Saturday, August 17, 2013

Here we come, Third Grade

I met with Dominic's  SPED teacher on Friday, Ms V.,  And we're all set to start school Monday.

We covered all the usual back to school topics:

- He'll have the same EA for working on his ABBLS goals that he's had for the last several years, Ms B, which  I'm thrilled about.  They will also have several other adults working with him every day, to hopefully broaden the number of adults he does well with. 

 - How the summer Went :  in 12 weeks of daycamp, he really only had 3 bad days.  She was really impressed.  Also let her know that wearing him out makes him sit more calmly.  She's going to entertain the idea of PE every day instead of every other.  We're okay with that.

- Communication: We'll use a binder again, and we'll have a touch base meeting in October to see how he's doing on his goals and on the ABBLS programming

- Food:  we'll send 2 snacks per day, plus some extra GFCF non perishables, and a baggie of frozen cupcakes to live in their freezer that he can eat during class parties

- the iPad:  It'll stay at home for now.  They'll let us know if they'd like us to bring it in.

- homework:  Will have its own folder and come home every day.

- Transportation:  The bus will pick him up at our door every morning at 7:34am and drop him back off every afternoon at 2:45pm.

- his daily schedule:  They'll be attempting to give him only 2 extra sensory breaks this year (last year he had three).  They're going to work really hard on encouraging him to make choices himself about what to do - giving him three options (going outside,  painting, or going to the library) and then allowing the other child he does sensory breaks with pick the second one of the day.  I told her "good luck"

- his Speech therapy will be a bit different this year.  Ms S, the SLP (speech and language pathogist) will be in the building a few days a week. Instead of Dominic getting his speech therapy from an EA under Ms S's supervision, she will be working directly with him this year.  One day a week, he'll be in a speech therapy group setting working on increasing verbal turn taking with peers (which his EA watches so that the skills can potentially be generalized for the rest of the week) and the other day he'll be one on one with Ms S. 

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Here's an interesting number.  In a school that has just under 300 kids enrolled, there're 27 of them on the SPED teachers case load.  thats pretty much 10%

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