Special Needs 7th/8th grade curric?

[training5]

I am at my wit's end with my 13almost14yr old and schooling him. I have Math pinned down, CLE 400, and writ/gram, Verticy Yellow, But no idea what to do about the other content areas. His reading ability is excellent, thank goodness!

History? Geography? Science? Literature? These all require/assume higher level skills than he has right now. The thought of trying to teach him a second language gives me nightmares.

How do you meet a wide ability gap like this without dumbing down? I am truely frustrated.

[JennW in SoCal]

So -- if his reading ability is excellent, he has the most important skill he needs to tackle these content areas. What skills are lacking that make you feel things have to be dumbed down? I myself always found history, literature and science to be the easiest subjects to do with my learning challenged ds -- the key was that I focused on the "input" in these areas rather than "output". That way the learning was fun rather than extra subjects to struggle with. Especially in 7th and 8th grades.

Between biographies and historical fiction you can cover literature and history. There are many excellent magazines on science, as well as countless DVDs of science documentaries. Google earth is a fun way to explore the world -- my ds often goes to find something he has read about or saw on a tv show. Talk with him about what he reads, what he enjoys and would like to learn more about. You can start introducing some comprehension and analysis questions casually through your conversations -- look at the Well Educated Mind for ideas or down load and listen to the lectures on writing and literary analysis available through Peace Hill Press.

You are working towards being more formal in high school as his writing skills progress. You'll probably find his skills improve as he matures, too, so that the student you have when he is in 12th grade is much more capable than you can imagine now.

That was my positive pep talk. This is the negative from my experience -- foreign language remains a nightmare with my learning challenged kiddo. He's graduated, started community college and is hoping and praying to transfer to a 4 year college that doesn't have a foreign language graduation requirement!!

[Shari]

It sounds like your ds abilities stretch over a wide range. How "excellent" is his reading? Would you say he is at grade level? The 3R's are most important imho so if he's good to go in reading, I'd focus a lot on Math and Writing. I am using Verticy Yellow myself and can tell you that the writing instruction (having a template basically) has worked well for my ds.

For everything else, I would look for curriculum that gauges learning through projects and experimentation rather than tests and papers. We are switching to Oak Meadow next year with my LD 5th grader for just this type of curriculum. It will be more work for Mom, but ds is not the type of kid who is ever going to learn from grade-level textbooks. I've decided to stop fighting it and go with the flow :D

Have you ever seen Teresa Moon's book Evaluating for Excellence? It has great ideas for getting 'outside the box' in evaluating your dc's work, writing up contracts for unit studies, IEP's for homeschoolers, and all sorts of forms and rubrics for "grading" projects. For me, having a paper trail / record of what is being accomplished helped me be less focused on what's not getting done (compared with his peers). Yes, ds has to learn to write a report .... eventually .... but while we are working on that he can show comprehension by making a comic strip of the book he just read, or building a model scene of a famous battle, or helping dissect a frog.

These are just a few ideas from another Mom in the trenches, for what it's worth. Best wishes :001_smile:

[Momto2Ns]

Why not do Sonlight history and literature if his reading level is good? You don't have to do all the language arts and writing. Just let him read and discuss with you. Core 3+4 would work for American History or Cores 6 and 7 would give you two years of World History.

[training5]

Excellent reading means he can read anything he picks up through adult level.

My beef with the other areas is he doesn't get drawing inferences or conclusions. Everything must be spelled out clear as anything. He thinks very concretely. Science usually requires higher math skills than he has. History and lit require higher writing/thinking skills than he has or way too much writing. How do we work on those, the thinking skills, I mean? We tried a critical thinking wkbk that did nothing for him. Study Skills, notetaking, etc.? He doesn't get it. He struggles with finding the answers in text, gets frustrated and gives up.

BTW, we tried OM 5th...WAY too much writing required with not enough instruction on how to do it. It seems to be more a jumping off point than a destination. I would have loved some outline maps that i didn't have to track down myself. The science made my guys laugh...truely. No daily schedule left them asking me constantly if they were done yet. I just didn't get it. I guess I felt it needed more to it in the box or directions to make it easier to use. I felt I was having to do too much tweaking and supplementing.
If you do use it, maybe we can share how we are using it. My 2nd son begs for it quite a bit.
The sad thing is I love OM! I love the soft flow, the more creative feel to it. The price...compared to Verticy, it is a steal! It just lacks too much in some ways. Maybe the rewrites, when available next year, will solve the problems. I keep going back to it every year and dream....

I am going to see if my library has the book Shari mentioned. What are you using for science? Thank you for your .02.

[training5]

hmmm...
I thought it might help if I shared what i have him currently working on.

We started with Calvert Scholastic 6th...lasted through the first 50 lessons in most subjects. Didn't make it through the first big assignment in composition. So I sold it.

So now he is finishing up CLE 300 math, reading and answering the questions in a McGraw Hill 6th grade science book, (He is struggling with it mightily. Not particularly the concepts, just the questions.) and reading through A History of Us and using the Hewitt Homeschool tests as study guides. I haven't started the Verticy yet.

[Shari]

For science, my LD ds is going to do the OM component beefed up by NOEO Biology II. My non-LD ds will be doing BJU Life Science w/ dvds so the whole family will be able to participate in his experiments, including an insect collection and the big year-end frog dissection. :D

If you liked Calvert apart from the writing component, you should like the rest of the Verticy program. They use grade-level Calvert and 'do their own thing' for Language Arts. You might be able to find the core curriculum guides on Ebay or the used boards (even though you aren't supposed to resell Calvert -- I see their syllabus all the time :tongue_smilie:). It seems that people either love Calvert or hate it. For the price tag, you'd have to love it to stick with it!

I chose OM because there seem to be many options for showing what you know *apart* from papers and reports. I could be wrong since I've not looked at the higher grades (7+). But with Verticy taking care of Writing/Grammar, I will choose the projects that are less writing OR dovetail his Verticy assignment with the OM literature/science/LA topic that week.

[training5]

Thank you, Shari, for your insight. I hope I did not come across in an offensive way at all. Sometimes I forget we can use a curriculum to fit the child and not the other way round.

Calvert...I love the daily schedules and checklists. But I think my 2nd son put it best. He said Calvert was killing his imagination! Time to switch to OM. I am going to ask the yahoo group if anyone has made a daily schedule for it. The 'new' version is supposedly going to be set up like OM6 with day1, day2, etc breakdowns.

[Momto2Ns]

You can see in my sig what I use. My oldest is the ASD guy. I am switching next year from BJU which we have used quite happily for the last two years to a secular textbook. I think its about making the curriculum work for your child just as Shari said.

[merry gardens]

Excellent reading means he can read anything he picks up through adult level.

My beef with the other areas is he doesn't get drawing inferences or conclusions. Everything must be spelled out clear as anything. He thinks very concretely. Science usually requires higher math skills than he has. History and lit require higher writing/thinking skills than he has or way too much writing. How do we work on those, the thinking skills, I mean? We tried a critical thinking wkbk that did nothing for him. Study Skills, notetaking, etc.? He doesn't get it. He struggles with finding the answers in text, gets frustrated and gives up. ...
If he's not able to draw inferences or conclusions, you might try targeting that area very specifically. (If he's missing those skills, he's not really comprehending the things he reads at an adult level yet.) I ran across this workbook http://www.rempub.com/Details.cfm?ProdId=3933&category=0 (http://www.rempub.com/Details.cfm?ProdId=3933&category=0) in Remedia Publications when I recently bought some of the other workbooks to use next year. My little guy's not read for this series yet, but your child might be. While the reading level is lower, it targets grade levels 4-12 with content. I wouldn't consider it "dumbed down" to take a lower reading level to target teaching a specific and important reading skill like inferences. They have other workbooks in that series that also might be helpful. The entire catalog is filled with special education materials.