Assessment Time

This past week marked the end of the first quarter of third grade for Samuel. As I have been saying, I have put a lot of time into preparing lessons and working with Samuel. I really need some direction and guidance on where to take Samuel's school work from here. I just got the "ABLLS", Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills and will be slowly doing this assessment on Samuel over the next few weeks. I heard this assessment mentioned by a friend of mine years ago, but I never had it done on Samuel. Now I can't believe that it has taken me so long to check it out!

I am hopeful that the assessment results and (hopefully!) obtaining the help of a consultant will give me some good direction. The last thing I want is for him to get bored or frustrated!

I'd love to hear what assessments others have had their children do, and what you think of it.

School Work Update

Samuel came home with some low Science Test scores. He took the tests late last week. I'm still trying to work out a good system of communicating with his teachers about what to study. I don't see all that much of his work come home in some of his subjects, science being one of them. I rely on study sheets, and this past time one came home at the beginning of the quarter, but it didn't cover everything. I got a second one 2 days before the test and that wasn't enough time to go over everything. I am able to look up on-line the general topics covered in each class for the quarter, but it does not give details about what he is being taught. We're still trying to figure out exactly what Samuel can and cannot comprehend, and how he communicates this to us.

I spoke with Samuel's teacher for a while yesterday afternoon about this. It was time for us to touch base about how he is doing anyways. He is doing much better now, 2 months after we relaxed his curriculum requirements, on Spelling and Reading tests. I think Samuel does much better when I take the time to go over his work at home with him.

I'm a little nervous because he will have alternate assessments done next year (instead of taking the same standardized tests that other 3rd graders take), and I'm wondering to what standards he will be held. After talking with his teacher I'm left with a vague understanding, like there might not be a lot of accountability. Add all this to the list of things for me to keep up with and research a bit!

Phonics for Samuel

In our recent meeting to discuss Samuel's progress in academics at school, I brought up concerns about Samuel's spelling. He seems to be having trouble with vowels digraphs and consonant combinations. His average spelling score is 80%, but a recent test, where the "ei" and "ay" vowel digraphs were used, some of them also having one or two consonant combinations, had a score of 20%. A second attempt resulted in 30% correct.

Samuel's teacher agreed to start working with him on phonics. I asked for some worksheets that I can use to work at home and they came home the next day.

This is the first time that I'm aware of Samuel working with phonics. He learned to read sight words in kindergarten and first grade. I believe that much of his ability to read is by memorizing words. When he is reading , he often looks at a word and just takes a guess as to what the word is. In these cases he doesn't appear to take any time to "sound out" letters.

I just tried a worksheet with the "long a" vowel sound this morning. Before doing the worksheet we talked about vowels sounds (including a review of what a vowel is, and that letters can make more than one sound) He did pretty good. The worksheet entailed choosing the appropriate word from a choice of 6 to fill in blanks that made up a story. He did well at understanding the context and then writing in the correct words.

I'd like to hear about what others have encountered with their children when they are learning to read. I'm wondering if teaching phonics will help him do better on his spelling tests.

Reflections of a Rookie Blogger and Follow Up to Situation with Academics at School

I have been blogging now for about 6 weeks and am enjoying it immensely. Since finding out my son was autistic I have always been frustrated by the "doom and gloom" approach to autism. It has been such a relief to find such positive (yet realistic and honest) viewpoints towards autism in the many many blogs I have come across. I wish I had looked into this much sooner than I did!

I love all the different kinds of blogs that are out there... the creative, the plain, the well-written and not-so-well-written, the artsy, the dramatic, the popular and not-so-popular. I have had lots of fun getting started and fine-tuning the features of my blog. I absolutely love the freedom we are given to make our own forums by blogging!

Six weeks ago I was just about at my wits end over my son's situation at school . I started looking up some things about neurodiversity and ended up coming across numerous blogs composed by people who do respect their autistic children by accepting them for who they are. I initially had no intention of setting up my own blog, but after a few days of wanting to comment and feeling inspired to tell my own family's story, I did just that! I shared the fact that I had a blog with a very few friends and family members after I had it for a month. It's kind of scary for me to share some of these thoughts with people that I know.

In these six weeks I have become much more settled regarding Samuel. I have met with his special education teacher two times. His learning requirements have been relaxed in his subjects. His teacher is also using a token board to provide small reinforcements for Samuel as he does his work at school. The incidence of behavioral outbursts has dropped since these changes were made. I think his overall stress level has gone down too. He seems more eager to get to school in the morning. His test scores have improved. The exercise I have put myself through in making up homework assignments has been exhausting, but it's nice to know that it is paying off. I better understand what Samuel is capable of and not capable of. Samuel's teacher has been attentive to my questions and requests, and our regular meetings, e-mails, and phone calls to each other are helping me to feel better about Samuel being at school. This has been a tough year of adjustment for both me and Samuel, but now, almost 3/4 of the way through the school year, we're both quite settled.

On the lighter side of things, we had another weather surprise today, about 5 inches of snow! It started as rain Thursday night, which continued Friday morning and started mixing with sleet. School was closed at noon and shortly after we got home it changed to snow. Samuel was happy to have the afternoon free. The only work I gave him the rest of the day was some tidying up in his bedroom. Friday is cleaning day around here!

Meeting with the teacher and principal

I mentioned early last week that I would be meeting with Samuel's teacher on Wednesday to discuss his academic progress. That ended up being the snow day so the meeting didn't happen. Now we are re-scheduled for this Monday, and the school principal will be joining us. I'm planning for this to be the first in a series of meetings in which we will look at re-vamping Samuel's entire curriculum.

At present, Samuel is in an inclusion classroom for most of the day. He is pulled out only for math. He is in 2nd grade and his goals for math follow the 1st grade requirements. It has become apparent, through his test scores and (I think) some behavior issues, that he is not being as fully engaged during class time. I believe that he just cannot follow some of the concepts that his class is covering, especially in science and social studies. He is also falling behind in reading.

It's a little scary approaching all of this because I don't want to run the risk of Samuel being taken out of inclusion, yet I don't want him to just get dragged around by his aid all day when he isn't paying attention and is "zoning out" during school. I have come up with a lot of homework exercises for him the past few weeks and I plan to take all of these in with me on Monday to show his teacher. Hopefully this will serve as a starting point, along with my requests for some testing to be done, and maybe some kind of help brought in to evaluate his setting at school.

My introduction

Hello blogging world. I'm the Mother of 4 wonderful children, one of whom is autistic. He is eight years old and his name is Samuel. I have known Samuel is autistic since he was 2 years old. He is currently in second grade at a local public school and my life has been consumed the past few months with trying to straighten out some problems in the methods being used to educate him. My other children are Samuel's older brother, who is 9, his younger brother, who is 4, and his baby sister, who is one.

I have started this blog to share my family's experiences with autism, and to share my approach to life with an autistic child. Let me start by saying that I love my family just the way it is. Life isn't always easy with Samuel, and as time goes on we are limited in what we can do and how we can do it because of Samuel. However, I think my son is very fortunate to have both an older brother (a good role model and a wonderful helper for me) and a younger brother (who is mighty persistent and often forces Samuel to play with him and acknowledge him. I love Samuel's personality and I am determined that I am going to help him lead a fulfilling life. Do I know exactly what I mean by that yet? No, I do not, because I don't fully know Samuel yet. We have lots of hope for him! He is learning to communicate better all the time and I love the parts of himself that he is slowly revealing to us! In no way do I think that he needs to be "cured"! Nor have I ever gone through any kind of "grieving" process for him. Like I said, I am full of hope for him. It may be a lot of work to keep up with him and teach him, but I never ever consider him to be any more of a burden than my other children are!

Please excuse my newness to blogging, and please excuse any seemingly incomplete or unorganized posts that I have. I'm very very overwhelmed and tired right now! In fact, I should probably sign off for right now.