Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional SLP role re:disorder of written expression

Thought I might as well move this to its own thread...

Things aren't going as well as anyone hoped they would (504 has been in place for about a month), and while the SLP at school didn't find anything remarkable in her observation of DS, I'm thinking that we should revisit that (either through school or a private SLP).

I'm hoping that you'll be able to share some of what your SLP has done in working with your DS--I don't know enough about this to ask specific questions yet.

Whoever I next find myself talking to, I think it would be helpful if I could at least say "I've heard that working with an SLP on [specific deficit] by doing [specific exercise] can help kids like DS with their writing", or offer to share some relevant articles--admit I haven't done a pubmed search on this yet...

They've given him noise-cancelling headphones, which aren't helping. I don't think any sort of assistive technology has been introduced.

His teacher says she can't spend all of writing time working one-on-one with him (understandable!), and the next thing she's planning on trying is sending him into the kid's kitchen to work one-on-one with the assistant teacher.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like she's getting frustrated that he's not applying himself and working efficiently--I heard a lot of that last year, but this is the first time I've heard it from her.

Thanks, polarbear--I don't know anyone else IRL who is dealing with this particular learning disability. You folks on this board are it!

Mo

Mo, what information and resources do you have already? Have you had a neuropsych eval that documents strengths and weaknesses?

This sounds to me like the school is not putting adequate resources into the situation. If you had an IEP instead of a 504 you could get OT for the writing and/or pushed-in or pullout special ed support for written expression, both of which seem highly relevant.

What I know about disorders of written expression makes me think, "of COURSE he's not working efficiently; he's working against the disability" but it may be hard for the teacher to see that unless she is shown how to see that and work with it.

DeeDee

We added SLP once I was able to argue that DD's speech was impacting her writing because she was sounding out words and spelling them the way she pronounced them. For example 'bright' would be 'bwite'. Not sure if that's what you're dealing with though.

At this point we also have OT, a para to scribe, accommodations allowing oral responses as needed and limits on the amount of written work she is required to do. Our situation is more complicated than 'just' Disorder of Written Expression but that is one of the many things DD has been labeled with.

Hi DeeDee,

We had a private neuropsych evaluation in the spring, and the school has a copy. The folks at school do know his strengths and weaknesses, and I believe that they really do want to help. His handwriting has improved quite a bit, but it's the thought-generating-writing-it-down process that needs constant prodding.

The fact that the 504 accomodations as implemented aren't having the desired effect is *probably* going to be enough of a reason for them to willingly switch over to an IEP. I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying that.

I have a feeling that whatever polarbear's DS has done with his SLP would stand a good chance of helping my DS too. So I'm looking for some specifics.

Mo

Hi Pemberley,

Here's a quote from polarbear that describes issues very similar to what I'm seeing in DS:


His articulation is fine, and his spelling is not too shabby. There's nothing obvious that would make a person think that speech therapy would be helpful.

Mo

My DS8 uses these and finds them helpful (ADHD, language disorder, partial APD, possibly HFA).

He spends time once a week with a SLP at school and they work on things like story sequencing. The goals for these sessions include increasing his expressive vocab, describing, sequencing, summarizing, predicting, creating, comprehending, etc etc. The SLP we have is new this year and she's going to create a "homework" book for him (which I haven't seen yet, but she has a ton of kids on her roster and is very busy).

His diagnoses include language processing, which affects written output (O.M.G... does it ever). He has no formal "written output" dx but he shouldn, imho.

FYI - I make up stuff for him to do as well. I have him look up words in the dictionary and then write a definition in his own words, for example. This gets him a) reading, b) printing, c) comprehending the meaning of the word, and d) using expressive written output to communicate the meaning.

It's quite amazing what he can do. The key is LOTS of breaks. Because he's compensating against his disabilities, he gets tired often. It's as if... he summons up all the will and strength he can, and then blasts right through whatever brick wall is in front of him... then he needs recovery time.

As for his spelling... eesh. Not good. Slowly getting better though.

Familiarize yourself with the language of RtI, which is now the legally recognized process. If an intervention isn't working, I believe they have to try something else. It should help...

DeeDee

Thanks, CCN!

I've been reluctant to make him do extra writing work outside of school other than things like writing short notes, making lists--the kinds of things one actually must do in everyday life.

He'll write down numbers if he's doing math for fun. He'll write me notes in secret code for fun. Give him a writing assignment, though, no matter how simple, and it's probably going to be a long and painful process. I can understand why teachers get frustrated.

Mo

Yep, DeeDee, good point about the RtI. I've been to one of those meetings in person, one on the phone. I have to say they are my least favorite, but whatever--do what you gotta do

Hi Mo,

This is probably going to get broken up into two (or more? lol) replies, because I only have a little bit of time at the moment, and I also have quite a bit of this pushed back into my long term memory so it takes awhile to recall

The test that our SLP gave my ds that showed discrepancies is called the CELF-4. If you want to know about any of the testing details, let me know.

The first thing that ds' SLP did when she started working with him was spend time evaluating the different initial steps in the writing process. Our school district and area are heavily into the "6 Traits of Writing" so if you're looking for a way to try to think of writing in steps, you can google 6 Traits and find some info to start with. There are more steps-within-the-steps, but it's a good starting point. DS' primary challenge is generating ideas, so once the SLP understood that she focused on working on generating ideas and that's what they spent most of his first year of speech therapy working on, and even though she's added in additional skills over time (organizing, adding descriptive detail, etc) they still work quite a bit on generating ideas.

I don't remember the very first set of types of exercises they worked through, but I do actually still have them in a notebook, so I'll take a look for you. The SLP learned a few things about ds from that worked that help - he needs a bit of a "jump start" for his brain to get set in motion so she worked on finding ways for ds to first, be jump-started (talking to another student to brainstorm was the first), then worked to where she realized it was just talking that helped with the jump-start (didn't have to be about the writing assignment), then realized that just moving his mouth helped (go figure?) so if he chews on gum or a granola bar or something that can be a help... which is something he can do at school at his desk without making any noise.

The other thing the SLP did at the very beginning was to research dysgraphia and written expression challenges. She used a book written by Virginia Beringer to come up with ideas (I think it's called the Source Book for Dysgraphia... but will have to dig my copy out to be sure). One thing she took from Beringer's book was the idea that dysgraphics are challenged with automaticity in more ways than just the act of handwriting, so any of the steps of writing that are taught in the classroom and most kids pick up on quickly might take repetition + repetition + repetition + and on and on for a student with dysgraphia. This is one thing that continues to be a challenge for us in school - writing concepts are shown as an example in class, the students practice that idea on one written assignment, then next week they are given an entirely different type of writing skill to learn and they practice that - and that works ok for NT kids who aren't challenged with written expression, but it meant that for a kid with a written expression challenge and dysgraphia my ds would *maybe* clue in just a bit (with a ton of help and support)... and then instead of getting that same type of assignment to practice again (and again and again until he truly "got" it)... wham, the class has moved on to something else and he was always lost. I think that's something that's especially difficult for teachers to understand with a gifted kid, because in math/science/any kind of class discussion about history/social studies, whatever, ds has that osmosis-capability of understanding and remembering everything the first time he hears it.

One thing that helped ds (and wasn't with our SLP) was a school assignment during 4th grade. Every Monday morning the first thing the students were supposed to do when they came into school was write one paragraph about what they did over the weekend. The paragraph had to have 2 sentences. The teacher had a graphic organizer that listed "topic sentence" and "detail 1" "detail 2" and "concluding sentence". It took the *entire* year for ds to get to where he could write that paragraph, but he was able to eventually write it because a) there was a very clear set of directions, b) the directions never varied so he was able to practice practice practice until he understood how to do it and c) he spent his weekends literally making sure he did two things so he would have two ideas to put down in that paragraph.

Back to his SLP work... one of the things that the SLP did with ds a lot early on when they worked on generating ideas was to play games with him (board games, kid games, the type of games that two people can play together). They were either games that had word-generation as part of the actual game, or they would take turns having to generate whatever words they were working on whenever he or she lost a turn on the game (or won a turn). We've continued to use this technique for generating ideas on homework assignments for several years, although ds is slowly needing it less and less.

I'm going to pull out ds' SLP notebook and come back and list some of the other specific types of work they've done together.

One other thing I would keep in mind when advocating is to realize that your ds is probably very unique. Our SLP had never worked with a student like ds before.. and she's an SLP who's worked for many years in our school district and has always worked exclusively with young children). I suspect there really *aren't* that many kids with 2e expressive language challenges.

Gotta run - more later!

polarbear