MSNative
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Posts posted by MSNative
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Not only that, the consultants can only pick size and style- not pattern. They are stuck with whatever LLR sends them. I had an online party to help a friend. I only saw two patterns I liked and they weren't in my size.I think lularoe has a $5000 start up cost too.
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We were in Warsaw last Easter and lots of places were closed. Some restaurants were open but most everything else was closed. We were in Kraków afterwards and everything was open. Only had one day there but it was amazing. We really only had time for the Wawel and then just enjoying the square. Gorgeous. You will not be disappointed even if everything is closed. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
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Yes, that's the book we're currently using. Then there's another set (The Processing Program) that has 2 volumes. That's what I want to do next. The materials are deceptively simple. I use it both receptively (I read, he touches the picture) and expressively (he has to follow the pattern and tell me what to touch). He finds that expressive step, where HE has to give the instructions, challenging and fatiguing. That's when you start to see the holes and breakdowns, because he'll use other odd, funky expressions to avoid using an adjective + noun construction. Or he won't have caught onto the details or patterns.
Remember too, this approach is building up their working memory, because they're needing to listen, notice lots of details, and then remember all of them and motor plan or speak. So to me, I don't mind that it was easy at the beginning. Like with your dd, I thought oh yeah, maybe it's a waste, maybe only the 2nd half will be worthwhile. But when he had to do it actively, it was harder. And you're building that plus the working memory and EF/attention.
Within a couple months I started noticing him initiating reading. My dd is now commenting that he seems able to relay more complex thoughts with more pieces. Like he might have a story he's telling her (from a movie, from something he did) and it has more components. And you think how for these tasks, by the latter part of the book he really is having to hold 6 details and use his speech. So it carries right over to be able to hold those thoughts and use speech irl, kwim? So I wouldn't feel badly about some of it being simple. I would find more sophisticated ways to use it and think that it might be stretching OTHER things as well.
We've been working on asking questions very agressively since about Thanksgiving. And I'm talking like action stops, ask the question or you don't get what you want and NOTHING happens and you must comply. It was just super hard for him, even with prompts. Now, come to think of it, we haven't been bringing any of that process into our Super Duper materials. That's an interesting point. If I were being creative, there would be a way, absolutely. That would be fun. Oh, duh, you could do the Magnatalk playing it that way! Like you could roll a die that has who, what, where, why, when, whatever, and then have to form that kind of question and place/move your magnets. That could be fun.
Anyways, my point is, the work we do DIRECTLY IMPROVES speech, communication, and therefore behavior. My ds actually had somewhat of a seemingly normal, reciprocal conversation this morning! And it wasn't about his obsession but about something that might have been interesting to the listener), football! How wild is that! But to have that kind of conversation, you have to be able to ask a question. So we've worked for months on this, and now he can. And we're using it to teach problem solving when he's aggressive and improve behavior.
So I don't know. The Grammar Processing program is sort of stealth. Like you get these subtle improvements and you're like WOW, where did that come from? It's very careful on basics like pronouns. If you don't get pronouns, you CANNOT UNDERSTAND SENTENCES. That was a sneaky little thing at the beginning where I thought oh, he won't need that, and yet it really made him think. And the way they use them (discriminating 3rd person singular and plural, etc.), the kids really have to listen HARD and up their meta-linguistics game to notice, notice, notice whether the sentence said he/she/it/they... And everything spirals, so they might have to notice, 3, 4,5, 6 details even to select the correct picture. That's some SERIOUS noticing! That's working memory and the meta-level both.
For us it's maybe 10 minutes a day, pain free, and it has been valuable enough that I'm planning/hoping to get the other books to keep going. I like what it has done for him on that meta level to notice lots of little bits. Is it appropriate for *every* situation? Obviously not. I mean, that's why they have VB-MAPP and ABLLS. But that's like saying AAR/AAS is no good because Barton is so much better. They're best for their best situations. The instruction in the Grammar Processing program is enough that my ds seems to get things and connect. It seems to be working for us. But obviously for someone else it could be like wow, our problems were way more severe, needed a lot slower pace, and that wasn't going to get us there.
MagneTalk Match-up Adventures Kit (includes Barrier Game Board Stand) Here's the link for Magnetalk. There are several kits available, and they increase in complexity.
Party Game - Pickles to Penguins - Quick Thinking Card Game This is the game I mentioned. It has tons of pictures you can use for class/feature/whatever, and just lots of potential to be played lots of ways. I was looking at some ABA picture kits, and they were crazy expensive. This has a broad variety of pictures for an affordable price. Obviously that's for that middle of the road student who maybe needs *some* help but not the most, most methodical careful level of help. But since picture boxes are like $50 a box on amazon (the ones I was looking at), this is a crazy deal. Broad variety too, like things in the house, food, sports, things for school, things that are alive, blah blah. Definitely enough variety to do your classifying work with some students. And then of course you have just the normal games they *intend* for you to play, hehe.
Back to the op a minute. You see why I keep saying the most valuable thing is to know that list of skills you're trying to hit, where the holes are. Because you can take that list and work on it with ANYTHING. But without that list, you're just shooting in the dark.
Hi! I just wanted to come back and say thank you to everyone who responded. I spent a lot of time digesting this and the tests. We are still shooting somewhat in the dark - he last official tests were over a year ago. So I scheduled some retesting to get a more clear game plan. In the meantime, we got the magnetalk products and they are great. He is learning so much with them. And it is forcing him to focus! He just had a bday and we are getting him the pickles game as one of the gifts.
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My favorite- the movers evidently stayed in our flat and borrowed some pots and plates to make dinner for themselves. They packed them without washing them. This was for an overseas move too so we got them months later - all gross and rotten and ewwwwwww
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Do they not interact with this person a lot? I know that fb has weird algorhythms and will only show you certain people's posts-even if you are friends and following them. They try to guess what will make your feed better. Perhaps that is what's going on?
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If they are both in a group together and have notifications setup so that they receive group notifications then it shouldn't matter if they are friends or following each other. I'm in groups with lots of nonfriends (state wide homeschool group for example). When I had the notifications set up to get notified whenever anyone posted I woudl see everything regardless of if I was fb friends with the person.
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Can you switch out one of your strength days for an intense core/body weight day? You can do a thousand different types of planks that work core, glutes, adductors, abductors, arms, chest and shoulders- basically everything. Lol!
Then add different lunges. I like to use sliders for both plank and lunges. You can get a lot of variety really easily. If you don't have sliders, you can start with just paper plates to get the same effect and see if you like them.
Half hour of those and you get a great workout.
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I completely agree with your smart board assessment. I stopped keeping track of all the wasteful stories from our school district, it hurts my head too much. So much waste!!
What a battle you've been on for your son! I will say the silver living is that the private resources your son is getting (although expensive!!) are probably much better than he would receive through the school. I couldn't believe the difference in speech therapy after we went to private pay over the public school options.
There are so many broken components in the school system. I don't even pretend to know how to fix them.
Where did you find the private therapist you are using? (I'm asking publicly rather than in a pm just in case there are others out there in this same situation. I apologize for the hijack)
Our biggest problem has been finding private options. I live in a decent sized city with a big university and several small colleges but have struggled to find a private therapist for him. The few there are usually are booked solid and not taking any new patients. I've been working through the university and asked the department head why there aren't more private therapists. She said her students almost universally want to go into the school system- better benefits and less hassle dealing with insurance. Having seen the paperwork fiasco that is involved with public school. Didn't think that anything could be worse. If dealing with insurance is worse than that then I can't even imagine the horror.
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Our teachers use the smart boards all the time.
They should train the teachers or not disburse the technology.
I personally am more a fan of chalkboards but if kids have allergies or asthma I'll take the tech.
Did you say your son is being denied disability services?
As I said, I am not anti-technology. But why spend all that money if there are needs that aren't being met and if our teachers don't want them? I completely agree with you- train them or don't dont install the technology. But it's something that our school district decided to spend big bucks on. Again I wonder who in our govt is friends with the smart board company owner. But I'm jaded.
Yes, my son is being denied services. For two years I fought for them. At one point I was told that I had refused them. At no point had I. I asked them to provide me the evidence that I had refused them and I showed them copies of emails and letters I had sent during that time trying to get the services. I could go on and on but I won't bore you. I finally looked at hiring an attorney to try to get him the services. But it was going to be really expensive and time consuming. I just pulled him from school and am homeschooling. We are paying for private services cause we want him to get the help he needs now. I feel for the parents who don't have the ability to make that decision. Being stuck at the mercy of the local public school and the powers that be there sucks.
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We had marble floors installed in a cafeteria here. Schools with half the classrooms empty (long story). And yet parents are still buying all the paper and tissues for the classes, getting piles of bonds every year no matter what the budget does, and seeing poor results from the schools that aren't charter/lottery/test in campuses.
Our waste isn't the teachers or even individual schools primarily. It is the district level and rural schools who don't have the numbers to support the expensive building and teaching staff but whose parents refuse the idea of satellite school or home study with fly in support.
Your district may vary.
Our local elementary school has smart boards in every classroom and at least three brand new computers per classroom. Are those necessary? No. My son's kindergarten teacher said she and the other teachers rarely use the smart boards. They just become a station for the kids to use during free time. Pretty expensive station. I think she said it cost $10k-$15k per classroom for the smart board. So that's a quarter of a million for just my school- that doesn't include all of elementary schools in my district. I'm not against technology. But if the teachers don't want it and don't use it, then it is a waste. Id much rather see that money go towards more special education (selfish there since my son qualifies for services but can't get them because there isn't money to fund enough qualified personnel) or help for ESL students or raises for teachers...Really something useful rather than stuff that was probably part of some contract where some politician got a kick back.
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Public educational institutions don't necessarily have to be poor quality. The UK has good universities, all of which are essentially government institutions. They have recently become more business-minded, but I don't think that this has improved their standing particularly. I don't know what the country-to-country differences might be:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2015/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25
And that is why I said public schools as a whole. There are public schools that do a fine job and private schools that don't. Also I was referring to k-12, not university level. That is a whole different story. There are public and private top tier colleges here too.
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Do you have some data? Id like to look at it and understand exactly where the increases are coming from.We are providing three times as much education, since we are meeting social and emotional, medical, and academic needs for age 3 to 21 for a substantial percentage of students. The parking lot alone is triple what it was before the staffing increase. Staff, with their cadillac health care and early retirement, are costly.
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Poverty and poor are different. The sham e is the artificial scarcity of education by choice...when we refuse to teach at the level a student needs, or offer a sufficient number of seats in appropriate classes.
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He doesn't answer all the criticisms. We are educating more people, period--not just "low scoring students".
Minority group rises stopped during Regan--not in the 90s, then they went up again, then flatlined.
HM.
In inflation adjusted dollars we are spending three times as much per pupil as we did in the 1970s. Are we educating three times as many people?
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I do not homeschool. I give my child a bespoke education! In my bespoke yoga pants.
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Most importantly, education is an area that tends to be very compromised when it is treated as a business, which is what happens when people are paying for it out of pocket. People expect it to satisfy the consumer rather than fulfill it's own particular ends.
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And yet that isn't what I see happening. Our public schools as a whole which are not treated as business do a poorer job than our private schools which are treated as businesses. There are many factors that go into that. But if we just look historically we are now spending much more per pupil and yet not seeing any significant increases in achievement. This link shows how spending has skyrocketed while test scores have stayed flat. It includes a response by the author to criticisms about the chart he created from data.
http://www.cato.org/blog/addressing-critics-purportedly-no-good-very-bad-chart
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So the proposal is that all taxpayers should fund college for people who choose to go. Though it sounds like it will help the poor, it's actually incredibly regressive. Even if college were govt funded, some lower class young people still couldn't go because they have to get jobs to help their families. They can't take four years off of working to go to college. Or they are ill equipped to get admitted into college because they went to failing schools. Either way, the entire idea of taxpayer funded college seems horribly skewed against low income families. They will be paying taxes just like everyone else but fewer of them will be able to take advantage of the actual schooling. Seems better to rein in tuition which is skyrocketing, improve K-12 education and offer need based scholarships.
This link has a chart that shows college enrollment sorted by income level.
http://higheredtoday.org/2015/11/25/where-have-all-the-low-income-students-gone/
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I think there are two areas that really show how the powerful and connected can use their clout and cash to tip the scales: subsidies and regulation. I support getting rid of govt subsidies that pick winners and losers. We don't need govt making sugar subsidies or solar subsidies. Reducing regulations that make entry into certain industries expensive would also help. A NYC cab medallion can cost $1million just to be a cab driver there! Ridiculous. Certainly some regulations are useful but we have so many with so many associated fees and costs that it's out of control.
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Is it really charity if you supply the bandage to fix the wound you created? There are those who do good work no doubt, but it can't make up for underlying systemic problems.
Wow. The wealthy caused poverty? Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the others all plotted to cause poverty? I assume you have data to back this up.
Systemic problems- I agree there are many though I'm sure we would disagree on what those are.
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But the necessity of having at least a high school diploma if not more is much more than it was even twenty years ago. There used to be many good blue collar jobs available for those available with a high school diploma or less. Today that is increasingly rare and thought to be one of the growing contributors to the shrinking middle class. It is absolutely true in my state with the almost complete disappearance of the timber industry. And while we may be doing a better job of educating almost everyone than we did 100 yeas ago, we are probably doing much worse than we did in the latter half or third of the 20th century, especially in terms of quality.
However, I don't disagree that all of us, including the poor, have access to luxuries that did not previously exist. But I guess I don't understand going from there to inequity doesn't really matter. Are you saying because the poor now have it better than the poor 100 hundred yeas ago, we don't need to worry about the growing inequality?
In my area blue collar jobs are hard to fill. There are lots of opening for trained workers and not enough workers to fill them. And most of these jobs can't be outsourced-plumbing, hvac, electrical, welding, etc. Happily there is also talk of bringing back some vo-tech in our high schools.
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I thought the video did a better job of showing that the very wealthy don't know how to share.
This shows a different view.
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/05/how-much-do-the-ultra-rich-give-to-charity.html
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I once read- and it could have been here- the suggestion to keep a time journal. Basically for a couple of days set a timer and every 15 minutes write down what you did. So annoying right? But I did it and found some of my time wasters. I also was able to see that a lot of chores that I think will take a long time, really don't. In 15 minutes my kids and I can get the house looking pretty good. Now I do two 15 minute house cleanings a day and it makes a huge difference.
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Wow! Thank you all. There's so much here I didn't know! I can't imagine how I could be deficient in Vit. D living in Texas, but I may be. I really hope supplements help me feel more energetic. Lately, I've been dragging through the day feeling a hundred years old.
Definitely get checked. I live in the south too and am outside as much as possible- most of the time without sunscreen cause I forget. I also eat foods high in vit d. I figured I was super high in vit d. Turns out I was ridiculously low and now have to supplement.
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Such cute leggings and skirts. Only two drawbacks - 1 their leggings are a little thinner material than I'm used to. I'm clumsy and fear tearing them like a friend did when she bumped into the corner of a piece of furniture. 2 no refunds. They only allow exchanges, not refunds. So if you buy, start with a smaller purchase and make sure you really like it before you buy more.
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For those using this year's campaign as a way to teach the American political system, I thought we could share articles and resources that our kids found useful/interesting.
This article was a huge conversation starter. I know my sons and I had a very good time researching super delegates and discussing the pros and cons of using them. This also led to research into primaries vs caucuses, open vs closed, etc.
Anybody been to Krakow, Poland?
in The Chat Board
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Auschwitz was ....there are no words. Definitely something that I wish everyone could see.
I'm jealous. I loved Poland and wish we could go back this year. A beautiful land filled with beautiful people.