IEP meeting.

How far below grade level is his writing? Can you buy time by asking for assessments like the TOWL and writing part of the WIAT? I too dumped special ed. but it’s easier in middle school since there resource is like a study hall for organization and homework stuff and my son didn’t need that. What would they do in the RR for 1/2 hr a day? Is it something you could do at home yourself? Good luck.

Dear Linda:

What about accomdations/modifications for the writing in the reg. class? My son was dx’d with Dysgraphia - his handwriting will always be below grade level. He is getting opportunities to use the alphasmart and dictating answers this year. He is a 3rd grader and right now the alphasmart is nearly as impossible as writing speed wise - but down the road it will be a great assest.

Best Wishes at your IEP!

Linda,

Would it be possible for you to hire a tutor to work one-on-one with your son? That might be better than pulling him out of his classes for resource support that is going to make him feel bad. We’ve had a lot of success using a tutor with special ed training to work with my son on his writing. He was in a self-contained class but still did not get enough one-on-one time. Also, our school district’s writing program was formulaic and really pretty abysmal. The tutor did things that interested him, like take him to a restaurant and then have him write a review. His handwriting is still poor but he is doing well with written expression using a laptop. We continue to have him tutored and it has really helped him.

Andrea

Thanks everyone!

I think it is time for assistive technology. He can compose his ideas verbally. It really is the act of writing and spelling that zaps all his energy leaving little room for higher level stuff. OT has helped with some of that but he does have this visual issue that is being worked on that should help further.

I really don’t know how far he is below in writing. He can write nice sentences when just writing sentences but when he writes a paragraph he forgets about sentences and just writes his thoughts. He has improved recently. When I push for sentences, he writes them, but then his writing is simpler. His spelling is much better than it was.

I just think that if they dealt with his core deficits like his symbol imagery problem through a program like seeing stars we could really improve things. A resource room where the teacher is dealing with kids who can’t read or write seems like overkill. He is very self aware and sped has been demoralizing in the past.

I refused, and that is that. I think we will hire a tutor. I had planned on doing that this summer but I don’t see why we shouldn’t do it now.

I think the teacher requested this without a full understanding of what sped has been like for him. I just think she sees a boy that is struggling with one thing and really wants him to get help. She doesn’t know how far he has come and doesn’t realize that with help provided outside the home we can take care of this problem too.
I really just wanted to focus on vision therapy for now. I think it is a major priority. It really irks me that they insist that they know what he needs when their track record of knowing what this boy needs is beyond bad.
Does anyone know if step up to writing helps to deal with sentence structure type problems?

In fourth grade in Florida there is a big standardized writing test. The person who has taught my son to write has been a regular fourth grade teacher. She is the lead writing teacher and he was put with her because his writing was so bad. She then taught his resource teacher to teach the kids.

So, in my book, there is no guarantee that the resource teacher will know anything useful. Ours really did not, and she is well trained in reading programs.

Technology really helps some kids. We were going that route last year (3rd grade). My son doesn’t seem need it as much now that he has done IM—although his output is still slower than typical.

I will be honest—I couldn’t teach my son to write. He was too bad. If your son is at all like mine, you need a really good structured writing program. His teacher broke it up into small bits—I think I was too impatient without any sense of how to get there.

Beth

You know Beth, you are right. I have absolutely no sense on how to deal with a writing problem. Reading and math were things I could tackle. Writing just seems so out there for me.

It’s TUTOR time!

I agree that you should look into AT. If he can’t keyboard either get him going at home or have it added as services at school. I found it worked better for my son to do it at school. My son is now in 9th grade and his English teacher says the difference in grading of one of his handwritten composition compared to type written is a C for the handwritten and an A- for the typewritten composition.

Helen

Linda,

I hate to say it, but unless you are at Anitya or Shay’s schools or a handful of others, resource will not remediate much of anything. I’d say thanks, we’ll stay on consultation for the accommodations and get the therapy privately, one-on-one. Find a tutor and provide them with Step Up to Writing if necessary. I provide my child’s school with the things I want them to teach her all the time! They even went to PG and V/V training for me! Yes, that is the exception to the rule (and it is a charter school, not a regular public school). We can’t get any of those trainings in the public schools. I would not send my own child to resource in the system in which I teach. And I do not mean that personally as I have some very committed teacher friends who simply do not have the tools they need.

As kids get older, I think a very real thing to consider is the negative stigma of being in special ed. At that point, private tutors are very much worth it, in my opinion.

Janis

Thanks Janis and Helen.

I know you are right Janis. Sped took a toll on my son’s self esteem in the past. He is such a happy, together kid which is something of a miracle considering what he has been through. I won’t let him go back over to the dark side, not ever again.

I requested 15 min consult on (special ed teacher to teacher). This keeps him under the ESE umbrella and I wrote “Parent declines all other services at this time”. This does to things: Keeps him out of the LOCATION of special ed and into the general ed classroom and “at this time” provides you with a change of heart if necessary. Get the private remediation - it will be worth it both adaemically and emotionally for your son. The 15 minute consult makes the ESE teacher and general ed teacher “talk” about how your son is progressing. Kind of keeps them on the hook.

It seems to me that writing would be something you or a tutor could work on.

I’m not exactly sure how to remediate the motor side of this.

For practice in getting ideas to paper, I had my son writing in a journal. I told him to write about daily events. Unfortunately, we haven’t kept up with this due to activities, homework, etc… but I’d like him to start doing this again. Of course, this is not the entire “solution.” We’d still need a good structured writing program.

Private tutor is a good idea.

Step by little bitty step is definitely the way to go.

Being able to handwrite notes and memos and lists is a very useful job skill — I would strongly recommend giving it a few more years of work before giving up and going totally keyboard; although there is no reason not to start having him taught typing, which is a good coordination exercise anyhow. Try to get him to learn typing with all his fingers, but be very very very patient; if the hands don’t work well for writing, there may also be pretty bad coordination problems in typing. My daughter also fought with writing, and she started to use the university computers and to hand in some of her work laser-printed around Grade 5, but she didn’t keyboard everything until high school.

I posted some long posts here and on Teaching Reading a while ago, giving details about step-by-step approaches to teaching writing. If someone can find those old posts they may be just what you and the tutor want for ideas where to start. I can also look on my desktop and see if I saved any – email me and I’ll try to hunt.

I personally lived through this first myself and then again with my daughter: we both learned phonics from our moms before kindergarten and read anything we got our hands on, but a combination of vision problems, timing, coordination problems, very slow-growing hands, etc. caused us to be extremely slow at picking up on writing. Neither of us could write legibly before Grade 3, and we were always a couple of years behind grade level in the physical act of handwriting, until college level. Grace was in first year university and complained to me that she wrote like a sixth grader. She is the one who, at age 15, bought clothes in the women’s department, shoes in the men’s, and gloves in the little kiddies’. When your hands are the size of an average six-year-old’s, of course you can’t write (or type) like an adult! We did persevere and we studied calligraphy and we can write very nicely when we put the effort into it — and that is important for those memos, as well as for me to teach other kids.My schools also had all essay exams, multiple choice unheard-of, and Grace’s had at least some essay testing, so that’s another place that acceptable handwriting is worth fighting for. We also both type our own forms of hunt and peck, and it would have been good if someone had helped us patiently instead of just yelling at us that we were typing “wrong”. In sum, yes, it is possible to overcone pretty severe handwriting difficulties with time and work, and yes, it’s worth it. Please do email me for more info.

I do like the idea of keeping the child’s right to help with the 15-minute consult, and keping him out of an ineffective special ed.

re meetings: Practice saying no. No. No, no. What part of “No” don’t you understand? And again, no. Fighting with a school committee is about the same level of argument and about as much fun as a bad divorce, but if you really dig your heels in sooner or later they do catch on to the fact that you really did say no. It will take several hundred repetitions in different positions, but keep at it. Be very alert to underhanded methods of argument, attempts to trick you into “compromises” that mean doing things the easy way for the school, attempts to trick you into admissions that will let them throw guilt on you, and all that. Just dig in the heels and say no and don’t let them go off on tangents or twist your words around. And be super careful to read every single word before signing, and if even one word got changed or one weasel clause got inserted, say no again. After the first battle it gets easier each time because they know their tricks don’t work on you.

I calmly stated, I will refuse as I know that is my right. There was some argument about the big picture and how is he going to feel not writing as well as the others. I was like oh geez, he is going to feel good in sped this time when every other time it has been a total bust. I refused and they pretty much know that I can be a brick wall on things. I don’t think they want me to start another one of my letter writing campaigns ;)

Everyone seemed to ignore the fact that I somehow managed to remediate his reading and math. Thanks to this board not thanks to the school (your help Victoria has been especially helpful.) He is in third, it is not like he is a highschool kid who can’t write. I honestly don’t see his writing as that bad. He can write very neatly, can spell in isolation, write nice sentence, has great ideas, understands starting sentences and summarizing. His biggest problems are punctuation and not giving enough detail when writing a story. It is more that he can’t do all of those things together well yet. They taught him to ignore spelling and punctuation when they initially taught him to write. It was all that creative spelling garbage. Whole language strikes again. He has come very far from the kid who wrote slanted down the page.

I am convinced there must be something else going on. I have this weird feeling that they just want him in sped for something and this was all they could find. There was this weird urgency to the meeting that made no sense considering how well he was doing. I wonder if it has something to do with state testing this spring that I just coincidentally got the notice for. Is a child’s scores only exempt if they are in resource or sped? Will they have difficulty exempting his scores if he gets no actual sped?

Victoria, for some reason my emails never reach you. It is the strangest thing. I will try again.

Sounds to me that he writes on a second grade level but is in third grade. Not a huge gap.

Is your son still classified? If not, perhaps his scores will be included and they wish they weren’t. If he is classified, who knows. It may bug them that you have done so much. Or honestly, his teacher may feel that he needs extra help. I would assume the later, thank her and everyone else for letting you know, and tell them you will hire a tutor because you don’t want him removed from class.

In my case, I have let the school take credit for everything. It is hard to separate out, because he is getting services at the same time. But I know that an 8-1 ratio in speech did nothing for his word retrieval skills. That came from daily work doing Neuronet. I figure if the school is working with me, I am doing well.

Beth

Linda, I will just mention that in my state, special ed kids (other than TMH) are not exempt from the testing and the scores count. However, in that light, they would want to be giving extra help to any child they feared might not pass the test.(Not that they ahve a clue how to help them of course. At one of my schools, they just do Great Leaps with everyone who scores low in reading. Never mind looking to see if the child has a decoding or other deficit besides fluency. It’s like giving all sick people aspirin and hoping it’ll cure a few of them. Ugh.)

Janis

Linda,

Here is a very inspiring article by Richard Windermere (SP). He didn’t learn to write until he was out of high school.

http://www.ldresources.com/articles/writing_tools.html

Helen

UGH is right. It is a mess!

I am going to ask the school psych directly if my son is exempt from testing and whether or not the sped kids’ scores count. I will let you know. I need a little distance for now. I just don’t think I could have a calm conversation with that woman at the moment.

I think they also have difficulty justifying the sped label when they aren’t doing anything for him. They may just need to stick him somewhere so they can collect their sped funds for him.

Thanks Helen,

You know I was talking to a few people about this issue. Everyone agrees that they could never hand write a paper. They say that their writing is much worse without the benefit of word processing.

One person even keeps his word processing program open for spelling help while hand writing anything.

We all need accomodations.

My son wrote the most beautiful essay last night. When I tell him he has to stop, think in complete sentences, speak in complete sentences and then write in complete sentences he does just great. I think there is a planning/attentional issues that gets in his way.