Thanks Aculady - I know that you home school but how do I approach the public school about doing what seems to obvious? I am thinking that DD needs to be able to orally give her response (i.e. "I have always wanted to live in a castle made of brick so I would use the money to build a castle in my backyard....") and then have the teacher point out *1* thing for her to focus on when writing her answer. (i.e. "Great. Now let's write this and try really hard to make sure that all your letters sit on the line.") First - let her know that she has successfully "completed" the assignment and then give her *1* component of the writing challenges to focus on. Again, this seems obvious to me so why aren't they doing this? Can I expect push back from them if I ask for this?

Activities like the fruit loop stringing should not be assigned to my DD without an aide. Period. She can count 1-100 orally but absolutely cannot manage manipulatives to that degree. She can string a few fruit loops to be part of the assignment but the effort it would take her to string 100? Forget it. Like I said I was there today so she counted and handed them to me to put on her necklace. Is it any wonder that she would have shut down or gone to the nurse if she was faced with this "fun" task on a normal day?

I am now wondering if we may need to ask for an aide to be assigned to her during in class work. I don't know what kind of response we'll get from that. I am also wondering if we will have to look for an out-placement at an LD school down the road.

They looked at me like I was crazy at the last meeting when I mentioned introducing assistive technology as she gets older. Right now they are focusing intently on teaching her to read and write. We bought her a computer and some fun learn to type software so she plays games at home that are teaching her keyboarding skills.

It just seems like she has SO many issues going on she can't be expected to address everything simultaneously. When I asked about having to fill in a grid with numbers 1-100 for homework "What was the objective here? To see if she knew all the numbers or to see if she could write each one?" I was told "It's all important." Yes, it's all important but it took my first grader more than 2 hours to do it. Normally her math homework take 5-10 minutes. What do I have to say to *force* them to differentiate so they are looking at her ability and effort rather than her disability?

I'm afraid we're losing her - she is beginning to shut down. And I really can’t say that I blame her…