Need advice for new homeschooling mom w/dd w/special needs.

[blessed2fosteradopt]

Hi all:

I am new to this particular forum and am seeking your advice on behalf of a friend.

She is going to homeschool her daughter next year and she will be coming home from the public school system. She will be entering the 9th grade at age 16. She has been evaluated by the school board and a physician as having ADD, some auditory processing disorder, a slow learner and her short term memory is challenged. Her IQ tested at 84 (below average), she has problems with phonics and vocab. She is in an IEP program for speech and she has been held behind twice for failing the FCAT (below grade level for reading and Math - she is currently at a 4th grade level).

Our questions are many but the most important would be, "Where do we start?" What are suggestions for curriculum? She obviously is behind and although she realizes she will not graduate with same age peers she would like to set goals for her daughter that are both attainable and realistic and that will allow her to graduate before she is in her early twenties.

Any thoughts and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

Blessings!

Lisa

[Claire]

My suggestion would be to not focus exclusively on academic subjects, but rather to design a program that incorporates therapies likely to reduce this girl's underlying deficits. If at all possible, I would try to get medical insurance to cover an occupational therapy evaluation, a complete speech and language evaluation, a complete neuro-psych evaluation, and a developmental vision eval. These evaluations would give much more detailed information than those given in school systems.

In terms of therapies, a lot depends on how much the family can invest in terms of both time and money. If this were my dd, I'd probably want to look into NeuroNet (http://www.neuronetonline.com). Results depend a lot on the exact nature of the underlying deficits, and there are no guarantees, but I know of one boy with a similar profile whose IQ scores went from 80 to 100 after NeuroNet. Again, depending on the type of auditory processing disorder, I would consider doing FastForWord (http://www.fastforword.com). If symptoms of ADD persist, I'd consider Interactive Metronome (http://www.interactivemetronome.com). After these sensory-level type therapies, I would give serious consideration to doing PACE (http://www.processingskills.com) or LearningRx. (http://www.learningrx.com) These are all therapies that schools cannot provide and are generally paid for out-of-pocket by parents.

For vocabulary, I would recommend incorporating WordSmart (http://www.wordsmart.com) computer CDs into the academic day. The girl could work on these independently for 15 to 20 minutes per day. These CDs helped my dd's vocabulary greatly, especially during the years before her reading came up to grade level.

For reading instruction, I would highly recommend getting the book Reading Reflex by McGuinness, reading the first three chapters, then giving the girl the assessments in the book. This would tell your friend a *lot* about where her dd's reading subskills. If she does okay on the segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation assessments, then I would start her in Rewards Intermediate from Sopris West. This is a scripted program that takes about 30 to 40 hours and is very efficient at teaching word attack skills; however, you really want to make sure basic skills are in place first. If she doesn't do well on these assessments, I would make different recommendations.

Math is a highly individual matter. I personally like Moving With Math (http://www.movingwithmath.com/based/multigrade.htm) for older students, as it provides good ways to review and reinforce weak areas. On the other hand, if the student is moving quickly through the material, this program makes it easy to compress two years of work into one year. I used Level D with my dd and was able to get through 7th and 8th grade math in 12 months.

A grammar program that I think would be suitable would be Shurley Grammar, perhaps Level 4. Much of Shurley is done orally, with a lot of repetition, and this approach helps develop a solid foundation for later grammar programs. Shurley tends to "stick" when other grammar approaches do not.

[Cadam]

What is the ultimate goal for this child? Will she live on her own? She will need a job to support herself and life skills.

A friend of mine homeschooled her SN dd for a few years because the ps said she wasn't teachable. The girl wanted to become a massage therapist so all of their work went into getting her ready to pass MT school.

For math I would start near the beginning of math u see and work through it at the girl's pace. I don't have experience with the remedial reading programs but I believe one is called fastforward.

[Sandra in FL]

The developer is in Fort Lauderdale, which should be within driving distance from almost anywhere in Florida (except I guess, the PanHandle). Ms. Rowe is excellent with kids, and I finally feel that I have someone knowledgeable on my side who can address ds as a whole person (not just from the speech side or OT angle).

After the auditory evaluation and initial evaluation by Ms. Rowe, this therapy has been the cheapest ($70 every 2-3 weeks for a 1 to 1 1/2 hour session). We go home with a (gradually harder) program specifically designed for ds that he does about 15 minutes every week day. He has made significant and lasting improvement with NN.

HTH,
Sandra

[Claire]

A friend of mine in Florida was also extremely satisfied with NeuroNet and Ms. Rowe. I think they did NN about a year. Her son made significant improvements in many areas.