Parent/Teacher Conferences - Winter 2011

We had the joy of sitting through our second parent/teacher conferences this past week. It's funny how I still don't feel old enough to be doing those, my how time flies. We are so happy with how well Ayden is doing in the ECSE program at school. I was so scared sending my three-year-old off to school on a bus, but I can say it has helped Ayden grow in leaps and bounds.

The ECSE assessment 'grades' by using a 1-3 scale. 1: Area of Concern 2: Making progress towards Expectations 3: Meets expectations. Ayden did show improvement in many areas from the fall, which is great. Here's a basic summary, keeping in mind he does things things at home as well.

Social:
Showing improvements in independence and working/playing with others. He can put on and take off his coat by himself as well as take off his shoes, socks, and pants. He's starting to play more with the other children as well instead of just watching them play.

Pre Academic:
No improvements in this area as far as actual numbers; however, he is getting better at recognizing/matching colors and shapes even if there wasn't a number change according to the teacher. To be fair, the other areas in this are "says alphabet and responds to simple questions". Kind of difficult to do when you are non-verbal.

Pre-Writing:
Definite improvements in this area. Back in the fall, Ayden wouldn't even touch a crayon or writing utensil! The areas for this were tracing line, shapes, letters, and numbers - which he definitely cannot do. I need to make a note to add this to our summer goals as it is something we can do very easily at home.

Mathematics:
HUGE improvement in sorting by color, shape, and size. He couldn't do this at all in the fall. They started him on counting and patterns, both of which he isn't doing well in. Of course, counting falls under that whole non-verbal thing too.

Physical Development:
Doing better with walking on a balance beam and running. Ayden has bad balance since he walks on the insides of his feet...this is pretty good for him. Needs to work on catching a ball with both hands and jumping.

Language:
Ayden's IEP goals for language are pretty broad. Essentially he has a large goal, with two small goals that lead up to that large one. His major goal is to communicate his wants and needs to others more consistently. (as compared to May 2010). He is currently using pictures to request items at snack time[in-school only] and also to request preferred items. He smiles and makes eye contact to the correct person when he wants to initiate his request. He is also fairly consistently using the signs "please" and "more" to request things, and has been using "all-done", "thank-you", and "bird" as well. As of the past few weeks he has been doing "moh moh moh" to get our attention or ask for more. Very good things in the land of language for Mr Ayden. Our big goal for this summer is to get him using a PECS system at home. I'm going to get one that works well for him here, then hopefully make a copy for him to use at school next year.

I'll have to come back to this post before we head to Akron so I can make some notes. They are going to help us with the IEP a little bit, specifically in setting goals that aren't quite as broad as the current ones are so I definitely want to keep these impressions freshly in my head.

Summer 2011
- Work on letter/number tracing
- Implement a PECS system at home
- Work on identifying colors/shapes
- Work on sorting by shape/color/size