Taking Note of Note Taking

My plan to have Kai work on his comprehension skills through the short videos on the BrainPop app hit a snag when he stopped watching the movies. With him often losing points because he did not score well on the quizzes given after the movie, he decided that there were other apps he’d rather play with.

And so I restructured the incentive plan. He would only gain points for doing well on the tests given at the end of each video, but would not lose any if he did not do well. However, he would have to try; on weekends, he would not be able to use the iPad for anything else if he did not do the BrainPop first.

While that new plan got him to watch the video of the day, he still did not perform well on the quizzes. Too often he scored around 50%.

I thought it would help him if he took notes while he watched the movie.

I instructed him to write down the things that were most important. I tried to educate him that good note taking was not about writing every fact, but rather taking note of the most relevant items and writing only things that he would not know or remember otherwise.

Kai proceeded to pause the movie every five seconds and write down everything he heard.

The first time he took notes it took him about forty minutes for him to get through a four minute video.

On the positive side, he scored 100%. I think the act of writing everything down got him to pay attention much more than he had been.

Since then I’ve kept harping on him to not write everything down. As he watches the video, I try to coach him on what he should write and what he can let pass.

Usually he doesn’t do as I say.

Though this weekend he got through a video in about a half hour, so that is some progress.

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of being a parent for me is when my son doesn’t follow all of my great advice.

Do you have any suggestions? I’ll be taking notes.

Practicing Comprehension Skills Through BrainPop

BrainPop has been one of my son’s favorite apps from the time he first got an iPad. We like it because the short animated movies teach a variety of subjects including math, science, social studies and more. Kai likes it because the character of the orange robot, Moby, is very funny as he antagonizes his buddy, Tim.

Lately I’ve noticed that as Kai has seen just about all of the different movies the app has to offer, he watches only the funny parts, skipping all of the educational content. I was wondering if he remembered at all what the movies are attempting to teach.

The cost to subscribe is over $7 a month, so it’s not terribly expensive, but it does add up. And for nearly $90 a year, I wanted to make sure Kai was actually learning something.

So, I’ve started making him take the test that is given at the end of each featured movie of the day. He had been skipping that part, but we are now tying in taking the test with earning points from our Point Store. If he answers 80% or 90% of the questions correctly, he earns 50 points. If he gets 100% correct, he earns 100 points. And if he scores less than 80%, he loses points.

The first day he struggled and got only 70% correct. I could see that while he can answer most questions about facts that were given, he struggled when he had to make inferences. It is the same issues he has with reading comprehension.

The next day, he still struggled with the same types of questions, but improved his score to 80%. I saw that he was paying much closer attention to the main content of the movie.

So, I’m thinking that this will be good practice for him. He can still laugh at all the funny parts. But, I’m hoping it helps to condition his brain for listening and thinking through what he hears, too.

Math Word Problem Struggles

Kai does very well in math normally, but there are areas where he really struggles.

I had him do coordinate plane word problems on his online Khan Academy program the other day.

The first problem stated that an ad was as 4 inches wide by 3 inches high. The upper left corner of the ad was given as (-6, -2) on the coordinate plane. Kai would have to place the four corners of the ad.

I thought this was a very easy problem for him.

So I was a little surprised when he didn’t know where to begin.

I asked him if he knew where one corner of the ad was. He tentatively moved his cursor to place the point in the wrong spot.

I stopped him and asked him to read where the sentence that gave the coordinates for the upper left corner.

He was starting to get agitated, and he did not pick up the fact that all he needed to do was to plot a point at (-6, -2).

I wrote out (x, y) on a sheet of paper and asked if he knew the x and y coordinates of the upper left corner. He would not answer the question.

I then told him that the he needed to plot a point at (-6, -2) and asked him to point on the screen where that point is. He waved his hand wildly, not pointing to any particular spot. He was getting more agitated, and I was starting to get that way, too.

I finally explained that -6 on the x coordinate meant that we needed to count six places to the left, and -2 on the y coordinate meant that we needed to count two places down. This was not the first time we have worked on coordinate planes. This really should not have been so hard.

I finally got him to place that first point. I breathed a sigh of relief as I thought the other three corners would be easy.

I was wrong.

He started to place the next corner in the wrong spot.

I stopped him. I pointed out that the first point he plotted was the upper left corner. When it says “upper,” does it mean that it is at the top or bottom? He answered bottom.

Huh?!

I was getting very frustrated.

I drew a rectangle on the paper. I asked him to point to the upper left corner, and he was able to do so. I asked him to write down the coordinate of the upper left corner. He resisted.

I yelled that he needed to write it down.

Now he was getting more upset.

If the upper left corner was at (-6, -2) and the height was 3, how far down to we count to get to the bottom left corner?

I thought I was giving away the answer but he just did not seem to understand any of it.

My frustration boiled over, and I was shouting my questions at him. He was yelling back saying that he never wanted to Khan Academy with me again.

My wife came downstairs to find out what was going on.

She suggested that she could take over for me, but I didn’t want to end on this sour note.

I had Kai take a five-minute break, which extended longer than that. For most of the time he was still yelling that he wanted to do this with Mom, not Dad.

Finally, my wife encouraged him to come try again.

I spoke very softly. Okay, we know where the upper left corner is. And we know the height is 3. Let’s count down three from the point we already plotted.

Finally, with me pretty much giving him the complete answer, he was able to plot out the other three corners.

And after he completed this one problem, he was able to do four more similar to it all on his own.

But it was an eye-opener for me how he struggles to comprehend the simplest things that are in word problems. It showed me how reading comprehension is still such a big issue for him.

So, we’ve got a couple of big things to work on: Kai’s reading comprehension, and my patience.

I think that progress with the latter will be essential to making progress on the former.

Reading Comprehension, Life Comprehension

As is our usual bedtime custom, my son and I were reading the other evening. It was the day that he had his major incident at school, so he was still feeling glum. Instead of reading himself, Kai wanted me to read to him.

He picked a book we got from the library, one of the Fox series written by noted children’s author, James Marshall.

I read aloud.

The story begins with Fox’s mother asking him to take his little sister to the park. Fox does not want to go; he wants to stay home and watch tv instead. But his mother insists so he reluctantly went. At the park, he meets a beautiful girl fox. She thought it was wonderful that Fox took his little sister to the park. Fox said of course, he loves to do that. His sister rolls her eyes.

I stopped and asked Kai why Fox’s sister rolled her eyes. He did not know, he said.

I asked him what Fox said right before she rolled her eyes. I had to point out the passage and Kai read the part about Fox saying that he enjoyed bringing his sister to the park.

I again asked Kai why his sister rolled her eyes at that. Still, he did not know.

I asked him if Fox really wanted to take his sister to the park. Yes, said Kai.

I went back to the earlier passage that indicated that his mother had to force him to take his sister to the park. Kai still had trouble putting it all together. I ended up explaining the whole thing to him.

Kai is a good reader when it comes to knowing the words. But as this one example shows, even seemingly simple aspects of stories are hard for him to comprehend.

* * * * *
At dinnertime, my wife and I always have Kai talk about his day at school. Oftentimes he will express anger at a teacher or student.

“David is mean.”

Why is that?

“He’s a bully.”

What did he do?

He got to use the computer.

Oh, so you are angry that he got to use the computer?

“Yes.”

Did you get to use the computer?

“No.”

It takes awhile, but we piece together that Kai misbehaved and lost his privilege to use the computer at break time. The other boy got to use the computer, which made Kai mad.

It was all the result of his own action. But Kai does not seem to understand that. In his mind, the other boy was mean, and that is that.

* * * * *
After seeing Kai’s difficulty in answering the simple questions about the bedtime story the other night, I realized that the same difficulty he has in comprehending the story was also affecting his reasoning skills when it came to real-life events.

He can’t put two and two together to understand that his own actions are what cause some of his worst moments.

Until he can, I think it will always be a challenge to get him to accept responsibility for his actions. Until then, while his anger is seen less often than before, I think we will continue to see the type of inappropriate behaviors that he did the other day.

So, this is our mission.

It’s not just about reading comprehension. It’s about his life.

An Introduction to Harry Potter: Just the Start?

My son’s school apparently showed the first Harry Potter movie to his class last week. I say apparently as we are never quite sure of the things Kai tells us about school. He doesn’t explain things very well and still has trouble answering questions. Sometimes we are just not sure what to believe.

But, this one appears to be true. He told us that he wanted to watch it again for our weekly video night so we got it on our regular trip to the library this weekend. When we all watched it together on Saturday night, we could tell that he had seen it before.

This is a first in that, prior to this, he has only been interested in animated films or those that featured Muppets, or Scarecrows and Cowardly Lions, or other non-humans. While there are all sorts of fanciful creatures in the Harry Potter films, this is first movie that features mostly human characters that Kai has shown any interest in.

This is actually not the first interest Kai has shown in the Harry Potter series. About two years ago, he discovered my set of the Harry Potter books and took them all off the bookshelf and flipped through each one. I’m fairly certain that his interest was due to the number on the cover of each book that indicates its position in the series. As we watched the movie, he again went to the bookshelf to take another look at the books. He told us how many chapters each book had.

I am hoping that one day he will actually read them. While the movies are enjoyable, I want my son to experience the joy of being totally immersed into a different world that only a good book can do.

However, I’ve often wondered if his mind will ever allow him to enjoy a fictional tale with a plot as imaginative and complex as the Harry Potter ones are. I have heard that some kids with autism have trouble with stories that are so far from the literal and concrete world that is comfortable for them. While Kai’s reading skills are advanced for his age, his comprehension is not as comparable, and he does sometimes seem to prefer factual, straightforward books like the non-fiction books about the planets that we get from the library every week.

Even with the movie, I wonder how much he understood. He was entertained by the funnier scenes such as when Harry’s invitation to Hogwarts was delivered by owls to the Dursley’s house. But, when it came to the more serious parts of the story, he seemed less interested.

Still, when I was his age, I was just reading “Dick and Jane” books. So, I guess I can be patient and see where his reading will take him in three or four years. Like the young Harry, Kai is full of surprises. So, I’m not about to give up hope on his literacy skills.