Could you walk me through how exactly that would work? I mean, I know multiplication is the opposite of division, but I wouldn't know how to use that fact ( separate from the algorithm) to help me figure out a division problem with larger numbers. I have no idea at all of what you mean by cancelling factors. I can picture using base 10 blocks?

So interesting.. I have never seen anyone teach long division without the algorithm. I am curious as to what the 5 different ways might be. Most kids just despise the algorithm due to the number of steps.

Has anyone used MCT for their child with learning disabilities? My son is terrible with remembering "rote" things like grammar definitions and I wondered if the more story type style of grammar might be more accessible for him? I would love to just drop grammar but it comes up in the Ontario Grade 10 literacy test, and I do think it helps students with writing, and understanding what they read. MCT looks beautiful, but that just means it appeals to me. Grammar just seems to be one of those topics that is not sticking in his long-term memory at all. He will seem to have it while working on a topics--- eg.. understand nouns while working on nouns, but then when the next unit is verbs, he seems to forget all the noun information. Any ideas or suggestions?

Just wanted to chime in... breaking a composite shape down into 2 shapes is harder than building a composite shape. You might want to try giving him some paper shapes and having him work on combining them together. So for example- adding the triangle to the square and making a house, adding some shapes together to make a car. I also want to suggest that he might have some sort of spatial disability. These shape issues you are talking about are very basic grade 1 type stuff... Most kids just "see" it without needing a lot of instruction. You can get some pattern block pictures on TPT to use that involves using pattern blocks to create composite pictures. You may need to do some very basic work on developing his spatial sense. You could probably show him how to do it once, then have him experiment with it on his own time.

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but they have closed the border between US and Canada. ( except for trade) I honestly never thought they would really do it.

Just desperately needing to vent to people who don't know me. I live in Ontario, on a remote First Nations reservation. We had a big meeting yesterday at the Nursing Station of frontline workers ( anyone really who deals with the public-- store manager, mental health workers, teachers, nursing staff, chief and council, etc.) They were basically running through a list of what actions we are taking to protect people , and which departments/ people would be responsible for what. All of that is great, and it was wonderful to hear. What was not so wonderful to hear, was the nurse responsible for briefing everybody either deliberately or stupidly giving mininformation or outdated information or deliberately editing what she said . ( clearly in an effort to calm people's fears.) As I am not First Nations, nor a health profession, I clamped my teeth and shut up , but it was incredibly frustrating. Examples of what I mean: She pointed out reassuringly that our nearby big town of Thunder Bay had no cases. She left out that a different nearby town, did, ( which several of us mentioned,)) When asked if nurses coming in were being screened, she replied that they were only being screened if they had travelled internationally, otherwise-- nope. If they have a fever they need to be fever free for 24 hours and then they are free to come up. When questioned on testing, she stated flat out that EVEN IF YOU HAD SYMPTOMS, if you had not travelled internationally, then YOU DID NOT HAVE IT. And obviously, therefore, they would not be testing you. She stated that there is NO community transmission at this time in Canada, even though there was literally just a news article stating that they believe Ontario is beginning to see signs of community transmission. She stated that there was only 1 death in Canada, rather than 4 deaths, as is actually the case. She stated that the ONLY people who are dying are old or have pre-existing conditions. Otherwise don't worry, you won't die. I think what left me most frustrated was i could not tell if she was simple misinformed or actually intentionally misleading people. I know all this will probably seem like small potatoes to people living in bigger areas that are already facing many more deaths, but as First Nations communities are notoriously overcrowded, understocked for medical supplies, underserviced for medical needs, and that any illness tends to run through the whole reserve like wildfire, I was really, really dismayed by her responses. Not much i can do about it, but just really needed to vent to other people.

On the other hand, here is a different point of view written in Maclean's , which is our major news magazine: https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/covid-19-has-the-potential-to-become-as-severe-as-the-spanish-flu/

In our area ( remote north of Canada), there are very few people who know how to run the water operating plant. One time when a guy went on vacation, his replacement did not understand the importance of chlorine so when they ran out of the additive, he told no one. Yes , this is a true story. Lots of diarrhea that month! If this hit our area hard, it would be entirely possible for all staff who know how to operate the plant to be out with the virus. Also power goes out a lot up here during the spring , which immediately affects the water system. It would not be at all surprising for both events to occur at the same time. As there is only one store, and many of us get groceries flown in ( which if there is a power outage, both our internet and cell phones won't work and therefore will not be able to arrange) . It might not happen. But it might. Why not get the water and be on the safe side. We have had times where internet and phones were out for several weeks.

Eating ice can be a sign of nutritional deficiencies.

Thank-you so much for all the ideas! I had forgotten about Bad Kitty-- that might be perfect for him with all the graphics. I am going to look into some of the other suggestions at the library. I wanted to grab some new books as we head into the holidays!

Yeah, he mentioned Warriors as a possibility. I think we tried it a year or two ago and he found it too scary at the time, but we could try it again. I had forgotten Socks-- I just remembered Ribsy!

My ds loves cats and all things cat-astic. I am trying to think of fiction books about cats, that are written at the early chapter level that he could read or slightly harder that could be a read-aloud. He loved the Catwings series by Ursula LeGuin. We read Cricket in Times Square and all its various sequels over and over again. I was not a big cat lover as a kid so this is not really a genre I ever tried to locate. He loves funny, light-hearted stuff, and fantasy. Deep, dark, scary and serious are out. If any characters die like in Bridge to Terebithia, I will have an extremely unhappy child. So I know this is kind of an odd request, but I hoped people might be able to point me in the right direction. Any favourites the cat-lovers in your house just loved, and that you would really recommend for an immature 12 year old who is a weak reader?

Phew!!! ok, I was freaking out there for a moment. I gotta go buy some groceries before lunchtime. Thank-you for providing so many ideas.

Yeah, I saw you mention this in another thread and have just been sniffing around the idea wondering if I am crazy for thinking about taking it. Same thing here for tokens. Right now our big motivators for school are that if he gets up early he can play video games before school ( which I would normally not allow in the mornings!) and we go pick up his best friend who would normally take the bus and we drive the both of them over to school together, so he has someone to walk onto the playground with.

oh my goodness-- the way to A book is only available from one buyer for $399. For a picture book???

Problem is-- officially I can't get anyone to even test for autism. I re-asked him counsellor about it and she basically said yes she still thinks he has autism or a collection of symptoms that are causing much the same problems autism would cause. She is experienced like crazy and watching her try to do traditional talk therapy with him is so eye-opening. If people could see that-- they might see what I am talking about. He is talking to her with a pillow over his face, completely ignoring her questions and talking about completely off-topic conversation, without worry about whether anyone else is engaging, completely unable to imagine any goals for himself other than Mr. B needs to go away. She later told me she has seen a book on how to use lego to do therapy. As that is one of his main interests ( Lego, Ninjago, Pokémon and Minecraft) that might work. She always keeps trying but she said flat out, he needs an ABA behaviourist, not her.

Lol-- yep, if you love snow, we are the place to be!! No movie theatres, bowling alleys, arcades, playplaces, McDonald's, or anything. But if cold and icy makes you happy, come on over!!

I love the simplicity of this. I will check this out. We have been talking about this, but probably in a more long-winded way that was not as concise as he needed. I looked into the POPARD, you need a letter of employment in a BC school to take their course. Even a certified teacher from BC who has no job cannot access their programs.

Yeah. I am in Canada. I think we are light-years away from Americans in how this is handled. Plus we are in the north where personnel is limited. And truthfully-- for a lot of people-- if you could get a job elsewhere-- you would. Thank-you Lecka. A lot of what you are saying is what I am wondering too. A fresh start might be what we need. We had our parent-teacher interview last night. I am not sure what to think. He was saying the right things--- "Obviously ds's need to feel safe and have a sense of belonging is more important than academics right now." I think the teacher has been "talked" to, as he was less cold. He says he sees no sign that ds is unhappy in class. Which is perfectly possible as ds is pretty good at faking it and may in fact be enjoying his friends even if he is scared of his teacher. I have not often heard him comment negatively about a teacher before, usually just the experience of school. Also, when we talked about how math is being taught, I can see what part of the problem is. It sounds like math is almost primarily problem based, open-ended questions like "How many rectangles can you make with a perimeter of 16cm?" It is a valid questions but requires a good understanding of perimeter, of how to calculate perimeter, of how length and width affect perimeter, plus an understanding of how to approach problem-solving in a systematic way. I am not sure he has any of those skills. And it is very different from how he has seen math taught before, which would have been more like-- here is a shape with these measurements., if we add them up, we can find the perimeter. But that is so much more straightforward than how he is being taught right now. The teacher asked me for some ideas on how to make math more accessible so I wrote up about 2 pages worth of suggestions--- some pretty basic techniques really--- give him an elapsed timer so he can see how much longer he has to work, split the work into smaller chunks with a break in-between, give him a reward for completing math even if he didn't do well, praise him for trying, provide more structured activities for math so he understands better what to do, follow a very basic lesson structure so ds knows what to expect ( such as I do, we do, you do) , explicitly teach problem-solving skills and strategies, and have a reference poster with an example so he can refer to each strategy taught. I sent the list today. Meh-- I feel like I am teaching the guy how to teach. I don't know. I really want to make this school work because he has friends here. They are now offering to have the behavioural lead sit in on math class and help--- but if ds is simply feeling super anxious but being outwardly complaint, I am not sure how much help that will be. I mean, basically, if he got into math class, he is actually already having a good day or he wouldn't have made it. I need his caseworker to get back in town so she can sign the papers for consent. I don't think the school has tried much in terms of positive rewards as they are not seeing the problem in the classroom ( other than him refusing to come!) I suspect that may think it is simply a home problem. People keep mentioning counselling. He is getting counselling. If the work is too hard, counselling won't change that, you need to. If he struggles to handle anxiety, you who are there as he experiences anxiety need to help him use strategies to calm down. But he is just trying to hide how overwhelmed he is when he is in class, and refuses to ask for help. No one is giving him strategies-- other than letting him calm down in a separate room when we are physically in the school, but having trouble getting him to come in to class. After he has calmed down, they simply keep insisting he must go back. The v-p was reassuring me that sometimes you just need tough love. I will check and see if the other school has PBIS. I am just waiting for principal to get back to me so we can see up an after-school meet and greet with the possible teacher.

Somewhat--we are seeking more. Some of what he is diagnosed with does not qualify for help-- ADHD, Borderline Intellectual Disability, SPD. Also has a lot of anxiety but that does not qualify for help here. So frustrated that with all these diagnoses, none of them seem to "count". Yesterday was another great day. He called me at 1:00 in the afternoon on recess and announced he was quitting school and I needed to come pick him up right now!!😨 Refused to tell me what had happened. We went to school and sat down with V-P.. Nothing had happened to him ( No bullying, no confrontation with teacher, etc.) After a lot of questions, we discovered that math was next and one of his friends had had a seizure ( which he did not really understand--- so-and-so did something with his neck muscles and fainted) He was hysterical. It took quite a while to coax him out of office and into spec. ed room. We left, and it was reported to us that he went back to class shortly after, with the assistance of spec. ed. teacher who also stayed and tried to help him transition back to class, and was apparrently successful. Principal had not spoken to her about the situation, but she gave us referral forms to sign that will get their behaviour specialist into the picture. Ds ' s take on it is that he had a meltdown, but will be fine today. I guess we will find out in about an hour and a half. I think witnessing the seizure and not really understanding it ( he was under the awed impression that the boy had somehow flexed his muscles in some way and caused this to happen to himself 🤥) and was also freaking out. I have gone over threee times to talk to the child worker's supervisor to see how much of the threats that are being made are from the organization and how much was just her. Parent-teacher interviews tonight. I can't wait. I may just walk around with this giant ball of anxiety eating away at my gut forever. I am sending the other school some a summary of our conversation with them from the other day, and am going to obtain a copy of the IEP for them.

I probably missed it on one of the pages, but what is RBT?

You know - I am not sure if friends are the main reason he is refusing to go to school right now. I think they WERE a big part of it when this whole thing started several years ago. It is one of the reasons we moved, as his rez is pretty small and it is not like the kids are going to change much. I think he expected much the same issues here which is why he didn't want to go to school last year. But when he finally did go, he said the kids in his class last year were really nice. He said there was no bullying at all from his classmates. He still wasn't crazy about school but he didn't seem particularly anxious once he got over it--- he did find it super stressful and exhausting though, especially as Grade 6 is a big testing year here and it was completely beyond him and he knew it. This year I am not sure it is kids-- but I wonder if the teacher is more or less registering as a "bully" to him, so he is employing the same avoidance technique? One of his friends mentioned that there was one kid who called him names a few times and this friend stood up for him. But ds never complained about it to us. So I am not sure how important it is. He constantly mentions how much he dislikes his teacher. He adored last year's teacher and just thought the world of her. We had a birthday party a few weeks ago and most of the kids he invited were from his class and they all came and seemed very nice and friendly. He had a great time. This is actually the main reason we have not wanted to move to other school even though it might have better services as he has friends here, and he might not make any there. Who knows? He is the kind of kid that people either like or hate, there is not real in-between. I think this is the part I am agonizing over-- will better services and a nicer teacher outweigh the issue of needing to make new friends? Or will needing to make new friends be so hard that it will not be worth the switch? Which part is more important? Honestly, he has had problems with school since about grade 1 or grade 2. He races through his work, doesn't bother to read the instructions, often doesn't understand the instructions even when he does read them, resists being corrected or told he has done something wrong, and is often perceived as lazy rather than incapable. If he doesn't understand something immediately, he simply gives up and assumes he is "stupid". ( his words, not mine) He has had a lot of issues with not doing work at school, so it gets sent home as homework. Then we try to work on it, and he falls apart because he doesn't really seem able to do it. But I can't seem to get across to his teachers-- if you feel like he can do the work, why is it not getting done then??? I mean sometimes work is coming home and he has literally only written one or two sentences or even written nothing, Same thing with math -- not a single problem done. If I ever saw a kid with a blank paper, I would be sitting down and working through 2-3 problems, or sentences or whatever, until it was obvious that the child really could do the work. So when I see a completely blank I feel pretty suspicious. He really, really hates feeling stupid. And I think he feels that way all the time right now. And he is very obviously at the bottom of his class. Him and one other kid do completely separate work in language arts and math. PeterPan-- I sent the links to the therapist so she can check everything out at her leisure. I ordered the one book called "Talk with Me" . Still waiting on the Rothstein stuff I ordered to come in. Therapist found it almost impossible to engage him in any productive conversation last night and re-confirmed that she still has serious concerns about ASD. She also reiterated that she didn't think counselling was what we really need, but rather an ABA behaviourist-- which I don't think one even exists in this town. But we got him off to school today so victory for that anyways!!

I am still reading and processing everything people have written. I so appreciate the time people are taking as it gives me lots of ideas to share with dh. I wanted to share an interesting conversation I just had with the mom of another boy in ds's class. She was furious at his report card and how poor the marks are as well as how negative the entire tone was from the teacher. She was amazed there was nothing more positive on or any words about what her son was good at. She was asking me advice on how to go in and talk to him and get him to understand that some positive words and praise will really help. In addition, her son also mentioned how great school was today and especially math. When she asked why, he said it was because their teacher was away and a substitute taught math and you know--- actually explained it. She is sending him over to me with some math review pages, as they have a big test tomorrow and she wants me to teach it to him. Oh, the irony!

This sounds awesome. I will ask her tonight! How soon is close?

Yes, I am beginning to think the other school can do a better job of meeting his needs in the classroom. They are pretty aware of the difficulties of getting some kids to school and the principal there offered to allow DS to shadow the class a couple time to see how it would be. I think having that option to try the other school out, without having to commit to leaving his school gives him a little more leeway to try something new without having to make a commitment to stay there. They have asked me to send a short summary of our situation and some of the testing he has had done to give them some specifics, and have offered to meet with us next week. ( This week is report card week here and both schools have parent-teacher interviews after school.) I just don't want to fool myself into thinking that switching schools will magically solve all his problems with school. More importantly, I don't want him thinking that either, as he will then be very disappointed. And I am worried he will miss his friends as he may not make new friends all that easily. Yesterday, I followed up with the principal at his current school on 2 things he had promised me and he had not followed up on either ( 1 was the referral to the mental health co-ordinator for the school district, and the other was talking to the teachers about the problems he is facing) I will be checking today to see if he had talked to the teachers yet. I had also requested at the recommendation of the physiotherapist that the teachers prompt him regularly to use the washroom as he was experiencing accidents from trying to hold it for 7 hours. Ds says this is not happening, but I will check with teachers, as he may not be reporting accurately. I don't find the private counsellor we are currently seeing is doing us very much good, but there are not a lot of options here. She is convinced he has autism and feels that traditional talk therapy will not work very well. She seems to be at a loss to know what will work instead. We are seeing her tonight. If the school still had their Youth and Child Worker, I think she would be overseeing this area and doing the counselling/ problem-solving side of it. Without her, I am not sure it falls under anyone else's specific job duties.