Last week I did a training on dyslexia and dysgraphia for parents and teachers of Knox County. The Knox County Council PTA and the Knox County Education Association sponsored the event and Knox County Schools approved the PowerPoint which allowed teachers the option to use it as part of their inservice hours. For those of you that were not able to attend KCS also sent someone to video tape the training and I will attach it here.

https://vimeo.com/144021331

Time for an IEP meeting for my daughter.

Last year I did a blog post about my advice, you can click here to read it, but I forgot one bit of advice and that is something that I have to work on every year...putting a notebook together.

My daughter's notebook is a 3" 3 ring binder, and that is not even including the 2 full file folders I have for all of her testing and school work from the previous years. 

This is what I recommend you keep in your child's notebook...

• All Progress Monitoring and Universal Screener papers. These should come home every 4.5 weeks if your child is in RTI tier 2 or 3 but you may need to ask your child's teacher for them.
  
• Report cards and state testing results. Make sure you make a copy of the report card before you send it back in to school.
  
• If your child has an IEP keep all those papers together as well. ALL papers...prior written notice, notes, the actual IEP including any drafts you receive.
• Emails. Print all emails and keep them together in one spot.
• Current schoolwork. Now, I am not saying keep every single piece of paper that comes home but anything that is significant. If you are concerned about math, keep math papers, if you are concerned about spelling and writing, then be sure to save those papers.
• I also keep a tab for dyslexia papers and I make sure I have extra copies. You have heard me say this before but teachers don't get trained on what dyslexia looks like while they are in college, so having some information to hand out will be helpful.

The more organized you are the easier it is to attend meetings and be able to speak about your child.

Yesterday, October 23, 2015 OSERS (Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services) released a memo that needs to be shared. Make copies and take this to your IEP meetings.