KPS 4 Parents looks interesting. It’s an advocacy organization that offers services as well as a blog, etc.
We work diligently to ensure that all eligible children, regardless of disability, receive the Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) to which they are entitled under federal special education and civil rights law and that their parents are fully involved members of their children’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) teams.
Our commitment to the ethical treatment of our clients is unparalled. We are dedicated to appropriate outcomes for the clients we serve. We know right from wrong and work diligently to see that every person we work with is dealt with honestly, fairly, and responsibly.
Our first focus is on parent education. Unless parents understand their rights and responsibilities, they cannot meaningfully participate in the special education process. After that, we focus on educating general education teachers, most of whom are left in the dark when it comes to conducting “child find,” which is the federal requirement of public schools to seek out, identify, and serve children with special needs. General education teachers are on the “front lines” and it is in their classrooms that the impact of any disabilities will be made on a disabled child’s education. Teachers must know what they are looking at when they see it!
This interesting organization offers items for sale as well as accepting donations. Link to the main page or to the blog. Anyone who has experience with KPS 4 Parents please post a comment.
For those who haven’t heard, Ken Kavale died this past weekend. I have an obituary over on SpedPro. He was a strong defender of the construct of Learning Disabilities and a tireless crusader for evidence-based interventions. Students of Learning Disabilities will be studying his academic works for many years to come.
In “Solving the dyslexia puzzle,” Teri Maddox of the Belleville (IL, US) News-Democrat reports about Matt Grohmann’s struggles with dyslexia. The good news is that Mr. Grohmann hooked up with Michele Johnson who tutors for the Valley of Southern Illinois 32nd Degree Masonic Learning Center for Children.
Matt Grohmann looks forward to after-school tutoring the way other kids look forward to Boy Scouts or baseball practice.
The one-on-one sessions with a reading specialist give him a chance to be successful and make the rest of his life happier.
Continue reading ‘Masons to the rescue again’
The Seattle (WA, US) Post-Intelligencer maintains a set of blogs about parenting, one of which focuses on Learning Disabilities. The blogs are maintained by people who are from the geographic area but are not otherwise affiliated with the newspaper, and “Mizz Givens,” who is Andrea Givens (in real life or “IRL,” as bloggers in the know say it) maintains the one about LD. As do so many other parents, in her blog she tells the story of her child, her child’s school, and their family.
Ms. Givens has been maintaining the blog for well over a year. Zion, her elementary-aged son is the focus, but there are also notes about Zion’s older sister and other matters, too. You can learn about what it’s like to have a child receive a video-monitored EEG as well as comments about reading with Zion at home, etc.
It’s a good one to track, so I’m adding it to the blogroll here on LD Blog. Link directly from this post and remember that you can get to it via the blogroll.
Professor Silvia Paracchini and colleagues have correlated the levels of one of the genes associated with chromosome 6p22, KIAA0319, with reading performance among the general population.
Association of the KIAA0319 Dyslexia Susceptibility Gene With Reading Skills in the General Population
Silvia Paracchini, D.Phil., Colin D. Steer, M.Sc., Lyn-Louise Buckingham, B.Sc., Andrew P. Morris, Ph.D., Susan Ring, Ph.D., Thomas Scerri, D.Phil., John Stein, F.R.C.P., Marcus E. Pembrey, M.D., Jiannis Ragoussis, Ph.D., Jean Golding, Ph.D., and Anthony P. Monaco, Ph.D.
Continue reading ‘More genetics and dyslexia’
Simple pragmatics
Some students with Learning Disabilities have substantial problems with the pragmatic aspects of language. Pragmatics is one of the main aspects of language (others are phonemics, morphology, semantics, and syntax), and it refers to the social aspects of using language (e.g., taking turns; adapting vocabulary, sentence structure, and etc. according to listeners’ language skills; and so forth). The problems of some students with LD were famously described in the title of a study by Tanis Bryan and colleagues; they took their title from something that one one of their students with LD said when talking with other children: “‘Come on dummy’: An observational study of children’s communication.”
As one might guess, deficits in pragmatics are associated with social-behavioral problems. Students with LD who have problems with pragmatics—do not know how to take turns, how to adjust their talk to fit different social situations, how to interpret subtle implications, etc.—may quickly become social outcasts, for example. Sadly, I fear that this aspect of LD is too rarely examined in thoughtful and parsimonious way.
However, over on Language Fix, Paul Morris had a commentary on the topic that I recommend to both of you folks who routinely read LD Blog. Mr. Morris provides a starting place for thinking about assessing and teaching pragmatics in a very, well, pragmatic way.
Continue reading ‘Simple pragmatics’