working with a LD child??

WHy is he stuck? There are lots of different reasons for him to have these problems and addressing the most common one if it isn’t his reason would be a sad mistake. WHat do the special ed folks know about him? WHat are his strengths? WOrking from how he learns best is a good starting point… another basic rule is not to try to make up for all the lost time at once — that if you can get something to really stick, take the time you need to do that.

I would start with connection of sounds to symbols via Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program. 1:1 sessions of any length are preferred to group work in the beginning. Even 15-20 minutes a day would help. Thirty minutes is ideal. After all sounds are introduced, I would begin using Handwriting Without Tears everyday.

www.lblp.com for materials and training opportunities nationwide.

Next summer, try to take some Orton-Gillingham training, too.

Glenda — trying to avoid repeating myself — this is exactly the clientele I work with, the kids nobody else has reached and often the system has given up on (not you, thank you). I just retyped a long, long outline of what to do for another parent — outline of a book really. Email me by clicking on my name and I’ll send it to you in a day or two when I next log on. Or, if I remember later, I’ll drop a long long email in your box.so be prepared. Same offer for anyone else with a kid who needs to work from the ground up — send an email and I’ll send you the outline and answer questions.

Since about 80% of poor readers have decoding issues, it is safe to try Lindamood-Bell first. It even works with mildly retarded children, unless they have severe speech apraxia. Then I’ve seen some problems.

Congrats!
You have taken the first step to helping this child — you reached out and asked for help! Often, so many teachers simple think they will find a way and do not ask for help in the right places. My first suggestion is to see what he really does know. Get a parent volunteer or have him eat his lunch with you. Present him with a list of all 26 letters in random order (upper and lower cases). What does he recognize? If he dopes know the letter, can he make the sound? You will need to consult with a first grade teacher and see if you can borrow some literature for him to decode/read….send a paper home every night with letters and one new sight word and tell him to practice sounding out the letters and reading the sight word. What does his cumulative file say about how he progressed in the lower grades? It is not too late. He is fortunate to have a caring teacher who will try to teach him this year instead of simply passing him along for a fourth year in a row.
Good luck and get the parents involved! Enlist their help and also consider pairing him with a younger child so he can read to them. Peer-assisted learning is also a wonderful way to reinforce skill development in class and across grade levels.
Karen Nicholas, FSU Dept. of Special Ed

Victoria,

I would really appreciate a copy of the email you are going to send to the lady who wrote the original message.

Glenda,
I second that,you are a wonderful teacher. I so wish my son would have had someone take this attitude with him. Maybe then he wouldn’t be a 8th grader, reading on a 4th grade level.
I hired a tutor this summer and she worked mostly on builing his self esteem. He started this school year feeling better about himself than he has in a long time. I just hope the teachers don’t destroy this new found self esteem, but I’m afraid they will. I think with a little confidence from them, it would grow.
I have a IEP meeting this week, to discuss issues that weren’t resolved at the meeting at the end of school, and I’m going to mention this, for all the good it will do.
So anyway, I just wanted to say……..good job, we need more teachers like you.

Of course it’s a good thing to have positive self-esteem, but many of us think that your tutor’s approach is backwards. Consider yourself: if it came to self-esteem in a conversation, what would you say about yourself? I’m a good mother/wife, I take care of my home and family, I make quilts/cakes/paintings that everybody loves and asks me for, I write/sing/play piano/decorate/train dogs well, I play tennis/swim/ski well, and so on. Real self-esteem is based on real accomplishments; you do something that is difficult and you take pride in overcoming hardships. Just telling someone how wonderful they are builds up a false image; when that person hits other real people, they will be judged on actual accomplishments. If you want to do the best possible thing for your child, teach real skills. Not only reading — and the best thing to do there is to use a proven effective method, see my and Shay’s posts — but also arts, sports, music, farm/garden work, and so on. If your child is the only one in the class who can play the bagpipes, ski downhill, do calligraphy, raise horses and win 4H prizes, or whatever, the child can take real pride in accomplishment, and this kind of real self-esteem won’t collapse at the first look from a teacher or classmate. Then if the child is taught by an effective program and learns to read effectively, well, even if you’re not the top of the class, you can be proud of what you have accomplished.

I agree with you Victoria. Accomplishments are at the core of good self esteem. I know my son has many gifts. Yet, being a child who struggles with various of aspects of school these gifts become lost. It seems that especially at school all the teacher gets to see are the deficits. Having these things constantly highlighted is demoralizing and can cause a truely great kid to become overwhelmed with self eteem issues.

I expect alot from my son. He works hard because he wants to succeed. He puts more pressure on himself than I ever could. I contstantly point out the things he does well, such as devise a new way to do something or grasp a complex idea.

Sometimes these children need help recognizing who they are. They need help understanding the fact that struggling at school does not make you dumb or bad. It is just one piece to a very big puzzle.
Adults that come into contact with these children need to be sensitive to the fact that their self esteem can take a battering at school.

Victoria - I too would be interested in the information you are willing to provide.

I am currently in a Masters (Education) program with many presentations to do…and my group would like to focus on reading with the LD child.

I know that all the good information and lessons available now will have an impact on the children I teach in the future.

Thank you for your kindness.

MMiller