Haha, yep, like lobster rolls at McDonald’s ?

I LOVE that you specifically mentioned natural food stores, old houses, thrift stores, and middle-aged ladies that don’t dye their gray hair. I think you just encapsulated Maine in one post ?

Thanks, I’m practically giddy! Oh, Boston. Now that everyone has smartphones, the social interaction must be cut down even more! When I lived there I had to ignore people by doing crosswords... but now anyone can just stare at a screen.

Well, I’ll be your friend!!

It’s a little hard to spell phonetically, but it’s supposed to be pronounced like bang-gore.

I grew up in Maine, went on to Boston, Colorado and PA, and now I”m going back to mid coast Maine in a month. I can’t wait!!’ Now I’m wondering if I’ve evolved during my 7 years in Colorado to be chatty, and I won’t fit in in the Northeast anymore! I have had SO many social interactions go wrong in PA... like the first time I went to the library to get a library card. I was so ready to be part of a small-town community and just go all in. “Hi, I just moved here and I can’t wait to get a library card! This is a beautiful library!” I said to the librarian. She just looked at me without smiling and said, “Did you bring proof of residency?” I feel like everyone in Maine is perfectly friendly, but I guess maybe they don’t see the point of doing small talk with strangers, like someone said above. When I lived in Boston, everyone pretty much went out of their way to NEVER look at anyone else on the subway, on the sidewalk, etc. You’ll definitely find the chatty Newenglanders eventually. It just takes time ? Oh, and about the swimming thing... YES! In this area of PA, there’s hardly any water... so no free swimming. There are pools, but they’re kind of expensive, and crowded. I can’t wait to just have (nearly) free access to any water I can find!

Wow, the sample pages look awesome! My big beef with history/science texts for younger ages is they’re just so wordy... I’d rather have a kid get the big ideas - maybe make a timeline of the “must remember” people, places, and events - and then anything else is just gravy. You can use history to work on sentence/paragraph composition, vocabulary, reading comprehension, etc. Maybe I’m cynical, but I’m skeptical about how much the average kid remembers about middle school history. Heck, I’m pretty sure I don’t remember anything about history from school... it’s all from reading as an adult. So, yes, I think documentaries/interest-led library books would be great ?

Which part of New England? When I moved to PA from Colorado, I was surprised at the lack of small talk from cashiers, librarians, etc. I guess I was used to chit-chatting with everyone. My guess is that people might feel awkward with small talk, and don’t really know how to do it. You’ll find the chatters eventually, though!

Are there other doctors you could see? Maybe your SS isn’t connecting very well with this doctor. Does the doctor give him/your family strategies, or are you just on your own with orders to eat less/exercise? Because that sounds tough.

Yeah.... definitely need some updating! She sounds like a fantastic individual. I wish I could be her teacher!

Haha, I just read your last response about teaching the science class. That’s pretty awesome :D I had a student that sounds like a younger version of your daughter. Boy, did we have some trying times until I figured out that her “defiance” was confusion, embarassment, being overloaded, etc. I think it’s quite a good idea to have an accommodation that says when she’s freezing up, to give her time to regroup. It’s great that they’re going to do new testing, but I’d put that in writing ASAP. Send to everyone!

Sorry you’re bummed about the draft goals. They do seem sort of... blah. It sounds like they’re maybe trying to address the potential work refusal? I recommend being super-prepared for the actual meeting. Read through the things you’ve said here already (writing down/taking picture of assignments, less busy work, etc) and make a list of things you want addressed in her accommodations. If you have some specific goals, write those down too. Like - make conversation with peers, learn strategies for when she starts to freeze up, etc. You can print out a stack of copies and give them to everyone at the meeting. You can even look at this IEP goal bank (https://usd320.socs.net/vimages/shared/vnews/stories/5a0c6b023d64b/IEP%20Goal%20Bank.pdf#page71) and copy out some sample goals that you think would fit with the goals you want. Did you already request new evaluations by the school? You need to make a request in writing, and send it to everyone. There are good samples on the web. It sounds like it will be a good experience for her, even though so far the goals are a bit lackluster. Hopefully everyone on the team is up for some revisions!

Free coding for kids: http://www.edutechpost.com/coding-for-kids-free-websites-teach-learn-programming/

This costs money, but what about using Tinkercad for 3D printing?

For something fun, what about the Dragonbox iPad apps? They have Algebra 5+, Algebra 12+, and Elements. I haven’t personally tried them, but I did download some of their other games and the graphics are REALLY good. Also, I really want someone to review the Algebra games for me ? https://dragonbox.com/ My PhD mathematician husband says that anything with numbers isn’t really math, it’s just arithmetic ?

Yay! Did it go away yet?

I'm not sure about the range of accommodations available at public schools, but could you ask her to be exempted from spelling tests, if they're still a thing in 7th grade? Also, you could ask for an accommodation that a teacher checks her planner to see that she's written down her assignments in each class. That seems low stress but really helpful.

Totally agree with this! Mom could also write half a sentence, and have him fill in the other half, if one sentence is too much. I also agree with the recommendations to scribe. Many of my students needed me to scribe almost everything for months, and then I could back off a little bit and have them write a couple words, and then eventually move on to writing a sentence. Lots of times I would write 3-4 sentences, and they would write 1.

Oh, you poor thing. All of this sounds completely miserable! I hope your DH being able to open his hands all the way is a sign that he's on the mend! Sometimes illnesses get better fast after the initial period of awfulness - I'm hoping your DH starts steadily recovering from this point on!!

Another thought - Hochman suggests writing in all subjects, not just in a specific writing time. So, if you're doing science or something, have him write a description of something you're working with in science - e.g., Friction is a force that slows objects down. Beavers have brown fur and big flat tails. Even in math, you could write. It sounds like you've got awesome routines down that really make your son feel confident. Yay! Maybe you could say something like, we're going to add a new layer to our schoolwork this year, and write a sentence after each lesson. Since a sentence after each lesson isn't much, he might be on board with it - and by the end of the day, you'd have 3-5 sentences written. Which, for an 11 year old with dyslexia, is huge!

Hi eeyore! A graphic organizer is like a simple outline. Graphic, because you see the information in a simple way, and organizer, just because it organizes information. You can use graphic organizers for studying, or as outlines for writing sentences and paragraphs. A good example of an elementary graphic organizer is this one: https://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/pdf/cluster_web3.pdf So, if your son is working on a writing prompt like "What is your favorite holiday?" He puts the holiday in the middle, say, Halloween, and then jots down a reason in each circle - candy, costumes, stay up late, etc. You can stop there, if that's enough writing, or have him turn a couple notes into sentences. Eventually he would move on to graphic organizers for writing paragraphs and essays. I think when I was in school, this kind of thing was called a word web or something like that. Visualizing and Verbalizing is a book by Lindamood-Bell that helps with reading comprehension. It doesn't sound like your son struggles with this, but lots of kids have trouble visualizing while they read, so their comprehension suffers. V&V teaches them, step by step, how to visualize simple things (like a single simple illustration of a cat) all the way up to multi-paragraph texts. It's pretty cool. V&V uses "structure words" to give kids "anchors" for visualizing. The words include: what, where, when, color, size, movement, perspective, mood, and some others. I suggested your son start writing descriptions of things because it's concrete and it also doesn't take that long ? My students always appreciated things that weren't a huge slog. At first, I suggest taking a picture (from the internet, from a calendar, from a book, etc) and having him fill out that graphic organizer I linked above. He should use the V&V words to help him if he needs ideas. My students would say, "I'm done!" And I'd look at their papers and say, Hmmm, have you told me the colors you see? What about the size? Where is this located?" And it would really help them to generate ideas. When he can consistently describe a picture, you can move on to him describing something from his life or his imagination - his favorite vacation, a pet he wants, an imaginary monster... ? The Hochman book that you can buy on Amazon is amazing. The PDF is pretty helpful too - it has those writing progression checklists that I think are so helpful. I think teaching writing is really challenging because there's s just SO MUCH you can do... should do...? And it's overwhelming. A checklist helps me to see what should be done next, and I don' have to wrack my brain trying to figure out All Of Writing, lol.

I think so, too!

Peter Pan, I'll have to go check out Bruce Saddler's book. What frustrates me is there's no corresponding workbook to either his book or the Hochman book. I wish there was! I would totally write one, except it would probably not be allowed... hmm. Anyway, I know worksheets aren't everything, but it can be exhausting to generate original materials for every little thing. I think a teacher's guide to writing sentences/paragraphs for students with learning disabilities AND a student workbook would be so useful.

Since your DS is going to be starting with single words and eventually sentences, I would start with descriptive writing - it's quite concrete, and may not require as much thought as other kinds of writing. I also highly suggest using graphic organizers... for EVERYTHING! He can start by filling out a very basic graphic organizer (single words), and then when he's ready, move on to turning a word or two into a sentence. In my class of dyslexic 9-11 year olds this year, we did: 1. I printed out the "visualizing and verbalizing" words from Lindamood-Bell. I put them up in a prominent spot by the board. The kids used those words ALL YEAR to generate descriptions. 2. They initially wrote descriptions of pictures so they didn't have to write *and* picture something in their own minds. If it was a picture of a cat, for example, they wrote "Cat" in the middle circle, and then a word or two in each "spoke" of the wheel. Like- cute, brown fur, white whiskers, pointy ears." Your DS can use one or more words. 3. When they were ready, they filled out graphic organizers without using a picture, and then moved on to writing a sentence or two, and then by the end of the year, most were able to write a basic paragraph with some support. 4. We sometimes sprinkled in opinion writing, or writing about fun things - like video games, favorite places, what you would pack in your lunch if you could, etc. We didn't get as far as informational writing, I.e. Getting information from a text and then putting it into a graphic organizer... but that could be a goal for the next year! Hope this helps. There are TONS of printable graphic organizers out there. This is just one example (I'd find one with fewer spots to write- maybe have him write 3-4 words in all at first): https://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/pdf/wheel_eng.pdf I also really recommend the book The Writing Revolution by Judith Hochman: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Revolution-Advancing-Thinking-Subjects/dp/1119364914 You can read an article about her work here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/ Hochman has another book about sentences, but I'm pretty sure it's out of print. I found a PDF of part of it, and I'm hoping it's not breaking any copyrights to put it here! There are fantastic pages for "sentence goals" and "paragraph goals." I LOVE LOVE LOVE her work, and I so wish this book was available! Check out pages 10 and 54 for goals. http://tapconyc.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/1/5/191529/the_hochman_method_09-15-2016-062048.pdf Have fun!!! Starting to write is so exciting.

We donated our car to NPR. It wasn't running, and they came and got it the day after I called (towed). It was really easy to arrange everything. I didn't even need to be there when they picked up the car.