I have a daughter who is on a 504 plan this year and received services 5x a week last year. She is having a good year so far but i still see suttle comprehension, decoding, and organizatonal issues in her work. She will attend middle school in two years and the work load will greatly increase along with the need for her to be able to keep up and organize all her papers and homework. The psychologist in our district will be re-evaluating her in the spring to see if she has lost any ground and continues to progress in all areas. I keep wondering if she should be receiving more services to begin to train her in some strategies for work and who should that person be? I talked briefly to a speech therapist at middle school and she mentioned that she has a few LD kids on her caseload with this diagnosis? I guess I am just looking for more info and wondering why support staff dont teach kids the strategies of underlining main ideas in a story and other organizers for work? Maggie
You ask a good question. As a teacher myself, I sadly think though that in these modern times, much of middle school and certainly high school has become very sink or swim. I think rather than support students through transition years, schools make those transition years a kind of proving ground. What support there is mostly comes from parents as schools pile on the new work. I sat down with my own son every night to keep him organized through middle school as his school seemed to think their responsibility was simply to hand out many papers to him but not to help him or teach him how to handle papers.
I would hope your daughter’s school is different. In the meantime, if she evidences decoding issues, she certainly could be and should be receiving services to help with that. Is there a reading specialist at her school?
I’m not sure that underling the main idea is still thought to be the best strategy to improve comprehension but even if the school does not, reading with her and discussing the meaning of stories together can only help - not hurt - her reading comprehension.
Good luck.