My son is in the 2nd grade and has been tested by the school psychologist and determined to have a general learning disability. He does not read on grade level therefore he does not do anything else on grade level because all of the tests he has to read the instructions and problems. He is very bright (all mothers say that) and retains almost everything he hears. He performs in plays, sings, dances and plays the drums. He remembers all of that but cannot remember on the second page, a word that he read on the first page.
When I talked to him about the possibility of staying in the second grade another year, he developed what the doctor determined to be a nervous stomach and had to be put on medication for that. He is mainstreamed and goes to reading 2 times a day from his class. I feel that he is improving but not enough to bring him up to grade level. 3rd grade has an end of grade test that he has to pass to go on. Do I wait and hope that his iep will make allowances for the EOG or do I keep him back now and risk him being on muscle relaxers the whole year?
Re: general
If he has an IEP, I don’t believe the school can use that test in order to pass him.Does he have an IEP, if so what accomodations do they have listed for testing?
Georgia
Re: general
Make sure that at every IEP conference you have from now on, you get whatever modifications you think your son needs to be successful down on that IEP. Whatever modifications he gets in his regular class, they have to use the same modifications on the test. That’s the way it is in Indiana. However, if a student in my program has a reading disability and his tests are read to him in regular class, the reading parts of the test that test reading are not allowed to be read on a state test, only the math, science, and social studies parts are read. I second the getting a private tutor. We teachers at school are overwhelmed with caseloads, not enough help or program assistants, and you don’t get the individual help as you would with a tutor. If you think about getting a tutor, the tutor should have experience and at least KNOW what the multisensory Orton-Gillingham method is all about, the Slingerland, or the Herman Method, Auditory Discrimination in Depth (the ADD program) or Morgan Dynamic Phonics. All these methods work on all the senses to help children learn to read, and they all provide systematic ways of learning the regular patterns of words. Good luck with your son’s program. It’s great that he was identified early. With the right teaching methods, he should progress at a good rate.
Re: general
What ever you do, don’t hold your son back in 2nd or any other grade. I am a second grade teacher of 17 years. I will not hold another child back for learning disabilities after research I have done about the drop out rates of those who do. Holding him back another year will not fix his LD. They will be there whenever he goes to 3rd grade, this year or the next. What you need is a good plan to assist the LD problem in third grade and Enrich the giftedness of your childs strengths. Look for positives outside of school like community or church plays if he likes acting. My son also has reading problems , yet a great memory for conversations we have had. I often talk to him about Social Studies and Science. I am really having a conversation about what he is responsible for from his text book. He remembers it all the next day when presented in this format. As far as EOGs go, you make the request put on the IEP that he needs extended time in Reading and the Math test can be given as a read aloud. When we first implimented this with my son in Math, his score went from a 54 to a 90 which was the highest score in the class. Good Luck.
M.P.
Re: general
We have a state test that the kids are suppose to pass to move on to the next grade both in 3rd and 5th. Because my son has an IEP, they cannot keep him back. Also, they cannot keep your child back unless you ok it. They forget to let you know that. Many studies have been done over the year and the studies have consistently shown that the blow in self esteem that a child suffers from being held back out weighs any advantageous effects of keeping the child back.
In other words, it really doesnt do the child any good! Our school district which covers about 100,000 population is notorious for grouping kids under the General Learning Disability catagory. We have 1700 kids identified with Learning Disabilities, and yet you and I both know, that very few have the same type of LD and obstacles. Hang in there and if you dont feel you are getting him the accomodations your child needs, contact PAVE, which can advocate with you at the IEP. You are allowed to bring an advocate or support when you attend these meetings.
Good luck.
Re: general
Jay
My daughter had “severe specific LD’s in ALL academic areas and significant processing delays” We provided her with Lindamood Bell tutoring and she is currently at grade level. We did not go the special ed route through the school, but instead told the school that we would provide private intervention. She gets use of AT through the school because of fine motor/dysgraphia, but due to private OT and “Handwriting without Tears”, she is doing much better.
With early intervention (my daughter was in 2nd grade when she was evaluated) these kids can excel. It won’t help to retain a child that needs specialized tutoring - teaching the same thing the same way won’t help. I would vote for Lindamood Bell or some other kind of multisensory reading program.
I would not hold my child back. Already
he towers over his classmates, he’s going to be really tall!
With the anxiety your child is already showing, I don’t
think it would be a good idea.
And it sounds like, intellectually, your son would
be bored and this would set him up for behaviour
problems.
These two books are wonderful and I highly recommend
them ~
A MIND AT A TIME by Mel Levine, MD
and
You, Your Child and “Special” Education
by Barbara Coyne Cutler
I also suggest you find out as MUCH as you can
about your state’s high stakes test. Know your rights
inside and out. We are starting that in our state and my
son’s year is the first year that will be held to it. I am
hoping for lawsuits to delay it. Bar that I have been
keeping up with all the latest news about it and will
know my child’s rights, as an LD student, backwards
and forwards when the time comes.
Finally I suggest tutoring for your son. I do my own
tutoring because my son and I work together well.
Trained as a ‘look and say’ reader (Dick and Jane) I had
to learn phonics from the ground up.
Children with learning disabilites do best with one
on one tutoring. Very few schools are ever going to
be able to do that - money, money, money - they
just don’t have near enough, and probably never will
have.
Another option is a private school for LD kids. If there
was one in our area that is the route I would have gone.
Anne - mom of 12-yr-old dyslexic boy