What is the difference between support and remediation?
Friday, January 28th, 2005
How do you determine when to stop remediation because it’s taking too much of a toll on a child?
How do you determine when to pull back on academic support so that children with learning disabilities can attempt to work independently?
These are tough but important questions and have to do with academic performance and social issues at the same time.
Seems like the public school my child goes to will keep those services going on forever, my question is when do you stop? There will always be a lag for some of my child’s need areas.
Seems to be doing okay, just had an outside evaluation done and they rec. help for organization/study skills, tutoring for math and accommodations.
Has been going to the resource room forever, but just seems like in middle school it is a place to do homework or catch up on an assignment. Very little time for any instruction since the group is so mixed.
When do you let go of the resource room, the SLP services, the OT…., high school is around the corner.
My child wants out – but we can’t ignore his LD’s and I am wondering what is best
Support is like a crutch that you have to use as long as you have a broken leg. If your leg is broken forever, then the crutch is used forever. If your leg heals then the crutch is not useful anymore (although you might have gotten used to it so find it hard to walk on your now good leg).
Remediation is like a “cure” where teachers work on weaknesses with exercises until those weaknesses are no longer as weak, or, are “normalized” and this process can take a long time or, in the case of school, go on forever, especially when it’s mixed up with support.
And, these things are almost always mixed up and rightly so as they are very similar and get worked on in parallel.
Support might be physical: using a keyboard instead of a pen.
Remediation might be cognitive: drilling vowel sounds to learn the difference.
Both take time to learn and grow into and / or grow out of.
In the case of the keyboard you use it forever and your handwriting gets worse (unless you practice that as well). But, if you don’t learn to use it well then the offset between handwriting and keyboarding is less or not meaningful.
In the case of the vowel sound drills you might make it over the hump and know them forever, but not unless you USE them regularly in reading and writing so practice forever is an essential ingredient.
Then there’s the emotional burden of being labeled as broken and in need of support or remediation. It is many times useful to get rid of the “crutch” so as to look okay because of the social toll of using a crutch in a crutchless world.
There’re more but I’ve not had enough coffee yet this this morning to get to it.
But, all of this is complex and as you tease it out there are nuances within the nuances.
What a fantantic question!
I agree that remediation all but stops by the middle school years, although I am finding out with the younger one that the issue can be forced if the severity of the LD warrents it. With the older one (entering 8th grade) I am weighting the benefits of the “extra study hall” vs. the “cost.” If your child wants out, and you think he can do the work outside the school and doesn’t need the down time, I’d seriously think about quiting the resource room….he can keep the accomidations in place in the mainstream if necessary. My child doesn’t mind the resource room. But then, he is basically lazy and when I pointed out to him that he’d have to do that work at night, instead of going to friends’ houses, to stay became an easy question. I will be the one forcing him out when he gets to high school so he gets enough credits to graduate.
With my younger son its a whole different ball game. He is so far behind and has real support, even in middle school, that I don’t see him leaving resource for a long time….he’ll graduate late or have to do summer school. That’s just the way it is.
Interesting to think about.
I am looking for specific remediation techniques for my 5th grade son who has mild-moderate dysnomia. He also has dyslexia but is doing fairly well with that as he attended an excellent school for LD kids. We have mainstreamed him this year (to a very good school that has a LD program called Discovery) and have realized that he has all the attributes of one with dysnomia. This is making test-taking horrific, even with accomodations, as memorizing details such as names, lables, dates, etc., is very tricky. Are there things I can do to help him memorize facts? He’s very good with concepts but bad with details.
Tiffany: I like self-made flash cards for fact memorization. I make a pack up with a question on one side and the answer on the other. I go through them without checking answers and do the best I can, then read through the answers, then do it again, then put them down for a while, then repeat.
Just informal immersion rather than deep studying can take the pressure off and get things stuck in brains in different kinds of ways.
You also might consider mnemonic help on each card, word associations to help memory.
LOVE flashcard idea as a support and will start today with flashcards for history test on Monday! Am wondering if there are also real remediation techniques similar to Orton-Gilligham (sp?) that might help him strengthen his ability to memorize facts. Do you know if there are any? Can’t find anything anywhere on this. Also re: testing, processing written instructions seems to be difficult. His overall reading comprehension is surprisingly good, however, when it comes to written instructions, i.e., what is he being asked to do?, what he is being asked to choose?, etc., he gets bogged down and can get confused. Any suggestions for him here – besides relax and slow down? thanks so very much!
Tiffany, there may be but remember, what O/G is all about is learning about sound and so, why not use sound mnemonics to make associations with factual sentences and words.
“In fourteen hundred and ninty two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
As far as parsing written instructions… tell me about it, I downloaded a sample ballot so that I could study it before Tuesday to make sure I voted the way I wanted. It’s not like I can’t fill in bubbles, but I find the layout on typical ballots visually confusing.
So, for me, rehearsal is the answer.
If there was a way to practice and rehearse typical test instructions that might help him. Rehearsal takes some of the pressure off because you’re not seeing the instructions for the first time on the day of the test.