classroom accomodations?
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| Mon, 05-28-2007 - 12:47pm |
Recently while waiting for our kids at therapy, a bunch of us moms were talking about varying accomodations at school. The kids are a mix bunch of adhd and spectrum but all in the age range of 5-8. I shared a couple of things I do to accomodate (we homeschool) and the one mom was very against what I did. She kept insisting it was crossing the line ebetween helping and doing it for him. She kept insisting that he just needed less difficult work. Another mom commented that her son's aid would NEVER do such a thing.
I don't see the problem so I wanted some other opinions. If it amtters DS is 7 and was in 1st grade this year.
One of the things I do is to grid his math worksheets. If there are 4 rows of 6 problems each I draw lines between them to give him a visual of where each problem is. With that many on one workbook page, his writing gets big and then he thinks he answered problem #9 but really it is the problem's answer above just written big. With my grid in orange marker (always orange marker), he can easily see where each problem ends and it helps keep his writing in the pace. If I don't do this he is missing prolems and getting a lower grade becasue problems are missed not becasue things are wrong. When I do this he gets almost 100% each time.
Sometimes I let him take math test orally especially if he has had a lot of phsycial writing in other subjects. (This the mom had a horrid time with).
The biggest issue they had is that I underline the directions. One color is for a one step direction. I use 2 colors if there are 2 steps and so on. He is perfectly capable of reading the directions and understanding them but if it a multistep thing he misses again not becasue he can't do it, but beacuse halfway through steps get forgotten. I have found that by underlining he remembers better to complete each step. Thsi pops up a lot in grammar. Read the paragraph, cross out the misspelled words, underline any capitalization mistakes and add punctation where needed. My hope is that next year I will work with him on underlining in different colors the different steps himself to foster that independence.
Am I overstepping? Thoughts welcome. Heather

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I'll chime in here a little late. I know of a few ASD kids in college who take their exams verbally because they still have writing issues. Or they are allowed to type when their classmates have to write longhand. So if it is okay for higher education, why wouldn't it be okay for 1st grade?
And the grid thing is wonderful. I'm sure it will help me down the road.
And I can remember underlining directions when I was in elementary school and that was too many years ago to count, so not a new idea and not a bad idea.
That's my opinion and I'm sure that there are way more people who agree with us here than agree with that other mom.
Heather
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