After our daughter had finished all of the screeners and the Intervention Specialist from the school system had gathered all the data, a case conference was scheduled. We met with the Intervention Specialist, Principal, teacher, and her intervention teacher. The Intervention Specialist went over all the screeners and how our daughter scored on them.
This was an overwhelming amount of information. Some screeners she tested in the normal range. Some screeners she struggled with. Her doing all of these screeners definitely helped the school system know what screeners they wanted to use for all students. Because of our daughter, they saw that some would not show all areas that a student could be struggling and wouldn’t benefit them.
After we talked about all the screeners, we started talking about the areas she struggled in the classroom. As parents, we knew he biggest struggle was reading. Her teachers shared other areas she struggled like spelling, writing, etc. We were not oblivious to these struggles as well but didn’t see them as much as the teachers did.
We began to talk about accommodations that she would need to help her the most. Having worked in special needs in a school system prior, I knew what some of this meant. After much discussion, we all agreed that she would have all parts of tests that could be read read to her. She would also get extra time on all tests. Her teacher had noticed that if she wasn’t rushed to finish something, she did so much better and showed what she actually knew. We also agreed she could have text to speech on any assessments or tests. This meant she could speak what she wanted typed instead of actually having to type or write everything. We decided she would do small group testing so that she would have less distractions and also, not feel the need to hurry because everyone else was done. She was also to start phonemic awareness activities in her intervention time. At the time, this was whatever strategy that teacher wanted to use. It quickly became Orton Gillingham.
Shortly after this meeting, she took her first large test. She had these accommodations in place and she did SO much better. She improved by at least 30 percent in each area. She was starting to show what she ACTUALLY knew instead of what she could read.