I was wondering if anyone would have some suggestions on accommodations for my son? He'll be in 9th grade next year, has an IQ of about 130-135, yet is failing most of his classes. In part because he's graded on note taking. For him, that's an impossibility. I'm not sure why just that it is. He's figured out that since there is no possible way for him to pass the class (notes count as much as the tests and if you fail all the notes, you can't pass the class), he's just not trying on any of it since it's a lost cause. I've tried to get the school to not grade him on notes in the past, but they believe it is vital and have refused to budge. There is a copy of the notes in the special ed room; however, it really does him little good. When he was younger it would literally take him days to write ten sentences for vocabulary. I think there are a variety of reasons. He's inability to just accept things or let them go. He would have to argue with any and all percieved inaccuracies in the notes or possible other methods of interpretation. He just can't let it go. Plus he's overly perfectionistic. It takes him hours to write one page because if the t isn't crossed exactly 2/3's of the way up and exactly the same on both sides he erases the entire page, not just the "t", or the offending sentence. So instead of focusing on the information and learning, he's focused on the one "t" and not learning the material. I've also tried to get the school to grade him on the notes he does take realizing they will not be the same as everyone elses. While he might rosary and that would be enough for him to remember the entire history of Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, the notes might require more specifics regarding religion and the establishment of the Protestant religion in England which may make absolutely no sense to him. The primary obstacles that I see in his education are his inability to let things go, his concrete thinking, his "attorney" thinking (have to find all the loopholes in everything, not just rules, but everything), his perfectionism, his lack of an ability to organize, his distractability, and his defeatism (if I'm this far behind in my homework in this class then I'll just quit doing it all). He also seems to have no concept of time. The primary hits to his grades appear to be either in the classes where notes are graded, then everything is bad, even if he knows the material,-- in classes with a lot of homework (he gets behind and gives up on the class),-- classes with a lot of writing or non-concrete type problems (ie vocabulary sentences need to encompass the "perfect" meaning of the word, or in other words reflect every possible meaning each word has as given in the Webster dictionary) (math isn't a problem as long as he's given worksheets instead of copying the problem from the book and he doesn't have to show his work)...has anyone been able to talk a school into only grading the exams? after all the purpose is to learn the material, not monitor the way in which it is learned.
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