Institute for Excellence in Writing {Schoolhouse Review Crew}

Do you have a student who is struggling to learn to read and write? Or one who is ready to begin reading and writing? I'm sure you've heard of Institute for Excellence in Writing. Did you also know that they have a real heart for special needs children? You can read how their program will work for special needs students, and the resources they provide.

Even though Little Bit turns 13 this month, he still struggles enormously with reading and writing. Recently we were overwhelmingly blessed with the opportunity to use the Primary Arts of Language: Reading Complete Package and the Primary Arts of Language: Writing Complete Package. I was really hoping this would finally be the key to open that door for him; I think I am correct.

Primary Arts of Language: Reading

This package consists of the PAL:Reading Teacher's manual, PAL Reading DVD-ROM, PAL Phonetic Games, and PAL Phonetic Farm folder with stickers.

You will want to begin with the DVD-ROM, because it includes the instructional video by Jill Pike. There are also 4 mp3 talks (2 by Andrew Pudewa, and 2 by Anna Ingham), and the PAL: Reading student book.

The teacher's manual is well laid out, with easy to follow lesson plans.

You begin each day with a poem (which is provided, or you can find your own, if you'd rather). The same poem is used daily, for several days, with suggested activities to do each day, like noticing they rhymes, underlining certain letter combinations, etc.

Then you switch over the the PAL: Writing, for the daily lesson from it (I'll discuss that in a bit).

Next, back in the PAL: Reading, you will do the activities, which consist of file folder games you make, using the PAL: Phonetic Games book, and file folders. (This is Little Bit's favorite part!). There is also time for the Card Game, words you write and mark on index cards, which are kept in an index card file box.

After that is the Phonetic Farm (although usually Little Bit prefers to save this for last!), followed by the worksheets printed from the DVD-ROM.

The PAL: Phonetic Games book provides white paper pages at the front, which you tear or cut out of the book, and paste in to a file folder, for the game board. At the back of the book are cardstock pages of game pieces.

Little Bit has so much fun with these games. He has been kinesthetic from infancy, always feeling for textures even as a tiny baby. I should have realized years ago, that the best method for teaching him would be to use file folder games! The PAL: Phonetic Games has emphasized that for me.

We both adore the Phonetic Farm! We are still placing stickers as we go, but it is a great resource for reviewing the various phonics rules. I like that it is small enough to be portable, and doesn't take up space on the wall like posters do. The farm theme is perfect my my animal loving son!

PAL: Reading covers four stages: Foundations, Activity Time, Discovery, and The Library. During stage 1, you as the teacher will be laying the foundation in phonics and whole words. You'll be teaching phonograms and phonemes. Stage 2 incorporates a set time for playing the file folder games. Your child can choose which ones he/she wants to play during that set time. Stage 3 shifts from the Phonetic Games to going through Discovery card packs (which are included in the back of the teacher's manual). Then when your student has mastered the Discovery cards, he/she will be ready to enter the individualized Library, which is a collection of real books on an easy reading level.

Primary Arts of Language: Writing

This package contains the PAL: Writing teacher's manual, PAL:Writing DVD-ROM, All About Spelling Interactive Kit, and All About Spelling Level 1.

Again, you will want to start with the DVD. This includes an instructional video by Jill Pike; 5 mp3 audio talks: 1 by Adam Andrews; 2 by Andrew Pudewa; 2 by Shirley George; and 1 by Richelle Palmer; and the PAL: Writing student books.

The PAL: Writing teacher's manual contains lesson plans, and is divided in to three parts. Part 1 covers Printing and Story Summaries. Part 2 covers Copy Work and Style with All About Spelling. Then Part 3 covers Composition with Style.

In Part 1, each day's lesson begins with the teacher/parent writing a few sentences in a Class Journal (which can be just a simple spiral notebook). Then the student is to read the sentences back.

The next activity is printing. The student will use the pages printed from the student book, beginning with individual letters, and progressing to words. Each letter is presented by sound, using the "letter stories" introduced in PAL: Reading.

Then the instructor reads aloud a story. The first few lessons have stories provided (fairy tales or fables), or you could chose one from your own source. Then the teacher/parent helps the student summarize the story: Characters and Setting: Who? What? When? Where? The Problem (plot): What happens? The Climax/Resolution: How is the problem solved? Then the Clincher ends the story.

After all of that, is suggested a spelling test.

Part 2, The class journal is continued. All About Spelling is added in, and you will begin style and copy work. You will continue with story summaries, as well.

Part 3 shifts things a bit more. You will continue with All About Spelling, daily. The class journal can be continued, but won't be necessary. The focus now shifts to Composition with Style, and each lesson is divided up, so it requires 4 days per lesson. Throughout these lessons, your student will learn to write stories, outlines and summaries, creative writing: letters, written narration, and even scrapbooking.

The All About Spelling Basic Interactive Kit includes letter tiles, magnets, divider cards, the Phonogram Sounds app. We have the app on Little Bit's iPad. The magnets are to go an the backs of the letter tiles, so they can be used on a magnetic board.

Last, but certainly not least, is the All About Spelling teacher's manual and student pack. The student pack contains four sets of flash cards, and five colored tokens. All About Spelling uses a multisensory approach to learning spelling, which, as I mentioned before, is such a perfect fit for Little Bit. (Frankly, we began using All About Spelling earlier this school year.)

How we put it all together

When our package first arrived, and I began a quick look through everything, I suddenly felt overwhelmed!

I played the DVDs first...yes, one after the other that first day! (My suggestion: Don't do that! LOL Break your watching time in to smaller increments.) I'm watching them again, here at the end of our review period, in the smaller increments.

Then I printed off the worksheets from the DVDs. I chose to use different colored paper for each the student books from PAL: Reading, PAL: Writing, and the PAL Phonetic Farm Word Book. I just found it might be easier for me to keep things straight in my mind which pages would go with which PAL resource.

Since Little Bit does know his letter sounds, and how to write his letters, my original thought was that we would begin further in to the program. But when I had a look the first several lessons, I decided to go ahead and start at the beginning. I thought Little Bit would enjoy learning the letter stories, and that he'd really have fun with the games.

I think he has also enjoyed, for the most part, doing the pages from the student book. Each day from PAL: Reading, he has a page of sentences to read, and a cut and paste page, which he seems to enjoy.

From PAL: Writing, he began with writing letters, and is now moving on to words. I know that soon, he will be moving on to sentences, and paragraphs, even.

 I like the suggestion for learning and reviewing the vowels. Since my boy is getting so tall, we could use the full height of the door frame, but a younger child, you could just place them lower, within reach.

Sometimes we have a hard time coming up with something to write in our journal, and then there are some days we are able to write quite a bit.

Here is how I have all our resources stored, and within fairly easy reach. Little Bit can pull out one of the phonetic games to play any time he wants to.

One of my favorite things is how hands-on this program is. It truly is a perfect fit for my boy. I have noticed some improvement in his writing and spelling. He seems better able to figure out the spelling of words.

Summarizing the stories or chapters we read is also improving his reading comprehension it seems. I am thankful for that.

I am looking forward to seeing continued improvements as we move in to part 2 then part 3 of PAL: Writing. He wants so badly to be able to write letters to his friends back in Florida. I know this program will be giving him the knowledge, ability, and confidence, for this to happen in the near future.

This review product has been a tremendous blessing for us, and I am abundantly thankful. Frankly, I wish we could have begun it 2-3 years ago. If your child is developmentally/learning delayed like Little Bit, or is a young child who's ready to learn to read and write, I would highly recommend IEW PAL!

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Be sure to read the reviews from the rest of the Crew, since there were other products covered.

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Homeschooling With Special Needs

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know by know that my youngest is a special learner. We've never fully learned what are all the special needs with which he's dealing.

We've been told:

• He's hearing impaired
• He's developmentally delayed
• He was tongue-tied
• He has Sensory Integration Disorder/Sensory Processing Disorder
• He has Apraxia
• He has Receptive Expressive Speech Disorder
• He's "mildly mentally retarded"
• He may be dyslexic

Yes, he is definitely developmentally delayed. He didn't start crawling until he was a year old. He didn't start walking until he was eighteen months old. He was a very late talker, and really didn't "babble" much as a baby even.

He's undergone many tests, to check his hearing. He's had procedures done to assist in his ability to talk, such as having his tongue "clipped;" having his tonsils removed; and now has braces to, hopefully, widen his palate and give his tongue more space in his mouth. He had physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy for years. He "graduated" out of  PT and OT...but Medicaid kicked him off Speech, which is the one he needed most, and still does.

So we try our hand at "therapy" here at home.

Math is his favorite subject, probably because it has concrete rules that it always follows. It's systematic, and logic oriented. When he was younger we used lots of hands-on, manipulative math. He still prefers manipulatives. When we reviewed Math-U-See a couple years ago, it instantly clicked for him. I plan to keep using it for him, as long as it benefits him. We purchased the Math-U-See Manipulatives app (with a gift card from Grandma for Christmas).

There are so many wonderful apps for the iPad, I knew we had to have one for him. Christmas of 2013, I requested extended-family members to help us out by pitching in on an iPad for him. Then I began the search for suitable apps, which is an ongoing search even now. I posted a list of apps for school last year, but have since then come across a few more.

I've recently loaded these on to his iPad:

Dictation Dragon--This application writes down spoken text. For students who struggle with writing, it can be a great way for them to jot down ideas or get help learning.

Word Ladder--This highly challenging word game will get older readers thinking about how words are spelled and how they can be connected and changed to form new words.

Word Fall-- In this educational game, words fall from the sky and players must collect letters to form basic words.

Jumbline 2 Free--Jumbline is a familiar and fantastic word puzzle that will challenge your speed, your agility, your pattern recognition, and your spelling prowess, as you try to find all the possible words within a set of letters.

Surf the Word and Scrollword. (I just noticed that Little Bit was also checking out LogiMatch. They are all by the same developer).

Speller--Speller is a perfect tool to check spellings of English or Spanish words and come up with suggestions for misspelled words. Speller is based on Aspell, an open source spell checker for various platforms.

Kids Word Search (lite)--Word search designed for kids featuring animals and nature theme. Fun backgrounds with interactive characters as rewards for finding words. (I've put the Elementary Learning Bundle on our wish list)

A few others we added to our wish list are: Montessori Crosswords, Word Wizard, Cursive Writing Wizard, and Writing Wizard. (They may be a bit "young" for him, yet with his developmental delays, he may still enjoy them and benefit from them).

Teachthought has a list of 50 popular iPad apps for struggling readers, which is where I found many of the ones I've listed above.

Another good resource is Smart Apps for Special Needs. Also Virtual Speech Center.

Aside from iPad apps, another program we are using is All About Reading and All About Spelling. They are both hands-on, which is great for a kinesthetic learner.

Sometimes I feel like I should go back to school, to become a speech therapist, or a special ed teacher. Do you ever feel that way? Meanwhile, I hope you will find some of these resources useful as well.

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Life Not Typical: How Special Needs Parenting Changed My Faith and My Song, by Jennifer Shaw {a book review}

About the book

Life Not Typical shares Jennifer Shaw’s story of how parenting a special needs child changed her faith, and changed the direction her music ministry took.

Jennifer had trained as a classical vocalist, and received a Master’s Degree in Vocal Performance from the Manhatten School of Music. She performed in the theater, then later performed with the Columbus Symphony. She also became a Professor of Music at Cedarville University, and became music director of her local church. In 2003 she suffered a miscarriage. Shortly after that, her father was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and deteriorated rapidly. Then her son, Toby, was born. Toby suffered frequent ear infections, and was diagnosed with severe hearing impairment.

Toby’s behavior became almost bizarre! He couldn’t touch anything, or be touched, couldn’t eat anything, and he made no sounds, except for his near-constant crying. The Shaws became very concerned, because it seemed like Toby was simply shutting down! It was during a speech therapy session that the therapist asked if they’d heard of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). When the therapist described what SPD is, it was as if she was describing Toby exactly.

Throughout the book, Jennifer shares the journey they embarked on with therapy for Toby, as well as walking through the dark time of losing her father, and even the need to walk away from her classical music, to writing and performing contemporary Christian music. She also began touring, speaking about her journey in regards to her father’s death to Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and Toby’s SPD and therapy, and the dramatic changes therapy made. Life Not Typical also has appendices, explaining more about SPD, interviews with some of Toby’s therapists, and a list of some helpful resources.

What I thought of the book

I was especially interested in this book, because my youngest also has SPD, and spent years in therapy. While reading, sometimes I would just cry, because I have felt some of the same feelings Jennifer expressed. My boy has other special needs in addition to SPD, though.

About the author

Jennifer Shaw is a Telly Award winning speaker, author, singer, songwriter and five-time Top 40 Billboard artist. Her ministry has been featured by Focus on the Family, Insight for Living, FamilyLife Today, Autism Speaks, Joni and Friends, and many more. Her book, Life Not Typical: How Special Needs Parenting Changed My Faith and My Song, has brought national attention to the issue of Sensory Processing Disorder.

To purchase Life Not Typical, or Mrs. Shaw's music
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The Juggling Act: Homeschooling and Special Needs

I haven't posted in this category as often as I'd hoped to throughout the year. Sometimes I get so caught up in doing what this week's topic is all about: How do you juggle homeschooling a child with special needs, therapy, etc.?

I definitely in no way feel like an expert in this area, but we are in the thick of it! ;) We have two special needs children/young people in our home: Teen Girl, with Type 1 Diabetes; and Little Bit, with developmental delays, sensory integration disorder, hearing impairment, speech impairment/apraxia of speech (what ever term you want to use), and he seems to have some language processing issues, as well.

So, how do we actually juggle the special needs with the homeschooling?

For Teen Girl, I try to be more understanding of the mood swings that the blood sugar swings cause! ;) (Yeah, add those mood swings to being female, and a teenager....can be a potent combination, sometimes!) I've also been told, and learned by observation, that diabetes seems to make a person more tired than the average person would be. Fortunately because we do homeschool, that means for Teen Girl, she has the option of sleeping later than she'd be able to in a "traditional" school setting.

To help her keep her blood sugars more on an "even keel," we try to adhere to a fairly structured mealtime. It doesn't always work, though. Sometimes life just plain interrupts! We also try to keep her on a pretty strict time frame for her long-acting insulin dosages. (You can read more about our diabetes journey here.)

Some people may not really consider diabetes as a "special need." But it is! It's just not the "traditional" type, such as Austism, or Down Syndrome, or Cerebral Palsy, etc.

Little Bit's "special needs" may not be as prominent, either, but they still effect our daily lives and routines. He has had therapy (speech, OT, PT) since he was younger than two years old. So, frankly, it is just as much a part of our life and routine as Teen Girl's insulin regimen is!

I tend to follow a more delayed-formal-education philosophy, so the early years are spent with me reading aloud quality books to the children, playing with math manipulatives, gardening and yard work, household chores, etc. Therapy just became a part of our education and daily activities.

As the children got older, and we incorporated more "book learning" activities, school became a little more structured. Now it isn't too unusual for us to do some school work on Sundays, since we know our therapy day, Tuesday, will not see much of the book work being done.

Of course, right now we don't seem to have much problem getting Little Bit to do certain of his school activities completed! He is enjoying his computer programs very much (thank you, TOS Crew!!). In fact, he comes to my room every morning (even Sabbath and Sunday!!) asking to do his schoolwork!! ;)

Which brings me to another method we have in this juggling act! Since the boys, especially Little Bit, wake earlier than the teens, I try to get some of the boys' one-on-one schoolwork completed before the teens even wake up! Sometimes even before breakfast.....

For those of you also affected by special needs, how do you juggle homeschool and special needs, therapy days, etc., in your home? Pin It Now!

Apraxia of Speech

My precious little seven year old has Apraxia. He didn't start vocalizing until at least two years old. He didn't start speaking words until about four years old.Even now, most of what he says, I cannot understand. He has been in speech therapy for a few years now, and I am sure has many more years ahead of him.

"What is Childhood Apraxia of Speech? Childhood Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder. For reasons not yet fully understood, children with apraxia of speech have great difficulty planning and producing the precise, highly refined and specific series of movements of the tongue, lips, jaw and palate that are necessary for intelligible speech. Apraxia of speech is sometimes called verbal apraxia, developmental apraxia of speech, or verbal dyspraxia. No matter what name is used, the most important concept is the root word "praxis." Praxis means planned movement. To some degree or another, a child with the diagnosis of apraxia of speech has difficulty programming and planning speech movements. Apraxia of speech is a specific speech disorder.” Taken from the Family Start Guide at Apraxia-Kids.Org

Day after tomorrow, Steven and I are participating in a walk, to raise funds for and awareness of Apraxia of Speech. Won't you please join us with your thoughts, prayers, and support? You can learn more about Apraxia, and our walk, by going here.I'll share more with you, after our walk.

The weather is supposed to be sunny, but rather chilly. I think it will be a more comfortable temperature for walking....and I am sure we will not be wearing shorts!! Pin It Now!

Steven, OT, PT, Speech and more

My darling Steven, who brings sunshine wherever he goes, is truly the joy of my "old age"! Because of his developmental delays, hearing impairment, etc., life is kept busy, too.

 

He has Occupational Therapy, Speech and Physical Therapy on Thursdays, and OT and Speech on Fridays.

 

Around the time of his birthday, the therapists pointed out that he was "tongue tied" and should probably have his tongue "clipped". So, an appointment was made to have that done on August 28.

 

On August 24, he had an appointment with the ENT specialist. That appointment was mainly follow-up on his hearing impairment. But I mentioned he was scheduled to have his tongue clipped the following Monday. The ENT looked at him and said, " He isn't tongue tied! Call and cancel the appointment!" I'm like, what!? Great, now who am I supposed to believe!!

 

Well, we got home that day too late for me to call; I didn't have time on Friday either (plus, we had no phone, thanks to that storm that knocked out the water pump!). So, come Monday morning, I took him in for the procedure anyway. I told them what the ENT said.

 

The attending doctor looked at him, and said that he was kind of borderline. He would probably be okay without the porcedure, but would probably benefit much more by having it done.

 

Well, we went ahead and had it done. He did just fine. Well, until we were on our way home, and he started waking up. He began to cry, and cry, and cry! I had to stop at Winn Dixie along the way, to pick up some pain medication. Here he was, crying and crying, and blood coming from his mouth! Everyone kept wondering what was wrong with him! I immediately gave him some of the medicine, and he fell asleep on the way home.

 

He slept a lot that day! And our visiting flat traveler kept him company!

 

 

 

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Back into Therapy

Well, we are finally getting Steven back into therapy.  This morning he had OT eval; Thursday he will have PT eval.  We are still waiting, and waiting, and waiting to get him in to Speech!!

 

He had a speach and hearing eval the end of December, and I was told then he would get onto a waiting list right away.  Well, come to find out last Wednesday (March 1), he was not on a waiting list!!! 

 

Anyway, this morning we had to be in Gainesville by about 8:15 (it is about an hour drive from here)--so we had to leave early.  In fact, I didn't even get to eat any breakfast.  And Jennifer had to dress Steven in the car after we got there, while I filled out paper work! 

 

He was rather clingy.  But I think he will get along okay with the therapist, once he gets acquainted.

 

I have a prayer request: Please pray he gets into Speech really, really soon!  Thank you!!

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