First and foremost, thanks a bunch for all of the response and support give to my previous post “Texas Mom of Possibly Dysgraphic Son Seeks Support”.
But now I have a couple of more issues to address and I would love some input ….
We have an ARD meeting coming up on the 21st of this month. I have spent so much time, almost to the point of obsession researching anything that I can find that pertains to my son and his situation.
Our last ARD was held in early December of last year, this one was for a transfer (We moved from Colorado to Texas at the end of October). Talk about feeling trapped…. In order for my son to be allowed any accomodations or modifications in the classroom, we had to hold this meeting. He went for a whole month with no modification because his teachers were afraid that if they did anything like that without all of the paperwork in place in Texas, they would be doing somthing illegal. The ARD team members showed up with a huge stack of papers, read a bunch of stuff verbally, asked me to sign, sign, sign, and sign some more, and when it was time for the regular ed teacher to go back to her class to dismiss them for the day, the meeting was over. (Fortunately, they decided to uphold the Colorado IEP and go from there, so he didn’t have to do all of those tests over again.) My son has two teacher, which I assumed would be there, though only one showed up and she was his math teacher - remember he has Dysgraphia, his Language Arts teacher didn’t show. Anyhow, after carefully reviewing all of the document from the meeting, I discovered that the Language Arts teacher didn’t even fill in a whole section. So, I had to go back to her and get that done. That is what this meeting is suppose to be for. However, I plan to take advantage of this meeting and will request a modification for Assistive Technology and more specific modifications in other areas. Of course please understand that Texas schools are not the only ones I’m pointing fingers at, the Colorado school did not follow through on some of these modifications either. And the Texas school has only had about two “legal” months to do anything with the IEP. How long should it take anyway?
Anyhow, here is my question… could anyone tell me, after reading the list below, if my modification requests are reasonable and are there any others that I may be missing?
~ Current - Timed written assignments should be used sparingly
(No change will be requested)
~ Current - May need extra time, and shortened written assignments, at times
(No change will be requested)
~ Current - Emphasize quality over quantity
(They always seem to have a hard time with this, his teacher is just so disturbed that he only writes maybe half a page compared to the 1 1/2 pages of the rest of the class, even if his is well thought out and relatively readable, I’m not sure if there is another way to word this, but it definately needs to be discussed)
~ Current - Provide opportunities for hands on learning
(Haven’t seen any of that in this school yet)
~ Current - Access to computer for word processing of final written products
(There are two students in his class now that are doing almost all of their work at the computers all day long, there are only two computers in each classroom, I would like to request an Alphasmart be purchased for him so that he can also bring written assignments home, since schools will not allow a transfer of diskettes from home to school due to viruses being brought in)
~ Current - Develop keyboarding skills
(The teacher, assistant principal, and sped teacher all said that they just don’t have a program set up for teaching keyboarding, those skills are taught to student during the first month of school and my son missed out on that. His sped teacher says that it wouldn’t matter anyway because she doesn’t have enough time to do keyboarding with him during their thirty minute sessions every day, I’d like to have something added to his IEP that says that they will provide it to him, they’ll just have to find something I guess. They’ve said that they don’t feel that he qualifies for OT, but I’m going to do some checking to see if OT provides keyboarding instruction)
~ Current - Daily home-school communication and homework planner with consistent follow through for practice.
(I never did figure out what ‘consistent follow through for practice’ meant here, but I definately DO NOT get anything even close to a daily communication unless I go stand by a teachers door and wait around til after school, but then I can’t talk to her because all of the teachers only conference with parents at specific scheduled times)
~ Current - Availability of tape recorder to dictate his written task, and then transcribe it into a Word program, to use the spell check
(Have yet to see one of these at all)
Specific Instructional Accomodations added by Texas school
~ Opportunity to respond orally
~ Emphasis on Major Points
~ Note taking assistance
~ Opportunity to repeat and explain instructions
~ Frequent feedback
~ Peer Tutoring/Paired working arrangement
~ Highlighted materials for emphasis
~ Provide word bank
~ Give oral responses
Impressive list, though it’s a shame that most of these things are not done. I plan to go to the ARD meeting, sit there with my list that they gave me and go over each of these one by one and ask what specific thing is being done to meet these accomodations / modifications. I sure hope that they have an answer for me.
Any input you could offer would be great.
Thanks in advance
Cindy
My advice would be to leave words out, such as Opportunity, because in my son’s school, the opportunity, would never be there. Also, on things like “Note taking assistance”, I would have written in the IEP, specifically. how this will be done.
I’ve learned, if it isn’t black and white, it doesn’t get done, and sadly, even sometimes when it is black and white, it doesn’t get done, but at least then you have something to come back at them with.
Good Luck!