Need ideas/11 yo with organization?

I have a daughter in middle school and I must tell you she doesn’t get homework on a weekly basis. She has some classes that don’t meet every day so the homework isnt due the next day. But all long term projects come with typed instructions! In other words, I think your daughter’s teacher may be doing overkill. Middle school may not be as bad as fifth grade!!!

Beth

Jody,

Have you considered buying her a cheap PDA to record her assignments? You’d have a better shot at understanding what she has recorded and she’d have access to to-do lists and other ways to prioritize her work. My son uses a Visor and the Palm desktop software to keep organized. At first I had to work with him to plan which assignments should be done when but now he does it on his own.

Andrea

Jody,

I would certainly discuss the organizational issues at an IEP meeting. Perhaps the teacher can review your daughter’s planner with her for a few minutes before school or after school to make sure the assignments are written down on the correct days of the week - and to make sure she understands the assignments. Often, these kids need more structured support than verbal directions in the classroom. For larger projects, perhaps the teacher can write down Step 1, Step 2, etc. - with interim due dates for your daughter to help her get organized.

As for NLD and ADHD - why do you ask? (My son has both)

Lil

I am concerned about the NLD piece because several years when we had comprehensive neuropsych testing done on our daughter she showed “poor visual organization and planning” — although nothing that warranted a diagnosis. In my limited understanding on NLD, they can be more disabling as a child matures and is expected to have more abstract thought, do higher level math, and exhibit more of the “Executive functions”. Ana has always seemed vague on the concept of time and sequencing. She’s the kind of kid who expects Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.

My concern about ADD is that she seems more “spacey” than she used to be, but friends say she may just be having a hormone surge.

The PDA is a good idea, but I am afraid she would lose it. Maybe in a year or two.

Based on the premise of “make a manipulative to teach LD students” I made a large weekly calendar to hang on her wall. I have post-it notes for her to place under the appropriate days of the week (e.g. “study spelling words” goes on Tuesday since her spelling test is every Wednesday, etc.) I’ll work with her tonight to see if she if can get the concept of planning ahead using this manipulative.

Jody

I have a 10 year old 4th grade daughter with LD in all academic areas. Considered global LD (has both language and NLD characteristics except great social skills) Visual spatial a big problem for us; however, we went to private OT and it help greatly.Written expression a big problem.

1) Could you get an OT evaluation at school to see if they would help with organizational skills? Our OT helps in that area.

2) The new Dana (improved Alphasmart) from what I understand has some kind of planner/palm feature for keeping track of assignments, etc. My AT specialist is supposed to be looking into this for my daughter.

The good thing about the Dana is it size, so it’s harder to lose! I always laugh and say she needs a velcro belt around her waist so she can keep up with all her AT tools. Alas, mom’s just as bad :-). Today I would probably be diagnosed LD!

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nt

There are several websites where you can get good information and checklists for both NLD and ADHD. Start here in the “In Depth” section for both.

Then for NLD go to NLDline.com, NLDontheWeb.org for starters. Read the articles on both sites. I think it is NLDontheWeb that has the referral checklist for kids with NLD. You will need further testing for a firm diagnosis.

For the ADHD - I’d try mindfixers.com. It is a rather lengthy test set up by two doctors who specialize in ADHD. You can take it, have your daughter take it, or you can take it for her. This test will give you a canned response re: whether ADHD is or is not present, the type of ADHD that it is, and the pharmacological fixes and natural fixes for the type(s) of ADHD present. The doctors who set this up are very well respected in their field. All this comes with the caveat that you see your family physician - with a print out of the test results :) - prior to using ANY of their advice. I found this test was spot on for my son - and the meds we have given him since the test are doing what they should be doing.

Of course, the question is - do you need these diagnoses? The school SHOULD be supporting your daughter no matter what the diagnosis. Are they giving her what she needs?

The flip side to that is that I understood my son better after his diagnoses. The NLD is tied up into such a neat little package - and he fits most of it! :-)

Lil

My daughter is in the middle school in 5th grade. Her Agenda book ( homework assignment book) is signed by each teacher daily. The teacher can add any notes. Does your daughter have a agenda book?

Also the school has a homework hotline. Everyday after 3:30 ..each teacher records the daily assignments.

My children in 3rd also have a agenda book and homework hotline.Parents have to sign the agenda book daily.

It is a PDA like a Palm. In fact, it runs the Palm operating system.

Hi! I am a LD middle school teacher. I write very simple, clear assignments on my “homework board” that the students put into the agenda. They do not leave my classroom until I have signed that agenda (that way I make sure they have written it in on the right day and so on). Also, I encourage my students to color code everything. They love this because middle schoolers are very into highlighters, gel pens, pretty folders, etc. For example, GEOGRAPHY equals GREEN, so in geography we write in green notebooks, put our work in green folders, use green highlighters, and write in our agendas with green gel pens or colored pencils, and cover our geography books with green book covers. I copy geography homework onto green paper. Parents love this because it keeps everything for like subjects together. Also, this helps students that are in a rush grab everything the need for class out of the locker. The just have to remember, “I need the green folder, book, and notebook.” I also have parents sign the agenda every evening. I tend to staple the directions for bigger projects right into the agenda, leave them there until I see a parent signature, and then move those into the folders. I think the calendar idea you mentioned was awesome. I might have a way of “celebrating” the finished assignments. Maybe replacing the posty notes with stickers or the earned grade? Hope this helps.

of getting this implemented in the general ed classroom? In othern words asking the geography teacher to allow my daughter to use green bookcovers, notebooks, etc. (sometimes the teacher already has a “color” in mind for the notebooks as I’ve found with my 8th grade son.

In 2nd grade my AT specialist said my daughter would need this kind of color coding organizational strategy; however, the OT has yet to implement anything (we are currently in 4th grade). Do you think it is something I should specifically request that she work on with my daughter? My concern IS middle school with all the different classes, notebooks, etc.

My daughter is generel ed, 15 min consult only, with 30 min/wkly OT.

If this is a strategy that will help your daughter than you should insist that it be included as an accomodation in her IEP. I think if the teacher wants to help her, it won’t be a big deal. Color coding stuff doesn’t even require a great deal of effort on the part of the teacher……just an idea that I threw out there. It really helps my middle school kids.

I think what you said is the KEY. Trying to get a gen ed teacher to WANT to allow these “different” kinds of strategies is the hard part. I have a friend with a high schooler whose teachers (general ed) are being VERY difficult about accommodations/modifications. I’m thinking if my OT works on it with her now, by the time she gets to middle school she will have the system down pat and I can say, “what do you mean we can’t do it this way, she’s been doing it this way for over a year!”

The problem we are finding this year with my NLD son (6th grade, first year of middle school) is that each teacher seems to have a different idea about how they want things organized. So all the hard work his very good SPED teacher did last year is for naught. He really internalized her system of organization, and it COULD work for all subject areas. But although my son’s teachers this year are great in other ways, and are working hard to accommodate his needs, they all have their own “way” of organizing, and each is different.

Some INSIST on spiral notebooks, some INSIST on separate 3 ring binders for “their” class, and some INSIST on a pocket folder in his main trapper. His SPED teacher helps him organize his stuff during academic support, but he only has that every other day. I go through everything with him each evening, and we put things in the right places. But it’s an on-going struggle, and things do slip between the cracks.

The teachers are good about not giving him too much grief when things do slip through the cracks, but I’d RATHER that he be given a system that he can actually follow so that he can be held accountable for it. By the second half of last year, he knew the system, and although the SPED teacher was checking his agenda and trapper, he was doing most of it by himself. We’re not even close this year, because it’s all so confusing.

It didn’t work for us. :-/

We HAD a workable system last year. We just can’t get the teachers in the middle school to support it. We could force it down their throats on the IEP, but my experience has been that unless the teachers buy into active support of an accommodation (rather than just “allowing” it) it doesn’t work.

Like taking notes on his lap top. They all say they will “let him” do it, but it hasn’t become something he thinks of on his own yet, and none of them actively encourage it. So he does longer writing assignments on the computer, but bypasses a potentially very powerful tool by not using it for note-taking too.

Karen