He does look a lot like me. All I'd have to do is lose 50-60 pounds and a foot of height, bind my breasts, and I'm good to go. I won't even need make-up, except for these pesky crow's feet and smile lines, which he brought out in the first place!!! I might even be able to cram my feet into his shoes. My hair's a little darker, though.
Poor guy has the same glitch re longitude and latitude that I had. And I eventually got it, but it still hurts my brain in a funny way, trying to help him get past the glitch.
Longitude lines (meridians) are the vertical lines. So in his head (and once, in mine) it was very confusing to remember that they actually give you the degrees East or West, because it totally feels like it ought to be a north/south thing. And ditto (in a reverso sort of way) for latitude lines (parallels).
He'd then blank out, finding a spot on the map, using the latitude/longitude coordinates. I'd give him the latitude point, and he'd stop there, even when I'd say, okay, you know it's along that line, and longitude will help you figure out where.
Finally, I had him trace the lines in the text book (and erased the heck out of them, later), to find where they intersect. I hope this teacher doesn't care if his test paper ends up looking like a doodle pad.
Most of the information was otherwise easy for him, but there's a ton of vocabulary. It's largely his fault that he is having a hard time. He should have started taking home the Social Studies book, last week. I'm 90% convinced he remembered to do so last night, only because I was in the school yesterday, and so taped a reminder note in his locker.
It's not hard stuff--it's just a lot. Last year, was heavy on math and reading. Both come naturally to him, so he could generally hear something once and get it. He's a little surprised by the concept of actually studying. Fourth grade is so different from third. We don't have a good read on this teacher's testing style yet, either. So it's not like we can look at the information, and know what we'll see on the test.