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How do you handle these kinds of things?
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So far I’ve read 2 things about the CM method that leaves me scratching my head because I KNOW it’s not going to work well… The first is “Only read it once” to make them pay attention. Not going to happen. Especially not at the beginning. I have a house full of kiddos with auditory processing issues and if I don’t repeat things as needed, we would get nowhere. Not to mention the number of times they ask for something to be repeated because they didn’t catch part of something. Especially my highschooler who supposedly is supposed to listen to longer pieces. I know the goal is to increase their listening abilities, which is why I want to do this, but honestly, I have no idea what is a realistic goal here for now or later on down the road.
The 2nd was about not stopping to explain words the students may not know, they’ll learn them in context. etc. Again…we have very low vocabularies here and if they don’t understand half the words, how will they comprehend, let alone remember anything I read? Although now that I typed that, I might have an idea for that one… My therapist had told me to have my son write down words he comes across while reading that he doesn’t know and use those as his vocab words to study. I’m wondering if I should have HIM do that while I read out loud? Would that cause him to miss other things I’m saying as well? My high schooler is the tricky one because I don’t want to lower the level too much that I’d insult his intelligence, but if I go up too far advanced to where he should be, I loose him in comprehension, etc.
Tracy
Tracy – Like everything we need to fit the method to our children. In your case with auditory processing issues I would certainly expect to need more than one reading.
Thanks Tristan, I know I’ll have to tweak it some, I just wanted to make sure I’m not tweaking it so much, it’s not long CM. LOL For the younger ones I’ll do really short sections at a time as well which will help.
Where can I find a list of questions similar to what CM would ask for exams? I know I’ve seen them somewhere, but not sure where to get a list of ideas for me to use. I want something to help get them going in narrations if need be–articulating their thoughts into words is another struggle and if they have some sort of “direction” to start them off, they’d do better. I really like the idea of the more open ended questions though because my oldest also has a hard time interuprating what a question is actually asking (comprehension issues again.
) But this way he CAN show that he DOES know something without worrying about getting the question wrong. I know he knows more than he’s able to show by the typical fill-in the blank, multiple choice type stuff, or his worst nightmare–essay qustions with specific answers. This is one of the big draws for me to CM. For words that were not understood, could they make some sort of non-interupting gesture to let you know they want to go back to that word? Put a hand on your knee, raise a hand, put a poker chip on the book or something? When they make the gesture that will not distrupt others, you could quick jot it down on a 3×5 or underline it in the book. I totally agree that even CM is not one sized fits all and I am guessing she ran across students that required some tweaking. You certainly know your kids better than Charlotte so always do what works best for your family!
I also scan readings that might be problematic ahead of time and have definitions of the words already on the board when we read. I don’t need to do it very much now except for Plutarch because over time their vocabularies have improved, but this just takes a few minutes of prepwork and doesn’t interrupt the reading but words which one might not want to “guess” at will then be defined.
I will scan the readings, too and write out “difficult” words on the chalk board for my DD 7. The words will be explained before the reading so the reading will not be interupted. I understood that this was a concern for CM that reading gets interupted because words have to be explained. It takes the focus off the subject to be learned and disrupts the student’s proccess of making his own connections. But at the end it really comes down to what works for your children. I see CM method as a guideline that sometimes need to be tweaked here and there to work in our school setting;)
If he’s reading himself, he can just write them down. And I might actually have HIM reading out loud to me rather than the other way around–I’d forgotten that idea from the therapist too to catch mispronunciations (another *frequent* issue we have) and he can just underline as he goes then go back and write down definitions or whatever he needs. We can break it up into smaller sections with time inbetween to go over any before moving too far ahead.
If he made some sort of a gesture indicating that he didn’t know the word, could you finish the sentence and have him narrate the sentence back to you. Then he’d be explaining the word contextually. Also, with my ds (14) who has severe auditory processing, sometimes I stop (after shorter sections) and ask him what pictures he sees in his mind. This takes it from the “word” stage to an imaging stage. Once he has a picture in his mind I can keep reading and he is able to better place the rest of the story, even if he doesn’t know each word.
) But this way he CAN show that he DOES know something without worrying about getting the question wrong. I know he knows more than he’s able to show by the typical fill-in the blank, multiple choice type stuff, or his worst nightmare–essay qustions with specific answers. This is one of the big draws for me to CM. 
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