Background, I went in and viewed my child’s day. I wrote a letter concerned that the IEP was not being met. I wrote my child was not verbalizing or counting in math and also not sounding out and breaking words down in reading and that fluency was not being addressed.
The teacher wrote back” Lastly, in your letter you mentioned that you did not see some objective being addressed. Please consider the fact that in order to do a good job in teaching skills, time must be spent on teaching them. If we were to jump from skill to skill to skill everyday, we would not be doing a good job of addressing the needs of the students. One day we may spend most of it working on ‘life’ math skills. Other days we may spend mostly on counting and place value, or we may work mostly on learning math facts . All of her objectives will be addressed weekly.”
To me it would make more sense to not bounce around from skill to skill from one day to the next but practice the same skills daily. Please let me know what you all think. Thanks-
Re: need help on reply to teacher about IEP objectives
I feel that my objectives should be delt with daily. My child has language problems. My objective is to have her verbalize in math so the symbol is connected to her verbal response. My other objective is for her to sound out and break words down into syllables instead of guessing. My last objective was to have her count in which she needs to repeat daily and write it down to keep it in her memory.I have seen verbalizing and writing down information greatly improve her retention. I don’t see these things as great burdens upon the teacher. I also would think fluency would need to be addressed daily. Thanks for your input
IEPS
I think you may have been sold a bit of a bill of goods as to what an IEP really is and what it can really do. How do we truly individualize for a child’s while they are in a group of children with different needs?
The law offering our LD children protection and the IEPS that describe that protection are a bit of a smoke and mirrors act. As a parent of two LD chidren, I’d like their individual needs to be met every day. As a teacher myself, I just can’t pull that off. I have to cast the widest net I can to catch up all the kids.
Perhaps pulling your child out the resource room would give him the kind of specific daily remediation you feel is best. In any case, I sincerely hope you can work this through to get what you want for your child.
Re: need help on reply to teacher about IEP objectives
This room is the rescource room. I also see that some of the objectives would also help the other kids, such as sounding out and breaking down words into syllables instead of guessing, and verbalizing would help too when doing place value . I do not expect all objectives to be met at once,there were quite a few that the previous mentor teacher had written down,but if my child’s objective is to count by 5’s to 100 , I don’t see how she can attain that goal by doing it once a week. It would only take a couple minutes for her to do it every day and it would be retained better.
to original poster
The problem I have with many posts here, including this one, is that little background info is given(perhaps it was in a previous post, or the poster assumes everyone remembers a particular child/situation)…it would help greatly for other responders if the child’s age, grade, classroom setting/student-teacher situation, and general functioning level was shared in the original post. The way this board is set up, each post needs to be “self-contained” and not rely on prior ones…they could be many pages back.
Yes background matters greatly to the response… if this child is a 10yo in a reg. 5th grade or in a resource room of 3 kids functioning below age level areas…that would influence what I would expect of the teacher.
Re: need help on reply to teacher about IEP objectives
My child is 10 years old and in 5th grade. I am also posting under teaching and ld child for an other view. The class is a resource room one educational assistant to 4-5 kids. One child is a 6th grader, 3 are 5th graders they are all being taught at 3rd grade reading level. My child’s WIAT scores were end of last school year 3.4 reading comprehension,2.6 word reading and 2.2 GE for pseudoword decoding. Thanks for all your input I do appreciate it.
Re: need help on reply to teacher about IEP objectives
This may seem like a dumb question, but are you working with your child on these things at home?? Since there are other kids that are being worked with at the same time, it is hard to focus on just on child’s difficult areas, and not the others. I understand how frustrating it is to try to get help for your child, and feel like you are hitting a brick wall, I have been there many times. I hope that you are able to work out a better plan with this teacher so your child’s needs are met as well as the needs of the others in that class.
Re: need help on reply to teacher about IEP objectives
I probably replied to this on the other board (it is really confusing when people post the same question twice, for future reference). But this child is delayed THREE YEARS in decoding. She obviously needs a structured multi-sensory language program for reading, not just an objective for sounding out words. She does not need to be working on fluency until she is taught decoding skills. So I would say the objectives are not really appropriate, and they clearly are probably not using an effective reading method (and by that I mean Phono-Graphix, Language!, Lindamood-Bell, Orton-Gillingham, or one of the other research-based reading decoding programs). Addressing those objectives daily is not going to have the result needed. She needs a whole new set of methods, obviously. Is this the situation where the kids are being taught with regular ed. third grade materials? if so, it’s basically a waste of time and these children will never be competent readers unless the parents get private tutoring or get the training and do it themselves. This is a common situation, unfortunately, but it will have terrible results for the children involved unless the parents seek outside intervention. I’m sorry, but 5th grade is a little late to try to spend the time fighting the school…although some do and eventually get private LD school placement. But that will ordinarily take a special ed. attorney to accomplish. And a lot of lost time for the child.
Janis
Re: need help on reply to teacher about IEP objectives
How much time does your child spend in this resource room? I would hope that with one adult to 3-4 students there could be intensive reading instruction, then back to the class for everything else. If your child has average intelligence, and is still 2-3yrs behind in reading I would question the effectiveness of the instruction, and worry that it’s not intensive enough. Is this a public elementary school? I would ask for a meeting of the team and formulate another plan ASAP.
Re: need help on reply to teacher about IEP objectives
I think the real question here is why the teacher is defensive and why she’s not doing things every day. If she really is carefully sequencing thigns, it’s worth trying to understand her approach.
However, an awful lot of the skills in the IEP really would best be addressed in a “little bit, every day” manner —it also is a good way to build up a daily routine and good work habits and all that. ANd frankly, what she probably needs to learn to read is intensive, daily instruction. Doesn’t sound like she’s going to get it at this setting — but it also sounds like the school does have itself coverd legally.
This is a situation where you get to choose your battles ;(
Well, I definitely do not cover every objective every day! Some goals and methods need to be very carefully sequenced. I do not see that as unusual at all.
Janis