To your question - DS has all sorts of struggles at school. He is halting at best on any sort of work that requires writing. Last year in K, he was perpetually kept in at recess and lunch to finish work. (This continued even after there was a written plan that said NOT to do this).
This is just horrible! I feel so for your ds. This happened to my ds too, but fortunately his teacher stopped after I threw a bit of a hissy fit about it. Not really a hissy fit, but I'm a relatively calm, quiet person in real life and when it happened and the teacher tried to explain that it was the right thing to do I became slightly louder than normal
In a big way lol!
He has already been told by this year's teacher that he will soon be in the same boat.
I wish I had time to look it up at the moment, but I don't - but - I think there is info on why this is a bad idea somewhere out there either at wrightslaw or another advocacy site. Are you asking for an IEP or a 504? If you are, you can add an accommodation that specifically states he will not lose recess/etc as a consequence of not completing work. I would also add an accommodation of either extended time for work (take a worksheet home and return it the same day if he can't finish it in class, or let him save and finish his work over the weekend etc. At the same time, I'd be *very* careful not to overload him with work that takes *TIME* away from his day. He's so danged smart, chances are he doesn't need to do the same repeated work that other kids do to learn a new concept. Right now it's important to focus on remediating the areas you can - but at the same time not letting the time it takes to do that suck up so many of his waking hours that he becomes frustrated.
Finally, all these problems are wildly exacerbated by noise, chaos or people getting in his space, which is basically the definition of a K/1 class room. So - many challenges.
I don't know if he'd be up for wearing these or not but it might be worth a try - do you have a pair of noise-cancelling headphones? My ds has a pair that he wears at home when his sisters are being crazy and he's trying to get his homework done. He's worn them in class a few times when he was writing just to drown out any distractions while he worked.
Re writing - for now, I'd scribe for him at home, whenever he has a writing assignment. I'd also let him start keyboarding at home just so he can become familiar with it. Request that he be allowed to either answer orally at school or scribe to an adult when he has a writing assignment.
Re the issues with noise/etc - one of my dd's had this to the extreme when she was your ds' age. We couldn't take her much of anywhere her sensitivity to it was so bad. There are so many different things that can cause a sensory over-response… it might be helpful to consider having your ds evaluated by a sensory OT, who would be able to make suggestions on simple "tricks" that can be used in the classroom to help ease his sensory anxiety in the classroom. This has nothing to do with your ds - you need to ask a professional lol! - but fwiw, our sensory OT had my dd sip water through a straw when she was bothered by distractions but was supposed to be doing "seat work", and she also had her wear a leo under her regular clothes because the sensation of it against her body helped her feel calmer. As I mentioned, those are things that were mentioned for my dd, not necessarily your ds (especially the leo lol!) - but the key is, they were just a few of literally thousands of different ideas our dd's sensory OT came up with to help dd cope when she was anxious over loud noises, classroom chaos, etc.
Best wishes,
polarbear
