Oral Book Reports

[ML]

Do you let them work through their fears and anxieties or "rescue" them with an accommodation? It's 6th grade. I'm of a mind to throw difficult child in the deep end this year. Of course I will notify the teacher of the level of difficulty and create an invisible net for him but the only way he will get any confidence in these areas is by doing them and realizing they won't kill him.

 

[aeroeng]

Moving too fast will only increase the anxieties. For most phobias you need to go slowly. In staid of throwing difficult child in the deep end, place in the shallow end and slowly increase the water level.

- Small presentation to you only
- Small presentation to close family members (non- judgmental)
- Normal presentation to teacher only
- Normal presentation to 4 or 5 friends.
- etc

Building up slowly is the best way to get over a phobia. Too much to soon only increases the anxieties.

 

[1 Day At a Time]

Could he do a Power Point presentation? For some reason this really helped our difficult child overcome this issue. He also has AS, tons of anxiety, and is painfully shy.

I suffered greatly with anxiety about oral presentations when I was that age. One time, I even had a vasovagal event, and I passed out - I was humiliated and it only made the phobia worse. I have to give presentations to large groups as part of my job now, and I still suffer greatly with this phobia - but I have come up with techniques to make it a little easier. Bottom line, my public speaking phobia has never really gone, I just manage it.

Valerie

 

[hearts and roses]

With difficult child and easy child, we always had them do a practice run only for us at home first. We also allowed them to use visual aids, such as poster board presentations with either collages, venn diagrams, etc., to show key points of the book along with the climax and resolution/ending. It really helped for them to do a dry run with us first. We did this throughout Jr and HS if they needed it. easy child did a presentation in her senior class and it was filmed! When she bought it home for us to watch, we were so impressed and she said "Yeah, I can do anything in front of anyone after all the times you made us do it for you guys!"...which is just funny to me, because we didn't 'make' them do it, we merely suggested it to get over their stage fright!

 

[klmno]

I'd let him work thru this one- it must be typical for teachers to start this sort of thing in 6th grade and when my son did his, came home and said he'd been very nervous but he could tell some of the other kids were pretty nervous giving theirs, too. If my son could see that, I'm sure the teachers know it and that might be part of reason they have 6th graders do this- to start working thru stage fright.

And I agree- the better prepared they are and the prouder they are of any accompanying material they've put together, the better it will go and less embaressed they will be. This works for myself, too, because I get stage fright sometimes when having to speak in public. It depends on the situation to me.

 

[DDD]

I vote for the family practice theory. It helped each of my kids...even the easy child's who sometimes felt anxious. DDD

 

[KTMom91]

It's a typical 6th grade thing around here, too. I'd also have him practice with family first.