Hi,
I just wanted to let you know how comforting it felt reading the post on this board. My son, Justin is in 2nd grade. We have been aware of his ld since he was 3. He was a slow walker and talker but both came around. It became evident that we needed to do some testing because everything was developing at such a slow rate. We got him in an intergrated preschool with speech,pt,ot ect. We just kept hoping he would grow out of this. Last year, for 1st grade he was place in a small class with low functioning children. I thought at the time the extra attention would help him “grow out of this”. He only advanced three months for the whole year according to testing. This new school year started this month and they placed him in the exact same class. We went to the open house and I watched my child change before my eyes. He is normally very verbal and fun until we walked into the class. He started slurring his words and pointing with grunts just as his classmate did. It became evident immediatly that he was lowering his ability to that of his peers. It has been a simple matter to get the classroom changed this week. I am however concerned about placing him in a class that is too advanced for him. Justin cannot write or read at this point. His social skills are far more advanced than the class he is currently in, I am hopeful this “new” more advance class may raise his academic level. Has anyone else had this experience?
Thanks,
Karl
Yes, kids tend to live down to low expectations, so it’s important to keep them in the highest level possible. You are absolutely right there, and stick to your guns.
No, learning doesn’t occur by magic. If a child does not have skills A, B, and C, it is extremely unlikely that that child will learn skill D just by being exposed to it.
Put yourself in the student’s shoes. Suppose you wanted to learn Chinese. You would take a Level 1 class, and after mastering at least 80% of it, move on to Level 2, and so on. In six semesters you would have a foundation knowledge of Chinese and be ready to go there on vacation and start to use the language a little in natural situations. Now, what if your school said “We don’t have Levels 1 to 3; everybody starts in Level 4.”? You go into the first day of class and people are holding conversations in a language you don’t understand, and writing and reading all sorts of strange symbols on the blackboard. Would you expect to suddenly understand and read Chinese just because you saw and heard a little of it every day? If you didn’t have any real motivation, you would just shut down and do something else. If you were very highly motivated, you would get a tutor to teach you the necessary skills from Levels 1 to 3 so you could get something out ogf the class.
This is what your child needs; good tutors and/or lanmguage therapists to actually *teach* the needed language and reading skills, starting where he really is and not where someone thinks he should be. It won’t be absorbed through the skin like a sponge, and the sooner you get him real help, the better off he’ll be. Teaching will take time and patience and work, but it is worth it, better than letting him stay where he is for years.