I read your post about not being able to get the Math and other teacher to give your son the assistance called for in the IEP and that his grade in math in particular is suffering for it.
Does your son receive or has he received speech therapy in the past for language processing issues?
My son and daughter both have similar issues. My daughter is particularly challenged this way.
In her case this was addressed by intensive speech therapy aimed at increasing her ability to recall and follow multiple step instructions at increasing levels of difficulty. They also gave her specific training on how to accommodate for her difficulty recognizing things like math signs and other symbols. In her case, these were all provided to treat auditory processing disability.
That training included awareness of her disability, self-advocacy - mainly that she needed to ask for clarification when she didn't understand directions or could tell she was doing the task wrong but couldn't figure out why, and specific training in recognizing these symbols and over-learning what they meant.
Her skills improved light years after 1 year of twice a week speech therapy when she was in 6th and 7th grade.
When she started she could follow simple one step directions 100% and complex one step directions about 70%, simple two step directions was down to something like 25% accuracy and after that forget it.
By the end of speech therapy she could follow simple 3 step directions at 95% accuracy and complex 3 step directions at about 75% accuracy. She had also mastered the self-advocacy skills and over-learned the symbols pretty well. They also taught her how to read a textbook - that bulleted lists were important for example or that vocabulary listed in the side bar was important to know.
My son has significant phonemic awareness problems due to his hearing loss. He skips over small words like "and" and "not", only reads the first part of the instructions, and firmly believes he has done the work right even when his answer makes no sense.
I haven't been able to get him speech therapy because his problems all fall in the cracks of standard speech tests. So I have tried to make sure he knows that he has these issues and that his teachers and RSP know about them too.
Usually I tell him he is going to need to read all the directions at least twice before he starts and maybe once part way through to make sure he is still following the directions. This has helped some.
If your son hasn't received speech services to teach these skills I would suggest you consider pursuing this now.
Best wishes,
Patricia
Does your son receive or has he received speech therapy in the past for language processing issues?
My son and daughter both have similar issues. My daughter is particularly challenged this way.
In her case this was addressed by intensive speech therapy aimed at increasing her ability to recall and follow multiple step instructions at increasing levels of difficulty. They also gave her specific training on how to accommodate for her difficulty recognizing things like math signs and other symbols. In her case, these were all provided to treat auditory processing disability.
That training included awareness of her disability, self-advocacy - mainly that she needed to ask for clarification when she didn't understand directions or could tell she was doing the task wrong but couldn't figure out why, and specific training in recognizing these symbols and over-learning what they meant.
Her skills improved light years after 1 year of twice a week speech therapy when she was in 6th and 7th grade.
When she started she could follow simple one step directions 100% and complex one step directions about 70%, simple two step directions was down to something like 25% accuracy and after that forget it.
By the end of speech therapy she could follow simple 3 step directions at 95% accuracy and complex 3 step directions at about 75% accuracy. She had also mastered the self-advocacy skills and over-learned the symbols pretty well. They also taught her how to read a textbook - that bulleted lists were important for example or that vocabulary listed in the side bar was important to know.
My son has significant phonemic awareness problems due to his hearing loss. He skips over small words like "and" and "not", only reads the first part of the instructions, and firmly believes he has done the work right even when his answer makes no sense.
I haven't been able to get him speech therapy because his problems all fall in the cracks of standard speech tests. So I have tried to make sure he knows that he has these issues and that his teachers and RSP know about them too.
Usually I tell him he is going to need to read all the directions at least twice before he starts and maybe once part way through to make sure he is still following the directions. This has helped some.
If your son hasn't received speech services to teach these skills I would suggest you consider pursuing this now.
Best wishes,
Patricia
