has anyone ever been able to get their angel tested but NOT labled?
what i mean is that i believe that my little guy has a written language disability and they will only continue to tell me he can remain in the rsp program. in that program he is only helped with what he doesn’t get donein the regular classroom. so great, she does all of the reports with him. he never is coached on how to develop and write papers and i am still told that he is approaching the 4 grade level. he calculates at almost a 6 grade level, and reads at above a 5 grade level and this child still has 1 and 2 on his report card. am i nuts… i think that if we had something specific to work on we might go somehwere on the writing.i amfeelinmg like he is victimized by the”no child left behind”
i am ready to go to the district.
Re: dysgraphia
My twelve year old son was diagnosed at age nine with Dysgraphia. The psychologist that did his testing at that time recommended a word processor for longer writing assignments so we bought him a laptop of his own (although now I know we could have made the school system provide him with a word processor). He does much better at getting his thoughts out when he isn’t having to concentrate so hard on actually forming each letter. The quality of his writing assignments has improved greatly, plus he has the added bonus of spell checking his work.
The school has not addressed his handwriting, so we are purchasing Handwriting Without Tears ourselves to use with him and they beginner set to use with his younger brother. I have seen the OT at school use this system with children of all ages, and it really works. You can check the system out at [url]http://www.hwtears.com[/url] HWT has been adopted by the state boards of Alabama, California, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahome, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. The program is relatively inexpensive and it really works.
As for learning keyboarding skills, we used Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 10 and it worked really well with him. He made more of a game of it than anything else and we even had races (he on his laptop and me on my desktop) and made it really fun. But as it is a skill needed to help with the assistive technology the child needs, the school system can be held responsible for teaching keyboarding skills. It just depends on which way you want to go.
Re: dysgraphia
I finally got my act together on sending out my tutoring notes. Ask me for the writing notes at [email protected] if you want them. From what I’ve seen, HWT follows the same general ideas I do, no surprise since it’a a step-by-step traditional method and it works.
Getting the school to teach keyboarding is questionable. My daughter;s school just left the kids in the computer room with no instruction. My niece’s school sent the kids to a room with a typing program (something like Mavis Beacon) but didn’t supervise that they were actually doing anything, so they took it as a play period. Check out that there is a good teacher and enough time and some actual teaching will get done.
Dysgraphia....and writing.....
Hi. This is “Joe” from Northern New Jersey.
I am a 1981 High School graduate. That year, IBM came out with the
original Personal Computer. Typing will definitely help those people with
Dysgraphia LD. But, tutoring for cursive writing will also help, too.
When one turns 16, and starts a checking account, it will be important for that person to know how to sign their name. Also, to do basic check-book reconciliation ( balance a checkbook ) ; though I don’t follow religiously, the columns in the check-book register, I do keep a balance record.
Learning script/cursive writing, is still a needed skill. Use of tape-recorders supplements class lecture notes. I used a lot of abbreviations.
Also, sometimes, I ask others ( in offices I visit ) to take down the information; I dictate the note I want to leave–-because of the extra time it takes for me to write something down, and legibly.
Good luck.
Re: dysgraphia
Has he been tested?????
Is being tested but not labeled what has ahppened, or what you want to happen?
Is he in RSP without an IEP — just “getting some help?”
You could either work on changing his status, if that’s the case, or directly trying to get them to *teach* the missing parts. Do you suspect he’s really smart and covering up an LD? What do you mean he reads above grade 5 but gets a 1 or 2?
If he can’t write at all (relatively speaking), _WHen They Can’t WRite_ is a great program that costs a bit - so the school should buy it and the workbook for the teacher and it will pretty much do his/her job for her. It’s all laid out; no lesson plans for the teacher, really :) Builds from two word sentences and understanding nouns and verbs to paragraphs, etc. But — if he hasn’t gone through some evaluation (schools often don’t want to because hey, he’s obviously smart, so there’s no problem; they’ve got lots of kids “with real problems”) then there could be major holes in what he knows and can do.
I am not sure what you mean by “tested but not labeled”. My son was recently tested (had to use a private Neuropsychologist) and he came out with a diagnosis of Dysgraphia and a form of Dyslexia (visual tracking problem). We are preparing to go to the IEP today, however with all the research I have done on Dysgraphia, I have found that what needs to happen is that he needs to get keyboard literate. Typing is a completely different motor skill than writing, so children can focus on what words they want to put on the paper, rather than how to form the letters that make up the words.
We will be requesting an AlphaSmart (small keyboard with 4 line screen made specifically for children), and also remediation for handwriting. We are hoping to get them to agree to use Handwriting Without Tears, although if they don’t I will probably get it for home.
They key here is that once you have the testing and diagnosis by a licensed professional, you can take this to the school to get an IEP established. At this point, they are required to work with you to make sure that your child is learning the things s/he needs to know.
Hope this helped!