Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Wow

So not only was Dominic's bus driver literally weeping this afternoon telling me how amazing the progress she has seen since Dominic started school in August and now is (her exact words were "i don't know what you're doing, but its going to pay off. he's going to go far"), but this note was in Dominic's go home binder today:
"Today, in art, Dominic raised his hand and said "I want paper" without EA prompting.  Then he asked the teacher "I cut" after hearing classroom directions on the project to get clarification on the next step"

[an EA is educational aide, aka para]

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

2013 IEP

I cannot believe its been a year since we did the last IEP.  Completely different support staff in the room this year from the school district, but I think the goals might be more realistic (he ended up not meeting any of his goals last year, for various reasons).

Here are this years goals - and we had some really nice dialogue with his various support staff.  This is the first year in 3 that we have not had Alpine there to advocate with us, and we got a nice compliment from his current classroom teacher that we were among the most involved / advocating parents she'd seen. 

1.   Communication and Basic Language Skills:
During 15 minutes of interactive play with peers, Dominic will participate in at least 3 conversational turns of more than 3 exchanges over 3 consecutive chartings.
(this would be recess/pe)

2.   Reading for All Purposes
Given a simple 4-5 word written directive, written with instructional level words, Dominic will demonstrate comprehension of directive by completing the task noted with 80% accuracy over 3 consecutive trials.
(we are going to label everything in the house at his eye level to assist from home)

3. Number sense, properties, and operations
Given a written numberal / symbol from 1-10, Dominic will provide the corresponding number of an item / manipulative with 80% accuracy over 3 consecutive trials
(we are going to work on counting EVERYTHING)

4.  Writing and Composition
Dominic will write his first and last name independently, without a visual model or tracing demonstarating proper letter formatoin, spacing, and staing on the lines of standard grade level paper with 80% accuracy on 3/4 data collection days
(This is going to be a challenge for him - she's going to have him writing his name on every single worksheet that the rest of the class gets, starting tomorrow - and while he probably wont' be doing the worksheet for its intended purpose, he will work on labelling whats on there)


So some interesting changes, which will need lots of steps to accomplish each one.  We will let them bake in for a few months, and then we will sit down and look at progress pretty hard, probably in early April.

We also talked about changing how they track his verbals, and only counting sentences of 3 words or more.  Which is a big change, but we're going to give it a shot.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Hippos!

Dominic has a hippo fixation right now.  Its funny because as a baby the Hippos at the zoo scared him so bad he refused to even go in the Hippo house for a couple of years. Anyway, he's had various animated shows with hippos on them, but the other day I noticed BBC America was running a discovery-channel-esque show on a Hippos life. A real hippo.  I figured we'd give it a shot and see if he liked it.

He watched it this morning.  Commercials and All.  Figured out how to start it again on the DVR by himself  and watched it a second time. I hung with him the second time and the verbals were really amazing.  He was doing tons of labeling all the way through.  I heard multiples of each of the below words in the course of about 10 minutes - all appropriately (no scripting - which is exciting)


Night
Sleeping
Swimming
baby
Red (for the sunrise)
alligator
water
shake it (for tail shaking)
Poop
Fighting
Lion
eating
Fish
scary (when there were hippo fights)

I also recorded off the same series episodes on Monkeys and Penguins.  We'll see if they are as enthralling.  Its been a long time (pre-regression) since he actually enjoyed and attended to in its entirety a non-animated tv show.   Interesting twist. :)

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New Years Funny:

I roasted a turkey today.  It is currently resting on the counter under foil. From the other room, i hear "petting gently, petting gently". i'm thinking Dominic is petting the dog because we've been working on the gently part. I go check. No, he's petting the turkey.  Gently.