Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
S/O to the homework ?
Jon has a laundry list of dx that affect his educational day. He is autistic, has apraxia, phonemic disorders, communication disorders, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. Doing homework for him *and me* is torture. To do his reading has become frustrating! They do Fundations which is a Wilson program. He is rote memorizing the Fundations catch phrases but doesn't transfer them nor can he begin to decode. As a result, his special education teacher does a program called Edmark with him which is sight word based.
He is to do kidwriting for his typical teacher's journal activity. How can I support him if he doesn't understand that letters make specific sounds? I don't want to change his homework to correct it as it should be a representation of his ability so they know where he is at skill wise. He wrote something like "dsgtr" for dragon.
Re: S/O to the homework ?
Don't correct his work- send in a note with it that this is what he is doing on his own. And honestly, "dsgtr" for dragon isn't too bad- he's got the beginning sound and some of the consonants, just confusing the order. If you send in "dsgtr" to the teacher they can see that he understands his beginning sounds but is "using but confusing" his consonant sounds, and isn't using vowel sounds. All of this can help them help him. You spelling "dragon" for him shows the teacher nothing.
As for how to support him, I'd definitely talk to his teacher. Fundations has cards that are very specific- maybe the teacher can give you a photocopy of the set so you can work with him. It tends to follow a pattern of "A apple /ah/" to teach sounds- the specific cards would be helpful for you.
I grew up with sister with various disabilities. My mom was the squeaky wheel when it came to issues like this. In my sister's IEP, it stated that she was to get NO homework, because she would fall apart when they had to do it. It served no purpose for her, other than inducing anxiety, so my mom put an end to it. Teachers didn't like it and often resented her as they felt that THEY knew best for what would help my sister. My mom stood her ground.
The same teachers told my Mom that my sister would NEVER learn to read with her disabilities. Funny enough, my sister learned to read fluently when she was 15. She had been working on it since preschool, and it just took that long.
I guess my message is to advocate for your child because you know best. If the homework is inappropriate, they need to change it to help him learn.
Got to echo the others, I would leave it as is, and send in a note translating if needed.
Do the inclusive & self-contained teacher discuss homework? Since the programs are so diverse, I wonder if there should be certain modifications for Jon for these types of task. It doesn't quite make that much sense for him to be asked to do phonemic based activties when his program is sight/memory based.
I'm not going to change anything on his work. We had sent something else in this week where his numbers were backwards. I had to stop my husband from fixing them. I want the teachers to see HIS work. They sent home the fundations cues on a paper. He will repeat them but when it comes to starting to decode, he's not there. Not all kids pick things up right away so I'm not stressing. I will if he's still not able to at this time next year.
Yes somewhat. When I went to college for my reading degree they said that if a kid had some letters off that was a cue there was an issue. I could see not putting in the vowels; that is developmentally appropriate. I am surprised he did have some of the letters. I really had to stretch the word out to get them.
I've not been the parent of a school aged child with a delay before and I want to make sure I am doing my parent to support him. It is a new thing for me; I was the teacher before not the parent. Perhaps this is part of my acceptance of who he is? We just got some of those dx recently. IDK, this is a whole new thing for me.
From what I understand they don't. We agreed to give him "a double dose of Fundations" hoping it would click and have the self-contained teacher do the sight word program to supplement. Would you ask for suggestions from the teachers to lessen behaviors surrounding reading and writing? My husband had issues reading and his mom would force him. Now he hates to read. I don't want to make Jon dislike it. It is something that I love and want to help my kids enjoy as much as I do.
Ryan has dyslexia and we struggled with kid writing. He just wasn't were some kids were. He went to a reading specialist and we have a tutor that specializes in dyslexia who works with him on decoding etc. I would just call the teacher and reiterate what you said here. Good luck. He will get there, it will just take him longer. Ryan has been catching up steadily. And they really tried to move us to not use computers with Ryan, saying he had to learn to write etc and practice was the best for him.
Best of luck!