Have you ever felt dismissed, talked over, or doubted in your intervention? When I walked out of the school after my first IEP meeting, I had this awful feeling of defeat knowing that I wasn’t taken seriously, but worse, I wasn’t able to advocate for my student they way I wanted to and knew I could. Keep reading to learn about the key to advocating for your students in IEP meetings.

We wanted to take this conversation a step further and dig into some common co-occurring struggles we see in our students with dyslexia. Specifically language, attention, mathematics, and social-emotional difficulties.

So let’s dive in!

Many students struggle to learn how to read effectively or efficiently.

RESEARCH INDICATES THAT THERE ARE THREE DIFFERENT TYPES OF READING DISABILITIES.

These three types of disabilities relate to (if you know us…you’re probably guessing it right now!!!)

YEP…..

The Literacy Processing Triangle

Today we wanted to take a little time to discuss how to interpret evaluation results, specifically how to determine whether a students standardized, norm-referenced test scores fall within the average range.

When we look at interpreting evaluation results, there are a number of things we need to consider but the first thing we absolutely must consider is whether scores are falling into an expected area or not. This requires that we go back to our statistics class in understanding the standard bell curve.

When students are struggling - it’s hard to know where to start and what the most important steps are in providing support to get them to where they need to be.

After working with hundreds of students, and evaluating thousands of students, we’ve realized that the most important thing that parents and educators can do to support struggling students actually has nothing to do with intervention or tutoring, accommodations, modifications, IEP or 504 Plans…

In honor of dyslexia awareness month, we wanted to take this opportunity to dispel some common myths about dyslexia and to provide further information to go check out if you’re worried your child or one of your students may have dyslexia.

Let’s dive right in…

Does this sound familiar to you…..

Parent: How was your day?

Kid: Good.

Parent: That’s great! What did you do?

Kid: Nothing.

Students with dyslexia need to be taught in the way that their brains learn best. As teachers, it is our responsibility to learn how to meet the needs of this unique and special learning style. Research tells us that people with dyslexia often have average to above-average IQ’s. 

The reason that they struggle in the school setting is not that they lack the intelligence it’s because people with dyslexia learn differently.

Is your child in the gray area?

“She has trouble spelling and reading fluently, but she’s doing okay for the most part

“He’s about a year behind, but don’t worry, it will click soon…”

“She has a hard time with reading grade level text, but she is fine compared to other kids in her class who struggle so much more…”

“I understand he has a diagnosis of dyslexia, but he’s not that far behind…”

Talking to your child about dyslexia can be anxiety-provoking. On the one hand you want them to understand why learning has been so difficult but on the other hand - you don't want to worry them or have them think anything is wrong. Using these 8 tips you will be well on your way to empowering your child to understand more about dyslexia.

There is nothing more frustrating than putting a ton of effort into something, and not having it go well.  

I remember when I was in college I had a test coming up in a General Education Physics Class. I knew that Physics wasn’t something that came naturally to me, but I was confident in my ability to learn the material.

When most people think about organization, having their work materials in order or keeping their clothes put away are some of the first things that come up.  While these are two important pieces, this Executive Functioning (EF) skill goes much farther than just being a clean person. 

Parents and teachers often mention that it is hard for their dyslexic child or student to follow directions. There are many possible reasons for this and causes can overlap.

The most common reason could be a weakness in one or more learning micro-skills.

Micro-skills are the foundation of learning. We tend to think of intelligence as one specific thing.

This can be both a difficult and freeing experience. Now, you know the reason that your child is struggling, but you feel lost and alone and aren't sure what to do next.

There is a two-pillar approach for helping your child close academic gaps. These two pillars stand together forming the "bases" of your child's success in the classroom. The first pillar is getting appropriate accommodations and/or modifications put into place within the school. If you need help getting appropriate accommodations we are happy to help.

Typically we can help predict the length of time in a program based on standardized testing results (psychoeducational testing results, not necessarily state standardized assessments). Our team researched the length of time it would take to see consistent growth in reading ability. There were many factors at play but overall we found that student's could expect to see around 8 Standard Score points of growth in a 6-month period with therapy occurring once to twice per week. There was not a statistical difference between students being seen once to twice per week.