I am continually trying to find ways for my son to work around his "weaknesses," which include a relatively slow reading rate and frustration with many aspects of writing, including spelling and grammar. I had one idea while he was looking back to find a particular passage in the book he is reading for Language Arts. I thought of using the keyword search feature on the Kindle app to find the passage in the book (which I had downloaded for Kindle). Knowing what the paragraph was about we thought of some keywords and we found the passage in question fairly quickly.
During another Language Arts assignment, my son had to find four passages of interest from the book the students were reading in class, write down the passages, and then discuss them in paragraph form. Writing down those passages was the most frustrating thing for him, as he has trouble transferring word for word from a book to writing (even with typing). I recommended that he use the microphone feature in the Pages app (which is the word processing app he uses for the iPad), to record the passages, but he was reluctant to do so. I then suggested he copy the passages on the home copier, cut them out, and tape them to a sheet of paper. He thought that would take as much time as typing the passages, but I still think it might be worth exploring at another time.
I will definitely continue to promote use of the microphone feature in Pages. Copying word for word is just not a good use of my son's time or energy and is not the point of the assignment in this case. While I am happy to type the passages for him, (which I do on some occasions), it is my goal that he develop strategies that allow him to complete assignments as independently as possible.
