speech pull out or consult with teachers for middle school

DS age 13 is pulled out for speech in 7th grade-only once a week. After the therapist met him we briefly spoke of increasing it once we were sure he could hold his grades up-she acted like she had the time

I never took her up on it-where has this school year gone?????

I REALLY need to get this kid in private therapy and see if we can resolve things. NINE years of speech therapy is ridiculous :(

My younger son had six years of speech via school, K-5th. During 5th, the speech teacher told me, off the record, that they just were not getting anywhere and she didn’t have the skill D needed. She unofficially refered us to a rehap center run by our children’s hospital. For six month D saw a therapist who worked on strengtening D’s tounge and jaw seeing her once a week for an hour. He also had an hour of exercise each night (although most of it was pretty simple and he could do other things at the same time such as read or even watch TV). After this his speech just took off at school and he went from the 2% on articulation to 48% in weeks. The school offered to continue speech in middle school this year (but in pull out. I’m having a rough time figuring out how that would work in inclusion?). We declined for various reasons.

Just my experience.

How would inclusive speech work?

Barb

I am an SLP who works with middle school students. My daughter is in high school and still gets speech services. This is what I do with my kids in the middle school. I look at their entire schedule. I talk with their teachers and find the class that I can pull them out that would be the least disruptive. Many of my kids are in Resource or Special Day Classes so the SDC and RSP teachers and I team up together to help the kids keep up with general education curriculum, reading and writing. I will also pull the kids during their SSR sustained silent reading which is for approximately 30 minutes once a week if they are speech only kids for those who have a stuttering problem or articulation.

My main concern in middle school with kids who have LANGUAGE difficulties is that they have someone like an SLP to help them with the hard vocabulary in expository text that you find in the text books. That is the hardest problem for my 10th grade daughter. Last night we were reading about Hitler and Mousellini and the vocabulary was WAY over HER HEAD. She even had problems decoding it and we would stop every few sentences and dialogue what the words meant, look at the questions she was supposed to answer and then help her formulate her responses. Kids in middle school have a hard time with organization, especially with keeping up with all the changes in the classes, when to turn things in, when to ask questions, planning enough time for homework and projects and studying for exams. It is really hard for those kids who have speech and language issues and especially difficult for the kids who have poor reading and writing skills.

I would stick with getting your kids speech and request the school based SLP to write goals that are TIED to the CURRICULUM standards. Your child can be supported in her general education curriculum with appropriate goals and objectives that are tied to the standards.

Thanks for the responses. My child has a language problem and the speech person last year thought she had apraxia.My child probably won’t be in general education classes. Learning support for the school told me they have classes where they go over the vocabulary so the kids understand-I am hoping she didn’t mean dumbing down the curriculum. Yes, I will try to get goals, thanks for the advice, but with the newer law it sounds like the school would only need to write objectives if the student took alternative assessments. I have been having my child take the regular assessments, and she has not come close to standard on the tests she has taken so far. The principal at the new school is great,so I am hoping next year goes well. It seems like it would be so much easier if the instructors from the middle school were involved in the IEP. They would have a better idea of what my child needs would be.

Thanks for the responses. My child has a language problem and the speech person last year thought she had apraxia.My child probably won’t be in general education classes. Learning support for the school told me they have classes where they go over the vocabulary so the kids understand-I am hoping she didn’t mean dumbing down the curriculum. Yes, I will try to get goals, thanks for the advice, but with the newer law it sounds like the school would only need to write objectives if the student took alternative assessments. I have been having my child take the regular assessments, and she has not come close to standard on the tests she has taken so far. The principal at the new school is great,so I am hoping next year goes well. It seems like it would be so much easier if the instructors from the middle school were involved in the IEP. They would have a better idea of what my child needs would be.

The goals should be tied to the STANDARDS of where she is at and there are tons of goal banks that are tied to the standards. Meaning…if she is functioning at 3rd grade level and you want to get to 4th grade then the SLP would pick out the goals that are appropriate to help her achieve the skills she needs to master the curriculum at where she is and get her to where she needs to be.