Your poor DS. The scenario of him in the centre of a room with four adults is appalling. It sounds like they are trying to make it as unpleasant as possible for him, in the hope that it would serve as deterring punishment or if it doesn’t work on him, they may be hoping it has an effect on you. I suspect if a group of teenagers were seen doing this, it would be regarded as bullying, but staff are doing this... I really do hope some solution or alternative can be found sooner rather than later.
Wrt to comprehension of fiction vs information text, my eldest was scoring distinctions in science competitions, but was placed in a remedial reading group because she didn’t seem proficient at reading the fiction material in class (she was 1-2 years younger than the rest of her class). When I probed, my daughter reported never using her imagination so they were just words on paper. I’m not a fan of Stephanie Meyer’s works, but reading the Twilight series at age 11 was the first time my daughter actually followed a plot and thereafter, she voluntarily read fiction regularly, so I owe a debt to the author. Both the Twilight and Harry Potter series might be helpful in that one could read the novels, watch the movies and compare the two to appreciate some of the nuances of the written word.
