Rhonda
Grade Primary:
Our son’s primary teacher first expressed concerns with our son’s ability to recognize upper and lower case letters, 5 upper and 4 lower in October 2001. In January 2002 he had progressed to recognition of 25 upper and 23 lower case letters. Sound/letter association was improving slowly and rhyming words were improving. By the end of grade primary he was reading books at the emergent level. In journal writing, our son used an initial letter-sound only for a word.
Grade One:
He is identified by his grade one teacher as a “tearful child”, but when attentive he absorbs readily what is being taught or discussed. He showed improvement in his reading skills but writing words continued to challenge him. Separating sounds is identified as a problem. Classroom noise is identified as a problem. Our son’s grade one teacher indicated at a parent/teacher meeting that he would normally have been identified as a student requiring resource assistance, but as a former resource teacher she felt she could provide him with the additional help he needed without having him removed from class for support. By the end of the year he was using the steps taught for reading with prompting and learning to find “just right” books. His grade one teacher provided a selection of “just right” books, for his daily practice over the summer. Our son’s writing had shown progress. He had learned some sight words and could write the first and last letter in an unknown word, though not always correctly. A delay in this growth development is noted at the end of grade one.
Grade Two:
Our son is now identified by the public school system as a student requiring both classroom accommodations and resource support from the learning centre. Strategies are implemented to reduce distractions, provide daily assignment sheets, time extensions for assignments and structured study time. His reading material is reduced from grade level and spelling lists are reduced. Motivational strategies are used for structured and unstructured transitional times. Positive consequences, praising behaviours, classroom rules being kept simple and clear, nonverbal cues to stay on task, supervised communication notebook and time-out procedures are implemented. He is receiving services of a program support teacher and extra help time. Our son is beginning resource support with three 30-minute sessions in the six day cycle. This support is provided for both reading and writing strategies. By year end grade 2 he is improving slowly and developing slowly to articulate words and to hear and record sounds. Punctuation still needs prompting and he is having a hard time transferring his ideas to paper. Difficulty is noted with using skills such as spelling in written work. Again he has summer reading and written assignment to reinforce his skills.
Grade Three:
Our son is identified by the public school system as needing a psycho educational assessment. Concerns are his emotional and behavioural well being. He is indicating fears and becoming anxious about not being able to keep up in class with his peers. He is again identified as a student requiring both classroom accommodations and resource support from the learning centre. Strategies are implemented to provide preferential seating, reading material is reduced from grade level, praising of specific behaviours, a supervised communication notebook and continued services of a program support teacher. During the grade three year concern increases for him both at school and at home. His teacher indicates he is reading below grade level, doing well on spelling tests but unable to transfer this to his written work. He is meeting all grade level requirements in math and enjoys both math and science. Avoidance has become an issue with writing tasks but he is observed to be keener on tasks that involve non-fiction materials. He continues resource support with three 30-minute sessions in the six day cycle. Our son’s remarkable memory is noted by his resource teacher but comprehension is being lost due to errors. Again a preference for non-fiction books is noted as he uses visual sources for clues. By year end he remains in the early stage of reading development…his writing needs support, he dislikes putting ideas to paper and is afraid of making mistakes. Continued resource support for grade 4 is recommended at the end of grade 3. He has daily exercises to complete over the summer to reinforce skills learned.
Grade Four:
Classroom accommodations are continued, he requires preferential seating, personal cueing and the reduction of distractions. Presentation strategies are used to reinforce instructions and chunk material into manageable units. Grade level of reading material is again reduced along with the continuance of praising specific behaviours. He is on a waiting list with the public school system for a psycho educational assessment, his doctor is concerned about the stress he is experiencing in relation to his learning and refers him to the IWK Developmental Clinic who also recommends his school complete psycho educational testing while he awaits an appointment at the IWK. Our son continues resource support with three 30-minute sessions in the six day cycle. His report card indicated he began grade 4 showing characteristics of a reader in the early development stage of reading and his sight vocabulary remained limited. He completed grade 4 within the early stage of reading development. He finds it difficult to become involved in the writing process and often avoids writing tasks or refuses to become engaged in the process. He has no difficulty expressing his thoughts verbally; the challenge arises when the ideas need to go on paper. Success within the math program is again noted but his difficulty with showing his understanding on paper frequently makes it difficult to assess his mathematical understanding and skills and does not always reflect his strengths and understanding. Near the completion of the grade 4 year he remains on the public school waiting list for a psycho educational assessment…concerns over his health and learning profile are now such that his doctor, at the request of his parents, refers him for private testing.
Our son is scheduled for a private psycho educational assessment, August 2006. At the end of a full day of testing, the Dr. informs us that our son is experiencing several significant learning difficulties and will require further extensive accommodations and adaptations within the public school system. She will be providing a full report within a few weeks and recommends a meeting with all his teachers, his resource support, myself and the Dr. to address his learning needs.
Grade Five:
We inform the school that our son has had a private psycho educational assessment completed and that the report is pending. Classroom adaptations are put in place temporarily until the psycho educational report can be reviewed. His report becomes available at the beginning of October but his school staff is unavailable to meet until Oct 25, 2006. The meeting is attended by the Dr., myself, the Principal, the Resource teacher, the Music teacher, his Social Studies, ELA, Math, Science and French teachers. At the meeting our son’s school receives a report confirming he has a language learning disability.
Recommendations are for our son to receive intensive remediation in reading, phonics and writing at foundation levels, such as the public school systems’ Reading Recovery program. We are informed at this meeting that the “Reading Recovery” program is mandated that it is available to a grade one student only; he is not eligible to access this remediation support at the learning centre in his public school. After four years of him receiving resource support from the public school system he remained an early stage reader, reading without fluency. The public school system had discontinued resource reports with school report cards (in grade 4), so detailed information about his progress in resources was no longer available.
Our son would benefit from language therapy for sarcasm and implied meaning, higher order language, and removal from French class, which was described as attempting to teach a third language to a child who had not mastered his first. His strengths are his memory, his abilities while working with his hands, math and his basic receptive language skills it is emphasized that these need to be encouraged.
At this meeting his school was resistant to providing him with an IPP program in language arts, expressing concerns that he did not qualify and that it would adversely affect his ability to attend higher education. After much discussion, our Dr. was very firm in explaining why he did qualify for an IPP program, and it was determined that he was to have an IPP in ELA and additional adaptations and accommodations in all other subjects. A letter would be provided from the Dr. requesting his removal from French and that the Principal would process a request for him to have a speech evaluation through the school. Our son’s schedule with resources would also be increased.
The public school system had provided our son with the following services:
• Resource support in the Learning Centre consisting of five 30-minute sessions in a six day cycle; 3 for phonics support, 2 for writing support.
• Removal from French class was approved – He received the support of a class room Teaching Assistant, when available, during this time.
• Formalized IPP for him in ELA.
• Evaluation and testing with the Speech-Language Pathologist was completed.
It was after this school meeting, after experiencing the resistance to an IPP program, after being told our son did not qualify for an IPP, after being told it would be several weeks or months before it would be implemented. We realized that he needed more; Bridgeway Academy had been mentioned once before to us. We began to make calls, investigate and research options, our son could not read and write and his school did not seem concerned. We were panicked by this.
Please come back tomorrow for part two.
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