Academic Breakout Session Notes

General

  • Focus on self-efficacy
  • Identify where his or her skills are now
  • Emphasize the importance of practice and effort
  • Give specific feedback on skill attainment (“You worked hard and added five more words to your reading vocabulary,” NOT, “You are so smart.”)
  • Monitor progress and point out specific skills developed, knowledge learned, and understandings achieved.

Reading skills deficits

  • Self-advocacy skills
  • Teach your child to identify and accept skills that are challenging for him or her
  • Coach your child on when and how to ask for help
  • Academic competency
  • Work with teacher to identify ways to practice development of specific reading skills
  • Assure that you are using your child’s time to work on identified areas of weakness in phonological awareness, phonics, and decoding
  • Assure that you are using techniques that have been shown to be effective
  • Help him or her read for understanding and use comprehension checking
  • Assure that he or she is exposed to high level material and high level vocabulary with scaffolding to help with comprehension
  • Read chapters or stories with your child while recording what you read
  • Have your child re-read the book while listening to the recording you made
  • Have your child paraphrase what he or she comprehended from the story
  • Help him or her read for understanding and use comprehension checking

Reading Comprehension

  • Use literature to stimulate interest in reading
  • Read high interest books with him or her with fluency, not allowing him or her to spend time struggling with individual words
  • Assure that he or she is exposed to high level material and high level vocabulary with scaffolding to help compensate for reading deficits
  • Help your child read with a conceptual approach that allows them to search for principles and knowledge

Writing

  • Encourage learning keyboarding skills at third grade level and above
  • Coach your child on using the spell check and the grammar check options on the computer
  • Have your child give his response orally and record his response
  • Have your child review the oral response you recorded and revise it if needed
  • Give your child support in writing or keyboarding his response
  • For younger students, consult with teacher or occupational therapist for ideas on direct instruction concerning muscle tone, fine motor guidance, and the writing position is important for the skills to come together in writing
  • Some students lack visual-fine motor coordination and may develop out of their deficit
  • Other have difficulty with sensory feedback, their fingers do not give adequate information to the brain to let it know where the pencil is
  • Still others have formulating and/or recalling the motor patterns needed for letter formation in their brains

Math

  • Make sure your child knows how to work the problem and then focus on doing it correctly
  • Have your child practice working problems slowly and step by step
  • Coach your child on using a cover sheet so that only the problem he or she is working on shows
  • Coach your child on using graph paper or turning lined paper sideways to create columns

Use computer based math games to support basic skill develop

Socialization Breakout Session Notes

Specific concerns:

Many group participants voiced concerns about their child’s ability to engage in conversations with others, including how to start a conversation, the reciprocal nature of conversations, and recognizing others’ points of view. These skills were then connected to making friends and experiencing friendships with real world implications.

  • Starting conversation
  • Making real friends
  • Communication with peers
  • Control issues with friend (see #2)
  • Perspective taking
  • Self-esteem issues
  • Participation in Real World

Friendships

Listed below are some specific skills identified as necessary forsuccessful friendships.

  • Confidence
  • Give and take
  • Perspective – other person’s point of view

Friendship groups-the following were suggestions made by the group that would allow for students to experience social interactions under adult supervision and provide immediate feedback on progress of social skill development. We discussed how social skills can be taught and then practiced just like any other skill and how modeling, repetition and correction of skills are very important.

  • Lunch groups – initiated by Social Worker
  • Modeling and practicing at home
  • Clubs – sports – structured groups

Executive Function Breakout Session Notes

Specific Concerns

The parents discussed a number of specific concerns, most of which related to organization and lack of sustained focus.

  • One of the concerns related to retreating into their own world when not stimulated by the challenge or interest of the work. Once in their own world, they may have difficulty returning to task when they need to do so. One idea suggested is making sure the teacher is aware of the issue. Once this is done, the teacher, parent and student can decide on a cue the teacher can use to help return him to task.
  • Another concern noted was difficulty with organizing and turning in homework. This lack of organization may be an ongoing concern for the student. In working with this, it was suggested that the student be involved in developing strategies to get himself or herself organized. The student will also be involved in monitoring the success of the strategy and developing new strategies if the first one does not work. Treat it as a skill he needs to learn just as he or she needs to learn algebraic algorithms. It will take practice, he or she will sometimes get it wrong, but will become better with continued effort to improve.

List of concerns noted

  • Not turning in homework
  • No homework assignments/details in planner
  • Meltdowns rather than getting started
  • Can’t bring book home to finish work
  • Shifting gears – moving from one activity to another
  • Not noticing other kid’s actions
  • We get tired
  • Lost in own mind/Galaxy
  • Loses attention when not stimulated/need for constant intellectual stimulus
  • More comfortable in own world
  • Smart, knows it, doesn’t want to lean more or doesn’t care – doesn’t think course content matters
  • Not taking responsibility for own unhappiness with teacher
  • Too many negative consequences – no response to negative consequences
  • Resisting strategies that previously worked
  • Failure to organize in the expected way
  • Varying levels of vigilance

Strategies

The parents discussed some specific ideas for helping students get organized. One topic discussed at some length was finding a motivator that is truly motivating to the student.

  • Adults sometimes assume that they know what a student will work for and what consequence he or she would want to avoid. However, students often identify very different motivators. For example, many middle school students identify free time with parents as a motivator. In a family with many kids, a student will sometimes identify individual time with parents as something worth striving for. Without checking with their child, parents may miss what is truly the most motivating for them.
  • Another concern about motivation is that not all students are motivated by utility (you need this to get a job one day). Some are more motivated by competition and others are motivated by their fascination about learning. Relying only on arguments about the utility of education may not reach some students.

List of strategies noted

  • List making
  • Treat behavior as a habit that you’re changing
  • Pretend to be a book/movie character with desired characteristics (detective: five things you saw, etc.)
  • Self-monitoring skills/correction
  • Time with parents as reward
  • Find a motivator
  • Competition
  • Future goals/usefulness
  • Desire to learn/opening awareness
  • Pursue fascinations
  • Provide challenges that are hard enough that they sometimes fail and learn from it
  • Encourage “Brain Growth”
  • Stay positive/positive rewards
  • Encourage “Learning how to learn”
  • If material is not interesting from a factual standpoint, encourage reading an autobiography
  • Don’t use TV for passive learning
  • Use graphic organizers
  • Hand off request for explanation of child’s strategy/ try their way, help them if it doesn’t work
  • Non-verbal cues – ask your kids what works for them
  • Vibrating reminders – watch designed for blind but works for kids who need it