Any tips on teaching grammar - ASD/ADD/SpLD visual thinker

[KOKOagainandagain]

LEA home tuition did not go well today.

DS1 on 3rd tutor in 2 months. 'Threatened' to find another tutor today - long story!

Anyway, they are doing grammar - I had to hang around to listen to the lesson (mopped the kitchen floor and cleaned the cupboards so I could listen without it being obvious). Nouns. He is very confused but scored understanding as 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 (it turned out he didn't know the answer - he only knew what 1 and 10 meant). He then said to me (after the tutor had left) 'it's still an 8 but I only understood half of it' He also said that the tutor had got it wrong - the part she said he didn't understand he did and vice versa.

Any tips gratefully received - either on dealing with a touchy tutor or teaching grammar.

TIA

We do similar to PolterGoose with ds1. He doesn't use capitals, full stops, commas or paragraphs when he writes (although he does bizarrely suddenly put in random capital letters in the middle of words or on words that needn't be capitalised).

What we actually do is, I read his work back to him, putting in the pauses, breaths etc where I think they should be and then hand him the book for him to do the same. It does help him to recognise, not only where the punctuation should be, but why it needs to be there, but he still can't apply it himself the next time he does some writing. I think this is to do with him struggling to generalise.

In terms of the language itself, ds tends to use some very odd phrases and we have only recently realised that these stem from a lack of understanding. I'm not sure how to tackle this myself to be honest.

Apparently they did an exercise at school today where they had to create sentences using 'I' or 'me' and deliberately set some up using the wrong word, to test their classmates. He told me he just couldn't do it, but he didn't understand why he couldn't do it, so he just did a pattern of right/wrong sentences and the other kids found the pattern every time.

Ds scored above gifted for verbal skills on the WISC IV and unfortunately this, coupled with a really wide vocabulary has masked the fact that his understanding is a lot lower than his vocabulary. We did try to get him assessed by SALT for both this and literal interpretation of phonics - which means he often pronounces even simple words in an unusual way, leading to him getting teased at school (eg he pronounces mild as 'milled'), but they clearly didn't understand what the problem was and just went on about his WISC results.

I know what you mean polter - fellow Canadian PhD students explicity understood the rules of grammar - they had often taught EFL. I do not understand the formal rules of grammar but I can write grammatically - I 'model' what I read.

Speaking to him, there are some really basic misunderstandings going on. For example, when his tutor said 'that is Proper Noun' he heard 'that is a proper noun'.

DS1 does not generalise either - at all. This is so hard to get over. Plus, as far as DS1 is concerned there is no point in saying that you don't understand because teachers just repeat and from his point of view he didn't understand it the first time so repetition does not help. But it does increase expectation of understanding. tbh a lot of adults would pretend that they understood after repetition. When he has grasped (or appears to have grasped) understanding in one setting, teachers cannot understand why it is not generalised. It's just the way it is. But they all they so cross.

Luckily today the frustration and disbelief was aimed at me and not DS1. As an adult I found it quite difficult to deal with. Combination of guilt trip - we all have our crosses to bear - my daughter has cancer - I am diabetic - I was working til 12.45 last night - and threat - DS1 does not have a consultant letter providing authorisation - I can't teach him etc.

Previous tutors have appeared the welcome feedback but she took it personally - she had given DS1 'homework' that asked what multiple characters were thinking. DS1 did not 'know' what they were thinking - could not even imagine what one character might be thinking. He doesn't work independently and refuses help from parents. He was not able to do the work and so I agreed to speak to the tutor - the only alternative was meltdown and still not doing the homework.

I mention it and then she starts composing a letter on her laptop to report to the lea...

Thanks for the advice - I'll check out Montessori resources.

Kung fu punctuation is fun and almost LEA-friendly

Colourful Senantics is about creating sentences, but might be too simplistic?

Oh I like the kung fu punctuation - it is at my level

My doctoral principal supervisor was discussing my thesis title with me in terms of transitive/intranstive verbs and why I had chosen a particular word. WTF - I never studied Latin. I can model but I can't show my workings.

DS1 and I would like the first tutor back but its the run up to tribunal. She said he can't cope with m/s, needs ss. lea have named mainstream and so are insisting on doing things as they would in the mainstream - ie nice tutor that understood DS1 is wisked away and replaced with crap tutors (used to teaching nt DC in m/s).

The tutor has already shown me the forms they are required to complete. 'Evaluation' is based upon whether she thinks that the child understood rather than them actually understanding. So after each day he receives a 'tick' for understanding and the lea build a case that he can understand m/s teaching despite the fact that he does not have a clue.

This is all such a drain - I have this crap to deal with plus upcoming tribual plus DS2 undergoing assessment/battling the school soon to be extended to the lea, plus imminent return to PhD plus mounting debts etc, etc. And DH is bothered about the weather and the car!

zzzzz, thanks. No, I hadn't heard of that. I'll have a look on Amazon. Sadly we have no SALT to borrow it from.

Maria, our school do Kung Fu Punctuation and both my boys love it. Ds1 can tell do all the moves etc, but it had no effect on his classwork. Ds2 drove me potty bouncing round the house repeating 'capital letter, capital letter, question mark' etc complete with actions for hours on end!

((hugs)) KeepOn.

It's just horrible when you are in the thick of it like that, with no let up and no-one really 'getting it' except you. My dh does things like turning into a headless chicken about things that aren't even on my radar (because in the big scheme of things, they are just not all that important) as well. Somehow it makes it all feel ten times worse, because you feel like they should be the one person who actually understands the enormity and pressure of it all.

Thanks moose

However, I am less enthusiastic about Kung Fu Punctuation now - can my nerves stand it?

It's fun really. Ds2 was just, erm, a tad over-enthusiastic about it!

Couple of nice youtube video of some primary kids doing it and .

Ds2 does all the moves right, but still writes his question marks back to front and his commas as a straight line pointing in the wrong direction.