Marshall received his Term 2 report cards for Kindergarten just before Spring Break back in March. He gets one report card that his K teacher makes that is based on the same learning outcome expectations as the rest of the class, mainly academic based. The second report card is a team one where his EA, teacher, and the special education coordinator create which is based on his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) goals that I outlined in my last post which were created back in fall.
Marshall's K report card brought me to tears... in a good way! He is meeting or exceeding in all areas academically, which just fills my heart with pride. He works SO hard and SO deserves that glowing report card. From a kid who entered K not knowing his alphabet or his letter sounds, to knowing how to write them, say them, sound them out... he is now above average in how quickly he has picked all of this up!! He is on fire lately with his popcorn words, having completed the 30 required for K, and moving onto the second set (with many other classmates) and in 2 weeks has mastered all but 3 of them!! I sit back and watch him sound out words and reading books... it is insane, and we all are so proud of him.
The report card on the IEP, although there is progress and we are grateful for that, is slower and he is still resting below meeting expectations in most areas. Most of the goals on the IEP are social based, and are hard for all of us (adults not excluded), never mind for M who is restricted because of his unawareness that is a part of his autism. I know many, many families who watch their kids struggle in this area, at all ages. I want so badly for M to learn some of these skills at this age so that he is set up for better success later on. So, after seeing his IEP, seeing challenges at home and with his cousins, as well as conflict and frustrations for him at school with his peers, I thought I needed to try and come up with a better plan.
At home in M's therapy with his BI's, there are social based programs. Marshall is doing well in his therapy at home, and we are so thankful to have this extra daily support. Because this program is 1-1, all of the social programs are more talking about what to do, or how to act, and in these scenarios, Marshall is giving all of the right answers and steps. This is great, but in the live scenarios, this is not happening. In his old program which was more social based with 1-1 but with 4-6 kids in a time slot, the reports I was getting from the staff was that Marshall was leading the kids in games, playing wonderfully and respectfully, and he was doing great socially. So, because Marshall has come a long way, I questioned if he was aware that he was 'older' than these kids and was able to be bossy and organize play his way. The maturity level was not there for most, and Marshall did well. At school, among peers his age where maturity level is probably above his own, he struggles.
So, I started to talk with his BI's, as well as his BC, about other options for helping him socially. It was suggested that I put him in a summer camp (weekly and daily)... Pivot Point hosts some, or even a program through our local Rec Centre, and if I wanted, the BI's could use their time to escort him during these camps. Another idea was to use his intervention time to go to the public pool, or ice skating, or to the park. These were great suggestions, however as I thought more about these options, I thought about myself and my opposite, my sister. I go to the park and I avoid eye contact and socializing with people I don't know, it is unnatural. lol. We created a park-like backyard so I can avoid having to go anywhere all together!! My sister will go and seek out others to talk to, at the park, at Walmart... every outing is a social opportunity for her, and she is comfortable and thrives living like that. Why should I expect Marshall to go with his BI to the Rec Centre, and to socialize with strangers?? I don't want to do it, and I don't feel like I am missing out on life. What I need for him to feel comfortable doing, is gaining friends and learning how to deal with situations that arise among the kids in his life where friendship should be coming naturally, but isn't, and in environments where he already is plugged in. My thought was, that the focus should be school and how to help him connect with his peers at school where he attends daily.
After mentioning my idea of integrating BI time into school time for social help, I had to get approval from the school on both having our 1 BI, Tara, come in 3 days a week, and also, allowing for Marshall to stay longer in his day. Currently M goes part time, which looks like half days till noon. When thinking about social opportunities, I realized that we kind of rob him of that with his schedule, so allowing him to stay and have lunch with his peers, including the longer lunch-recess outside for the 25 minutes, would (hopefully) make a big difference. The school came back in full support, so last week we starting implementing it!!
On the days when BI Tara is here, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she goes to Marshall's school after he eats lunch and heads outside with him. Once recess is done, she drives M back to our home to finish up their session here where they can talk about scenarios that just happened, and how they could do them differently, or praise for good effort :) At school currently, Tara is observing and also prompting M for when to jump into a pause in play, or how to ask others to play, or to even be aware of their existing play to see if he might be interested. So far, it has been GREAT and I am so thankful that the school is on board, allowing us to make good use of our funding for a month and a half until it is cut down in June. I am also thankful that the SpEd coordinator spoke with Tara already about meetings with her on how to best help M socially for next year!! :D Marshall LOVES having Tara at school, and LOVES driving in her car. lol. So far, I am happy to hear her observations, both because it helps us help him, and also, because Marshall is already doing a lot of great things in play naturally, even adjusting to changes and compromising a bit in how to play with others without prompt!! Of course, most of the time he still needs guidance, and so we shall see how these next weeks go and what he can learn to do on his own in that time :)
Monday, April 28, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
"How a-dicilous!"
The title of this post is a common phrase that we hear Marshall using around here lately. One thing that we could reflect on as being ridiculous at present might be: I haven't blogged about Marshall since fall, and he is rounding up term 2 at school already! My last post was about my daughter's health journey, and I had triple the views on that one!! wow! I guess it is nice to have a story where there is a beginning, middle, and end :) For Marshall's posts, I usually try to keep lists of all of things I want to blog about for when I finally sit down to type, however that has not happened for some reason, so you are getting a 'fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants' post! Whatever I can share within the next half an hour is all I am able to offer at this time!!
Marshall is doing well in Kindergarten! From what I can tell and from what his first term report card read, he is able to keep up with his peers academically at this point which is fantastic!! Rounding up term 2 I am excited to tell you that Marshall now knows his upper and lowercase letters, and almost all of the sounds! He is reading sight words and has almost mastered his assigned 30 first words for the year... it is SO awesome listening to him READ!! Just really never knew if that day would happen for him :) He is getting pulled out of the classroom to work on his IEP goals with his EA. The first term report card did not show much progress as the IEP is created near first report card time, so we will see how it is coming along in our report card in a couple of weeks!
Below I have listed Marshall's 7 IEP goals in general form. These goals are created based on my input, the assessments and paperwork from M's past and current programs, as well as the observations in the classroom by both the teacher and the EA, and are support by the learning coordinator:
1. Will be able to initiate play
2. Be able to develop self-regulation skills
3. Will be able to stay on topic in discussion
4. Will improve language skills
5. Be able to retell a simple story
6. Will learn his alphabet- names/sounds
7. Will be able to achieve grade level outcomes with support/adaptations
** M was recently seen by the OT and a new goal that stemmed from that assessment is to work on his pencil grip. Now, it's not perfect, but his writing is beautiful and that is why no one has been working on changing his grip up to this point. From an OT's perspective, it seems Marshall's whole academic career will be destroyed if he does not hold his pencil correctly! oh brother. We will support trying and hope that M's penmanship is not jeopardized in the process!! haha. The other day using a pencil grip with his BI here at home, he was so uncomfortable with it that he started using his left hand to grasp the top of the pencil to help him! HA! Two hands... cause that's better than what he is currently doing?!?! We shall see how it goes as so far he is not fighting it and apparently doing it correctly with the grip at school for limited periods of time :)
On top of the school support Marshall is receiving, he gets extra help daily from the BI therapy we have going on in our home (covered by Autism funding- what a blessing)...plus what I do with him myself. He has so much support right now, that I do have a slight fear of whether or not he will be able to keep up next year with less BI/therapy support and with full days of school that are more academic (he will still have an EA in a shared scenario I am sure). I had a chat with another parent recently that then led to me talking to M's teacher about next year, to which I was given a 'pretty sure' to him moving on to Grade 1 (of course they can't say for sure as it needs to be assessed by several people on all levels). I would be surprised if they suggested holding him back... he could probably use the extra social support provided in Kindergarten with all of the play, but academically I think he would get bored. Anyways, that will all be processed and talked about in May/June.
Also at that time Marshall's funding will drop down to a third of what he has been getting due to him turning 6. Two of my friends dropped the BI therapy and are using their boys' funding on a hired SLP (speech), and are finding it very successful thus far. We will have to figure out where to focus Marshall's therapy and how we want to go about that as it will change from what we've been doing for 3 years. More on that in the coming months as we figure out the direction we believe is the best fit for Marshall.
I am becoming more aware of just how much Marshall's sister and the cousins he is close to, adapt their play in order to keep the peace. Generally I have felt like M does pretty well with other kids, but after spending time in the classroom, and attempting a play date here with a peer from school, I am seeing M's challenges plain and clear. Now when I sit back and observe his play with his sister, as well as with his closest cousins, I am hearing how they either give in to his demands before he becomes angry or upset. Also, and this is especially true for Devyn and I kinda knew this already, she has picked up on how we talk to Marshall, mainly, all of the pre-talk that we do before anything and everything. It is common for us to pull into a parking spot at the mall, turn off the engine, and for me to lay out the expectations of behaviour prior to going into the mall, as well as what will happen (we will leave/no reward afterwards) if he chooses not to follow 'the rules'. He says ok and I know we will have success, and if we don't, he knows I will take away what I said I would do... and everyone is calm and happy (most of the time). Devyn totally does this with Marshall too, and i'm noticing it more and more... and it's great, yet it is quite unhelpful in setting up scenarios of how to interact with typical children who don't listen, who don't warn, who grab, who... anything!! haha. It will be interesting to see when/how/if these lacking social skills will develop to being natural and easy for him.
We took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge over the Family Day weekend! This was our second visit and we had even more fun this time round! Last year, Marshall kept to the kiddie pool. He did try out some of the slides, but came out crying at the end yelling, "dis is no fun at all!" lol. THIS year, he told me pre-trip that he was going to be so brave and try the slides again. And he did, and HE LOVED THEM!!! I had hoped so as he now takes showers and can handle the water on his face a lot better (obviously, if he's taking showers!). We did ALL of the slides multiple times and with joy! It was awesome and I was so proud of him even just for trying! We went with two other families and a total of 9 kids all around his age. It was a blast and we will definitely head out to Seattle for the trip again!
I am totally out of time... but there's always more to say. Until next time!
Marshall is doing well in Kindergarten! From what I can tell and from what his first term report card read, he is able to keep up with his peers academically at this point which is fantastic!! Rounding up term 2 I am excited to tell you that Marshall now knows his upper and lowercase letters, and almost all of the sounds! He is reading sight words and has almost mastered his assigned 30 first words for the year... it is SO awesome listening to him READ!! Just really never knew if that day would happen for him :) He is getting pulled out of the classroom to work on his IEP goals with his EA. The first term report card did not show much progress as the IEP is created near first report card time, so we will see how it is coming along in our report card in a couple of weeks!
Below I have listed Marshall's 7 IEP goals in general form. These goals are created based on my input, the assessments and paperwork from M's past and current programs, as well as the observations in the classroom by both the teacher and the EA, and are support by the learning coordinator:
1. Will be able to initiate play
2. Be able to develop self-regulation skills
3. Will be able to stay on topic in discussion
4. Will improve language skills
5. Be able to retell a simple story
6. Will learn his alphabet- names/sounds
7. Will be able to achieve grade level outcomes with support/adaptations
** M was recently seen by the OT and a new goal that stemmed from that assessment is to work on his pencil grip. Now, it's not perfect, but his writing is beautiful and that is why no one has been working on changing his grip up to this point. From an OT's perspective, it seems Marshall's whole academic career will be destroyed if he does not hold his pencil correctly! oh brother. We will support trying and hope that M's penmanship is not jeopardized in the process!! haha. The other day using a pencil grip with his BI here at home, he was so uncomfortable with it that he started using his left hand to grasp the top of the pencil to help him! HA! Two hands... cause that's better than what he is currently doing?!?! We shall see how it goes as so far he is not fighting it and apparently doing it correctly with the grip at school for limited periods of time :)
On top of the school support Marshall is receiving, he gets extra help daily from the BI therapy we have going on in our home (covered by Autism funding- what a blessing)...plus what I do with him myself. He has so much support right now, that I do have a slight fear of whether or not he will be able to keep up next year with less BI/therapy support and with full days of school that are more academic (he will still have an EA in a shared scenario I am sure). I had a chat with another parent recently that then led to me talking to M's teacher about next year, to which I was given a 'pretty sure' to him moving on to Grade 1 (of course they can't say for sure as it needs to be assessed by several people on all levels). I would be surprised if they suggested holding him back... he could probably use the extra social support provided in Kindergarten with all of the play, but academically I think he would get bored. Anyways, that will all be processed and talked about in May/June.
Also at that time Marshall's funding will drop down to a third of what he has been getting due to him turning 6. Two of my friends dropped the BI therapy and are using their boys' funding on a hired SLP (speech), and are finding it very successful thus far. We will have to figure out where to focus Marshall's therapy and how we want to go about that as it will change from what we've been doing for 3 years. More on that in the coming months as we figure out the direction we believe is the best fit for Marshall.
I am becoming more aware of just how much Marshall's sister and the cousins he is close to, adapt their play in order to keep the peace. Generally I have felt like M does pretty well with other kids, but after spending time in the classroom, and attempting a play date here with a peer from school, I am seeing M's challenges plain and clear. Now when I sit back and observe his play with his sister, as well as with his closest cousins, I am hearing how they either give in to his demands before he becomes angry or upset. Also, and this is especially true for Devyn and I kinda knew this already, she has picked up on how we talk to Marshall, mainly, all of the pre-talk that we do before anything and everything. It is common for us to pull into a parking spot at the mall, turn off the engine, and for me to lay out the expectations of behaviour prior to going into the mall, as well as what will happen (we will leave/no reward afterwards) if he chooses not to follow 'the rules'. He says ok and I know we will have success, and if we don't, he knows I will take away what I said I would do... and everyone is calm and happy (most of the time). Devyn totally does this with Marshall too, and i'm noticing it more and more... and it's great, yet it is quite unhelpful in setting up scenarios of how to interact with typical children who don't listen, who don't warn, who grab, who... anything!! haha. It will be interesting to see when/how/if these lacking social skills will develop to being natural and easy for him.
We took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge over the Family Day weekend! This was our second visit and we had even more fun this time round! Last year, Marshall kept to the kiddie pool. He did try out some of the slides, but came out crying at the end yelling, "dis is no fun at all!" lol. THIS year, he told me pre-trip that he was going to be so brave and try the slides again. And he did, and HE LOVED THEM!!! I had hoped so as he now takes showers and can handle the water on his face a lot better (obviously, if he's taking showers!). We did ALL of the slides multiple times and with joy! It was awesome and I was so proud of him even just for trying! We went with two other families and a total of 9 kids all around his age. It was a blast and we will definitely head out to Seattle for the trip again!
I am totally out of time... but there's always more to say. Until next time!
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