Parent Teacher Conferences

Our school district is doing conferences a little different this year than normal.  The simple explanation is that the district has a lot of our elementary schools designated as Michigan Focus Schools and this is part of their action plan for 'closing the gap'.  I'm not going into the whole Focus School explanation here - but you can obviously look at the link above if you want.  The idea with the new conferences is that instead of being reactive by having conferences at report card time, we are being proactive.  The conferences consisted of us setting academic and behavioral goals for Ayden to be the focus of this semester.  We also signed a contract that spelled out what the parents and teachers were doing specifically to help the child meet these goals.  It's supposed to get parents more involved and hopefully catch any learning problems for the kids early.

I like the idea, but for us it seems redundant.  We have an IEP in place that is much more in depth than the conference goals were and we actually used and IEP goal word-for-word as one of our conference goals.

The conference did give us some time to sit down with both of Ayden's teachers though and just talk about how he was doing.  We had two conferences - one with the gen ed teacher and one with the ASD teacher (though the ASD teacher was in on both).  We do get daily updates, but face to face is always nice.  We (as always) have issues to work through with him; however, they are minimal.  He is playing well with other peers and making friends in gen ed - which is fantastic.  He is also comprehending the material they are teaching in class and for the most part outputting that comprehension as well.  His ASD teacher is phenomenal at adapting lessons to Ayden's learning style and basically just not taking any behavioral issues from him at all. She's helping gen ed to adapt their materials as well so Ayden can participate like the other kids in his class.  I'm extremely excited to see where he goes as the school year progresses.

The other person we met with was Ayden's speech teacher.  Of course, our main focus has always been speech with Ayden.  A lot of other issues he has will fall into place as his speech comes I think.  It seems likely as many of his issues get better the more he is communicating with us.  As per usual, our biggest dilemma is always figuring out whether his whining is because he doesn't want to do something or because he is anxious.  So, his speech teacher is doing amazing with him.  She is working through using PECS to request things in the classroom from not only teachers but also peers. He's already had one instance where he did request a toy from another peer, which is amazing!  On top of all that, Ayden's speech (like, actual WORDS) is starting to come.  We are up to about 10-11 words that he can say upon request.  Spontaneous use is (as expected) not happening yet - but SPEECH.  She is now working to isolate the sounds he can make so we can start practicing more.  We were hesitant about the SLP after our IEP, but I'm very impressed with her and really enjoy working with her so far (as does Ayden).

So...long, wordy post shortened:  We love Ayden's team he currently has.  They are all on-board with what we expect from him at home and are working very hard to make sure we are as consistent as possible no matter who is working with him.  It's pretty much everything we could have hoped for with where he is at right now.

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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

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