Going through her test and evaluations to see where she is academically are always interesting and a true telling on how her teacher gets it. When explaining confusing Math concepts her teacher knows to explain these things in concrete ways when there is no way for her to misunderstand. For instance, when asking her to make a pattern, telling her to make it look the same but with different colors. Also with symmetry her teacher has to ask her which things can you use scissors to cut and they are the same.
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| She refused to believe a butterfly was symmetrical even with a visual. I just think she didn't want to even pretend to cut a butterfly. |
It's the same with some of the reading concepts that she is having trouble with. She has trouble understanding rhyming when you ask her to rhyme some words and even give her a word she is unable to do it, all she does is repeat the word you say (darn echolalia). The teacher changed the question and asked her to say words that end the same and got it immediately. Sight words are progressing well, she is a little behind but with practice she'll get them.
Cute Eden story alert! When talking about Eden's sight words she was pointing out that Eden had made a good effort trying a few with some interesting results. When presented with the word he, Eden told the teacher the word was chicken. Seems kind of weird right? Well her teacher has been reading, "The Little Red Hen" story, over and over.
So, she explained to me (and as she was going this over with her Special Ed teacher earlier) that the h and e had been seen a lot in that book in the word hen. That's where she got chicken. Yeah, it's a pretty far stretch but if you look at it through Eden's brain it makes perfect sense. It's the effort that counts right?
She is doing really well in the classroom. She has definitely grown up in the last few months. The teacher has a great understanding on what she can and can't do and always is expecting the best from her. The teacher also says that she does have trouble staying on task and completing tasks, which has caused some difficulty when it comes to school work and some outbursts. This comes with getting her ready for 1st grade where the work is more independent and she'll probably need some help with keeping her work caught up.
Eden is also working better with other staff members, before she was having a lot of issues when her aide had to redirect her but this is improving. As well as the teacher making sure everyone who works with Eden is consistent. We shared the fact that we both randomly have to inform people how to react to the cute little girl in the corner crying, to help them understand that giving her attention for that behavior is not helpful for her and will create more problems for us all in the long run.
I also mentioned to the teacher about the letter I had written to the transition team last spring when we were getting a plan together to transition Eden from pre-school to kindergarten. It's in this post if your interested. She had not seen it so I e-mailed it to her today. The amazing part is even without reading the letter she knows all of Eden's quirks, interests, how and why she does things and how to best get her to behaved.
Without great teachers who understand our kids (not just special needs children because this kind of stuff has happened with Tanya as well) and work to make school successful for them, I'm not sure where I'd be. We are already talking about next year and how to plan for a successful year. We have her IEP at the beginning of next month and that's when were will be planning for the next year. Here's hoping everything goes well.
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