Tag Archives: advocacy

Dyslexia: Be a Punk Band

Dyslexia Be A Punk Band - Dyslexia Training Institute

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In a previous article, Dyslexia: Hear Us Roar, I made a statement that we need to be louder and less polite. Well, we are getting there. It is a very exciting time to be part of the dyslexia community. There are grass roots movements like Decoding Dyslexia and Literate Nation that are making progress at a pace I have never seen. Three movies about dyslexia were released just last year. Assistive technology is gaining more acceptance as a legitimate way to help a student with dyslexia access the curriculum they are so capable of learning. I love it. It makes me happy. Ah, but there is always more to learn right? I do see a missed opportunity and I am here to call you to action.

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Dyslexia: The Incredible Disappearing Goals

Dyslexia - The Incredible Disappearing Goals (Photo by Wonderlane/flickr)

Dyslexia – The Incredible Disappearing Goals (Photo by Wonderlane/flickr)

Download the PDF version of this article here.

 

What could I possibly mean this time? A disappearing goal? Was the goal written with a special pen? Did the goal disappear when the student met the goal? Nope and Nope. What happened was really a brilliant and quite creative way for a school district to solve the problem of failing to teach a child with dyslexia to improve his reading and spelling. Below is the story of the incredible missing goals and other IEP magic tricks that every parent and/or advocate should be on the lookout for.

I would like you to meet Jason. He is entering the fifth grade and has had an IEP since the middle of third grade. His initial assessment included documentation of teacher comments from each grade who reported that Jason had difficulty with phonemic awareness, fluency and spelling. He has dyslexia. His initial IEP included two goals, fluency and spelling high frequency words. His fluency goal was to read a third grade passage (he would have been in 4th grade by the next IEP) with 90 CWPM – not a terrible goal, right? Now, I am not going to get into the fact that there only two goals and no baselines…yadda yadda yadda (for more about goal writing and dyslexia: http://www.specialeducationadvisor.com/dyslexia-its-all-about-goals-goals-goals/.) What I have to tell you is much more interesting.

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