Chuck and I went on a date last night. Something happened while we were out that really has me alarmed.
Charlie has been doing really well, he is now in third grade, but both Chuck and I both have realized, almost simultaneously, that Charlie's comprehension level of words that they are using in third grade is very low.
He is still spelling well, and he is doing the math, but as far as comprehending words like ray, ragged and such, he is just not getting it. How did I miss this? He talks up a blue streak, but this took me by surprise, he just glosses over words that he does not know, he doesn't even ask about them.
I am glad that we found out now, I am going to start working on word comprehension, but I realized that it's a daunting job, there are just so many words out there that he is going to have a hard time with.
I wrote an email to his teachers and the school counselor, I think we need to get the speech therapist involved and maybe look into creative ways to teach meanings with pictures. Feel free to give me ideas if anyone has some.
LIGHTBULB MOMENT! I just realized when proof reading this that maybe what we need to do is to teach Charlie to say, "I do not know what that word means" when he encounters something strange. I am going to sit down and write a social story about that right now!
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Comments (3)
Some kids hate asking for help, i know i was one of them when i was younger, i used to get so angry to the point i would cry when i knew i had to go and ask for help. i think once he starts getting the hang of asking about things he does not understand the easier it will get an that way when he gets older it wont be such a big deal for him to ask for help with anything. Hopefully your idea will help the situation and goodluck!!!!!!
Silly thing to do... give him a dictionary and let him read it. That's what I did as a kid. I started looking words up. If I didn't know what a word in the definition meant, I'd look that word up, until I had spent hours looking up chains of words. By the time I was in sixth grade, I was reading on a college level.
This from a "kid" with Aspergers... who happens to be absolutely fascinated with words and their meanings and origins... *shrugs*
I remember, in the house I grew up in, there was a full encyclopedia set, a collegiate thesaurus, a collegiate dictionary, a picture dictionary, and a whole host of other things. Asking for help was often awkward, especially with words I "should" know.
Having remembered that, I set up the same things - the desk reference set - on the computer for my kids.
A friend of mine, in going through the same vocabulary problems with her kids, told me of difficulties of her kid being able to make sense of the sentences: it seemed that, although he could recite the definitions to the words, he couldn't make the sentences make sense.
So, in reading some of the easy-reader books, she began to act out the sentences as the characters in the book, in front of her kid - and everything began to click into place.
She also mentioned a word game she plays with her kid - "Big words in little pieces" - where larger words were stated, then the related words, prefixes, suffixes, would be defined.
Example:
The paper was written, but the incomprehensibility of the words left him stumped.
incomprehensibility
in
not or very,depending.
comprehend
understand
ibility
ability
It left him stumped, so the "in" means not.
* * *
This "game" teaches both phonics and context cues, which are both quite helpful in learning new words.
Hope it helps...