Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Low comprehension scores

Have you checked out books like The Number Devil? I love this one for being a fun story...about numbers. (I'm going to have to add it to my signature or something...)

Another vote here for "no no, anything but drawing", although of course your DS may vary. Can't speak to the AR stuff, we don't have it here, but we've had trouble getting reading material that's engaging and any challenge at all for DS5 - fiction that's at the right reading level is usually "too scary". Some things that are proving useful to us:
- science books! Is your DS not into science as well as maths? While there are some great maths books, if he's into science as well and his teacher will let him read science books I'd think that would be problem solved. We can tell DS comprehends them because he won't shut up about what he reads, lol.
- once he was sent back from school with a Just William book, which has abstruse vocabulary and also complex "he thinks that she knows that he thinks" situations. This was a problem as he didn't like to interrupt his reading flow to ask for help, but then couldn't understand the next chapter because he'd missed things in this one. So what we did was: he'd read a chapter to himself; then I'd read the same chapter aloud to him, and we agreed a hand signal he'd make if he wanted anything explained. Not ideal - really the vocab was a bit too hard for him here - but this was one of the first books school gave him after they stopped sending him home with reading scheme books, so we didn't want to complain!
- with stuff that's just not very interesting and which he tends to skim, I'm not above requiring him to read a homework chapter aloud instead of in his head, and explicitly making the point that if you're reading something for work you're required to read it well enough that you can answer questions about it.

Dottie, the link doesn't work for me. What's the name of the series?

Thanks

Some gifted children just find reading too slow and laborious. Sometimes the right material just tunes them in. My son wouldn't read (and still won't) but he wanted to read Nicholas Nickleby! So I bought him this

http://www.amazon.com/Dominoes-Nich...1?ie=UTF8&qid=1239365853&sr=11-1

- it has little comprehension tests at the end of each chapter so you can check his grasp of the story - and he read it. hasn't read much else since, but it just goes to show
(The headwords series are graded so they introduce only a limited vocabulary depending on the series/edition. I think they're great)

Sorry - the link should be:
http://www.amazon.com/Nicholas-Nick...1?ie=UTF8&qid=1239366479&sr=11-1

Thank you, Dottie. I think I have blocked cookies for that website and all I got was the state selection screen.

We read most of the Sir Circumference books and the Pythagoras book last year but haven't read the rest.

The book he is reading at school is the Encyclopedia of Animals (his choice). She has him read about one animal (his choice) then asks him to answer some questions. She has never limited his reading material, he is free to choose anything listed as 3rd grade and up.

Interestingly enough, we tried the whole drawing experiment last night with the book we are reading at home. "Into the Land of Unicorns" which is a complete removal from his normal reading stuff. I was hoping to use it as a sort of lead in to Harry Potter.

Anyway, he's read 4 chapters so far. We put together a little book and I had him draw a picture representing the main idea from each chapter. He was "spot on". Tonight I'm going to ask him to explain to DP what has happened in the book so far and see what I get. Maybe his pictures as reference will help him. I'll keep you posted.

That's great Shari and I'm glad to hear the teacher gives him freedom to choose his books. That makes such a difference!