My daughter has (had?) several learning disabilities; including reading comprehension, poor spelling, expressing her ideas in writting, and poor hand writing skills.
In grade 6 she went through the LIPS program which brought her reading level up to grade level. She was given strategies (such as mapping and outlines) to help her with her written assignemtns. She still has some trouble with spelling but now that she in grade 8 she no longer has those weekly spelling tests and she can spell checks her assignments.
Now she is in grade 8 and is doing well. Her grades are all in the 70s. During parent teacher intervews, her history and english teacher mentioned that they never would have realized that she was Dyslexic unless I mentioned it.
Which got me to wondering, should I still mention it to her teachers? What are the pros and cons? :?
Re: When do you stop mentioning LDs?
My 7th grader is LD but in reg. ed. and receives no services and he’s on his own; we don’t mention it at all. He’s doing A work, but really is very very bright, but our middle school is happy to teach to the middle of the pack(no gifted and talented programs in our system), so he does fine even with his slow processing and terrible spelling. Why mention it if she’s not receiving services?
Re: When do you stop mentioning LDs?
THe time it may become important again is when classes segregate into “college bound” and not. YOu may have to do some jumping up and down — but even then I would focus intently on the brightness, not the LD.
Re: When do you stop mentioning LDs?
[quote=”SAR”]My 7th grader is LD but in reg. ed. and receives no services and he’s on his own; we don’t mention it at all. He’s doing A work, but really is very very bright, but our middle school is happy to teach to the middle of the pack(no gifted and talented programs in our system), so he does fine even with his slow processing and terrible spelling. Why mention it if she’s not receiving services?[/quote]
SAR,
How sad that your really very bright child isn’t being challenged. It is not okay for a kid who is bright to get middle-of-the-pack instruction, even if he is a slow processor and doesn’t spell well. I don’t understand school systems that don’t offer opportunites for gifted education. WHat tends to happen with bright children who are not challenged is that they turn off from school. There is an interesting article in the latest Roeper Review concerning a recent study of giftedness and the “honor” in underachievement. it seems that some very bright kids underachieve out of a sense of moral outrage. They know they deserve more education than they are getting and when it is not forthcoming, they stop bothering with school, seeing it as the “honorable” response to an unfair situation.
Re: When do you stop mentioning LDs?
Our state, Mass., is in a huge recession because of the high tech companies cutting back and sending jobs overseas…our state funds education thru a combo of state funds(hugely cut back), and property taxes and voters don’t support an override to the state law that “caps” property taxes…so many, many programs(enrichment, etc) have been cut back. Yes, I think he’ll do OK(he doesn’t want any harder work, and spends enough time on his homework now) and that there will be a college somewhere for him. Our high school does have honors courses and maybe he’ll get into some of those, who knows. Have you read Not Much Just Chillin, the Hidden World of Middle Schoolers? It will explain a lot about the middle school mind!!
sharing info with teachers
It’s an excellent question. As a teacher myself, I appreciate knowing those things about my students and I just can’t read every student’s file - I have 63 students. Knowing that a child has a history of dyslexia allows me to keep an extra caring eye on the student.
But such things vary from teacher to teacher. Some teachers do not modify what they do for any child without a mandate to do so.
Personal Experience
I would personally try to take cues from your child. Repeatedly ask her if she feels that she is recieving enough attention in the class, or if more attention would actually help her in each class.
I’m currently a Soph. at Univ of Texas and dyslexic, so I went through this entire mess not too long ago myself. I always held off talking to my teachers about my LD until I believed that it would be of benefit to me for them to know.
Sometimes I found that after my teachers found out about my LD that they started talking down to me and treated me like I was mentally disabled. As sad as it is, some teachers today still don’t understand LDs.
I never tell people that I’m dyslexic unless I believe that they need to know b/c I’m struggling with the material. I don’t know if this helps you or anyone else, but there is my experience. Good luck.
Do her grades reflect her knowledge and/or her abilities? Or, as with many kids with dyslexia, is she either actually learning a lot more than the grades indicate, or (also too common) still really not learning at anything like her potential, but hey, she’s passing so that’s good enough… and the third possibility, she’s passing but learning even *less* than her grades indicate because of the language issues?
If any of the above, I’d want teachers to know that there is more potential there and to encourage it all the way. Too many *very* bright students sincerely believe they’re not and many decisions and attitudes and therefore their ability to learn in more advanced settings are determined not by their true ab ilities but by these attitude-imposed limitations.
If she’s really pretty much licked her language problems, more power to her and let her go :)