Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Conferences

Because the Hurricane changed things immensely in terms of school schedules, Colin's teacher and therapists have been setting up phone conferences to discuss progress that Colin has made so far in different areas.  While our communication is pretty good on a regular basis, it was really nice to spend a little time discussing different topics regarding this school year.  

Colin's speech therapist reported that he has been a bit "scoochy" and silly lately when it comes to working together.  It has only been the last week or two and coincidentally he is trying to fight off a cold when Daddy hasn't been around much, so we are hoping this was just a "short phase" that he will come out of soon.  He hasn't been unproductive, but I often receive status notes that say he needed "maximum cues" for production.  While we have all seen progress when it comes to communication, there are many things that he needs continued work on.  Some of the major things that she has been working on have been "wh" questions like "what" and "where".  She finds (as do we) that with maximum cues he will ultimately answer the question (ie: where does a hat go? A maximum cue would be, "Colin, a hat goes on our ___" and he will answer head).  I feel as though we have made progress here, but ideally we want him to answer head without needing the prompt.  We also want him to initiate more like instead of just saying "milk" or "eat" when he wants those things, we want him to say "I want milk" or "I want yogurt".  Colin has always been an observer and then one day shows what he knows, so I know that with time we will see progress with these things as well.  


Colin's teacher discussed how he is doing in her class and I always love getting glimpses into his day at school.  I really wish I could spend some time "watching" to see how his day goes, but don't we all?  We discussed different things about his day, like the fact he loves circle time and does really well coming up with the pointer when they work on days, numbers, letters, etc.  She said that he does well initiating which center he wants to work on and communicates where he wants to go or what he wants to do.  Behavior is always a concern of mine just because of how it's been with Kailey lately, however, she said that his only negative/inappropriate behavior has been poking his friends at circle as a way to get their attention.  She said it's obvious he isn't trying to hurt anyone but rather, get their attention and be silly so they have been working on "quiet hands".  We discussed how I feel about his low success rate in identifying colors (she already tried changing things around today) so we are all going to try a few things to make improvements here.  

I feel confident that there is progress so we will just continue to work with him as we always do to continue to move in the right direction.  

5 comments:

viv said...

For what it's worth my average 5 year old answered "on the end of your bed" when I asked him "where does your hat go" lol. But it got me thinking that maybe Colin is not answering because there is a wrong answer, does your ST know about errorless learning ? I think it is recommended for kids with Ds.
You know think Colin is doing amazing, I remember seeing him in the video in the car saying his name and where he lived I thought at was amazing!! He is doing so good.

JC said...

I love posts like this about Colin's progress. It's just interesting to hear what he is working on and what things you guys are trying with him. He really sounds like he is doing amazing. Thanks for always sharing so much about him, it's fun to read :)

Michelle said...

Progress is always good news :) Yay for Colin!

I don't mind if you want to share my post about inclusive education. I wish we lived in a district that already practiced inclusive education so it wouldn't be so hard advocating for it! She is fully included in a gen ed 3rd grade class with some resource time pull out for math and reading, but the rest of her team doesn't agree with this at all and wants to re-visit her placement (or amt of time she's in gen ed) in Jan. I'm so tired of trying to get them to see what is being done at schools all across the country.

Michelle said...

Oops...my sentence about sharing that post was meant for another blogger :)

Laura said...

From the perspective a momma with a younger child with Ds, I always think Colin is doing great! Our kids, unfortunately, are always under a microscope. We have Ben's IFSP coming up:(