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.

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

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 order to close the gap, we need to have appropriate goals based on individual student needs. As part of an IEP goals are set in specific areas. If a student is struggling in a specific area (e.g., language skills, motor ability, reading, writing, math, etc) they should receive goals in those specific areas.

This week we are so excited to share information on identifying student challenges.

One of the most challenging aspects of helping a struggling reader is understanding specifically where and why they are struggling.

Once we can understand the specific areas in which a student is breaking down and/or the cause of the breakdown we can begin providing targeted instruction and intervention.

Today we wanted to have a little real talk with all of you. We wanted to address three common myths we keep hearing about research-based reading intervention.

Empower your students with attention-monitoring skills for academic success! Discover effective strategies to help children self-monitor their attention in class and at home. Encourage lifelong learning habits and enhance focus with simple yet impactful techniques.

Prepare your students for summer with strategies to combat the dreaded "summer slide" and prevent learning loss. Learn how to identify signs of dyslexia and guide families toward appropriate testing and intervention to ensure a successful new school year.

I want you to take a second and think about your life.  What big challenges have you faced?  How did you overcome them?  What goal were you trying to reach?  

We all have our own struggles and challenges in life that we have to work through in order to reach the goals that we have set for ourselves.  The ability to stick with something, even when challenges arise and it is tough, is called perseverance.

Flexibility, in terms of Executive Functioning, means to be able to deal with changes and accommodate for problems that come up.  This is crucial.  Out of all ten of the EF skills, one could argue that this is the one that is the most necessary to get through life.  Things change, and if we cannot adapt to those changes, we cannot be successful. Here are some tips on dealing with change.

Self-control is the ability to regulate your thoughts, emotions and actions.  It is something we always expect kids to have, but never explicitly teach.  We may tell kids "use your inside voice" or "this is how you should sit on the carpet in the classroom" or "keep your hands to yourself,"  but what about in the instances where self-control is hard to practice?  

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.

Working Memory refers to a part of our short-term memory.  When information enters this part of our memory, we only have about 5 seconds to interpret it.  This means that we have only seconds to process the information, and categorize it into Long-Term Memory in order to be able to remember it later. 

Have you ever sat down to work, and realized it took you a while to get started?  Or, have you ever asked your child to do something and came back 30 minutes later and nothing you had asked for has been done?  These are instances that have happened to all of us in one form or another and refer to the Executive Functioning skill, Task Initiation.

When we look at a child’s Time Management abilities, the first problem we often think of is procrastination.  While this can be a huge issue for many of our kids, being able to avoid procrastination is only a small piece of having good time management skills.  

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. 

Do you ever go to the store without a list and walk out with a bunch of things you don’t need, only to realize you forgot to buy the one thing you needed?   How about when you receive an invitation in the mail and forget about the event until right before it starts?  

Executive Functioning (EF) skills are skills we use every single day, but often don’t realize we are using them.  For example, when you make your lunch in the morning, you are planning a meal for later in the day.  When you sit quietly in class or at work, you are exhibiting self-control.  Most of our daily activities can be tied back to executive functioning in some way.