Sunday, July 20, 2008

Math Research May Be Starting to Catch Up

The regulations for Public Law (P.L.) 101-476, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), formerly P.L. 94-142, the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), define a learning disability as a "disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or to do mathematical calculations." (from Kidsource at NICHCY)


Since RTI has been evolving, one of my biggest concerns is that the areas of learning disabilities that are not reading based will not be serviced well. There are a plethora of research-based remediations and teaching methods now available for reading instruction, at least for the early years, and not much for the other areas of learning disabilities. I read some web entries today that has given me hope that math may be catching up, though I still question how soon solid interventions will be able to be put into place to assist our young ones with dyscalculia soon enough.

Dyscalculia Research Reveals Possible Cause by Amanda Windom

Down for the Count by Laura Blue, in Time Magazine

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Reader's Digest Support for Non-Profits

I realize that I have quoted this whole blog entry, but it's awesome!! What a great way to highlight someone you appreciate and help your favorite non-profit at the same time!

* Inspiring People

"Make it Matter" is a new initiative of the Reader’s Digest Foundation. The Foundation will give away $1 million to nonprofit organizations based on inspiring stories submitted by the public.

Every month for ten months, Reader’s Digest will choose one individual whose story of giving back serves as an inspiration to others. For each story, the Reader’s Digest Foundation will donate $100,000 to a nonprofit organization that is associated either with the story or the cause. These individuals and their stories of giving back will appear every month in the new "Make it Matter" column in Reader’s Digest and on rd.com, beginning with the April issue.

Stories can be submitted at http://www.rd.com/makeitmatter.do.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Sensory Integration and a Tube of Toothpaste

I have been fortunate to work with a few little guys this summer who I am sure have some pretty severe sensory integration issues and this morning a wonderful comparison popped into my mind (does anyone out there have a white board that could work to catch the amazing thoughts that come to me in the shower?). Anyway, I was musing on how frustrating it is to know that they have not been diagnosed and know that some of their behaviors could be addressed with therapies at the same time I was reminding myself that many people, including school personnel, do not understand sensory integration very well. It is still a newer concept outside of the autistic world, but one that can have significant advantages for many of our ADHD, ODD or OCD children without the full autism spectrum challenges. I find myself often explaining children to teachers and parents right now using sensory references, so here's my new one:

A child with sensory issues can be like a tube of toothpaste. After a few squeezes (stimulus), the tube is no longer even. Sometimes, it fills up at the top, sometimes it fills at the bottom and sometimes there's just a gap in the middle. To get some toothpaste out, you often have to smooth it back out in some fashion, and you certainly have to take the cap off when there's too much pressure. However, squeeze too hard and everything explodes! Even the folks who roll up their tube at the bottom have to adjust it every day to maintain their acceptable amount of pressure in the toothpaste tube.

That tube of toothpaste now reminds me of many of my students. They need to be stimulated appropriately, or squeezed sometimes, but not too hard or too soft. And when the pressure is on from any stimulus, things might blow and they will not stop blowing on their own in these kids. The tube needs to be rebalanced.

I expect that I will now be taking extra tubes of toothpaste with me to presentations from now on :).