Hi! I'm looking for specific strategies for approaching our public school to get services for dyslexia for my DS. Here's some relevant background & some questions rattling around in my head.
DS is a grade-skipped child whose teachers will see his major reading skills as being "above average" already.
* DS is 7y 10mo entering 3rd grade
* DS is EG/PG and skipped kindergarten. Grade skipping is unheard of in our school.
* DS was the BEST reader in his 2nd grade class, possibly his grade. Both in-school reading and recent private testing put his reading comprehension level at around 5th grade.
DS already has an IEP, but it's weak.
* He has had an IEP for speech articulation issues since preschool -- his issues are minor, he gets speech 1x week for 20-30 minutes.
* His IEP also glancingly mentions his ADHD, but doesn't currently cover much in the way of accommodation
I am familiar with the IEP process, but know very little about dyxlexia and dysgraphia, which are his new diagnoses.
* My daughter has Autism and ADHD, so have BTDT
* But both kids' IEPs were initiated in other school districts
* Because our school has a special program for Autism, I have not actually dealt with the special ed teacher or reading specialists.
Where to start? The first day of school is September 7.
* Should I inform the school now, to get the ball rolling? I'm sure their official clock for doing anything doesn't start until the first day of school. But everyone's going to be swamped that early in the year and I don't want to waste any time. I don't know who the sped teacher is this year, but I could email the principal. If she's not available now, I expect she will be very soon.
* How important is classroom teacher knowledge, if the school does provide dyslexia supports? There are 3 teachers in 3rd grade, all of them good choices for different reasons. One is a guy (which would be great for DS), one is a former special ed teacher, and then there's #3, who DS absolutely loves and adores.
What to ask for?
* His reading comprehension is pretty good
* His handwriting is atrocious, despite 8 months of private OT so far
* His areas of relative weakness on the WIAT-III were everything do with fluency, spelling, sentence building, essay composition; and on the CTOPP-2, phoneme isolation and nonword repetition -- his "phonological memory index" was in the 37th% and rapid naming index in the 45th %tile. On the BEERY, Motor Coordination is more than a year behind age level (the other indexes are above age level, and I assume it's normed for age?). On WISC-V, his PSI is only 114, but VSI and FRI are >99%
MOST IMPORTANTLY: How do you argue that your grade-skipped, academically-achieving child needs to have specialized reading training added to his IEP?
Successfully, without making anyone regret they let your child skip a grade in the first place?
Last edited by Aufilia; 08/09/17 11:16 PM.
