textbooks, etc. for homeschooled special needs student

What age? What grade level? Are you looking for curriculum materials for specific subjects (reading, math) only, or are you looking for home therapies also — that work on processing and memory)?

Nancy

I’m looking for 6th grade textbooks and things to do at home to improve processing and memory. He’s a visual, kinestitic learner.

Is he reading on grade level then or is it delayed? We’d need to know how the processing and memory deficits are effecting his academics in order to give you suggestions.

Janis

Hello,

I know of a very good technique to help a visual-spacial learner decode words. Email me for more info if you are interested. [email protected] Anita

I generally took a text and then modified and made up my own exercises — see my post at http://forums.ldonline.org/viewtopic.php?t=10685 for some ideas on American History as examples.
Basically, I figure out what the important stuff is — the main concepts and terms that I want to be remembered forever — and find a way to show it visually, and then find a way for the student to work with the information visually & kinesthetically. It’s hard for me, since I am so much a verbal person — I constantly have to bring myself back to “okay, where are the pictures?” :-)
I’d find my state standards (or use the Virginia Standards of Learning which are online) to use as guidelines.
Things like timelines and big posters with teh “big picture” to keep connecting to are also very good.
There are a couple of really good articles in the LD In Depth “For Teachers” section about “watering up” the curriculum that have some neat strategies for teaching the textbook-resistant.
http://www.resourceroom.net/myarticles/barriers.asp also has some general ideas for keeping the language from preventing learning.

If you get specific, I could come up with specific ideas ;)

Visual processing- Spacial when writing and drawing, sequences of info. like long division and tying shoes harder to learn, some discrimination. Auditory processing- difficulty distiquishing differences in similiar sounds sometimes, difficulty hearing some sounds in a word, storing, recalling, poor auditory working memory and short term memory. His working memory is very poor. He has sensory integration dysfunction, but not too badly. Very poor writing and spelling, subject vocabulary and complex info. difficult. He tests at grade level, but he’s not able to keep up with textbooks. He practices alot. It’s just getting harder!!! I’ve home schooled and have made many worksheets, since some previous textbooks have not worked. He is in O.T., doing AudiBlox and I’m thinking of Brain Gym and the PACE program for underlying skills. AT WITS END!

How long have you been using Audiblox? Are you working with it 5 times a week? I know this program needs to be done consistently to have results. It is not a quick fix. The student also has to work very hard at it each session. I am watching a student blossoming with it right now. She works on it 1/2 hour with her class each day, and then she gets an additional 1/2 hour after school.

BTW, Brain gym hasn’t gotten good reviews here.

—des

For visual processing, have you gotten a developmental vision eval?

Ideally you would want to get any OT and other sensory therapies out of the way before investing in PACE, in order to optimize gains. PACE usually does a good job of improving working memory, though. A recent student of mine with very severe deficits was able to make a two-year gain in working memory with PACE, and it has definitely helped.

For the auditory processing, I would be inclined to do FastForWord. It should help considerably with the sound discrimination problems, and perhaps some others. If you decide to do FFW and PACE, you would definitely want to do FFW first.

Brain Gym would be more suitable for a younger child. It may do other things, but in my opinion it works primarily on sensory integration. For a 6th grader, I would invest in Dance Dance Revolution instead — a lot more fun for the child, and much less hassle for you.

Something somewhat similar to Brain Gym in that it consists of simple exercises, but that works specifically on the visual system, is Integrating Mind, Brain and Body Through Movement by Etta Rowley (http://www.oep.org/prod02.htm ). This works on sensory integration of the visual system and would be easier than Brain Gym to use with a 6th grader, in my opinion.

You might want to consider WordSmart computer CD’s for vocabulary — probably starting with Volume B. That is something he could work on by himself. http://www.wordsmart.com . You can find them for less $$$ used on eBay. (This company is very pushy. If you call, they will do a hard sell on a complete subscription. Better to buy one volume at a time on eBay.)

Spelling Through Morphographs would be helpful for vocabulary as well as spelling. There is a pretest for it at http://www.mcgrawhill.ca/school/schoolGraphics/spellingthroughmorphographs0.pdf

Hope this helps some.

Nancy

Try Looking Glass Spelling for multisensory spelling instruction. The website is www.gwhizresources.com.
Fern Goldstein
[email protected]