vocabulary. For my ds, if he listens too much to stuff he's not really comprehending, he zones out. So I try to find a sweet spot. I think just distract him every so often, make sure he's ok. 

And as far as if he wants to listen to the book again, I think I'd just start by asking who is favorite character is, what they do, what they look like, why he likes them. Ask for the things he can give with his stage of narrative language (verbs, description, etc.) rather than looking for a whole summary. You could even ask if they learn something or have a problem.

[Lecka]

He can hardly tell me anything, but he likes it and he wanted to listen to it again last night.  I think I am just going to listen with him when I can and tell him about it.  

I will see what happens.  If he wants to keep listening to it, maybe it will help his comprehension.  

I like it too, thank goodness!  Not like "If I could drive a Tonka Truck" I read a million times to my older son.  

[kbutton]

5 hours ago, Lecka said:

He can hardly tell me anything, but he likes it and he wanted to listen to it again last night.  I think I am just going to listen with him when I can and tell him about it.  

I will see what happens.  If he wants to keep listening to it, maybe it will help his comprehension.  

I like it too, thank goodness!  Not like "If I could drive a Tonka Truck" I read a million times to my older son.  

I think this is part of the goal with family read-alouds. You enjoy it together. You might talk about it as you said in another post. I think that is all valuable whether the comprehension deepens immediately or not. I think there are a lot of incidental things he might be getting from the story that he can't express also. If you talk about and explain those, that could be really valuable in a life skills way even if it doesn't lead to specific academic gains or makes a bit of a divide between comprehension and expression over time.

The only one of the autism-specific books we have is Making Connections. I think if you want to use MW with him and work through characters, you might have to find a backdoor way to do it if he's resistant to his "fun" stuff being made into school or therapy (mine are even though they don't mind doing therapy--they just want a separation). But I think it's worth talking to him about characters and using those materials to inform the way you talk if formal work would make him resistant.

[Lecka]

Okay, I think I am going to try the MW stuff with things where he already has good comprehension and can already talk about it.  I might try with a tv show here and there.

And then he can just enjoy his audiobook.  I can still listen with him when I have the chance.