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Ruth
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| Posted: March 08 2007 at 9:27am | IP Logged
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My 17dd has been struggling with Seton for 4 years now, and she's only in 10th grade. She took an English entrance exam in the local community college in Nov. She scored a 96% in writing, but failed Reading Comp. by 5 points. She also took the CAT and scored a 98% in writing, but she only scored a 55% in Reading Comp.  This is why she has always struggled with school.
What can I do to help my kids do well in this area? I'm at a total loss  They're not great readers. My oldest does love to read. I'm not sure how to get the youngest ones to have that love of reading, while making them narrate. This might be two different problems here. I'm just confused.
God bless you all.
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LLMom
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| Posted: March 08 2007 at 11:41am | IP Logged
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Ruth,
Have you talked to Seton about it? They have a wonderful special services (not that she needs it for all things)and they might be able to give you some tips. I don't know if you realize that you can enroll your child in 1 special service class for free with full enrollment. I don't know if you have them all enrolled, but its an option. Even if you are not enrolled, they will talk to you to see if it would be helpful or not.
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: March 08 2007 at 12:36pm | IP Logged
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If you read aloud.. you can read a chapter and then ask someone to recap it.. maybe before you start the next day?
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JennyMaine
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Have you purchased anything to help specifically with reading comprehension? What did the community college recommend to bring up that score?
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onemoretracy
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| Posted: March 08 2007 at 4:14pm | IP Logged
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I am at a loss at how she could write so well and not score high on comprehension?
I am so sorry this is such a stuggle, how frustrating!
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Willa
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| Posted: March 08 2007 at 4:25pm | IP Logged
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onemoretracy wrote:
I am at a loss at how she could write so well and not score high on comprehension?
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That's what I was thinking. I always thought writing expression was a more advanced skill than reading comprehension.
What kinds of questions are they asking on the tests? Maybe knowing where she has trouble would help you target those issues in her reading.
I remember my oldest taking a SAT practice test at home when he was in 9th grade and having a few glitches in the reading section. The test was asking him to make inferences and draw on background knowledge in a more sophisticated way than he had done up till then.
Anyway, we stepped up on the discussion and written analysis particularly in those areas and either that or simple maturity helped.
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Ruth
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| Posted: March 08 2007 at 4:46pm | IP Logged
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She's always had trouble picking out the main idea, main confict, the theme of the story. I'm not sure what sort of questions were asked on the test. I wasn't with her when she took it.
The Community College counselor suggested reading newspaper articles and summarizing for 2 weeks and that would bring up her score. She only missed that one by 5 points. I was definately shocked at the CAT score.
I thought about using CHC's "Reading Comprehension: Stories of the Saints." Maybe once a week? Is that enough, or should it be done every day?
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andibc
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| Posted: March 08 2007 at 5:48pm | IP Logged
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Reading Detective does a better job of teaching comprehension then any other program that I have seen. There are a few stories here and there that are a little bit on the  side, but overall it does a fine job. Most other reading comprehension workbooks measure comprehension, but don't teach it.
Reading Detective
Elements of Clear Thinking for those in high school who have not spent a lot of time reading. This goes beyond comprehension and is good prep. for the SATs. Some of this does overlap with courses in logic.
Elements of Clear Thinking
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ALmom
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OK, reading comp was one of our lower scores for a while too. I did ask Seton about it and they said this was a common low area for homeschoolers, but really didn't have any ideas how to improve. I think it is more a result of the standard memorize and regurgitate without any advantage of hearing other ideas in a classroom. I looked for more subtle questions and did find some of the CHC stories had some of this to gently lead into more in depth thought. We also liked some of Kolbe's deeper probing questions.
We did get the advice from an English teacher to do the read newspapers and editorials (I think this may make them a bit more aware of some of the discussion/issues that have not been in their face since we protected them from some of the ugliness and we have always looked at logical fallacies, use of language to influence opinion and such. I know that in earlier years in high school, I had limited discussion time and this child was working very independently. In the end, we decided that in depth discussion was really what she needed and we focused on providing that during her Senior year.
I think that the biggest two factors in our lower comp score were 1)a need for greater discussion picking out subtler messages in passages - catching things like sarcasm, etc. and 2)simply whether or not the test was relying on them comprehending new age type material or not (one of the tests she got had a lot of reading comp related to parapsychology type things and frankly my dd didn't have a clue what it was even about). We weren't too concerned about that one as it wasn't one area we were all that intent on getting her background knowlege up to speed - and the next time she retook, she got more normal things to comprehend and a better score.
If you can just spend a lot of time (I know, with more dc that you are helping and everything else, we do the best we can) reading the same books and then talking about them - seeing what messages you get out of them. We even took a book that was very representative of different things. So with a Tale of Two Cities we read aloud for quite a few chapters discussing sarcasm and historical references. With another book, we discussed foreshadowing and with all of them we discussed character traits and development and themes. I noticed that she tended to take things very literally and sometimes miss hints and thus misunderstand various aspects of a book. She got better the more we discussed. She also took a co op English class for one year so that she would get more discussion than I was able to provide.
Janet
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MichelleW
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My quick reader struggles with this. He LOVES to read, but he is in such a hurry to get on with the story that he misses a lot of information. I don't have a good understanding of HOW this happens, but I know it does. We have used Reading Detective with success(even though it is aimed at younger kids than yours it might still be worth trying).
He also is a good writer. I think it is because he takes the time to compose and think. When he reads he races. He always gets the jist of what he's read, but misses the finer points. I've had him do detailed narrations as well as asking him specific (sometimes trivial) questions on the piece just to force him to slow down, pay attention, reread if necessary.
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esperanza
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Ruth,
Jer used theReading Detective RX ..its for grades 6-12.
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Ruth
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| Posted: March 11 2007 at 5:49pm | IP Logged
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Thanks, everyone. I'm definately going to buy Reading Detective RX from CTP.
God bless.
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Topic: My daughter failed reading comp. again
