Kaitlyn's Progress

Today we had Kaitlyn's PPT (Planning and Placement Team) meeting. I had met with the school psychologist yesterday to discuss the testing they had done on Kaitlyn and was pretty sure coming in that I would be told no special ed services. Yes, this is a good thing, but I still have my doubts. All of her testing came out with her being in the normal range and sometimes even above normal. They are still very puzzled by Kaitlyn though. I don't know maybe she's a genious. After all Einstein didn't do well in school.

The testing done by the school psychologist did reveal some helpful tips. First of all Kaitlyn is a visual learner. Whenever possible giving her pictures to look at for instruction will be a huge help for her. Also there are some attention things. So the school psychologist suggested that making sure that she understands by checking in with her frequently will be helpful. And lastly she is very good at scanning things, but the faster she goes the more errors she makes. This was an area of strength that she had. Actually very great strength, but when she's timed or has to do things quickly there are errors. So slowing things down for her and getting her to relax will be an important thing there.

Now here's my concern when it comes to this. In 3rd grade she will be taking the CMT's (CT Mastery Tests) which are a timed test. If we don't figure out a way to get her to do things speedy and effitiently by then how is she going to do on that?

Oddly she can read a passage out loud that makes no sense (because she won't correct the words that she gets wrong that don't make sense), but she can comprehend what she read well enough to answer multiple choice questions about it which are read to her. That's puzzling to me. Almost like she's hearing the words differently, but yet in her phonemic awareness testing with the speech she scored well. I don't get how she can read something without any corrections and still do so well on a multiple choice test that was read to her.

I'm really unsure of how to help her. I mean I think as far as limiting our frustrations with her in daily living with her chores I can work with the visual aids for that, but I still don't know what to do for her with her reading. Her math skills are fine now, but they are going to start doing word problems. Now numbers seem to be something she's interested in. If a word problem is read to her she can come up with the correct answer, but is she going to be able to read it herself and come up with the right answer?

Then there's her spelling. I forgot to ask about this today. She can spell the words at home for me. Now sometimes I have her write them sometimes I have it aloud. This might come down to the whole speed thing with her since at home she gets all the time in the world since I'm only testing her.

The other thing I forgot to ask about is her writing. More specifically her pencil holding. She still doesn't always hold her pencil right. Now maybe this isn't such a big deal, but I really think this is a big reason why her writing is so hard to read. When I remind her to hold it correctly her handwriting is so much neater. I don't think they even tested anything pertaining to my concerns about her fine motor skills.

So where we stand now is she doesn't qualify for special ed. She will move onto 2nd grade next year with her friends. She is probably getting a new teacher to the school. Not new to teaching just to the school. They say she's very strong in reading and going for her masters degree in reading. So hopefully that will be helpful to her. We will get lots of sight words to practice with her over the summer. And we will be spending lots of time at the library I'm sure. I will talk to her teacher for next year hopefully before school even starts to give her a heads up about Kaitlyn so we can jump right into the school year with all the information in place. And I will continue to push things if she's still struggling with reading. I'm tired of waiting to see if it clicks and hope that now with this new insight into her we can start using that and getting everything into place so she continues to want to read.