We finally entered third grade, in the fall of 2007. Amy had not only the reading support, but, now was receiving basic skills math in the classroom, too. We continued to have her tutor come out weekly. The tutor was very helpful, not only to Amy, but, to myself. I learned various techniques, that involved tactile, sensory, visual and kinesthetic learning techniques. As I researched Dyslexia, I learned that these were Orton-Gillingham based, and that they were used to help dyslexic children/adults to learn how to read. Amy, once again, lucked out in the teacher placement, and was placed in the classroom, of a caring, and concerned teacher.
I will never forget back to school night, this past year. Amy’s teacher had all the children write a story about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most of the children had well written, well spelt, ideas and stories. They had separate words, that were not running together, and were able to write on a line without a wavy approach. They had proper capitalization and punctuation. But, when I saw Amy’s work, it looked out of place. It looked like a kindergartner, or an early first grader had written the words. The spelling was phonemic, many letters were backwards, and there were many words that were backwards (of was fo, for was orf, saw= was, etc). I didn’t want to let the other parents know that my child had written it! I was really sad. I did know that we had a learning problem, but, to see how far behind she was was like a slap in the face.
I met with the basic skills reading teacher. She was new this year for Amy. She was genuinely concerned. She knew that there was some sort of language disorder going on. She thought that she was being seen by the speech therapist, but, she was discharged in second grade, and was only seen for an articulation problem not for a speech and language disorder. I met with the speech therapist, and discussed my concerns and those of the basic skills teacher. She recommended, requesting a child study team evaluation, AGAIN.
I went home, and researched dyslexia and dysgraphia. Amy presented with almost all the signs and symptoms of both. I wanted to meet with her teacher one on one, before I met with the child study team. At our parent teacher conference, I had brought a child study team request letter with me. I met with Amy’s teacher, and we both came to the same opinion, that she was smart, but, her grades were not reflecting her intelligence.
On my way out, I dropped my letter off to the Child Study Team. This was in the beginning of October. I finally heard from them, and a meeting to determine if they were going to evaluate was set up for November.
Mom Of a Child who is Dyslexic 