heartofdakota.com

I am reading all the books from MTMM this summer and right now I am reading Atoms in the Family. My concern is that my ds struggles with reading comprehension with certain types of books. When we do standardized testing if he scores in the 50th percentile I am excited. It has improved with using HOD, he used to score much lower than that. I pretty much can tell if a book is going to be a struggle for him. I think this one is going to bring him to tears of frustration. It is a good book, but the vocabulary is very high level and very scientific, which can mess him up. There are also so many names and many of them are similar and Italian. He struggles remembering names that he is familiar with, much less ones he hasn't heard before. It also has very little action and lots of description of all the scientific things like fission, nuclear bombardment etc. I know by the time he gets here he will have done The Elements and the Marie Curie book which should help some, but I still see that he will really struggle to grasp this book and written narrations may be next to impossible. He does ok with books with higher vocabulary if there is action for him to grasp on to or if it is a topic he is very familiar with.

So I feel like I have a few options and I am looking for advice. My first thought is that I could let him start reading it and if he is really struggling then I could come along side him and either read it aloud or really help him after he reads by pointing out some things I noticed and seeing if that helps. I also thought about dropping the written narration and just taking whatever he can grasp and calling it a day. My last option would be to substitute an easier book on the same subject. I have looked for videos etc to see if there is something we could watch this summer that might make him more familiar with it all, but I haven't found much. I also thought of having him read the easier book this summer and then see if that helped set the frame work.

It is just really tough for me. I know he should be able to comprehend this kind of book and it is an important stepping stone for him to move toward high school level books, but I also have to acknowledge his limits. I just don't know how best to handle it.

Any of the suggestions you mentioned would be perfect. You have to help your son be successful. There is no "wrong way" to HS you DS. That is probably one of the biggest reasons why you began HS him in the first place.

Out of your suggestions I like the one about reading just that book out loud to him. If the written narrations for that book become too difficult you could require shorter narrations or have him orally narrate to you while you be his scribe.

Lynn,

Maadrose did a wonderful job of talking through options with you and sharing some great advice. I'll just pop-in to mention that there are a couple of things that will make a big difference in how well your son is able to handle the Fermi book (that are not readily apparent from reading through the book without the benefit of the activities and experiments in our guide). One is that the students will have had several types of exposure to many of the concepts in the Fermi book prior to reading it. The Elements, combined with John Hudson Tiner's Exploring the World of Chemistry, plus the biographies of Curie and Einstein, and a myriad of experiments, all come before the Fermi book for a reason. This is to allow the kiddos some introduction to the scientific concepts in the Fermi book prior to reading it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Fermi book is written by Fermi's wife, and as such is much more of a story about their family life and marriage than it is strictly about science. Of course, the scientific concepts are in there as Fermi progresses in his research, but the science is not the whole story but rather one part of the story. The book reads more like a novel of someone's life story, in the context of some really startling historical events surrounding their life, rather than a scientific fact book. As such, if your son can follow other biographies to some extent, he'll be able to follow this one (just maybe not all of the science included, but that's o.k. because that isn't necessarily the goal).

We're also not thinking that the kiddos are grasping everything in the book, as it is mainly meant to be laying the groundwork for a future, deeper study of chemistry and physics. Fermi's life is also linked to the history study, and makes much more sense in the context of what the kiddos are studying for history as well. So, there are many unseen layers that will all contribute to the effectiveness of the Fermi book.

I would deifinitely give the book a chance. As you mentioned, with your son on the brink of high school, reading higher level material is a good thing to do. Any time a skill like this is new, it is wise to downsize our expectations. So, I would go into the readings with the expectation that your son will grasp some of Fermi's life and understand he was very important in the course of history due to his research in atomic energy. I wouldn't expect much beyond that and not get bogged down in trying to make your son understand the science in the book. Since you've read the book, when you visit with your son about it I would focus on things in Fermi's life that you remember from the reading, rather than worrying about turning the book into a science lesson. If you adjust your goals, I think the book can be successful on that level.

You can always shift into one of the coping strategies you mentioned in your post above as a back-up plan. However, I would start out with the book and plans as written and see what comes of it. Your son will be almost a whole year older by the time he gets to this book, and he will also have much more context by then for both the time period and the scientific concepts when he gets there. You may be surprised.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thanks Carrie for replying and helping me to see the big picture. I am reading the science in the order he will read so I know you are right that he will have more hooks to hang his understanding on then he does now. I like your advice to downsize my expectations. That is what I was thinking of when I said I would just take whatever he could gleam from it and call it done. I think I will tell him that if he doesn't understand all the science things that is ok, that I want him to just focus more on his life and what is going on there. He has a tendency to get very stressed if he is reading and starts seeing a lot of things that he doesn't understand. I saw that a few times with the inventor books this year so what I told him to do was to not feel like he had to narrate everything, but to pick a part that he found the most interesting and narrate on just that part. That seemed to really help. In fact his best written narrations were the ones from the inventor books. Maybe if I do that with this book that might help also. Thanks again for calming my panic.