Dear Joy:
With school starting soon for B, I’m trying to figure out the next steps for her reading and learning for this school year. Joy, I know you had mentioned possibly setting up a 504 plan with the school. Is that something that you would recommend? Or, should I see how she does first in school this year? Is there something I can help her with at home to help keep up her progress?
Thanks so much, R
Hi R,
Thanks for reaching out! Yes, we always recommend setting up a 504 plan because it allows B to use different supports through the day but doesn’t require her to always use all of them. An example of this is being allowed to listen to a story instead of reading the book. One day she might choose to listen to the book and the next day she chooses to read it. She has full choice with the accommodations. To get this started, simply email the school and request that the process get started to create a 504 plan. Once it’s in writing, the school by law has a certain amount of days to act (depending on the school district.)
As far as school intervention, this is where we recommend declining all services. You should only have her in one intervention program to see the best results. Either use school intervention (if it’s good structured literacy/Orton-Gillingham instruction for at least 2 hours per week) or private tutoring, but not both.
As far as working on things at home, we recommend only reading TO her or audiobooks until she’s gotten to the end of Barton Level 4. The tutor can let you know what Level they’re currently at. Reading text with words that the tutor has not yet taught the student to decode will only encourage guessing, and that is a habit with all students that we are trying to break. So please don’t have her read anything until the end of Level 4 when she has been taught enough decoding skills to be more successful.
Hope that helps answer your questions. Reach out if there’s anything else I can help with! Joy