Jennie Sjursen 0:00
It's nearly here. We're knocking on the door of what you ask. IEP season, of course, the least wonderful time of the year.
Jennie Sjursen 0:11
I'm Jenny Sjursen, ex special educator turned dyslexia interventionist. It wasn't so long ago that I too, was overwhelmed by balanced literacy versus structured literacy, education speak, and everything in between. Fast forward after many, many hours of self driven education, and you'll see I've built a thriving dyslexia practice helping students from ages six to eight t. My specialties, working with the quote unquote difficult almost always to the student, and breaking down the complexities of dyslexic to everyday language strategies and action steps.
Jennie Sjursen 0:52
If you're new to the process, or have selective amnesia, you may not realize we are heading into prime IP season. Traditionally, mid January through mid March is when the bulk of the yearly IEP meetings take place. From a teaching point of view, it's erasing from meeting to meeting from the very beginning to the very end of the season. From a parent's point of view, it's a time of anxiety and stress, hoping you do the best for your child, while frequently feeling like much of what is being said is going over your head.
Jennie Sjursen 1:26
To help you out, we've put together 12 questions to ask at a dyslexia IEP meeting, including answers. We've also created a PDF with all the questions and answers and linked to it below in our show notes. You can download it now to follow along or download it later and place it in your IEP binder as an extra resource. Okay, let's get started. Question one. How does everyone at the meeting know or work with my child? Good answer. They have worked closely with your child or extensively observed them in multiple settings, not just in the hallways or cafeteria. Question two, what is your understanding of dyslexia? Good answer. someone on the team should be able to give you a reasonable working explanation of what dyslexia is and how it affects students. Question three, what type of instructional approach will be used? Good answer. And explicit multisensory structured literacy approach that includes phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, morphology, sentence structure, and comprehension. Questions four. Why has this approach been chosen? And what needs will this approach specifically address? Good answer? This answer will depend upon the weaknesses found in your child's evaluation, report, observations and classroom work. For example, if a weakness was found in phonemic awareness, the approach used should address this issue.
Jennie Sjursen 3:08
Question number five, and this is a biggie who will be providing the reading services? Good answer. Services will be directly delivered by a specialist or teacher with training and dyslexia and explicit multi sensory approaches. Question number six, what training or credentials does the person providing the services have? Good answer. A specialist or a teacher with training in dyslexia and explicit multi sensory approaches. Bear in mind, quote unquote years of experience is not the same thing as being trained in dyslexia and the appropriate instructional approaches. That is a red flag. Question number seven. how often and how long are the service sessions? Good answer. The sessions are being delivered with fidelity the frequency and duration outlined in the guidelines for the chosen reading instructional approach or program. Question number eight, when and where will the services be delivered? Good answer, one on one services and a pull out resource room setting. When this is not feasible and acceptable alternative is a small pull out group, a group of two to three students all have the same skill level in a resource room.
Jennie Sjursen 4:32
Question number nine. How will mastery be measured? Good answer. First, we need to know their benchmark present levels in the area foundational reading skills we ultimately want your child to perform at a 90% or higher accuracy level. We may have to scaffold the instruction in yearly goals depending on your child's current present levels and learning profile. I want you to note I said 90% Not at question number 10. How often will you evaluate whether or not this is the appropriate program for my child? Good answer. An intervention is utilized for six to eight weeks. If at the end of that time period, we don't see a response to the intervention. We need to reconvene and evaluate what's working, what isn't? Do we need to increase the number of sessions or length of sessions, etc? Question 11. Why do you think my child hasn't made meaningful progress on their reading, spelling or writing goal? Or what do you plan to do differently to ensure my child makes progress on their goals in the upcoming year? Good answer. The approach or the intensity of the approach we are using is not the appropriate one for your child. We need to reevaluate and adjust instruction.
Jennie Sjursen 5:57
Question 12? What additional accommodations or supports will my child receive? Good answer. There are many good answers. Some of the most common are your child will receive extra time on all assignments and assessments, fewer items per page, text to speech speech to text, frequent breaks and reduce distractions. If you have any further questions about our 12 questions to ask and dyslexia IEP meeting, please feel free to sneak into my inbox. In our next episode will dive into something near to my heart, dyslexia and ADHD. Until next time, bye bye I hope you enjoyed this episode of literacy untangled if you love this episode as much as I can head on over and rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you want to continue the conversation or share your takeaways, head on over to our Instagram at literacy untangled and comment on your favorite part. I can't wait to hang out with you again soon. Bye
