How do you use Mosdos Gold?

[wendyroo]

We've never used a literature program before, but this year I want to use some of Mosdos Gold with my 7th grader.

He is a huge reader, but not a huge fiction reader. I think his autism makes it hard for him to connect to characters in books. I'm not trying to force him to love novels - he can still read mostly non-fiction and biographies - but, I would like him to work on some literary analysis, and I think Mosdos Gold is a good fit for our needs.

He read the first short story this week, and it was fine, but I'm not sure how to make the resource work best for us. This week I just had him read the Blueprint for Reading, and then the story one page at a time. After each page I would bring up some of the discussion points and ask him some of the "Guiding the Reading" questions in the teacher's guide. If he didn't "see" the answer they were aiming for, then I would use Socratic dialogue to guide him to their analysis. Afterwards we discussed some of the questions in the In-depth Thinking, Drawing Conclusions, and Focusing on the Plot sections.

How do you use Mosdos Gold? Do you read the stories together? Does the student write answers to question? Do you use the questions as a springboard for discussion? Do you do all the questions or just some? Do you cover a story in one sitting or spread out over several days?

Thanks.

[Wheres Toto]

When I used Mosdos it was because I wanted something easy to plan that the kids could do mostly independently.  I didn't buy the Teacher's Guide, but a couple years we did use the Workbook.

For each story I would have them read the Blueprint and the story, then I would choose some questions at the end to answer or pages in the workbook to do.  I would check it over (I would quickly read the story to make sure it made sense) and move to the next story.   Sometimes I would give In-depth questions, sometimes the plot questions, sometimes the other writing assignments.   When we didn't use the workbook, sometimes I'd have them do something with the vocabulary words.   They would do one or two stories a week. 

[kbutton]

I am a little late because I am not on this board as much. 

I got Mosdos Gold for my older 2e son with ASD a few years ago (he was 8th grade then, I think), and at the time, it was too much for him even though he tested as being beyond that level in literature and had since 3rd grade. Long story with lots of frustration. I sat on Mosdos Gold when it didn't go well and kept it for my younger son who is also 2e. He's using it this year for 8th grade. He's already struggling a bit; he has some minor language issues that are not from autism (he doesn't have ASD), but they aren't really broad either. I think the questions require more insight and a lot of, "Since they asked the question this way, the person writing the question must think you can find evidence in the text to support the answer, so let's find it." I hope we both survive it, lol! 

For my older son, we ended up going all the way back to Coral even though it wasn't the correct grade. Had I known what the workbook was like for Pearl, we'd have done Pearl instead. I did Coral because I could use it for both boys at the same time. It worked well for my younger son, so we kept using Mosdos for him while my older son worked with a tutor on totally different stuff (long story). Pearl is the best organized level, and it's workbook is the best. It's also the year my younger son has enjoyed the most, but he liked Jade too. I read poor reviews (long time ago) on here of Pearl, and lots of times, the workbooks have been pooh-pooed on here across the board regardless of grade level. Some kids need more scaffolding and/or need to jump through hoops to attend to helpful details, and the WB helped accomplish that here.

Anyway, consider taking a look at the sample of the Pearl workbook. https://mosdospress.com/reading-programs/6th-grade-pearl/pearl-student-workbook/ It's the only level that has highly scaffolded one-page-ish stories in the actual workbook with scaffolded questions that teach them how to answer some of the questions that involve connecting with characters. I would go so far as to say that if you want to use Gold, maybe just get the Pearl WB, and then use only the "Mini Originals" as warm-ups to tackling Gold. They won't be coordinated conceptually, though I think they are with Pearl; I think the mini originals correspond either thematically or by some literature concept with the stories in the text. 

But knowing what I know now, I would've put my older son straight into Pearl, and we would've all done much better.

I also highly recommend products from Mindwing Concepts for narrative language, working through what characters are thinking, etc. It's not a curriculum; it's an SLP tool. It really cracked the code for my older son. What he was missing was in tiny but super important pieces, and Mindwing stuff put it together for him. 

[On a side note, my son with ASD floundered for a while, but once he received therapy that clicked, he does grade-level literature with scaffolding for some of the analysis or essays. He did an American Lit course last year and actually enjoyed it, even all the Puritans and such. I was pretty stunned since he literally had to go all the way back to fairy tales just two or three years before to solve his weird, specific-but-deep language issue. Going backwards doesn't have to be a defeat.]

If background knowledge is a problem for your son (probably not if he enjoys non-fiction, but I know it is for some kids with ASD), the Teacher Guides do have a lot of that information included. I have the TMs for several levels, but not for Jade. I do have them for Gold. If you don't have them and want someone to take a peak for you on specific lessons, let me know. We didn't end up using them a lot, but I think I would've if I'd needed to do more background stuff for comprehension. I have all the TBs from Coral through Gold if you need someone to look at any of them for you.

As to how we use the curriculum, my son usually takes 2-4 days to complete the story, selected questions from the book, and selected stuff from the WB. He needs the vocabulary (dyslexic) in the WB, so we don't skip those activities. They aren't difficult, and he picks up things from context, but this forces him to pay attention, which is his primary issue getting things into longer term memory. He does it mostly independently, but I think Gold might require more hand-holding. For other levels, I would comment on his answers and nudge him to more thorough answers when needed. I think he's missing some things, but I also get frustrated with some kinds of questions myself--sometimes I think literary questions are a bit of a reach, though not as much with Mosdos as with many publishers. 

In my dream world, they'd rewrite all the levels to work like Pearl, lol! 

Another source for scaffolded lit analysis is Memoria Press.