Cyber school buying Barton!

[amo_mea_filiis.]

On Wednesday I had a 4 hour IEP meeting with my son's cyber school. We'd been having problems since Jan 2016 when I enrolled him. This meeting was supposed to be facilitated, but the facilitator didn't make it. It was good though, and I think his big meetings will just need to be face to face.

 

He's getting 2 1:1 social studies lessons weekly with a special ed teacher. This came up because 1. His curriculum is prioritized and slowed, so live lessons are useless as he's on a different track 2. The teacher is nice and tries, but really can't grasp my son's language difficulties and doesn't modified the modified assessments in a meaningful way 3. This year is very, very vocab and non concrete content heavy. Next year we decide if this will be needed for science and social studies.

 

All gen ed assessments will be matching, word bank with only necessary words, or reduced multiple choice; no essay or open ended.

 

Barton will be ESY. The sped director was iffy about making an on the spot decision, but while we discussed reading and LA, I kept circling back to Barton and how it's designed to work with x, y, and z.

 

We settled on Reading Rewards given 3x 1:1 from now until June as his core, not supplemental. I don't know what we decided for spelling and writing. I know his writing goal was left in the air though. I think we also said gen ed LA for reading comp modified. He now has LearningAlly, and they may do modified, no open ended quizzes for assessing.

 

I'm really, really hoping that levels 1 and 2 of Barton can be done over the summer and that they prove to be spot on for us with data meaningful enough to get levels 3 and 4 for next year.

 

Math was our other big problem. The format of Rod and Staff has worked for us. But that obviously can't be used in a public school. They don't currently have a curriculum that meets his needs. 6th grade modified is useless. Math 180 has proven confusing and doesn't touch his lagging skills. SRA math is also confusing for him.

 

He's a solid 2nd grader in math with some higher splinter skills. R&S 2nd grade is going well, and we will continue until he has a program. They tossed around Saxon, Do The Math, and another I forgot. From now until June, it'll basically be pieced together with his teacher. Summer will be R&S. Next year is the question.

 

There was no psych at the meeting so we couldn't argue labels or his glaring reading SLD (shhh, *dyslexia* is a dirty word), but we will at his annual.

 

We also switched OTs. Our current OT is a theory master. Never made contact with a more knowledgeable OT. But she lacks in action, severely. If she had OTAs to run the daily work, it would probably be great.

[OneStepAtATime]

Hey sounds good overall. Theoretically you should be able to get through Level 1 & 2 over the summer. I wasn't clear though, are you doing Barton or they? Would you have access to the support material such as the extra practice pages for level 2 and beyond?

[amo_mea_filiis.]

I'm doing Barton, but it's written into his IEP so they're paying.

 

Where does the support material come from? Baton's website?

[OneStepAtATime]

Yes.  You are given an access code and then you can see the support materials.  There are fluency drills and extra practice pages and other items.  I think there is also a support group.

 

If you can get them to cover it for the later levels you might also see if they would be willing to include the Spelling Success games designed specifically for Barton.  Awesome resource.  They were created by a professional Barton tutor and are very well made.  They are professionally made.  They hold up well to multiple uses, too.

 

https://www.spellingsuccess.com/

 

On days when one of my kids was having a bad day the games were good for keeping material fresh without trying to tackle a full lesson.  Also, if you are between levels and need to keep things from being forgotten they work well for review.  Also a nice thing to pull out at the end of a lesson as a kind of reward for sticking it out through a hard section.  

[amo_mea_filiis.]

The first 2 levels I'm just looking at as a test or data collection.

 

I'll make sure I get access codes.

 

I don't mind at all buying some supplemental stuff like those spelling games. I just know that I have no means of keeping up pace with buying Barton. Each level would be a hardship, and I would likely have other things come up preventing me from keeping us on track with it.

 

If Reading Rewards actually addresses his issues, great! But I'm not optimistic given his complex profile (autism, borderline IQ, ADHD, LDs).

 

They also considered Wilson, but given his behavioral profile, I suggested that it wouldn't be cost efficient in the long run. I may not be able to get work out of him without "behaviors," but I get really good work sprinkled with cursing, licking, chewing. That wouldn't be tolerated by a tutor and he wouldn't work as hard.

 

Yes, the behaviors are being addressed, but he's 12.5. I can't stop academics, address behaviors, and attempt to reintroduce academics.

[OneStepAtATime]

One thing that really helped me with Barton and doing the tutoring myself was judging how much my child could take on any given day.  DD really, really needed lessons to be short.  Once I embraced that and started understanding the program better it was much easier to figure out where good breaking points were within each lesson.  The lessons are long, especially for a kid that is not neurotypical.  Each "lesson" has multiple parts and might take days or even weeks to complete, depending on the student.  Especially after Level 2 everything progresses basically in the same way, though, so it follows a predictable pattern.  That predictable pattern over time really helped the kids and me, too, for various reasons.  For one thing, the parts of each lesson are all labeled and since they all follow the same basic lesson pattern I could go through and create logical break points based on the letter sections so DD only had to deal with a particularly difficult section just once a day.

 

For instance, with Level 6 there are 15 sections (designated by letters) in each lesson.  The first section is review.  The second and third sections are introducing the 1st and 2nd new related concepts for that lesson.  Barton brilliantly sets up the lessons so that if your student really can only handle one new teaching concept at a time then you can do just the first concept and the support sections through letter F then go back and do the second new teaching concept and support lessons through lesson F either integrating the previous new concept or doing both completely separately then running back through with additional material already provided for a more integrated lesson.  In other words, you can keep lessons short, focus on one concept introduced at a time, and run through it all 3 different times or do the whole thing at once or any combination, depending on the student.  Very versatile.