need help with reply from teacher about concern of objective

I have always found that a small amount of time spent daily on a subject is much more valuable than a large amount of time spent once a week.
So, I agree with you and I think the teacher is very wrong.

Granted, you can’t teach something new in every subject every day. However, old skills should be reviewed and practiced daily. For example, some words should be sounded out every day, even if new words or sounds are not taught that day.

http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infocs/Study/Curve.html

has an interesting diagram illustrating the importance of review for retention. Perhaps you could print it out and take it along as ammunition to a meeting?

Nancy

I appreciate the information and I will be making a copy and sending to her. Thanks so much, I needed the reinforcement to know I am doing right.

Well, I just answered this question on another board here, but I have a very different view. Many objectives are sequenced according to level of difficulty. I certainly do not work on all of a child’s objectives in one day! I will focus on certain skills until they are mastered and then move on to other objectives. Certainly there is room for review and practice. But I think it is very unrealistic to come in and observe for one day and then tell the teacher she is not doing things right. I’d personally have a problem with that.

Janis

I have viewed the class before last year and I had told the same teacher I need my child to sound out the words instead of guessing. I even modeled the way it should be done with my child. She said thanks but later on when I viewed the class the same thing happened. I have repeated my request got in on the IEP and still she is not following through. Also I have tried to get her to change the spelling level as it is too easy for my daughter. Last year I just let it go , as I had arranged to use the regular classes spelling words which my child did well with but at end of year they changed ,and back to the simple words we went. Again this year same thing , even though I had specified that my child do certain words and is in IEP, the teacher is not following the IEP. I wrote on my other post that I don’t think my objectives are that much of a hinderance to the teacher to include in her sessions.

You’d have to be more specific about what you saw, what was going on in the classroom, etc. for me to be able to respond. It is plausible that you won’t see everying every day if there are a variety of objectives. The context, how many students are in the room, all effect what the teacher does.

I think IEPS are guidelines. I don’t think IEPS can or do spell out how each skill is to be achieved. I do think you could engage this teacher and others in a battle over the best way to achieve the skills but the reality is that the best of teachers can’t be in two places at the same time and has to do what works for the class as a whole while bearing in mind your son’s individual needs.

It also isn’t realistic to think that any teacher can drop their teaching plans or teaching style and quickly switch to another. We are what we are.

Is your son happy with this teacher? Is he having a good year in school? Does he speak well of his school day? If so, you and he are way ahead of the game. If you also see growth in his skills as the year goes on, you’ve won the game.

If though he’s coming home each day sad, blue or down in the dumps, then school isn’t working for him. Young children need to be comfortable in their school and their class to enable them to learn. Young children don’t learn well when fearful or sad. If his teacher and her teaching leads him to feel that way that’s another matter that would deserve everyone’s full attention.

Good luck.

By the way besides this class being the resource room there are only 5 kids and it is being taught by a” educational assistant” who doesn’t have educational training. I think there is something also going on with the educational assistant and my child or the curriculum. The learning support teacher is going to give my child harder spelling words after she had received my letter,I had also previously in beginning of year let her know the words were too easy. On this particular day , my child was very disruptive mumbling to herself she herself is dumb and educational assistant is mean. Which when I inquired was told not like that usually but is whiny, so something is happening. I am hoping the harder spelling words will help, but am thinking something else is going on. They are also doing explode the code book 4 which is syllabication.We are doing that series with tutor and are up to book 7. I wrote a letter to say make sure my child doesn’t feel bad about redoing the workbook. So that could also be the problem. When I viewed the class the educational assistant had the kids do the work book without much guidance and worked out of a program which had a fluency piece in it ,but did not use it as such. Learning support said they will not use that as the fluency as her response. I appreciate all the comments as they get me in the right mind to be able to deal with this.
Thanks

Really, this is a complex problem which probably won’t be solved by arguing over the implemntation IEP objectives.

First of all, is this educational assistant (or the teacher) trained in a multi-sensory structured language approach to reading? Does she or the teacher understand how reading and spelling instruction should be connected? Just telling this person to have your child “sound out words” is almost pointless if the person is not trained to teach reading. There simply HAS to be some basic knowledge on the part of the teacher or assistant for the instruction to be delivered properly. If she has indeed mastered the skills in book 4 of ETC, then I’d have to ask why she is wasting the time doing it again in resource. If your private tutor is good, perhaps your child might be better off in the regular classroom. Having a child miss regular class is only worthwhile if the remediation in resouce is very good. And in the case, I think I’d want to know much more about what methods they are using to teach reading, spelling, etc.

Janis

I do thank you for your input. This situation is complex and I hope I can get it figured out, as there are many aspects to this situation that needs attention. Thanks to you all for letting me bounce around for ideas and suggestions.

So… sounds like the issue is a whole lot deeper than how she’s covering objectives.
Assuming you’re absolutely in the right, and this teacher basically teaches her program, not the students’ objecitves, I sincerely doubt that she will do the 180. It’s not how she works.
So — you get to pick your battles. However, consider how well you will be able to enforce the results of an argument you win, no matter how well you win it. There might be a way to do it (with results of the daily teaching) but then again, that might not be feasible. She’s also on the defensive (and it sounds like she feels she has an ironclad defense).