Board index › Coping in life › Parents' Discussion

Types of Homework

Page 2 of 2 [ 23 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2

Previous topic | Next topic

kramer1
Blue Jay
Blue Jay

User avatar

Joined: 30 Sep 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 81

06 Dec 2008, 8:16 am

DW - You're writing for him? Is it really that bad?



violet_yoshi
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Aug 2004
Age: 44
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,297

06 Dec 2008, 9:19 am

I have a handwriting disability, and it can be that bad. Your hand simply cramps up and you cannot write without extreme pain. I guess it's difficult explaining it to someone without a handwriting disability, but it's like your muscles just give up and say "No more!" There's not much you can do once that happens.



EvilTeach
Pileated woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 14 Mar 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 196

07 Dec 2008, 11:59 am

My evil boy is in the same boat as everyone else.

Most worksheets are make work.

Hand writing is painful after a while.

Some solutions we tried....

I taught him to type. Typing doesn't hurt, and he get's it done a lot faster. He gets immedient feed back on misspelled words.... kind of like i just did with the misspelling of immediate.

His IEP says that parents have the right to adjust the homework as needed.

Now. What does that mean in practice?

The first sheet of his geometry homework had a number of questions on it. The last three which involved using a ruler to measure a line segment in millimeters.
He has understood measuring with a ruler since he was 4 years old.

The second sheet was 15 similar measuring problems. Rather than put him thought that, I wrote a note on the page that I was satisfied with the skill, and had him move on to the next sheet.


In another case, there were word problems, and I am sure you parents have seen this in aspy land..... The word problems were ambigueous. They could be interpreted several different ways. This is a great source of frustration to my boy. I finally figured out a way to deal with this.

I have him add an assumption to the question, that deambiguates the question.
That allows him to answer the question, and show the teacher that he thought about the problem, and found a way to resolve it with out simply giving up, and complaining about the quality of the question.

This has the added bonus that one can talk and and consider that there are many ways to look at a problem, and that two different people can read something and come away with two different viewpoints.

One of the keys to good communication is the ability to verbally set a context, so that both parties are thinking about the same thing at the time of the conversation. Recognizing this fact can be very hard for an aspie to grasp.



violet_yoshi
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Aug 2004
Age: 44
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,297

07 Dec 2008, 2:05 pm

EvilTeach wrote:
My evil boy is in the same boat as everyone else.

Most worksheets are make work.

Hand writing is painful after a while.

Some solutions we tried....

I taught him to type. Typing doesn't hurt, and he get's it done a lot faster. He gets immedient feed back on misspelled words.... kind of like i just did with the misspelling of immediate.

His IEP says that parents have the right to adjust the homework as needed.

Now. What does that mean in practice?

The first sheet of his geometry homework had a number of questions on it. The last three which involved using a ruler to measure a line segment in millimeters.
He has understood measuring with a ruler since he was 4 years old.

The second sheet was 15 similar measuring problems. Rather than put him thought that, I wrote a note on the page that I was satisfied with the skill, and had him move on to the next sheet.


In another case, there were word problems, and I am sure you parents have seen this in aspy land..... The word problems were ambigueous. They could be interpreted several different ways. This is a great source of frustration to my boy. I finally figured out a way to deal with this.

I have him add an assumption to the question, that deambiguates the question.
That allows him to answer the question, and show the teacher that he thought about the problem, and found a way to resolve it with out simply giving up, and complaining about the quality of the question.

This has the added bonus that one can talk and and consider that there are many ways to look at a problem, and that two different people can read something and come away with two different viewpoints.

One of the keys to good communication is the ability to verbally set a context, so that both parties are thinking about the same thing at the time of the conversation. Recognizing this fact can be very hard for an aspie to grasp.


The issue of ambiguity reminds me of a funny short I saw on Sesame Street:

http://www.sesamestreet.org/video_playe ... 7dea8a73e7

Ernie thinks at one point that another way to solve the answer is that there's only one sweet food being the cookie, and the other foods aren't sweet so they're different. Then Ernie finds out later that all the foods are made from cookies, like a Cookie Fajita, Cookieroni Pizza, and Cookie Burger. LoL



DW_a_mom
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 22 Feb 2008
Gender: Female
Posts: 13,689
Location: Northern California

07 Dec 2008, 8:32 pm

kramer1 wrote:
DW - You're writing for him? Is it really that bad?


If the writing is going to be legible, it takes him forever, and he can't do homework from the moment he comes home until he goes to bed without any breaks, and that is what it would take, although some days still are like that (in that he does nothing but homework til bed). If he writes at a reasonable speed, I have to go back and clean it up or no one can read it. If something needs to be in his writing, we do the later, so that I can see he is trying and getting the concepts.

He definitely needs to type, and typing isn't as frustrating or painful as handwriting, but it's still excruciatingly slow for him. So, still, there just aren't hours in the day that will allow him to accomplish the volume of written work he has to do. The elementary school understood this, and allowed us to use our discretion in cutting down assignments; the middle school hasn't been willing to because he's in "advanced" classes. I do want him to keep typing to get his speed up and because I believe it should be his own work, but unless I take a certain portion for him there is just no way he can get it done.

So, yes, it really is that bad.

I know we can do voice and dictate and all that but I just don't believe that is the best thing for him, and all the kids are struggling with the homework volume. I just don't see the point. If he can demonstrate he knows the concepts, why does he have to do 15 lines instead of 5? I honestly believe it is better education for him to do 5 independently, completely his own work, no assistance, than have to rely on help to be able to do 15. What I haven't been able to do is get the middle school to agree to this. So I'm left being in the homework business.


_________________
Mom to an amazing young adult AS son, plus an also amazing non-AS daughter. Most likely part of the "Broader Autism Phenotype" (some traits).


Moop
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 3 Dec 2008
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 466
Location: Right here! Ya! Right behind the monitors glass! Get me out of here!

07 Dec 2008, 8:34 pm

What really helped me was typing all of my homework. I could think more clearly when typing, it comes more natural. I even typed some classwork assignments.



violet_yoshi
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Aug 2004
Age: 44
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,297

07 Dec 2008, 8:47 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:
kramer1 wrote:
DW - You're writing for him? Is it really that bad?


If the writing is going to be legible, it takes him forever, and he can't do homework from the moment he comes home until he goes to bed without any breaks, and that is what it would take, although some days still are like that (in that he does nothing but homework til bed). If he writes at a reasonable speed, I have to go back and clean it up or no one can read it. If something needs to be in his writing, we do the later, so that I can see he is trying and getting the concepts.

He definitely needs to type, and typing isn't as frustrating or painful as handwriting, but it's still excruciatingly slow for him. So, still, there just aren't hours in the day that will allow him to accomplish the volume of written work he has to do. The elementary school understood this, and allowed us to use our discretion in cutting down assignments; the middle school hasn't been willing to because he's in "advanced" classes. I do want him to keep typing to get his speed up and because I believe it should be his own work, but unless I take a certain portion for him there is just no way he can get it done.

So, yes, it really is that bad.

I know we can do voice and dictate and all that but I just don't believe that is the best thing for him, and all the kids are struggling with the homework volume. I just don't see the point. If he can demonstrate he knows the concepts, why does he have to do 15 lines instead of 5? I honestly believe it is better education for him to do 5 independently, completely his own work, no assistance, than have to rely on help to be able to do 15. What I haven't been able to do is get the middle school to agree to this. So I'm left being in the homework business.


Especially when you can see as a parent, that it's little more than busywork due to the lack of the teacher wanting to actually teach.