New goals in amended IEP but no new service hours?

[Anonymous]

My DC's IEP is being amended to add speech/language goals based on a recent evaluation. They have added some goals, and speech/language therapy. That's good. But the special education service hours have remained the same - what do you think about this? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DC's IEP is being amended to add speech/language goals based on a recent evaluation. They have added some goals, and speech/language therapy. That's good. But the special education service hours have remained the same - what do you think about this? Thanks.

Are all of the new goals speech / language ones? m

Assuming your child has made progress adding a few more goals without hours wouldn't faze me.

[Anonymous]

Yes, there are 4 new speech/language goals and 30 min. a week of speech/language therapy just added. Kid gets about 2.75 hours of "specialized education" right now (all in a mainstream classroom).

[Anonymous]

Adding speech and language goals, and then adding speech and language therapy, seems reasonable.

Whether or not more special education hours are needed is a separate question. Is he making progress in whatever goals the special ed teacher is supposed to be working on?

[Anonymous]

I think so...some progress.

I was thinking DC should have more hours of the special ed teacher in the room, since there's more to work on.

If everyone thinks it's fine, great...was checking.

[Anonymous]

Yes, the speech-language goals are worked on by the SLP, though she might (should) share useful strategies that are working in therapy with the teacher and SPED to increase generalization. The SPED would work on the academic or behavior goals, though they would also probably share strategies with the SLP. The two are addressing separate issues, and as long as your DC is making progress on the academic side, it sounds like the SPED hours are reasonable.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your explanation. One of the reasons for the speech language evaluation was concern about spelling and phonemic awareness etc. The evaluation found delay in phonemic awareness even though DC is a very good reader. Right now DC has push-in support from the special education teacher during writing time but I was hoping the eval and findings would get DC more specialized help in this. DC does already have written expression goals, but with only 2.75 hours a week of extra help I worry DC is not getting the assistance needed (though slowly making progress).

Further thoughts? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for your explanation. One of the reasons for the speech language evaluation was concern about spelling and phonemic awareness etc. The evaluation found delay in phonemic awareness even though DC is a very good reader. Right now DC has push-in support from the special education teacher during writing time but I was hoping the eval and findings would get DC more specialized help in this. DC does already have written expression goals, but with only 2.75 hours a week of extra help I worry DC is not getting the assistance needed (though slowly making progress).

Further thoughts? Thanks.

In what specific ways does the low phonemic awareness impact your child academically? If appropriate, you could push for reading/decoding goals and additional special ed hours to match. But depending on how old your child is and what you mean by "very good reader," this might be hard to get.

[Anonymous]

DC has trouble with spelling and hates writing. Below grade level in writing. Appears to be a whole word reader. Scored in the 14th percentile for Phonological Awareness, 16th for Elision (below average), 25th for Blending Words (says Average), 16th for Isolating Phonemes (below average). There is one new goal related to improving this.

Child is 7, in second grade, and an O level reader. Loves reading.

Does this give anyone further ideas about what to ask for? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for your explanation. One of the reasons for the speech language evaluation was concern about spelling and phonemic awareness etc. The evaluation found delay in phonemic awareness even though DC is a very good reader. Right now DC has push-in support from the special education teacher during writing time but I was hoping the eval and findings would get DC more specialized help in this. DC does already have written expression goals, but with only 2.75 hours a week of extra help I worry DC is not getting the assistance needed (though slowly making progress).

Further thoughts? Thanks.

OP, I don't think push in "help" in the mainstream classroom is very effective for working on difficulties with phonemic awareness and spelling. You just cover so much more ground with students through pull out instruction in this area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC has trouble with spelling and hates writing. Below grade level in writing. Appears to be a whole word reader. Scored in the 14th percentile for Phonological Awareness, 16th for Elision (below average), 25th for Blending Words (says Average), 16th for Isolating Phonemes (below average). There is one new goal related to improving this.

Child is 7, in second grade, and an O level reader. Loves reading.

Does this give anyone further ideas about what to ask for? Thanks.

I would remediate this problem by yourself. You cannot rely on the school to do it for you. You should be able to but they won't.

Go here:

http://www.abcdrp.com/supplements.asp

Download the placement assessment (first link) and administer to your child.

Buy the recommended level workbook and teachers manual. They are very cheap. Work with your child for an hour each weekend to get through one workbook in 3 months. (Or 2 hours each weekend to make faster progress.) Use the sentences at the end of every unit to do sentence dictation at the end of every lesson. If you see your child make a mistake on the sentence dictation, just sound the word out to her again, more slowly, so she can get it right.

95% of the students I tutor who are good readers, but poor spellers due to poor phonemic awareness, only need this approach for successful remediation. Schools mostly won't do this, because what they mostly are geared for is reading. If your child reads well but can't spell, they just don't seem that concerned about it.

[Anonymous]

Phonemic awareness is attained by mid-first grade. A child who struggles in this area is at risk for always being a struggling reader. It is very important to work on this area daily with fun and simple activities. Workbooks do not TEACH, they are practice at best. Phonemic awareness is not acquired through paper and pencil activities as it is actually an awareness of how the sounds (phonemes) in our language work. This is different from phonics.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all these thoughts. Since I'm in the draft IEP amendment stage what should I ask for?

And PP, what kinds of activities do you recommend?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Phonemic awareness is attained by mid-first grade. A child who struggles in this area is at risk for always being a struggling reader. It is very important to work on this area daily with fun and simple activities. Workbooks do not TEACH, they are practice at best. Phonemic awareness is not acquired through paper and pencil activities as it is actually an awareness of how the sounds (phonemes) in our language work. This is different from phonics.

Yes, traditional phonics workbooks do not help child acquire phonemic awareness, however the abcdrp workbooks are not traditional workbooks. They do not do any teaching; they are designed to be used with an adult interacting and responding to the child. The adult does the teaching using the materials as a guide to what is most efficient. They are very powerful and efficient activities to help a child develop every skill needed to become a proficient at decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling).

The primary focus of the system is decoding; however I have found by adding a spelling/dictation activity after each unit using sentences from the unit, the workbooks provide excellent practice in encoding (spelling). I have used them very successfully with students who are good readers (know their sight words well) but didn't learn decoding well. They typically fly through one or two units in an hour lesson and quickly get up to speed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for all these thoughts. Since I'm in the draft IEP amendment stage what should I ask for?

These are the simplest phonemic awareness and spelling goals I'd want to see for a student who has the scores you mentioned. I'd expect ALL of them to be accomplished in one year of instruction (but probably can't happen if addressed through push in services IMO)

Phonemic Awareness goals:

-- given a cvc word (or nonsense word) presented orally, student will segment word into three phonemes correctly 18/20 times.

(Teacher says "mat" - child sats /m/.../a/../t/)

-- Given CCVC or CVCC word (or nonsense word) presented orally, student will segment word into four phonemes correctly 18/20 times

(teacher says "mask" -- child says /m/ .../a/.../s/.../k/)

-- Given CVC word and told to remove one phoneme, child says VC or CV correctly 18/20

(teacher says "What's "big" without the /b/? Answer? "ig"

Spelling Goals:

-- given a CVC word (or nonsense word) presented orally, student will spell the word with phonetically plausible representation 18/20 times.

(Teacher says "mat" - child writes "mat" or "Matt" but not "mit" or "mad"

-- Given CCVC or CVCC word (or nonsense word) presented orally, student spell the word with phonetically plausible representation of each sound: 18/20 times

(teacher says "mask" -- child writes "mask" or "masc" -- at this stage spelling rules are less vital than just getting a plausible sound for each letter

-- Given CVC or CVCC words with consonant digraphs (ch, th, sh, ng, ck) and short vowel sound student will spell the word correctly 18/20 times in isolation and 9/10 times correctly in sentence dictation (sentences composed of phonetically regular one syllable words and very high frequency sight words)