DD(8) thinking=99th, working memory=6th. She's completely organized and remembers what her "special" class is that day, where she goes after school. But she can't remember all of the smoke that covered our area from the Arizona fires in June. DS#2 is very distressed with her not reading chapter books - she complains they are "boring." This sounds like trouble concentrating to me.
So it looks like once DD8 gets into a routine, she can do really well with it. She is probably good at getting things into long term memory - check if she knows how she is doing this. I used to learn thing - really get them into long term memory, while the teacher was talking about them, as long as they had a tiny bit of abstract thinking content. And my processing speed is fast - so I could get stuff into long term memory almost in real time.
I'll bet DD8 would explain how she knows when the specials are by referencing some 'odd' coinsedence - such as 'Musical scales have 8 notes and Music is 8th period - how could I forget that?!?' or 'Art starts with the first letter of the alphabet, and it happens 1st period - that's easy!' Humor is a great way to shortcut into long term memory - remember the time.... (you get the picture)
As for chapter books being boring that worries me, and I don't think that saying 'it's concentration issue' is enough.
What - exactly - is she having trouble concentrating on?
Would she do better if she made a list of character names, and a few handle traits to remember them by?
Or draw a picture of the most dramatic scene in the chapter,
Or draw a family tree of the characters - and make up some kind of social 'family' tree to diagram the friendships
Or some kind of graphic organizer with what are the possible themes and big picture ideas the the author was trying to communicate about and place cartoons of moments that are evidence for various hypothesis?
Make clay characters of the books and simple sets, and move them from scene to scene.
Or somehow try and get into the head of the writers - maybe by reading several books by the same writer and seeing what big ideas or little ticks always come up? Roald Dahl and Orson Scott Card come to mind...
If she tries any of these techniques the idea is to review her notes just before she sits down to read, and then add to her project after every chapter. Writers try to end chapters in an emotionally exciting point - because they know that there is always the chance that folks will just close the book and never finish.
Maybe your daughter isn't reading books that are advance enough to be interesting to her brain because her reading skills are lower then her enjoying skills? How does she feel about audio books? I love it when my family has occasion to be trapped in the car together all enjoying an audio book for hours and hours.
Or maybe she was just pulling her brother's chain? Go EQ if that, huh?
Smiles,
Grinity
