HOD and students with unique learning needs

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LynnH
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HOD and students with unique learning needs

Post by LynnH » Sat Jul 19, 2014 8:01 am

From time to time I see posts asking about making HOD work for dc with special learning needs so I thought it might be helpful if I outlined some of the things I have done with my ds who has dysgraphia due to Cerebral Palsy,some challenges with short term memory, and just average reading comprehension. I see my “tweaks” fitting into 3 main categories: Omission, Adjusting Expectations, and Adaptations.

Omissions: There are only 3 of these I can think of all due to his struggles with reading comprehension and vocabulary. We didn’t do the Shakespeare study in RTR and we stopped Genesis: Finding our Roots part way through the year. Looking back he probably could have handled the Shakespeare, but I didn’t want to overwhelm him. I also made the difficult decision to change out Write with the Best Volume 2 because I felt like he would struggle understanding the passages which would interfere with his writing.

Adjusting Expectations: This is where I do modify the assignments to a degree where he may not be doing it to the full degree which is expected. Most of these are short term things. Examples of this are: Letting him trace the Draw Write Now drawings at first, typing or copy and pasting some of the copywork if he had already done some that day, taking turns reading in CTC until he felt more comfortable with Story of the Ancient World, and decreasing the number of lit books he reads in the World Geography guide.

Adaptations: Most things fall into the category of adaptations, meaning he still is completing the assignment as instructed and achieving the learning goal of the assignment, but may need to do it in slightly different way. These things include typing all his written narrations, dictation and other writing assignments, and doing science lab sheets and bookmarks on the Ipad. I also make a map key for him using the teacher’s maps so all he has to do is put numbers on his map instead of writing the names. One big one is that after several years of struggling through written narrations I realized the issue was his short term memory issues, so I started letting him take notes for his written narrations. He only uses one or 2 word phrases, just enough to trigger his memory. I also do let him look back in the book more than what is probably desired when he does his oral narrations. He also dictated DITHOR answers to me at times. I look at adaptations as things he may need to do the rest of his school career and maybe into his working years so I want him to know how to make things work for him in order to be successful.

It really is very easy to use HOD with a child with learning challenges because all the hard work of picking wonderful resources and planning it all out is already done for you. As a parent of a child with special needs I feel like I am always trying to find that balance between pushing him to his full potential and being realistic about his abilities. This is just how I have balanced this up to this point. I would love to hear what others have done.
Mom to:
dd 22 college graduate and employed as an Intervention Specialist
ds 18 US2, Loved Preparing, CTC , RTR , Rev to Rev, MTMM ,WG, WH and US1
http://www.graceandfur.blogspot.com/

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