Thursday, December 20, 2012

ACC - "The Mystery of the Missed Connection" article - January-February 2013


Many months ago, I was contacted by a writer, Daisy Yuhas, from Scientific American Mind magazine who was inquiring about connecting with an adult who has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum, who would be interested in being interviewed by her for an article about ACC in their magazine. After carefully checking her credentials and exploring their magazine further, I sent out Daisy's request to the ACC Adults yahoo e-mail support group and was so excited to learn that there was an interest from not only one adult who has ACC (but from SEVERAL adults) who wanted to be interviewed for the article.

In our correspondence between then and now, it was revealed that Daisy hoped to be able to not only write an article about one adult, who has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum, in the magazine but to also include a follow-up to the article where she could include several more stories about other adults with ACC (who she interviewed).

This morning I received an e-mail from Daisy Yuhas who informed me that the ACC article is finished and it will appear in the January/February 2013 issue of Scientific American Mind. The additional stories of adults with ACC was published today, December 20, 2012, and appears in their Scientific American Blog.

I am including Daisy's e-mail below, so you can read it for yourself:

"Dear Sandie,

I hope that you're doing well! I just wanted to share that the agenesis of the corpus callosum feature will appear in the January-February 2013 issue of Scientific American Mind (you can find a preview with a paragraph or two online—the issue will hit newsstands in the new year). In addition, Scienitfic American has run a blog post that shares a few additional stories. I realize I can't possibly do justice to the full range of experiences shared— but I want to thank you again for your help in putting me in touch with others who could share their stories. I truly believe that readers will find strength in reading these experiences.

All the best and very happy holidays,

-Daisy"

This is incredibly exciting news and, thanks to each one of the adults who have ACC who shared their stories (and who revealed personal insights about living life with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum), as well as the people at Scientific American Mind, there is now an even greater awareness about ACC, which brings us one step further in helping other adults and children in the world who have this congenital brain anomaly.

I know that (as a mom myself of a child with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum) I definitely plan to buy a copy of the January/February 2013 Scientific American Mind magazine for The Mystery of the Missed Connection article.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Teacher of ACC Student - Reading Comprehension



Alexandra Berube has written several guest blog articles here about her teaching experiences with her student who has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum. She is a former Kindergarten teacher, who first taught the student in her Kindergarten class and she also tutors the student, who is currently in a regular 3rd grade mainstream class.

Her most recent article today is about Reading Comprehension. In our e-mail correspondence, Alexandra shared information with me that I am including here for you to see (with her permission) as a preface to her article:

Alexandra writes:

"Max came into Kindergarten already reading because his family had been working with him before he came to kindergarten. He already knew a lot of sight words and understood decoding and blending when we started working together. His speech skills were not strong so it was hard to understand him (and know he was reading the correct word) but he did speech therapy and that helped a lot."


GUEST BLOG POST


Reading Comprehension--Taking it to the Next Level
by Alexandra Berube, bostontutoringservices.com


Max and I did not spend time working together during his second grade year, because he was receiving services through school. At the end of his second grade year, I began working with him again, picking up where we had left off the previous summer. His mother's goals were for him to improve his reading comprehension in the following three areas: making inferences, comparing and contrasting, and deciphering main idea/details in text.

In my assessment of his reading comprehension at that point, I noticed that he didn't anticipate the next steps in a text based on the clues. For example, if a character is put into a situation and someone tells him not to move, *Max did not anticipate that the character would of course move, because that is standard literary practice. He didn't know how to anticipate these common literary themes that would help him make predictions in his reading. His predictions were usually completely unrelated to the story structure so far.

I started reading books with him that all had a theme: the character did something bad at first, then did something good, and everybody likes the character in the end. We read books such as Walter the Farting Dog and Leo Lionni’s Frederick. I wanted him to learn of this story pattern, which is so common in literature (and movies). I also wanted him to be able to contrast and compare the way that the character interacted with the others in the book in the beginning (and how they treated the character in response), and how things changed at the end. This also related to cause and effect relationships, because the character acted a certain way and the effect was that the others related back to him in a certain way (first he was ‘bad’ and they didn’t like him, then he was ‘good’ and they did like him). We also did many text-to-self and self-to-text relationships to help him connect to what he was reading.

We continued to practice reading stories with this literary theme so that he would improve in his ability to make predictions. Adults are used to so many classic story patterns that we can anticipate when a common literary theme is being used. But young students don't have this storage of knowledge, and I wanted him to get used to more and more of the literary themes he would encounter in his reading, so he would be able to make predictions and make connections between what he already knew and what he would read.

Talking about the structure of the stories also helped focus on the main point, because the main point is a larger perspective of the story, not the details in the story specifically. Many students focus on the individual details and can't back up farther to get the main point, but when talking about patterns between one story to another, it's easier to step back and see the larger story structures at hand. The more you do this, the more they also begin to understand the order of events and the idea of cause and effect

The more we did text-to-text relationships between the books we were reading with common story patterns (including many text-to-self relationships so he could relate personally to what was going on in the story), the more he was able to make predictions about the text, make inferences about what was going on, determine what the main point was, and figure out the cause and effect relationships.

This study of a specific literary theme helped Max realize that there are patterns in stories that he can recognize. All stories will not have this literary theme of ‘character is unliked, does something good, is then liked by others,’ but all will have a main point, all will have cause-and-effect relationships, and all stories have a beginning, middle, and end so that you can compare and contrast what happens from one part of the story to the next. You can also connect stories to other stories and to yourself. You can make predictions based on what you have seen characters do in other stories, or based on what you would do in that situation (text-to-self relationships). Just the knowledge that all this is going on helped Max know to look for these clues, and to be an active reader (not just ingesting details, but seeking out broader answers). This is the goal of every teacher in instructing reading comprehension.


*Name has been changed.


Hint: don't forget to check your local library when looking for the books mentioned here (or other books).


About Alexandra Berube


Alexandra is the Managing Director of Boston Tutoring Services, a tutoring company that offers one-to-one in-home tutoring in Massachusetts. She is also a former Kindergarten teacher who also tutors students in grades
K-8, in all subject areas, including test preparation.


--click below for printable version of this article--

Reading Comprehension--Taking it to the Next Level - printable version


Watch for an upcoming guest blog post here in the near future from Teacher/Tutor, Alexandra Berube.

As a teacher and professional tutor, Alexandra plans to share more future guest blog posts here--where she will reveal additional insight into her student who has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum and how it affects the student's education, and she will also be sharing teaching strategies that have helped her student.**


**Note: Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum has a very wide range of effects--ranging anywhere from no symptoms--or mild learning disabilities--to severe mental and/or physical challenges. It can sometimes also be seen with other medical conditions, genetic syndromes, chromosomal anomalies and more. Every person with ACC can present differently in terms of their development, cognitive abilities and educational needs.

Each child who has ACC is a unique individual with their own abilities, weaknesses, challenges, motivations, strengths, as well as their own style of learning.


Sunday, December 9, 2012

Teacher of ACC Student - Question #2


Alexandra Berube, the former Kindergarten teacher, who taught a student with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (and who also tutors the student - who is currently in 3rd grade), has written several guest blog articles here about her teaching experiences.

Alexandra welcomes questions from you--if you might have a question.

The second question for Alexandra comes from the parent of an 8 year old child who has ACC, after the parent read Alexandra's previous Multiplication article.

The parent writes:

"This article came at the perfect time as my daughter is now working on multiplication. This is just what I needed to help her as she is struggling with it. Now if we can figure out how to help her find the key words to do word problems. Whatever math concept she did on the regular problems, she just automatically assumes it is what she does on the word problems, not realizing it could be different."


GUEST BLOG POST - Reply to Question


Mathematics from the Beginning (Struggles Overcome in Kindergarten)
by Alexandra Berube, bostontutoringservices.com


In Kindergarten, it seemed at first that *Max did not have a strong understanding of one-to-one correspondence (he would count something twice or recount something). With more practice, however, it seemed that he may have been having difficulty with the task of physically counting objects with his hand and remembering how many objects he had touched. The combination of tasks—physically touching and cognitively counting—may have been challenging for him, rather than the concept of one-to-one correspondence itself. We found that drawing a dot for each time he counted worked better, because he was in control of each mark he was putting down, which helped him retain that he had counted the number, versus just touching an object. We have used dot-drawing ever since over physical manipulatives.

The concept that Max struggled with the most was patterns. He had difficulty continuing patterns that had already been generated, or recognizing a set pattern. For example, the children played a game in which one child made a pattern and covered up the last four objects with cups. The other child had to guess which colors the objects under the cups were, based on continuing the pattern that they could see. This was called ‘breaking a pattern’ to find a ‘unit’ of a pattern.

This was rather challenging for Max; although he understood the concept of a pattern, and was usually able to create his own patterns using math manipulatives, he had difficulty making more complex patterns and breaking patterns into units. When it was his turn to generate a pattern for his partner, he was able to build very simple patterns (like ABAB patterns), but he clearly understood what a pattern was. He just couldn’t ‘see’ a ‘unit’ of a ready-made pattern very well. With practice building his own patterns, the skills transferred over so he could recognize already-made patterns better over time. He needed to keep doing the skill on his own terms in order to recognize the skill in other students and out in the world, wherever patterns are found.

Abstract story problems are the hardest for most children, and for Max they have always been a struggle to ascertain what the problem was asking. A big piece of story problems that is challenging is when it states something like, “Bob has 5 more carrots than Kate. Bob has 8 carrots. How many carrots does Kate have?” It’s hard for children to understand that this means they need to subtract. The wording on these problems is confusing, but having Max draw dots for each sentence helped a lot. If the first sentence doesn’t tell us a specific number, we know we need to work backwards and start with the second sentence. Draw 8 carrots for Bob. This is 5 more than Kate. Does Kate have less than Bob? He has more than Kate, so she has less than him. How many less does she have? She has 5 less. Cross off 5 dots. How many does she have? 3.

It really takes a lot of repetition and using dots or objects to make these concepts more solid and less abstract. The more I talked through it, the more the logic came together. We worked backwards through problems over and over again. I had one lesson where I would draw dots on notecards--3 dots on one card, 4 dots on another card, and 5 dots on another card. I would say, “Kate makes two cakes. Her friend makes 3 more cakes than her. Which of these [point to the 3 notecards] is her friend?” So the card with 5 dots on it is Kate’s friend.

We’d do that in many ways. “Kate has 4 cats. She has two more cats than her friend. Which of these is her friend?” So the card with 2 dots is her friend. This is far more intuitive than trying to memorize if you need to subtract or add based on the wording of the problem. They will see the numbers visually and they will know (over time and practice) if they need to add or subtract. Children understand addition and subtraction on an abstract level before they understand what the operation ‘addition’ means. They know that 2 more than 3 is five before they know that 2+3=5, if they see this with actual visual representation. Getting it visual versus through wording is key.


*Name has been changed.


About Alexandra Berube


Alexandra is the Managing Director of Boston Tutoring Services, a tutoring company that offers one-to-one in-home tutoring in Massachusetts. She is also a former Kindergarten teacher who also tutors students in grades
K-8, in all subject areas, including test preparation.


--click below for printable version of this article--

Mathematics from the Beginning (Struggles Overcome in Kindergarten) - printable version


Watch for an upcoming guest blog post here soon from Teacher/Tutor, Alexandra Berube.

As a teacher and professional tutor, Alexandra plans to share more future guest blog posts here--where she will reveal additional insight into her student who has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum and how it affects the student's education, and she will also be sharing teaching strategies that have helped her student.**


ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM PARENTS OF KIDS WITH ACC:


Parent of 8 year old with ACC, Third Grade, writes:

"In regards to your ACC article on Word story problems for ACCers, I noticed that my son has done so much better in Math in general, and especially word problems, if the problem(s) are separated into boxes. Our Math teacher separates my son's problems on graph paper, because we know that his mind has a hard time separating and organizing too much information on paper.

We have also enlarged the font, as he has severe eye problems. This enlargement has made all the difference in the world.

We also have done away with any timed tests, as it raised the anxiety and he often just stopped writing after a few minutes. He told me his "mind got stuck".

We have also had enormous success with an iPad. My son absolutely loves practicing Math and doing Math on his iPad. The applications are so fun and endless."


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If you would like to share input about Math Story Problems and your child who has ACC, please send me an e-mail and I will be glad to include it here.

And, if you would like to recommend a specific Math "app" for the iPad that your child or student who has ACC uses, please click on the link above and let me know so I can include it here as a resource for others. Thank you very much. ********************************************************************************

Do you have a QUESTION for Alexandra?

If while reading Alexandra's articles, about teaching and tutoring her student with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum, you have a question -- she welcomes you to ask her a question.


**Note: Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum has a very wide range of effects--ranging anywhere from no symptoms--or mild learning disabilities--to severe mental and/or physical challenges. It can sometimes also be seen with other medical conditions, genetic syndromes, chromosomal anomalies and more. Every person with ACC can present differently in terms of their development, cognitive abilities and educational needs.

Each child who has ACC is a unique individual with their own abilities, weaknesses, challenges, motivations, strengths, as well as their own style of learning.