by PRIDE Reading Program Admin | Sep 12, 2014 | Pride Redondo Beach
You are invited to an Open House at PRIDE Learning Center in Redondo Beach!
September 19, 2014
10:00am – 2:00pm
PRIDE Learning Center is a non-public agency (NPA) providing high quality and cost-effective reading, writing, comprehension and math tutoring services. We are located in Orange County and Los Angeles and also provide on-site services as well.
- Our teachers are all credentialed reading specialists with Orton-Gillingham Certification and strong special education backgrounds.
- Our average student progresses one complete grade level in 4-6 weeks!
- Flexible after-school hours, intensive reading therapy and fun summer camp programs.
Come to our OPEN HOUSE and meet our wonderful staff and learn more about our research-validated programs. We will have light refreshments.
We are looking forward to meeting and networking with you!
Regards,
Cindy Ragsdale, M.Ed.
Redondo Beach Center Director
T. 310-322-2800 Ext. 6
Email: rb@pridelearningcenter.com
www.pridelearningcenter.com
by PRIDE Reading Program Admin | Sep 3, 2014 | A PRIDE Post, IEP
PREPARE FOR THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR
As you and your child await the beginning of a new school year, now is the time to review your child’s IEP and determine whether the IEP proposed at the IEP meeting held last school year is appropriate for the new school year. Children, especially younger children, can transform during the summer; physical development, new experiences and opportunities to engage with other children during the summer can significantly impact a child. Before your child begins school, carefully review his/her IEP and determine whether changes are in order.
If you believe revisions should be made, clearly identify concrete examples of how your child has changed. For example, stating, “My child is talking more” is not as helpful as, “This summer, my son starting using adjectives to describe things. I made a list of the ones I have heard him use and I will provide you a copy.” You should also identify what specific changes you are seeking.
Asking for “better goals” or “more services” will leave school staff confused, whereas, asking that a goal be developed in a certain area or that your child receive a particular service will allow your requests due consideration. A school district must provide a detailed response to parental requests to a change an IEP. If the changes are simple, you may be able to make those changes through an IEP Amendment without the necessity of a meeting. However, you are always better served to make a written request for an IEP meeting and cancel the meeting if it is not needed rather than request a meeting at the last minute. In California, a school district is required to convene an IEP meeting within 30 days of receiving a written parental request for an IEP meeting (prolonged periods where school is not in session generally do not count towards those 30 days). Ca. Ed. Code §56343.5.
EVALUATE AND PROVIDE INFORMATION
If parents find that changes in their child warrant changes to their child’s IEP, they should not hesitate to make their concerns and requests known to their school district. (One way to determine whether changes need to be made to the IEP is to mentally walk through the child’s school day to visualize how the child is doing across a wide array of settings, activities and events, and see whether the IEP provides the appropriate level of support for the child.) If you request an IEP meeting, prepare well for the meeting. Carefully review the IEP so you can specifically focus on your areas of concern. If you have documented information that your child has changed, provide it to the IEP team. Parents are also permitted to bring anyone they believe may have “knowledge or special expertise” regarding their child to the IEP meeting. Ca. Ed. Code §56341(b)(6).
THINGS TO LOOK FOR AS YOU REVIEW YOUR CHILD’S IEP
- How has my child’s performance across activities, settings and events changed?
- Are the components of the IEP prepared last school year appropriate for the new school year?
- Should I request an IEP meeting to make changes to the IEP?
- What documentation can I provide that will demonstrate the changes in my child and/or how the IEP should be changed?
- Are there professionals or other individuals with specialized knowledge regarding my child that I should invite to the IEP meeting?
Michael E. Jewell graduated from Brigham Young University Law School and has been a practicing attorney for more than twenty years. He may be contacted by calling (714)-978-0110, emailing mjewell@jewellawoffice.com or on the web at www.jewellawoffice.com.
He has represented parents of children with all types of disabilities from autism through specific learning disability and traumatic brain injury and has represented parents in IEP meetings throughout the State of California. He has presented to both parent groups and professional groups. He has represented families at mediation, in due process hearings and in the United States District Court. Mr. Jewell has argued before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Jewell is married and the father of three children. He lived in Argentina for two years and is fluent in Spanish.
by PRIDE Reading Program Admin | Jul 8, 2014 | A PRIDE Post, Autism, Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension help for students with autism may requires a few strategies that YOU the parent or teacher can easily do at home or in the classroom. Studies consistently show that children who are encouraged to use visual imagery have improved performance on tests of comprehension and recall of materials. For many children with autism, this skill of using mental imagery in text is an extremely challenging task. Nevertheless, this method can be taught and mastered.
Reading Comprehension help for students with autism involves VISUALIZATION. This is one of the most effective ways to help improve reading comprehension in a child with autism. How do you teach this? Well …. try to encourage the child to form mental pictures of the events described in the stories read.
TEACHING VISUALIZATION…
An autistic child struggling with reading comprehension will benefit from a teaching method geared to make sure that he understands and thinks about word meaning as he reads and that provides a specific scheme for visualizing. For example, a teacher might stop a student after reading a few lines and encourage the student to form a mental picture with a question such as “what do you think that looked like?” This allows the student to build imagery directly related to the concepts conveyed in the reading and at the same time to continue to focus on the printed symbols on the page.
- Use prior knowledge and pre-reading strategies. “Look at the title. Think about what the story might be about.”
- For stories, the student can visualize what is happening at the beginning, middle, and end of the story. “Read or listen to the first few sentences. Remember to get a picture in your head for each sentence. Do not continue until you get a moving picture in your head, kind of like a movie.”
- For informational text, student can think about key words and visualize the content they are learning. “Read or listen to this paragraph. Remember to get a picture for each sentence. Ask me if you do not understand a word.”
- Students should be asked to explain their images. “Can you describe what you see as you are reading.”
- Students should compare the picture in their minds with what they are reading. “Tell me as much information as you can remember.””
Integrating the child’s own artwork with story reading, such as having the child draw a map or diagram of events, or represent the story in cartoon form, is also useful. They can also read an entire passage and then create an illustration that represents the main idea of the paragraph. To help the child decide which ideas are most important, provide them with some guidelines: “If this story were to be made into a movie, which scenes absolutely must be included for the story to make sense. Which scenes would be funny, sad, etc.”?
Reading Comprehension help for students with autism involves your help and guidance in teaching visualization strategies. Good Luck – and let us know how they worked!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Karina Richland, M.A. is the Founder of PRIDE Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County. Ms. Richland is a reading and learning disability specialist and speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences. You can reach her by email at karina@pridelearningcenter.com or visit the PRIDE Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com
by PRIDE Reading Program Admin | May 20, 2014 | Summer Programs
Summer is the perfect time to catch up on any learning deficiencies your child may have. By dedicating more time than is possible during the school year, a student can make a remarkable amount of progress during the summer – as much as a year’s progress in just 4-6 weeks!
In addition, working on skill-building during the summer months prevents further deterioration of skills – the dreaded “summer slide.”
At PRIDE Learning Center we offer an amazing summer program to help students enter the new school year prepared to meet and exceed classroom expectations.
Students attend Monday – Friday from 9:00am – 12:00pm or 12:30pm – 3:30pm.
Parents can sign up for any weeks between June 2nd and August 29th
We have locations in Redondo Beach, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo and San Clemente.
Struggling Readers
For students struggling to learn to read, we offer out intensive Orton-Gillingham reading program. Your child will work one-on-one with our credentialed and Orton-Gillingham Certified teachers (not tutors) using the best research-based and multi-sensory materials. At PRIDE Learning Center we specialize in helping children with learning differences by focusing on the underlying foundational skills that are preventing your child from reading.
Reading Comprehension
Designed for students who know how to read fluently but are struggling with comprehension, this intensive program teachers your child strategies and skills to improve “Reading to Learn.” The goal of this program is to teach children to be efficient readers so that they can learn the content begin taught in any of their classes. These are skills that must be explicitly learned, they do not come naturally to many students. At PRIDE Learning Center, our highly effective comprehension program provides students with the ability to conceptualize mental images that match content, and use language to describe those images. Starting at a concrete level and moving towards more abstract concepts, we are able to help students visualize the content of what they are reading.
Basic Math Skills
Our math program is for students of all ages who are struggling with basic math concepts. At PRIDE Learning Center, we build an understanding of mathematical concepts by using visual learning tools, game playing and exercises that engage all the senses. Our one-on-one, multisensory math program gives students a strong math foundation. Students master their number facts and numerical fluency. They are given the essential tools for a strong math foundation.
Writing Skills
Our writing skills program effectively teaches essential skills in careful order: from parts of speech, to sentence structure, to paragraphs, to complete essays. For the reluctant beginner writer, our program provides the essential foundation in thinking and writing skills. For the more proficient and advanced writer, it offers opportunities, strategies, and techniques to apply them.
For more information on our summer programs call us at 866-774-3342 ext. 1 or you can email us at: info@pridelearningcenter.com
by PRIDE Reading Program Admin | Apr 29, 2014 | A PRIDE Post, Executive Functioning Skills
Executive functioning has become a very popular term in recent years, especially as it relates to treating children. In the past, diagnosis involving children’s attention, activity level, organizing and problem solving were made. However often little was discussed with parents regarding improving deficits, executive functioning, using behavioral techniques.
Executive functioning (also known as cognitive control and supervisory attentional system) is an umbrella term for the management (regulation, control) of cognitive processes, including working memory, reasoning, task flexibility, and problem solving, as well as planning and execution. It has also expanded to include organization and impulse control. Executive functioning affects not only children’s behaviors but expands to social abilities and their ability to learn. It includes their ability to self-regulate, to infer and ponder consequences, to encode information in memory.
What we deem largely as automatic, or multi-tasking, is often a skill that needs to be modeled and taught. Children can benefit from working on executive functioning whether they are typically developing, or have clinical diagnosis that includes impairments in these areas. Think about the things that cause stress in your home. Perhaps you begin to worry time and time again when your son doesn’t call you after baseball practice only to find out later he forgot to charge his phone. Perhaps your high school daughter realizes she has a project due the night before it is to be turned in, or maybe you have numerous calls from your child’s teacher with regards to forgetting materials, including books, pencils, homework. Many times, parents can be frustrated in the lack of executive functioning skills if they themselves have relative strengths in these areas. On the flip side, on many occasions when parents have difficulties in the same areas of executive functioning as their children, they sympathize with the children, and lack an understanding of how to help them other than to offer commiseration.
One of the greatest things parents can do to assist in helping their children grow in this area is scaffolding. Scaffolding is a teaching method that enables an individual to achieve a goal or task under adult guidance, or more capable peers. It is important to know what appropriate expectations would be, given your child’s developmental level. For instance, you wouldn’t expect your children to pack their own lunch at 3 years old.
Ways to increase executive functioning
- Identify situations that cause inattention or frustration (identifying situations that make your child or adolescent stressed. Bringing this to their attention will help you both problem solve alternative behaviors to make the situation easier).
- Change tasks frequently to decrease drain on working memory
- Frontload information especially when task is novel or not routine (practice a song that will be sung in the classroom or go over key points in a chapter that will be discussed in class before the teacher presents material)
- Cue your child to complete a task when in the same environment (i.e., ask children to clear their plate in the kitchen)
- Offer breaks that allow for physical activity
- Create a structured environment whenever possible
- Pair tasks your child has mastered with those that are new or more of an energy cost
- Encourage thinking of future scenarios (discussing an upcoming assignment or event with a child gives them the opportunity to collect appropriate materials and create a timeline).
- Underline key concepts when reading (parent or child should underline or highlight main points being read. When answering questions, read questions first, then material).
Dr. Robin Morris is a Clinical Psychologist. She holds a Masters in Family and Child Therapy and a Graduate Academic Certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis. Dr. Morris resides in Mission Viejo where she conducts psychoeducational assessments, school/home observations used to determine appropriate placements and services, as well as functional Behavior Assessments. you can contact her at (949) 351-3770 or email her at drmorris05@yahoo.com. Visit her website at drrobinmorris.com
