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    Originally Posted by Laurie918
    I can pay a tutor for 20 years and I guarantee it won't make a difference on her writing but I can show the district that I am at least trying. Your comment about the schools not understanding 2e kids is spot on. The tutor we are using is a gifted class teacher at DD's school.
    Depends on who you find. Look for an educational therapist rather than a run of the mill tutor. My older DD went to see one for years and it helped a lot. But I've struggled to find someone to work with my DS. We have had bad luck. We found someone who started to look like she was getting somewhere and she turned around and quit on us for personal reasons. There are tutors out there that can help with this kind of thing, but it's not your run of the mill 'writing tutor'.

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    I'm guessing tutoring options are limited because someone who hasn't heard of 2e is not ideal. Will she take direction from you or is she just doing what doesn't work at school again?

    I have had the same problems with writing with DS. We did some stuff at home last year (essentials in writing) and he is now back at the top end of where he should be but he dislikes it and still avoids starting. it is a bit topic dependant too.

    Last edited by puffin; 05/03/15 01:49 PM.
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    Originally Posted by puffin
    I have had the same problems with writing with DS. We did some stuff at home last year (essentials in writing) and he is now back at the top end of where he should be but he dislikes it and still avoids starting. it is a bit topic dependant too.


    What is essentials in writing? I think I'm going to have to teach her myself. Even the special ed staff don't necessarily know what to do. I'm pretty sure my other kid (in a different school than the one I described above) has dysgraphia but his problem is more handwriting and dd's problem is more the result of impaired executive functioning. She has no clue what to write or how to organize her thoughts to get them on the paper. She also now has anxiety about writing, making everything worse, because teachers have mismanaged her for so long. If she was sitting there staring into space rather than writing they would yell at her to focus and make better choices. Her math scores are similar to writing. For instance applied problems pulls her overall score up into the average range. She qualifies according to having a severe discrepancy, but I don't think that school districts are forced to give a student services unless they are failing.

    polarbear, I moved DD to the school where DS is a couple weeks ago. The gifted program seemed hopeless, like DD would continue to spiral downhill and even if the teachers DO finally understand her issue, they are so disorganized they are never going to pull things together and consistently do accommodations/modifications. The new school actually increased DS's services for writing (practically tripled the pull-out time), but in terms of DD, they will not do anything unless the initial team from the old school makes her eligible. Since she was just evaluated and then we had an IEE they will not evaluate her, and they will not make their own eligibility determination (even though legally I think they are supposed to).

    In terms of evaluating for "Other Health Impaired" for the ADHD, I had to basically tell them to do it. These people are clueless and I doubt that the psych has ever qualified a single kid for an IEP if they have ADHD. We have been dealing with this psych for years and at first she told me that DD doesn't even qualify for a 504 (after observing her working in a group of kids for 20 min and that's it). I think she could easily classify in that OHI category because her slow speed and focus issues are having an adverse effect on performance, but they give me the same exact line about how she needs to be failing. There is NOTHING in the State manual stating that to be the case.

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    Another thing you might look at is Writing Strands. Not for everyone but you might like it.

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    Originally Posted by blackcat
    dd's problem is more the result of impaired executive functioning. She has no clue what to write or how to organize her thoughts to get them on the paper.

    That is exactly my ds' issue too - had no clue what to write or how to organize his thoughts to get them onto paper. This is also what speech therapy helped with soon so very much.

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    She also now has anxiety about writing, making everything worse, because teachers have mismanaged her for so long. If she was sitting there starting into space rather than writing they would yell at her to focus and make better choices.

    DS' teachers also didn't understand that either - and he spent a lot of time stairing into space during writing assignments in elementary school because he was simply clueless and had no idea what to put on his paper. The teachers were really quick to place fault on ds, rather than admitting that he actually needed instruction.

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    I don't think that school districts are forced to give a student services unless they are failing.

    I think that if you could find a local advocate it might help. I do think that school districts can't deny services just because a child isn't failing - I think you could google around the boards here and wrightslaw and find articles that specifically address that issue. What may be more relevant in your school/district's case though is the reality of ability to provide services - our school district has been very short-staffed and stretched to the limit to meet the needs of all the students who *should* qualify for IEP services, hence there are a lot of kids who are given quick excuses for why they don't qualify and only the kids who have a strong advocate fighting back ultimately get the IEP. At one point in time a friend of mine who teachers high school (regular academics) was extremely annoyed because the only way for high school students to get IEPs was basically to get denied and then have to go to due process or sue the district, which meant teachers then had to be pulled out of class to testify.

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    The new school actually increased DS's services for writing (practically tripled the pull-out time), but in terms of DD, they will not do anything unless the initial team from the old school makes her eligible. Since she was just evaluated and then we had an IEE they will not evaluate her, and they will not make their own eligibility determination (even though legally I think they are supposed to).

    I don't know what the legal responsibility is in that situation, but it would be interesting to see what an advocate had to say about it. So if I understand, your dd was evaluated at her old school (the gifted school), found ineligible, you disagreed and the district paid for an IEE, the IEE shows that dd has a disability or meets criteria for some services based on discrepancy, and the old school still said no she doesn't qualify?

    Do you have any pro-bono legal groups in your town that offer advice to people with disabilities? If you did, I'd make a call and just ask what they think about the situation.

    I do also hope the new school works out much better than the old school - sending you lots of good wishes!

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    ps - re the writing and getting ideas out - I can send you some of the things our slp did with ds if you'd like - a lot of what they did together could easily be done at home without an slp - send me a pm.

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    Essentials in writing is a home school but public school style writing and grammar programme. I watched the short (less than 5 min) video then we talked and did the workbook together. Because it was so quick it wasn't painful and it helped (I think) him see more structure in writing. He doesn't like creative writing and was getting stuck. I don't know that it was the programme that helped him really but it helped me. It has a a good return policy if you want to look. Also 4 square which is basically a structured graphic organizer might help.

    Last edited by puffin; 05/03/15 08:16 PM.
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    puffin, thanks, I will check that out.

    polarbear, I will send you a PM

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    Originally Posted by blackcat
    What is essentials in writing? I think I'm going to have to teach her myself. Even the special ed staff don't necessarily know what to do. I'm pretty sure my other kid (in a different school than the one I described above) has dysgraphia but his problem is more handwriting and dd's problem is more the result of impaired executive functioning. She has no clue what to write or how to organize her thoughts to get them on the paper. She also now has anxiety about writing, making everything worse, because teachers have mismanaged her for so long. If she was sitting there staring into space rather than writing they would yell at her to focus and make better choices. Her math scores are similar to writing. For instance applied problems pulls her overall score up into the average range. She qualifies according to having a severe discrepancy, but I don't think that school districts are forced to give a student services unless they are failing.
    This describes DS16's problems with writing to a T. Issue came up again tonight unresolved. Tonight was particularly bad because he was supposed to write about himself. He just gets stuck and had ZERO idea's and then he gets anxious and the situation gets even worse. What's frustrating about the whole thing is once he gets past this stage the mechanics of writing come easy. So when we get over these humps, he gets good grades on his writing. But writing almost always gets turned in late.

    My DS16 does had a 504 accommodation for this that we got this past year. But all his accommodation gives him is the right to turn things in late. When he gets stuck there really is no way to push through it and he need to look at it fresh the next day. All the teachers and tutors we have keep trying to emphasis pre-writing skills like making outlines or brainstorming. But that doesn't always help particularly if it's creative writing. Sometimes it helps to re-frame the question. I'm going to have to ask his English teacher to do this tomorrow on his current assignment. Since DS is a sophomore in H.S. he is supposed to talk with her himself. (Doesn't help that this is a 2nd long term sub for this class this year.) This seems to be a unhelpful perfectionism where he can't write something stupid or wrong or incorrect. And he seems particularly incapable or writing about himself.

    I find questions that are personal are WORSE that stuff that is concrete. So "write an essay about an experience that happened to you" is near impossible but a social studies report doesn't cause as many problems. So sometimes a prompt can be re-framed. DS's Spanish teacher this year figured this out. And since all she cared was that he wrote a paragraph using specific vocabulary changing the prompt made the assignment a lot less difficult.

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    Thanks bluemagic, sorry you are dealing with this too. Since DD is only in 4th grade most of the writing has to be done in school. She just ends up zoning out there and looks really unfocused. Then as teachers berate her for not doing the work, she gets more and more unfocused and anxious (but it doesn't necessarily show up as anxiety--it's not obvious). She ends up looking passive aggressive which makes everyone more frustrated with her because it looks like she's not even trying and doesn't care. I don't even know how to fix this situation with a 504. It's not like a regular classroom teacher is going to be able to give her a pep talk and coach her about what to write every time she needs to write something in class.

    For the standardized tests (like WIAT and TOWL) she was given prompts like "write about a favorite X" or given a picture and she was supposed to write a story about it. She didn't write more than 3 sentences for either test. For the "write about a favorite..." question she wasn't even on-topic.

    I just started her on a new medication and she wrote a couple paragraphs of a story without making a fuss about it. She also organized all of my tupperware. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence but I'm praying that this med is doing something to the part of her brain that isn't working quite right. When she was most recently tested, she wasn't on stimulants and now she's on a really low dose.


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