Tuesday, September 13, 2011

When Do You Start To Worry?

Hope is repeating kindergarten this year. Yesterday, she brought home her "reading" bag. In it was a reading log, ten flash cards on a ring, and two first sight word books. I recognized the books from when GB was learning to read. After Hope had completed her math hw and GB was done with her hw, Hope and I sat down with her "reading" bag. It came with directions. Hope was to read the books to me and review the flash cards, then log the time spent. Each Friday, Hope will get tested on the flash cards. If she knows them all, she gets a sticker. Eight stickers mean an ice cream treat.

Hope does not know what a word is yet. When she "read" the books, she made stories about the pictures. Long, involved stories that clearly had more words in them than the four words on the page. Using our pointer fingers, I tried to get Hope to read one word at a time. I will try again tonight. We practiced with the flash cards. She knew one of the words was "can" and that is what she read for each word. We practiced identifying the first letter of a word and the sound it makes. Hope could do that more than half the time. What she couldn't do is use that to think of words it might be. For example, she had the word "ran". She identified the first letter as "r" and knew what sound it made. She did the same thing with the "a" and the "n". Then she used the picture in the book and read the word as "hop", "jump", and "fly".

Hope is already in a 1:8:3 class. She went to Extended Year Program. This is her second time through kindergarten. When is it appropriate to be worried?

6 comments:

Last Mom said...

I have used the screening tool, activities and resources on this website a lot of with preschoolers, as well as thier parents and teachers. Might be helpful for Hope. http://www.getreadytoread.org/

Quacken said...

I would be worried now probably. Especially since this is now her second year. We are having some issues with Kindergarten ourselves. Layla is going to be evaluated this week for an Audio Processing Disorder. I agree highly with that being a possible issue for us, and I see it already effecting her learning. She twists sounds around. A good example is I will say, "How are you doing?" she hears it as "WHAT are you doing?" or vice versa. She usually answers "Good" if the question ends in "are you doing?". Hope you get some answers. Here, I thought we were out of the woods on some of this stuff, and it feels like we're back to square one some days. I know we're not, but it feels like it.

APD can have major behavioral issues too...

Ranger said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Ms A ended up needing private, one-on-one tutoring with a real professional for years in order to learn how to read, but she started out not being able to tell me things like "is the Mmmm sound in 'house'?"
Not like you need more evaluations, but I agree w/ Quackenbaby-CQ. You should consider getting Hope evaluated by an audiologist for auditory processing disorder. That is one disorder than can wreak havoc on learning (and behavior) yet is potentially curable! (Ms A was cured.) The cure we used was a speech-therapist supervised computer program called "Fast ForWord". Intensive. 5 days a week for 8 weeks. Scientific proof and our insurance paid for it.
That being said, Mr L couldn't put sounds together to make a word 'til near the end of Kinder, and the only thing "wrong" w/ him is high-functioning Aspergers. Hope is maybe 1.5 years behind (and shows promise of still doing catch-up) but the SCHOOLS have changed to require more of children at a younger age. That, IMO, is wrong and no good for the kids. But you can't fight it without going private or home-schooling. I KNOW you don't want to home-school!
Do some reasearch on the audio testing. I was allowed to be in the booth with Ms A ... but I'm also remembering that the condition may not be diagnosable until the child is 6 or even 8? (It was so long ago!)
Meanwhile, perhaps spelling puzzles may help get her brain used to it (jigsaw; a pitcure of a cat broken into 3 pieces, one for each letter...) And every little word you see, break it down. There will be resistance! Her brain doesn't want to learn this, it isn't ready. (So don't push.)
Vision eval may also reveal information, but it doesn't sound visual.
I swear the school should pretend she is at least a year younger than she is. Oh well.
Hang in there.
{{ hugs }}

Kelly said...

I too struggle with this same question. Jackson is in 2nd grade but was not ready. He needed 1st grade again but he is already one of the oldest in his class and I do think he has some LD. So I don't want to have him repeat if he is going to continue needing assistance and not catch up to grade level.

LD are tricky and knowing when to seek help and what tests need to be done and deciding then what services he needs is a bit confusing for me. I wish there was an easy answer to your question but for me, I don't know. Our hurt children are not typical and to me that means they are not going to learn and retain in a typical way either. So hard to know if it is lack of knowledge or a combination of other things going on in their little heads.

Hope you get some answers. I am meeting with Jackson's school on Wednesday.

beemommy said...

I would be pushing for testing now. The earlier the better. I have taught first through fourth grades for seventeen years. We knew our third daughter was struggling and had her go through pre-k twice (I knew when, in April, she came crawling down the hall at school acting like a puppy that she was not ready for the rigors of kindergarten...kindergarten should NOT be rigorous, but it is.) Thought she was just very immature and she's a July baby.

Hannah continued to struggle but we were so overwhelmed with the needs of our RADiant son that we just kept thinking she would "catch up". By third grade, she was tested for Dyslexia and she has ADD. She has always struggled with math. Unbelievably, it took all the way until her freshman year of high school for my demands to be heard, for me not to allow myself to be blown off. She has two areas of math that she has been identified as having a learning disability in. When I think of the numerous times she's failed the TAKS test, given up electives for extra math prep time, oh I was so ticked! She's now taking a Math Models class which has a very small group of students and earned a 97% on her test this week! Most importantly, her smile as she shared that with us was priceless! Irony: our son (she was adopted at birth here in Texas, he's from a Ukrainian orphanage)has Dyslexia as well, and has the same math disabilities.

I would also strongly suggest that any parent take someone with them to any school meetings: Initial ARD, ongoing ARD, etc. I do realize that schools are under such a financial burden (ought to...went back to school last year and then got laid off at the end of it due to budget cuts) but it is so much for effective to intervene when they are younger. Slowly backing down off of my soap box, sorry.