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My rising 6th grader is dyslexic.(12yrs old) He has overcome his reading difficulties and is now an excellent reader but other issues still remain. His has so much trouble with verbal expression so narrations are downright painful. He thinks in pictures and has to translate these images into a story. When we read a passage and I ask him to narrate, he gets a deer in the headlights look. His words are, "I know what it said but it's really hard to tell it"
We did WWE for 2 years and it led us through a guided narration with shorter passages at first and only one or two sentence narrations required. He did alright until the passages became longer. Dictation did go well, though, even with longer passages. It is the original thought that is difficult for him.

I really want to use HOD next year but I'm having trouble knowing exactly how to handle this issue along with wondering if Preparing would be too easy. He can definately handle all the reading in CtC or maybe even RtR but I worry that the narration and the writing. Also, he has to put A LOT of effort into writing anything. I think it is just the same issue except on paper. His paragraph writing is borderline and he does not seem to catch his mistakes, such as runon or incomplete sentences. Am I kidding myself with thinking he could keep up with the work? Should we just spend some time on this over the summer?

Any advice would be welcome!

My sixth grader (who is a prolific writer and scores advanced on state testing in all areas, including language arts) did Preparing with Extensions this year. It was plenty "meaty" enough. There were the easier picture books or chapter books in the Independent History box, but they complimented the extension SO well (Leif the Lucky gave her pictures of Vikings and their ships as she read Beorn the Proud, William Shakespeare and the Globe provided the visual backdrop for the extension book Shakespeare Stealer). I wouldn't worry there won't be "enough" here. In fact, you couldn't pay me to skip it! Carrie described this year as helping students form the "mental pegs" on which to hang the next four years of history in HOD. So true! It did exactly that.

Have you considered comics as a way for your son to express himself and narrate back what he learned? Let him illustrate and fill in speech bubbles in printed, blank "comic strips". If that works, eventually pick one comic a week to turn into a 3 to 5 sentence paragraph on Friday. Perhaps the "graphic organizer" nature of the comic strip can help him organize his thoughts for narration and paragraph writing?

Somehow I accidentally posted this question twice.

Thank you for the response! I think I needed to hear from someone who has done Preparing with an older child. I think it was the final push needed. The comic idea sound great! He does enjoy drawing also, so graphic organizers would really appeal to his highly visual artistic ability. Oddly enough, I recently recieved his results from standardized testing. He did very well in all LA areas, very much to my surprise. The oral narrations seem to be his biggest issue. Not sure if I should push the issue or not.