Date published: 2/15/23

Listen to the full podcast here

In this podcast, Dr. Levy discusses ways parents can advocate for their special education child to help them thrive in school.

Special education students often have many gifts, but they also have unique and individual needs. Some thrive in math but struggle with reading and writing. Others have strong academic skills but have difficulty with their executive functioning skills, including organization, planning, prioritizing, and time management. Students might have autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, ADHD, or a combination of diagnoses. As a parent, it is important that you consistently advocate for your child, year after year.

Many different services and accommodations are available to special education students based on their needs, as defined by their IEP or 504 plan. Students may qualify for extra time, preferential seating, a scribe, speech therapy, occupational therapy, pull-out special education tutoring, or other related services. You might find that your child is thriving in school one year with a certain set of services and accommodations only to find that the following year – or even partially through the current school year – their performance begins to sink. 

As a parent, you should always be advocating for your child. At the beginning of the school year, schedule a meeting with your child’s teacher and any other service providers. Tell them about your child and what has or hasn’t worked in the past and try to make sure they read your child’s evaluation reports, IEPs, or 504 plans if available. Then stay in touch with them throughout the school year. Schedule periodic calls or meetings; don’t wait until the end of the school year to find out about any struggles or challenges. Be active in constantly evaluating and reevaluating the services and support your child is receiving to make sure they are consistently getting what they need. Learn more about strategies for helping your special education child at Strategies For Your Child with a Learning Disability or ADHD – EBL Coaching.

With the right support, students with special education needs have the potential to thrive academically.

Read more at Navigating the special education process | LD OnLine.

The post Dr. Emily Levy on the My Child Will Thrive Podcast: Tips for Advocating for Your Special Needs Child appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Does your child struggle with sounding out words when reading? Does he have difficulty recognizing sight words or understanding what he reads? Perhaps he loses focus when reading or avoids reading at all costs. If so, your child may be experiencing reading difficulties. Reading is a skill that affects all aspects of school, so the earlier you can help your child build this skill, the better. Help your child build stronger reading skills with the four tips detailed below.

Read, Read, Read!

One of the best ways to help improve your child’s reading skills is by doing lots of reading! Starting when your child is a baby, make reading a ritual – every night before bed pick 2-3 books to read to them. Eventually let them pick the books and try to integrate topics they are interested in – mermaids, trucks, animals, you name it!  Any topic that peaks their interest is a good one. As they get older, talk about the plot of the story, the characters, and the setting. Ask questions, like “What do you think will happen next?” or “Why do you think Sara feels this way?” Remember that struggling readers often choose shorter books that they perceive as “easy” so feel free to pick longer, more complex books when you’re doing the reading. 

Make it Multi-Sensory

Most kids learn best by engaging the senses, especially those who are struggling with reading. Rather than sticking a worksheet or mundane workbook in front of your child, engage their visual, auditory, and kinesthetic senses when helping them learn to read. For instance, when teaching your young child how to form letters, gather some colored sand, sugar, or flour, and spread it out on a cookie tray. Say the formations aloud as you model tracing each letter. For example, for the lowercase letter “a” use your pointer and middle fingers and say “around, up, and down” as you form the letter a in the sand. Then ask your child to do the same. Practice this technique for all of the letters of the alphabet, and also numbers! Additionally, you can use magnetic tiles, mini whiteboards, and shaving cream for forming letters and words. These elements are part of the Orton Gillingham methodology, which is a research-based, multi-sensory technique for helping students with or without learning disabilities, including dyslexia, develop stronger reading and spelling skills. 

Use a Structured Reading Program

Many children who struggle with reading benefit from a structured, Orton Gillingham based reading program. For instance, the Flags and Stars Orton Gillingham Multisensory student workbook program teaches students to read and spell words starting at a very basic foundational level and moving upwards using a structured, systematic approach. The program starts by teaching students to identify individual letters and their corresponding sounds and blend them together to read and spell CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. It then progresses to words containing blends, consonant digraphs, vowel digraphs, silent e patterns, multisyllabic word patterns, prefixes, suffixes, and roots. This Orton Gillingham, multi-sensory program is a great way to help students who struggle to read, including students with learning disabilities, ADHD, and dyslexia, to build stronger reading skills. 

Get Help!

If your child is still struggling to read despite practice and reinforcement at home, you may want to consider speaking to his teacher about any reading challenges at school, and possibly look into further testing. Public schools offer testing for learning disabilities free of charge, or some families choose to undergo a private neuropsychological evaluation. This evaluation will help determine whether or not your child has a learning disability (like dyslexia or dyscalculia), ADHD, executive functioning challenges, or other formal diagnoses. Oftentimes, if your child struggles with reading, the evaluator will recommend a structured, multi-sensory approach, such as the Orton Gillingham methodology, since this is a highly effective research-based approach for building reading and spelling skills.

Reading is a skill that plays a role in all aspects of school. The earlier you can help your child build stronger reading skills, the better! Use a multi-sensory approach, help engage your child with books on topics he enjoys, and work on strengthening his foundational skills – and he will be well on his way to reading success! 

The post FOUR Ways to Help Your Struggling Reader appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Many kids struggle with math at some point in their academic careers. Yet others show continuous math challenges that never seem to ease, regardless of the topic. Such children, if diagnosed, may in fact have dyscalculia. Kids with dyscalculia often become frustrated when completing math work, struggle to learn basic facts and simple concepts, and show difficulties with math terminology. Help your child with dyscalculia build stronger math skills with the ideas detailed below.

Teach Number Sense
Teach your young child to understand number values and concepts using concrete manipulatives. When teaching numbers, for instance, instead of simply writing the symbol for each number and hoping your child memorizes them, use balls of colored dough to demonstrate the values. For the number two, create two balls of dough; for the number three, create three balls; and so forth. You can also have your child draw pictures representing each value, like two stars for the number two or three houses for the number three. Then play “games” by adding or subtracting balls of dough. For example, show your child two balls of dough and ask him how many balls you presented. Then add two more balls and ask him to count all of the balls and tell you how many balls of dough you now have all together. You can try the same concept with subtraction. Start with five balls, for instance, then take one away and ask him how many balls are left. Later, you can transcribe the “problems” on a white board or sheet of paper as you play, like 2 balls + 2 balls = 4 balls, or 2+2=4; 5-1=4; and so on. Move at your child’s pace, starting with only concrete objects and eventually moving onto abstract equations.

Play with Dice
Many kids with dyscalculia rely on counting objects one-by-one to come up with an answer, rather than conceptualizing values. Try playing with dice to help your child recognize number patterns instead of always counting. Encourage her to visualize what specific numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) look like on a dice, then play games! Start with two dice and two players. The first player rolls one dice and says the number, then rol‎ls the second dice and says that number, and finally adds the numbers together, like 2+3=5. Then the next player does the same, and so on. Try a similar game for subtraction once she has grasped addition, and eventually write the math equations on a sheet of paper or white board like with the dough game. This will help her move from using objects to solve equations to completing problems with more fluency, while visualizing the value of each number from the dice.

Play Math Board Games
Help make math fun and avoid one dimensional tasks and worksheets by playing math games with your child. Try Sum Swamp, where players pick a “creature” and move though a “swamp”‎game board, solving addition and subtraction problems along the way. Head Full of Numbers is another fun game where players shake a funny-looking head filled with dice then use the dice to create equations using the numbers and symbols contained on a die in a given amount of time. Money Bags is another engaging game for learning coin and dollar values. Players move around a path, earning money by completing “chores,” like setting a table or doing other household activities. Don’t even tell your child you’re practicing math skills—just have fun!

Math Apps
Many kids can spend countless hours playing on a tablet or computer. Make this time productive by downloading some fun math apps to reinforce key concepts. Try Math Concentration for kids in grades pre-K-5, which is played like the classic game of Concentration, but focused on math. At the beginning level, kids match numbers to the appropriate number of dots, and eventually move onto shapes, multiplication facts, and fractions. ‎Sushi Monster is a fun, colorful app, which gives kids in grades 2-4 practice with addition and multiplication facts and builds fluency with them. Splash Math is another colorful, animated app that kids in grade K-5 have fun engaging with, and covers all math concepts ranging from basic counting to telling time, place value, money, multiplication, and division.

Don’t let your child with dyscalculia struggle as the math demands of school inevitably increase. Instead, try these tools with your child and have fun while building key skills that will set the stage for academic success.

The post Math Strategies for Students with Dyscalculia appeared first on EBL Coaching.