Sandi_NC
-
Posts
52 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by Sandi_NC
-
-
HOD's Bigger Hearts for His Glory covers American History ~ you can customize it accordingly by adding the deluxe and extension pkgs.
-
Hi Jennifer ~
Just wanted to say Hi ... and that I'm interested in your question as well. My youngest daughter is struggling with learning disabilities and I had considered contacting HSLDA too, but haven't as of yet. Our children came to us through adoption as well!
Blessings,
Sandi
-
So would something like WWE and FLL work for her?
Or any other recommendations? I'm going to be overhauling her entire school, starting now since we school year round. She'll continue to do ETC because she loves it and considers it "fun" ~ but everything else will be a clean slate.
-
One thing that I think is critical with students with significant learning differences is to spend at least as much time developing their strengths than remediating their weaknesses. We tend to focus on weaknesses, and those do need to be remediated, but what will lead to their success in life is their strengths.
Thank you so much for the reminder! It's true that because she struggles so much, that I tend to hyper-focus on those areas because I want her to succeed and do better! But then I forget that there is this whole life of hers outside that small square of hs'ing.
Can she get really good at a housekeeping task? An organizing task? A yard work task? Can she assume all the pet care in your home and offer pet care to others as a job? Work on developing her skills at interacting with young children (too young to babysit, but you could offer to babysit with her and help her learn those skills if you don't have younger children.) Any of those types of tasks could lead to satisfying career goals. Keep looking for those and exposing her to things outside of academic achievement alone.
Anna loves to do stuff outside ~ and she pretty much takes care of all our chickens by herself. There are definitely more things she can do around here ... and she would love it. I just never think of those things! She loves to cook and that would be an area to absolutely explore with her.
In her reading, the Word Attack score is her highest and is commensurate with her verbal IQ, which is what you're looking for. Word Attack measures phonics skills by having kids pronounce nonsense words. So good job! It is somewhat higher than Your approach, which I assume has been phonetically based, has worked on that. I think some use of whole word instruction is probably a good idea.
That is good to know!
Yes, most of what I've done with her was originally phonetic based ~ we've tried a little bit of everything over the years. Right now she is working through ETC bk 3 and she *loves* that. I have Linda Mood Bell on my list of things to start researching this afternoon, along with other stuff. Right now I'm not really using anything specific because I don't know what to use. So we work through ETC together and then I have her read a book to me and we just work through the words as we come to them.
Again, this underscores the importance of having her learn in hands on ways, followed by visual, followed by abstract in math, science, etc. You can probably alleviate her objection to "too much review" by incorporating about 10 min. of review at the beginning of each lesson, using a variety of presentations (hands on, visual, abstract) and that will keep it feeling fresh.
This makes a lot of sense ~ thank you! She has spent time working through R&S and Horizons for math but I can already see where there are other programs that will be better suited to her.
I will also research the spelling/overteaching method you mentioned.
I've got my list going and I'm sure I will come up with more questions. ;)
Thank you again for all the help!
-
if you move forward without the repetition and review, you can arrive at the place where she's forgotten everything and you have to start over.
THAT is definitely Anna. Maybe she is not getting enough review and repetition, though I feel that is often *all* that we do - review and repeat. She is also very head strong in that she will get tired of repeating something and start jumping ahead (with or without me LOL) and then it's like she hits a brick wall and nothing makes sense to her anymore so we go back to the beginning.
I can say more once I see where the subtest scores broke down. How old is she? How social is she? What does she like to do for fun? What do you think her strengths are?
I will PM you with her scores ~ thank you *so* much for that offer. She is newly 10 (March b-day) ~ she was adopted from overseas when she was 10 months old. In many regards she has always been delayed and learning in any way or form has always been a struggle for her.
For fun she likes to play outside with our chickens. LOL She likes to play with her stuffed animals and will spend time in her room creating her own little plays or activities - often with her brother or sister. Sometimes she will go through spurts where she will take a notebook and doodle or write down all the words that she can remember and draw pictures to match them. If she is not doing that, she spends the rest of her time trying to annoy and pick on her siblings to get attention.
For her strengths ~ she is persistent. She will keep at something until she figures it out even if she never figures it out the "correct" way. And she *wants* to learn. That is definitely a strength. :001_smile: She will volunteer to help out wherever it's needed - and will even do a job that is someone else's responsibility (like feed the cats even though it's her sister's job).
I hope that helps!
-
Hi Karen,
I think I wasn't given as much because I'm a homeschooler ~ that is just my impression. He commented to me that "If I had her in public school they would have tested her for LD's long ago and she would be set up in special classes and have an IEP in place." His only advice was to do the opposite of what I was doing and network within my hs'ing circle for help with curriculum questions. I was not at all impressed.
We met for about 30 mins after all her testing was completed (after having to go back for a 2nd visit because they "forgot" to give her a copmuter type test the first time - not related to the WISC or WCJ). He showed me her scores, said that he believes she has severe LD's in reading comp. and writing expression but borderline ADHD and he would send me my report within a week. I received a 5 pg report yesterday with her results and that was it.
I am trying to find someone locally who can help me ~ I live in a small town and we don't have a Dr. locally who handles this type of stuff. I traveled to another town for her testing and to meet with this Dr.
I'm very discouraged but I know there are answers out there ~ I figured it will just take me a little longer to find them! LOL
-
Hi all,
I need some help in interpreting my dd's test scores and what this all might mean. I took her for a psychoeducational evaluation a few weeks ago because we suspected she had some learning challenges/disabilities. She has always been homeschooled but has always struggled in one way or another. When she was 3 or 4 yrs old, we had her evaluated and she participated in a pre-k therapy program where she received speech, OT and PT. There was concern back then that she might have CAPD but it was never officially diagnosed. Fast forward several years (and a move from FL to NC) and here we are.
These are her WISC-IV scores:
Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI) - 85 Low Avg
Perceptual Reasoning Index (PRI) - 90 Avg
Working Memory Index (WMI) - 83 Low Avg
Processing Speed Index (PSI) - 112 High Avg
Full Scale IQ - 88 Low Avg
Within her PSI, she did much better on the Symbol Search (SS = 14), than she did on the Coding (SS=10) Her ability to process visual material quickly is an ability she performs well as compared to her verbal and nonverbal reasoning ability.
Her general cognitive ability is in the low average range, her general verbal comprehension abilities were in the low average range and her general perceptual reasoning abilities were in the average range.
(I have all her subtest scores if those would be helpful)
Then she took the Woodcock Johnson ~ I have those scores but the only thing I can make sense out of are the grade equivalents. She does well in math, but was determined to have significant learning disabilities in reading comprehension and writing expression. She was borderline for a disability in basic reading skills (13 pts, with 15 pts being the cutoff)
He said she was borderline ADHD (Predominantly Inattentive) with 6 of 9 markers, but also borderline ADHD (Hyperactive/Impulsive) with 6 of 9 markers but thinks that her inattentiveness is more or less related to her learning difficulties and if we can figure out how to better help her, things might settle down.
She was also given the Intergrated Visual and Auditory Performance Test. Her Full Scale Response Control Quotient was 83 which is considered mildly impaired. Her Full Scale Attention Quotient was 105 which is average. Her Combined Sustained Attn. Scale was 108, which is average.
He recommended I look into a 'whole word approach' or Linda Mood Bell. Just as we were leaving he basically said to try doing the complete opposite of whatever I had been doing and see if that works. :confused:
Is there some way to interpret her scores so that I can understand *where* exactly she needs help? (other than *everywhere* LOL)
Thanks so much!
Sandi
-
Here's the link to the all the years they have formating for:
Thank you! In all my browsing over at AO, I somehow missed this!
-
I want my children to enjoy learning, but I also want them to understand that sometimes that we have to do things that are not fun to work towards a long-term goal. I am looking for (but have not yet achieved) a balance between fun and discipline. I want them to think it's "fun" to work through challenges and come through victorious learners. Like I said, haven't achieved this yet ...
:iagree:
-
Of my 3 children, only my 2 girls worked through R&S 1. My oldest dd was around 5, my youngest was 6.5. We doubled up quite a bit for my oldest because the math facts came very easily for her. My youngest struggled to learn her math facts but we found R&S to be a great math program for their early math exposure.
-
We moved along rather well until we hit 3A. After that, my children started to struggle a bit. We made it through 3B, and then finished 4A during the first part of 4th grade and then stopped. We've moved into Saxon for now though my oldest 2 want to start back in Singapore with 4B (we still have the books) because they think it's "fun". LOL
-
I voted eclectic. I tend to mix classical, Charlotte Mason, literature-based, and unit study, not necessarily together or at the same time! :D
-
For extra "facts" practice we did flashcards and Calculadders primarily. .
This is what we did (though we didn't use Calculadders for long) ~ we mostly used flashcards or I printed math drill sheets off the internet. For awhile we were using both R&S and Singapore so my children knew their math facts quite well!
Singapore is a great program.
-
I voted for HOD. At that age, it would be a wonderful program to work with. You could check the graph at the HOD sight and that does a really wonderful job helping you to place your child if you torn between two programs. They also have a very supportive message board to help with placement questions as well.
We used bits and pieces of MFW K and 1st. If HOD had existed back then, I most likely would have used HOD instead. They are both very good programs though.
-
Now for the spelling, I would suggest you do a program that can combine all your kids and will nail both phonics (to improve their reading) and spelling at the same time. SWR or WRTR will do this very nicely. Both are practical. SWR has a few extra features, but WRTR is only $17 and available at your local library or on amazon. Do it, and it's going to remediate your kids in reading while improving their spelling at the same time. If you can't spell, you can't write.
SWR ~ is that Spelling to Write and Read? I'm somewhat familiar with WRTR. Thank you for those suggestions! :)
On writing, that's your next major thing to tackleWriting is going to be a huge thing for us. It's something I wish I had focused more on when we first started hs'ing and not let us have gotten so lazy with it.
I like Writing Tales for your olders, and WWE would work for your youngers. WT is SO much fun. Or look at IEW, which again is something you can implement with all of them (good bang for your buck).I'll take a look at those too .... Thanks!
I appreciate your help!
-
My children (almost 9 and 11) spend most of the morning on just the 3 R's and Latin, which horrifies some of my more relaxed friends, but they're capable of that and are thriving.
We've been dabbling in Prima Latina since the summer and my children are actually asking for it and want to know when we can start it back up! It's definitely going on our list of morning basics.
-
I would write down a schedule. Several people have posted on here. I would also be very strict about what time to get up in the morning and getting started. It sounds like you want to switch your philosophy - that will be hard - give yourself three weeks to stick by your new schedule (to a "t") and then you can evaluate it. Good Luck in the New Year.
by the way - I would go ahead and plan meals for that time, so that you feel super organized and don't have to run to the store instead of teaching.
Getting up in the morning and getting started is a huge issue for me, as I am SO not a morning person! :001_smile: But, even my dh has mentioned setting a schedule and actually posting it! Then holding everyone accountable and working on it together. Also, breakfast and lunches are usually scattered about and we're going to focus on setting a specific time for those so that we have a better flow to our day. I'm actually looking forward to it!
-
Stacy,
Thanks so much for your help! I did plan on moving into 4B after our holiday break. But I will take your advice and ask for some help on the special needs board. My 8 & 10 y/o's are strugglers, and my 9 y/o is way more advanced. I struggle keeping her challenged, and yet getting the other 2 the help they need.
-
My children are 8 (dd), 9 (dd) and 10 (ds) ~ all about to have birthdays.
My 8 y/o is doing mostly 1st/2nd grade work. She has several LDs so we're focusing mostly on still learning to read, math and basic handwriting.
My 9 & 10 y/o's are doing mostly 4th grade work and I keep them together in most areas. My 9 y/o is a very fluent reader. My 10 y/o is still struggling with reading. We've not done much in the way of writing, grammar or anything like that. Things have been *very* relaxed. Almost too relaxed.
We are needing to change things up *desperately* and start getting busy.
This is what we've been doing the past few months:
MOH 1 loosely
4th grade Spectrum wkbks for LA, Math and Reading
Singapore 4A (we've finished 4A and taking a break before 4B - hence the Spectrum wkbk)
My 8 y/o is working on ETC bks 2 & 3 and R&S math 2.
We've not done much (consistently) in the way of history or science. We have been working on Prima Latina, but again, almost too loosely. A good portion of our problem has not been wanting to *work* (as hard as that is to admit too!)
Where should I start?
-
The kids play up a storm in the a.m., which is great with me since I'm sooo not-a-morning-kinda-gal. Ds especially needs to indulge in his fantasy/rambunctious play before settling down to work.
This is me too ~ I'm not a morning kinda gal ~ but the kids are up and ready to hit the floors running! I prefer to get school stuff done earlier, but for now we are enjoying play time in the mornings and school stuff in the early afternoons when it's really too hot to play outside comfortably.
That is one thing I love about homeschooling - we can do it whenever and wherever it works for us!
-
Cool! Thanks bunches!
-
Wow! Thank ya'll SO much! So far the only thing I know we're going to be using is Abeka 4 for grammar for my 4th graders. We have been using Singapore math (took a break from R&S) but I'm not sure if we'll continue with Singapore or transition back to R&S. We are definitely wanting to pick up the pace a bit but I just have no idea which direction we are going to take. Seeing all these plans has definitely helped!
-
Pretty please!
I have two rising 4th graders and a rising 2nd grader. Can I take a peak at what ya'll are doing?
-
Neat! Thanks for sharing!
Conference goers, check in here!
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
I'm attending the Great HS Conv. in Greenville as well ~ at this point hubby and three children are joining me. I've never been to a large HS conference so I'm a little overwhelmed and I haven't even gotten there yet! We managed to get reservations at a hotel about 2 miles from the conf. center.