speech goals - he is not mastering them how can I help?

I would definitely go for more time and one to one if possible. The little he is getting is clearly not working.

My daughter is funny about directions — very very smart, but one thing at a time, period. By the time she was ten she had learned to insist on being given one direction at a time, or in writing.

Work as you do teaching any skill — do NOT jump in off the deep end and insist that he follow long complex directions all at once; rather, find out what he does understand and start there; then practice adding on more complexity a little, teeny, tiny bit at a time. Make a point of practicing; send him on small errands around the house and tell him he is helping *both* of you.

Also the way they are measured could be part of the problem. Perhaps the SLP needs to move backwards to lay the foundation for the skills he is missing.

What is his disability to be specific? If you gave me more input I could help you more with ideas. I am a speech path.

Thank you I do not know anyone to ask this about. It seems most go to speech for the sounds they make or hear.

Levels of performance -
demonstrates functional voice, fluency and articulation. Receptive and expressive language weaknesses are impacting his learning in the first grade classroom at this time.
* second time in first grade

These where his short term goals from the beginning of school till the last days. They did not change at all during the year.
all having a level of mastery of 80% accuracy X 3 weeks

MS 13 define and use adjectives as describing a person place or object
end of year score 40%

MS 14 use categories to describe and to organize words into groupings
end of year score 40%

AP 22 follow 1-2 steps directions to complete a task
end of year score 40%

AP 23 recall 1-2 facts from orally presented material of increading length
end of year score 30%

LS 8 ask and answer wh questions who what where when why and how many
end of year score 45%

P 19 request clarification aor repetition of previously presented information in the speech room and in the classroom
end of year score 35%
this sccore I think is more because in the classroom repeating instruction meant he would have to leave the room. Not an understanding teacher at all.

method of evaluation - observation and clinical judgement on all areas

I did ask the speech, well not the speech teacher, she was not in the meeting but the speech assesser I guess is a better name where he was on these goals at the beginning of the year she said he was at 0%.

This was his first year in speech and started it with a nice first year speech teacher. Last years speech teacher is now a floater teacher between schools and does the assessments.

I dont know if this has any influence or not.

He met the speech group of 3-4 students at the end of the day right after the resource room time of 1.5 hours. Maybe the time of day should be changed?

Oh and one more thing you should know and the school is aware of this too but I do not know if they made any connection.

When my son’s 6 year molars where coming in - it took over a year he had loud ringing in his ears. I toke him to the nose, ears and throat doc often trying to fing out why. She said she could find nothing wrong and that it was a reaction to his teeth.

He did take some kind of hearing test in a box. He answer all the questions wrong. Not a mistake but the answer had nothing to do with the question- ???? After givin examples of the questions and what the answer should be he got the hang of giving the correct answers. so hearing checked out ok when he knew the pattern

She did say he had fluid in one ear but not enough for tubes. It is like when you come off a plane. Can get worse when allegies act up which is not often. We gave him Allegra but then found out Allegra can cause fluid in the ears if used to often??? I think it was the school nurse that told me that.

Regular hearing test are good. The school nurse even tested him when he had said is ears where ringing and he past.

His ears have not rang in over a year since his molars are all in.

Just a little more history if it helps

This over a year ago.

Have you checked your medical insurance to find out if it will cover a private evaluation by a speech and language pathologist? If not, call and ask. I wouldn’t volunteer during the call that your son is receiving services at school. Just say that you suspect language processing problems. What you want to ask for is a complete speech and language evaluation. If medical insurance covers this, I would definitely go that route. A private evaluation is usually much more thorough than what a school can provide. Medical insurance will also sometimes cover a certain number of private therapy visits per year. If you have a choice, try to find a speech/language pathologist who includes screening tests for auditory processing disorders. APD can result from fluid in the ears, etc.

Nancy

I have been wondering about auditory processing. I hve called one place that does auditory and visual testing for $650. I did not ask about speech. I thought they where two different issues.

Should I call his doc first or just call my ins co?

This and visual processing I have been thinking about checking. He also reverses double digit numbers 57 is called 75 etc.

Definitely check into the auditory issues with your insurance and your doctor. In your case I would call both — sooner or later you get answers if you keep looking.

As far as reversals, I have a running battle with this. Years ago, I hardly ever saw reversals, and when I did see them it was with kids who had really severe problems, like one with Kleinfelter’s Syndrome. Now, *nearly all* my students are reversing, even the good gifted high school kids.
Since the genetics of the population have not changed, it *must* be something in the way things are being taught.
Looking into this further, I have seen that *all* my primary school kids, even the good gifted ones, have a nightmare way of writing: they get up on their knees on the chair, place their left arm on the table as a fulcrum, balance their chest on the arm, and drive half their body weight through the pencil. In order to do this they have the pencil in a death-grip in the fist, most often “hooked” like a left-hander. The head is over and above the letters, looking back and down at it, and due to the posture, usually right at the end of the pencil. OK, try to write like this. You will find that you can’t actually see what you are writing very well through your hand, you are looking at the writing upside down anyway, and you hand and eye fatigue very rapidly.
So, seeing this spread of reversals across the board as a new development, I asked what causes it and what to do about it.
What causes it seems to be giving little four- and five-year-old kids with tiny hands hard pencils and worse yet wax crayons to write with, so they need the body weight to make any marks, and then leaving them on their own to re-invent thousands of years of cultural development, just figure out any way on their own any way to get vaguely letter-shaped marks on paper. Naturally, not knowing that there is a left-to-right and top-to-bottom system in our written system (how could they know? Nobody has taught them!) they work sometimes left and sometimes right, sometimes down and sometimes up. Because of the pressure problem, they find it “easier” to use some very odd letter formations. Many of these are the reverse of standard, and first things first, you have to get standard left-to-right visualization of letters in the mind before any correction of reversals in reading is going to stick.
What to do about it: well, first get some writing tools that do not require pressure. I like whiteboards and wipe-off markers for practice, and rolling writers or inexpensive real fountain pens for book work. No yellow pencils, period (This also addresses the erasing addiction that is so common — one minute of writing to five minutes of erasing, hours of work and no results.) Yes, that incluses math. Crossing out is not a sin and is a lot faster and more efficient anyway.
Then, I have to retrain habits. This takes time and is not fun for anyone concerned, but too bad, years of failure later is a lot less fun. I insist on sitting on the chair and not having the weight on the table, left (non-writing) hand out of the middle of the work. Then letters are formed left-to-right and top-to-bottom, period; any malformed letter is wiped off or crossed out and rewritten, evey single time. It doesn’t matter if it is sort of kind of close and can be read with the right squint, it is the directionality that matters and directionality is one of the central messages of the lesson. The first week or two includes a lot of whining and complaints, the next few months are hard work; and the payoff comes after a month or two when the reading reversals start to die off. They are usually almost disappeared within three to six months of work.
Of course we are also reading orally and working on accuracy there too, but I find the reading reversals and math reversals are very resistant to change until the physical/visual reversals of the writing are addressed — you cannot work right-to-left in half a lesson and left-to-right in another half without confusing yourself.

Yes I can see some of he writting style you are talking of here. He sits at the chair but he does bend his hand like a lefty would. Before he went to K he colored and ate lefty. I just thought that was from doing lefty first and thought that was how to hold his hand. I will work on changing that. He does have weak fine motor. He has done the writing without tears twice and does still form some of letter clockwise but other than d’s and b’s most of his reversal are just will the number. Writting them has got better but reading them he reverses the number order.

He also insists that his paper is parallel to his belly.

Thank you it is amazing how what would seem like a harmless thing ex hand and head position - can cause so much more confusion else where.[size=18][/size][size=24][/size]