Can someone help me understand or point me in the right

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Follow-up post:

The school psychologist is going to try to use some visual prompts that he has had success with in the past to get her "unstuck" and help her focus her thoughts to answer the question.

Her teacher has never thought she wasn't trying. That was my daughters interpretation. The teacher said that because my daughter is so bright and she is so used to never having to help her with anything, she didn't really realize that she was struggling with the content. She also noted that because her responses in "free writing" are so well formed, it didn't dawn on her that my daughter was actually having problems with the writing aspect of the task. She thought that her reticence with the exercise was related to transition issues that she has because this specific activity happens right before a switch of classrooms and my daughter has difficulty with that transition. She has always required extra prompting to help her to stay on task. My daughter interpreted the extra prompting as the teacher thinking she wasn't trying. Now that the teacher is aware that her delay in completing the task is related to lack of understanding and not due to needing prompts to stay on task, she is planning to change her approach. She offered that if it doesn't help, she will meet with my daughter before school to do the task with her ahead of time, so that when she has to do it in class, she will already know how to do it.

I have been talking more with my daughter about this, and I think another piece of the puzzle is that ever since she has started school, she has been ahead of the majority of her peers academically. She has never really had to "try" to learn anything and has pretty much never struggled. She has always kind of "equalized" things by saying that other kids have "social smarts" but maybe not "school smarts" but she has "school smarts" but maybe not "social smarts." In her mind, this means they are all the same. I suspect that struggling with something that the other kids are all "getting" is causing additional anxiety for her because it may be bringing up an awareness of her differences that she was previously able to ignore.

That wouldn't surprise me.

As the curriculum and emphasis in grading rubrics has changed, so has my son's assessment of his own intelligence. He used to have no trouble seeing himself as really smart. Now that he has discovered more of his academic weak areas, he questions that viewpoint when others say it.

We just keep talking about strengths and weaknesses and how the world needs all of it, no one "better" than anyone else when it comes to the overall picture. And I always say that he is still smart, even if he may not be as smart as some people think he is, and that I know that for a FACT. He IS smart. But he is also "different," and sometimes we are blown away by how fast he dreams something up that is brilliant, and sometimes we are all laughing with how he fails to understand something basic (he has totally learned to laugh at himself).

I can't vouch for it, but Bravewriter is something people tout as a good writing program. Check the site out first, though.

I am weighing whether to spring for this. There is a lot in it that does not suit us and it is pretty spendy. I have to review the site, again, but it may be what you heard people talk about.

http://www.bravewriter.com/

http://www.bravewriter.com/program/home ... rs-jungle/

Re-skimming the page, the parts that gave me pause aside from price, were the emphasis on fine children's literature and copywork, so if we do end up springing for it, we will probably get very little use of that aspect of it. (We have issues with interest in conventional literature and my son can't handle the types of topics in things like Charlotte's Web and I do not think he would like too much copywork. They did some in school, but I think it was more handwriting practice than learning what a well-composed sentence looks like. I don't know what he would comply with on that score. We do dictation with spelling tests to prepare for note-taking and because he is used to it, but beyond that...)

Edited for stupid grammar.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 08 Mar 2014, 8:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Thanks for the link, ASDMommy.

It isn't what I can't remember, and it looks very interesting. I wonder, though, if it may be too much for a supplement for in-school curriculum since, since it is designed for homeschoolers. It seems for the bits and pieces I might use to supplement what she is learning in school, it is very pricey.

I just found the book club list and it is way too advanced for my daughter, but even for my son (12), there is no way he would make it through most of those books. He recently wrote to the creator of one of his online games to report that he felt one of the characters was "too scary"! He did read The Outsiders in school and it bothered him a great deal when the characters died. He still likes to read things like the Warrior's series. Though oddly enough, I did get him interested in Jame's Patterson's Maximum Ride series, which is the first thing he would read that had "violence" in it. Perhaps because there are no such things as winged children.

Firstly if your daughter was diagnosed with ASD or Aspergers then the teacher is simply being ill-informed and ignorant in claiming it's laziness.

Drawing on my daughter's experience, she blitzes multi-choice after reading an age appropriate book. Multi-choice provides options where clearly wrong answers can be crossed off and answers that seem closer to the elements of the chapter/book that was read can be considered . This sort of logic is right up the alley for many kids with ASD. Open ended questions have an element of ambiguity. This ambiguity is confusing to kids on the spectrum and many NT kids also get flustered with open ended questions.

One option here is for the teacher to provide hints? i.e. give points of reference. I think if your daughter was able to visualise the context behind the question she would have less of a problem in giving answers to open ended questions.

I know this is an old thread but I have a question for you Yippy. Were you all able to figure out an answer or did the teacher tell what the answer was?

Based on relatively recent experience of helping my kids through math homework, I would guess they were looking for:

The additive property of zero, or the addition property of zero

and

The zero product property, or the multiplication property of zero

Abscissa and ordinate not required!

I think Adamantium is right; one of those properties was the answer.

My solution may not be the best one...but I would tell my child to look at the nouns and then right every single thing they could think of about them? Or something like that? Like if it was "What was the emotional journey of Frodo in the book?" Journey + Frodo = ? At least then they would have something to write down and would get some credit for their answer.