Episode 37- Pros and Cons of Retention for a Child with an IEP (aka "Holding Back")
Retaining your child on an IEP (or "holding them back") is a really hard decision, frought with emotions. Everyone appears to have a strong opinion, and parents can feel belittled and judged no matter what decision they make. Not anymore!
Related Podcast Episodes Mentioned:
Episode 16: Outside Evaluation vs. School Identification (Dyslexia is used as a detailed example)
Episode 36: High Impact Accommodations for Reading and Math
Resource links:
Overdrive Library Books (Audio)
Episode 38- Assistive Technology Tools for Dyslexia -Listener Request!- - 4:12:22, 9.50 AM.mp3
Beth [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Elevate Your Advocacy Podcast, I am super excited today because we have our first listener request episode, and we had Brandi write in and ask about my favorite assistive technology tools for kids with dyslexia, and I’m super excited to share my list with all of my favorite tools. So stick with me today. We’re going to talk about assistive technology tools for kids with dyslexia.
Beth (intro) [00:00:27] Hi there. Welcome to the Elevate your advocacy podcast. If you are a parent of a child with a disability in the United States, this is exactly the podcast you’ve been looking for. I’m Beth Liesenfeld, an occupational therapist who has participated in over 400 IEP meetings for all ages from two and a half to 21 years old, with all the different case managers and parents I’ve worked with. I started to notice some parents had approaches that inspired the school team to rise up and support their child, which resulted in a more effective and supportive IEP plan. After feeling lost and finding support in an online course for my own parenting journey, I got to thinking that there must be a great, easily accessible resource for parents to teach them the amazing strategies I saw working so well in the school setting. When I couldn’t find anything even remotely close to what I was looking for. I decided to find a way to share what I’d seen parents do in all of those meetings, but also find out more from the experts and other parents. Thus, ParentFriendlyOT was born At ParentFriendlyOT, we believe that every child deserves an informed adult advocate to speak up for them. We also believe that every parent has the capacity to be that advocate. They just need some guidance to know how to do it. Don’t forget to snag your free Parent IEP Get started pack at www.parentfriendlyot.com/pack. Just one little disclaimer that while I occasionally have lawyers on his guests, I myself am an occupational therapist and not a lawyer, and I don’t give legal advice on the podcast or in any of my online trainings. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.
Beth [00:02:02] OK, I am super excited to talk about dyslexia towards today because it’s one of my favorite things to talk about, and I do not think that we have been super specific about dyslexia yet. We have talked about it. It has come up in my interview with Liz Leggadro. That is in episode 16. She is a school psychologist but also a clinical psychologist. So she is talking about the differences between an outpatient and a school, identification or diagnosis in the outpatient world, ID in the school world. And she talks a lot about dyslexia in that episode. But we really haven’t dove into like what dyslexia is and some specific tools that you can use for suggestions for accommodations for dyslexia. So I’m super excited!
Beth [00:02:53] OTs in the school, usually are our technology type people because we like to accommodate for disabilities as well as remediate them. And in the schools, we do a lot of accommodation. We’re actually going to talk about that later. So I’m getting ahead of myself already because I’m just really excited. I’m really excited when people request certain things and I can address that more fully, so I’m really excited about that.
Beth [00:03:19] So first, we’re going to go into just a brief definition of dyslexia, and then we’re going to talk about what is assistive technology. And then we’re going to talk about the difference between remediation and accommodation. And of course, I have a ton of tools and suggestions to give you there as well. If you are listening and you’re like, I’m not going to remember all this stuff, Beth. Just remember that you can go to www.parentfriendlyot.com/podcast . And actually, this one is episode thirty eight. So it’s going to be www.parentfriendlyot.com/episode-38 But if you just go to the podcast homepage and find number 38, you can click on it there, and I will have the show notes, which will be a list of the tools that I’m going to talk about today as well.
Beth [00:04:06] OK, so we’re going to talk about what dyslexia is. And again, dyslexia is like the diagnosis, but actually it’s not an official diagnosis. It’s just a really common way to describe somebody who has a specific learning disability in reading. And Liz talks about this in that episode 16. So if you haven’t listened to it, go back and listen to it. But what she describes is it’s not an official diagnosis in the DSM, which is like the book of diagnoses, but it’s a cluster of symptoms. So we know it like in common, everyday life is the warning signs are like people reversing things or transposing things, which means like instead of eight, they’ll see 83 simple example, but with letters instead of numbers. Although the numbers thing is a thing, I think my husband has the numbers thing for sure, but it’s a difficulty with reading,.
Beth [00:05:01] So you definitely can get support for dyslexia. People understand what you say when you say dyslexia, but the official definition is it’s a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems, identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words. So hopefully that helps you clarify a little bit. Usually in the schools, it’s just classified as a specific learning disability or an SLD in reading. OK, so they’ll get special education services to help remediate and give them tools to be able to decode and read and most importantly, understand what they are reading. So that’s the definition of dyslexia.
Beth [00:05:45] So let’s talk about what is assistive technology?
Beth [00:05:47] My favorite so assistive technology also notated, and a lot of people work with “AT.” And these are typically accommodations that can go into the IEP section. Assistive technology, even since I became an OT not too long ago, these this technology has just changed so much. There’s more universal design concepts where everything is just built in, right? And my favorite universal design example is automatic opening doors when you go into like target. And so when you walk up to the door, it has motion sensor and it opens the door for you. Well, that definitely helps people with disabilities in wheelchairs because they don’t have an extra hand to open the door and coordinate going in right. But it helps everybody because as a mom, I usually have my toddler in one arm and a purse or something else in the other arm. It would be hard for me to open the door too, or it’s just very convenient for people to walk in. They don’t have to touch a handle that’s been important during COVID, so it really benefits everybody.
Beth [00:06:57] And some of these technology tools, assistive technology is really. Anything, whether that’s a computer or high tech thing or it’s a low tech thing like a checklist or a reading overlay, which we’re going to talk about those these are all pieces of equipment that help people access their environment, whether that’s like a computer or it’s something as simple as a checklist or some other tool that they have in front of them. So that’s a very long definition, and I threw in universal design as well because I just love that concept, and I think I have a guest lined up for talking about universal design, too. So that’s that’s coming, and we’ll focus more on that later. Let me know if you have specific questions about it before you have that interview.
Beth [00:07:43] So the third thing we’re going to talk about is the difference between remediation and accommodation. So remediation is actually teaching the skill. So in terms of dyslexia, this is going to be the special education teacher specifically teaching that child how to read specific strategies that work for people with dyslexia in how to decode, how to read, how to understand what they’re reading. OK?
Beth [00:08:09] Accommodation is you are just all treating altering the demands of the activity or you’re helping them in overcoming that barrier in a different way. So this is when OTs really shine because I like to call this practical problem solvers. So we’re like, OK, you can’t read, but you still need to learn this history book, right? And so how can we help you get that information into your brain with this huge barrier of not being able to decode and understand what you’re reading. And so that’s accommodation, and a lot of people shy away from accommodation because they say, Well, my child still needs to be able to read. Uh-Huh. Yeah, they do.
Beth [00:08:53] But in the meantime, when they are trying to catch up, let’s not have them fall behind in history or science, which is some things that they might really love to learn about just because they can’t read the text. So let’s overcome that so they can actually keep up and really enjoy what they’re learning and really overcome that barrier and see that there’s not all this pressure. And it’s it takes a lot to overcome a disability, right? It takes a lot of effort for them to learn how to read because it’s so much harder for them. So how can we accommodate that in the other subjects other than reading and really get them to understand and really be passionate about learning other things right because they might have a huge strength in science? Well, if we’re making them read and that becomes super taxing to them when we could make it easier for them to access that, then we’re shutting down a passion that they might really have. Does that make sense?
Beth [00:09:51] So I’m really excited to talk about the accommodation part, which is that that assistive technology part is a lot of that accommodation part.
Beth [00:10:00] OK, so let’s get into some dyslexia specific tools. And there is kind of a difference between like kindergarten or even, well, dyslexia really doesn’t pop up or like become a thing until like kindergarten first grade. So if we’re talking kinder through third grade, that’s when we use some low technology tools, so we’re still learning to read. Right? So all of the curriculum in these grades is typically learning how to read, how to decode vocabulary, how to put a sentence together, reading fluently, which means like how fast they can read, which drops off leader and really understanding what they are reading, right? You’re focusing on reading skills. This is a really, really good time to really focus on those skills.
Beth [00:10:51] So some things that can kind of help your child and some of these kind of blur that line between like understanding, vision and not vision, like do they need glasses, but vision in how the brain interprets the picture? Because if you think about that dyslexic trait of like swapping things or having letters reversed, which, by the way, in kinder to third grade, it is typical for kids to still reverse some letters. So don’t think that it has to be perfect. I have a tool for that to let me know if you want it. But you know, if that starts to persist in like flipping, you might also want to take your child to a behavioral optometrist or an ophthalmologist really is the best place to take them and see how their brain is processing that visual information, because that might be the answer.
Beth [00:11:43] And I probably should do a whole episode on that because I’m really passionate about vision, but I’ve just been focusing on IEP stuff anyway. So the first couple of tools that we have, if they’re are through third, you can try colored overlays and this is just like a piece of cellophane or like it’s thicker than a cellophane, but they’re called colored overlays, and you just place that over the book or a physical object. And it’s supposed to increase the contrast between the book like paper, you know, like the white space and then the black letters. So it’s supposed to be, you know, pretty high contrast black on white paper, but sometimes these colored tints can really help. There’s also like these erland glasses e r l y n glasses that supposedly help kids with, well, help people. You might see a couple of people around having them, but help them distinguish and just see better. And it’s more in the brain processing than it is like actual acuity of the eyeballs like 2020 vision. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the brain processing that picture.
Beth [00:12:51] So you can play around with some colored overlays. You can even get wrapping paper that has that colored tint on it and put it over. Usually, these kids that have dyslexia can tell you if they like it or not. And so they can kind of tell you a preference or they’re just they’ll just pull it off if they don’t like it. But generally, when I’ve worked with kids and they try to do a couple of different colors, they can say, Oh, I like this one or I do not like this one. And I’ve had a lot of kids like the green and the blue version. Some of them like the highlighter yellow. But I haven’t had a ton of kids like that. So you just have to kind of trial and error it with the colors and ask them if they want to try it. Typically, you can buy a packet off of Amazon really quick, and they’re pretty inexpensive. Or your special education teacher might have a pack and they might be able to trail them with them as well.
Beth [00:13:44] The other thing in which we talked about in the last couple of episodes with Jenna from Learning Link is she really likes these straight edge accommodation. So that’s like taking a piece of paper and putting it underneath the line that they’re reading and helping their eyes to follow the line of text that they’re on. I like reading windows, which again, they’re cellophane in the middle so you can have them colored. And then it’s kind of like a ruler that they move down so that they can keep track of the line. So those are really good just to kind of focus their attention on one line at a time and not get like overwhelmed with the amount of visual information that they’re trying to take in when they’re learning these really intensive, really hard for them reading skills.
Beth [00:14:27] Third grade and up is when it gets really, really fun. And I say that because typically kids and I don’t want to make blanket statement, but my experience is that when I work with kids, with dyslexia or specific learning disability in reading, it might not be that dyslexia cluster. They usually take to technology like kids I have never seen before in my life, right? They typically get it. Their brain gets it. And that’s why I get so excited.
Beth [00:14:56] Because once you know, middle of third is when we typically, as OTs across the country typically recommend to go to like typing instead of writing, if that gets really hard. And so this is why I say like third grade and up, you can start it earlier. If you want to you, you can advocate for that. But typically in the schools, in the districts that I’ve been in, they naturally go towards technology middle of third grade and on pretty frequently. And so everybody’s on a computer. So it’s a really easy thing like they’re not going to look any different. We’re just putting different tools on their Chromebooks or whatever they have.
Beth [00:15:34] So my favorite one in it is a paid extension is called cowriter. So “Co:Writer.” This is a paid app, but both of the districts that I have been in, they have paid for a district wide subscription to cowriter and I think it’s less than $10 a month if you just want to buy it on your own and try it out, you can also. I think you have a trial. I think you can do a free trial with it as well, but it is a lot of things. We use it most frequently for writing as the as it suggests, but it also is a screen reader so you can highlight a bunch of text and then right click it and then hit speak and it will speak it to you. Also, it is predictive text, so you know that when you’re on your phone and you’re texting and it has suggestions for the words that it thinks that you’re trying to spell, it does that. But in a word processing form, so you can be in Google Docs, any like web based platform and you can be in Google Docs and then it’ll predict what letters that you want and then what words. And then the cool thing is that you can add a period at the end or a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence, which reinforces putting a period at the end of the sentence, and then it’ll read the sentence to you.
Beth [00:16:53] So it’s a really cool accommodation to have. We have a ton of people on it in the in the district that I just worked for, so just a ton, we would just do it all the time, even if they didn’t have OT we would put them on it. And especially when they get to middle school, we just made sure that all the kids with an SD had it and they loved it.
Beth [00:17:13] It’s so funny. I went in there to consult with the teacher that has, like, you know, reading intervention class. And I went in there and I was like, OK, cool. So everybody, do you have cowriter? And they got really excited. They’re like, Yeah, we have cowriter. I’m like, OK, so I need to make sure that it’s working because sometimes over the summer, it like resets. And they were like, oh yeah, and I just fixed it and “blah blah blah.” They, like, were ahead of me. Like, all I had to do was say, “Hey, will you make sure it’s working and let me know if it’s not?” And then they could even fix it if it wasn’t working.
Beth [00:17:45] So this is a really cool extension, so it follows their Chrome profile. So if your district is a district that uses like Google Classroom or anything to do with Chrome, if they have Chromebooks, they obviously are using Chrome, then it follows their profile. So if they go home and they’re on like your laptop at home, as long as they sign into their Chrome profile, which is the browser profile, then they will have corridor on it and you don’t have to pay anything extra. So that’s what I love about it is it follows them around. It’s it’s a really cool program.
Beth [00:18:19] I also know a lot of districts use Google, read and write, and this does very similar things. So it’s again like your Google extension that you put on your Chrome profile. And as long as they are logged in, then they can use it. So same same type capabilities as co-writer co-writers. Just my favorite paint has slightly more features than Google read and write does, but I think they just improved Google read and write a little bit, so I haven’t used it recently. So that’s the thing is like, these things keep changing.
Beth [00:18:47] Another thing that I really, really, really love, and it used to be free, and now it’s an extension that’s paid, but we can probably find one that’s free if you’re like, Hey, I need something similar to this and this is called beeline reader. So “Beeline” and then reader.
Beth [00:19:04] So it used to be free. And what it does is it changes on any website, absolutely any website. It changes the text to dyslexic font. And this is a font that’s been researched. It’s called dyslexie, actually dyslexie, and this is an award winning font that is proven to help dyslexics read, and it has more weight or more thickness on the bottom of the letters. So it looks really funky to me because I’m not dyslexic, but I can still read it, but apparently it’s really helpful for dyslexic.
Beth [00:19:41] It also this extension also colors the line of text. So if you have a paragraph and let’s say they’re looking up groundhogs, I don’t know. And there’s like a paragraph of text for groundhog’s. The first line will be like red, and then it’ll fade to black and then it’ll fade to blue. So that it’s easier for them to follow the lines down because it’s a different color, so like they’re looking for the color that ended on the right hand side to continue on the left hand side. Hopefully, that makes sense. You can look at Beeline Reader and see what it looks like. It’s really fantastic. I really love it. If you can’t tell.
Beth [00:20:20] The next thing is a screen reader. So I said that co-writer and this is also called text to speech. So it reads whatever is on the screen to you, so it translates text to speech. I always have to think about that because we also do like speech to text, right? So this is also called a screenreader. If your child has access to a Chromebook, it is actually integrated into the Chromebook, and I do believe that it’s integrated into any Mac product products as well. And this is that universal design concept that’s really exploding within the technology world. It’s really cool, but all you have to do on a Chromebook is you have to go into the settings and turn it on. Under the accessibility settings, and then you just hit the magnifying glass button in the S button for speak and it will speak the page for you. So this happens like in word document. Also, you can do it online as well, and that’s just built in. You don’t have to download anything, you just have to turn it on. It’s super duper cool.
Beth [00:21:21] And I remember again, teaching kids with dyslexia this and they just like, Yep, got it. Like, I had to show them once and then maybe remind the teachers a couple of times, and how do you do it? And the kids just get it so fast. It’s just amazing. I love it.
Beth [00:21:37] The next is some voice to text, so speech to text, which is the reverse, right? So this is really helpful when writing because it can be really taxing in general. You need to be able to read first before you can write really well, because if you think about it, you have to learn, you know, the sentence structure and you have to have all of that kind of down before you can write really well. But with this change of being able to use your voice to type it, and have it on the paper, of course, like kids with dyslexia can typically speak in full sentences, they typically have okay grammar, you know, that might be a challenge for them as well. But the cool thing is this voice to text. And again, this is a feature of cowriter in Google read and write. But also, there is integrated tools that are free through Google Docs.
Beth [00:22:27] So if you use Google Docs, then you go into the tools menu and you can have the voice typing option. And so you can just tuck into there and it is a little bit fine. You know, they do need a quiet space to use this, you know, for this, for the text to speech, they can do headphones and that can be an accommodation that they have headphones to listen to, things being read to them. But this one is a little bit tricky because that microphone, when they tuck into their computer, picks up everything. And even if they have headphones with a microphone on it, they still tend to pick up everything in the room. So a lot of these kids end up like stepping into the hall. There’s usually desk desks in the hall or whatever, or they have a quiet place to go to so that they can do their writing in the hall. And most of them don’t seem to mind doing that actually, from my experience of what I’ve seen. So they’ll go out into the hallway, they’ll do the writing and then they’ll come back. So that is a really cool, such a cool tool for them. That is just it’s so standard now.
Beth [00:23:26] E, even if I’m late getting to somebody like, say, a special education teacher has somebody on their caseload. I didn’t get to them in time or it’s been a week or two or whatever. So I could install cowriter. A lot of them will show me what they’re already doing and they’ve already figured it out. They’ve already figured out they can do voice typing on their on their Google Docs. So these are very creative, inventive kids that can problem solve. And I I don’t want to ever, ever discourage that, right?
Beth [00:23:55] The next thing is a tool called Snap and Read, and this is also from Don Johnston, which is the cowriter company. So you do have to pay for it, but it is really cool. So Snap and read can again, it works on anything that’s online. And it is. I can do a lot of things. The thing that is most helpful probably is leveling the vocabulary so you can bring it up on a website. And if it has some big words and you can do the settings so that it knows what grade level to grade it too, but it will take those bigger words and replace them with synonyms that mean the same thing, but they’re smaller. Words are easier to read, and then you can hover over it because at italicized, is it? And then you can see what the word was before it was replaced and then a definition. So it’s really quite cool. It takes more time to read it, of course, but it’s really neat.
Beth [00:24:48] And then it also reads that to them. So it’s a text to speech app. And the last thing that I’m going to mention, it also translates things. But the last thing that I really want to highlight is you can pull information into an outline. So it’s a little bar that comes up on the right hand side and you can highlight like a sentence if you’re doing like a report and you can pull it over to the right hand side and drop it into that outline. And so then you can export it into a Google Doc and then you have, of course you don’t want to copy, but then you have like the outline for what you’re trying to do, and it’s just it’s really helpful. So a lot of those kids that need help with like structuring paragraphs and things like that, it’s pretty amazing. OK?
Beth [00:25:32] The last specific thing that I’m going to mention are audio books. So again, this is a compensatory technique because as long as they know the information, then you know they’re learning, right? So audiobooks are really handy. We actually recommend that people get a library card and get hooked up with it’s called an app called Overdrive or Libby. I’ve seen it change to Libby recently. I don’t know why, but those are the apps that you can have on your phone that connect to your library card. So these are all free. Now these work for like novels and things that you might need for language arts or reading course, but it doesn’t necessarily help with textbooks. So, so many new curriculums will have the textbooks online. So definitely ask the general information teacher that is in the reading curriculum if there’s a way to get that shared with your child because a lot of times the textbook is uploaded and it can have these integrated tools, especially if it’s a more recent curriculum that they’re using if they updated it. I know we just went through a curriculum change two years ago, and they sat down with us and gave us a login for it. And I’m not in the curriculum world a ton, but I just know from looking at that dashboard that there are options to make it more accessible for kids. So ask if the curriculum has a built in like screen reader or text reader for that text book. That might be helpful.
Beth [00:26:57] Most of the time they’re reading like booklets or. Novels and kind of that that kind of context, so it should be pretty easy to find it through your library app, but if they don’t, then there’s different things that you can do. There’s also kind of an older program called Book Share. I think it’s online. Actually, I never used it. Our district used it, but I always referred it to somebody else to work on and get access to. So it’s called book share, and that is more like text book kind of things, and it’s more designed for people who are visually impaired. But it does like read along. So it like highlights the word that it’s reading as it goes. And most of these screenwriters do that now, but it’s kind of like the original screen reader for textbooks, so you can ask your district if they have access to that or something similar, right? It doesn’t have to be these specific tools. It can be something that has the same capabilities that’s going to be really helpful. Okay.
Beth [00:27:54] So when you get into older grades and apps and when your kid can have a phone with them, there are a ton of apps that are accessible and they absolutely help with with being read and speak things and read text to them in and whatever else. So there are a ton of things on the phone if your child is allowed to be on the phone. So super cool.
Beth [00:28:20] These are my highlighted versions. Of course, there’s a ton more out there. Let me know if you have any questions, especially in like the extensions and what those are. It’s basically an app for Chrome. You can go to the Chrome Web Store, you can just Google that and then you can search like cowriter or snap and read in there and you can see what they look like so that you can know what to advocate for if you think that would be helpful.
Beth [00:28:42] So the most fun part about working with this population, again, is that they can tell you what’s working and what they like and what they don’t like. And so, so often I have kids, you know, I’ll give them co-writer and co-writer works most of the time, but I’ll have some kids, especially in the older grades, and I’ll be like, Are you using your co-writer? No, I’m like, Okay, that’s fine, but what are you using instead? And they’re like, Oh, use this and this and this. And so they can tell you your their preference, and they’re probably going to know about technology before we even know about it. They’re just resourceful. Like that is what I found in my experience.
Beth [00:29:18] So I am so excited to be able to give these tools to you. Don’t forget that the list is in the show notes atwww.parentfriendlyot.com/podcast . I would absolutely love it if you would share this podcast with any connections that you have that you would benefit. If there’s a friend who would benefit from knowing these tools, that would be amazing. If you could share it, you guys are sharing it and it’s growing, and I really appreciate it because that just means that I’m able to help. More parents and more kids have a more joyful experience in the public schools, and that just makes my heart happy.
Beth [00:29:54] So thank you for sharing it and thank you for being here. The last reminder that I want to give you is that I am running a IEP paperwork workshop and so you can find out more information about that at parentfriendlyot.com/paperwork.
Beth [00:31:27] As always, thank you for spending time with me. I know that your time is so valuable and I so appreciate it. Thank you for being here. I will see you next time next week at the same place. Same time. Talk to you soon. Bye.