Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional IEP Mtg - Dysgraphia/Writing Accomodations Help.

Good job marytheres! You have been working incredibly hard and you finally got to see some of the fruits of your labor.

We have the same issue where DD apparently sometimes asks to do more writing. I am all for her writing if she wants but as you said not when it opens the door to being told "Do as much as you can yourself before you ask for help." Wanting to try to do more should not cause these kids to be forced to more. They have good days and bad days - I'm not sure why but they do. With my DD there is also the sensitivity of not wanting to appear different, not wanting to disappoint the adults she is working with and just plain wishing her disabilities don't exist. (We have been told that unlike many/most children with her set of challenges she is "painfully aware" of them...) Also if she is left to do her own writing she gets access to only a small portion of the curriculum. As I pointed out at our last meeting in the time it would take her to fill in 1 or 2 answers the rest of the kids in the class would probably have finished the entire worksheet and moved on to the next task. She will either complete only a small portion of the task at hand or miss the next one. That is not providing full access to the curriculum.

My suggestion, which was adopted, was to say "DD will be 'encouraged' to write one sentence and will be 'allowed' to write up to (_____ #) sentences." The spec ed teacher pointed out that no one should insist she write on any given day because sometimes she just can't. If it appears that DD wants to write more than the upper limit and is becoming frustrated she can do more while with the service providers who work with her on writing tasks and the number can be revisited at future IEP meetings. (The teacher expressed her desire to be able to be included in the list of people who could use her own judgement and allow DD to do whatever amount of writing she thought was appropriate. I guess what came next could be described as "verbal blunt force trauma" as I listed the reasons why this teacher should not and could not be allowed to exercise such judgement...)

In terms of him having to wait for the para to help him I would say this too comes under the heading of "providing access to the full curriculum." If he needs a para to write, and he is expected to complete a writing assignment, it is incumbent on the school district to make that para available to him. To use the wheelchair analogy would they have him sit there and wait for a wheelchair while the rest of the class went on ahead to (fill in the blank activity)? By the time they got him his wheelchair and wheeled him down the hall what percentage of that art/gym/music class would he have missed because his disability prevented him from walking down the hall with his class? In that scenario they would understand it was their responsibility to have the accommodation ready for him when he needed it rather than have him sitting on the side waiting for someone to allow him to access his education along with the rest of his class.