Getting Ready for the New School Year - A Webinar

Last week, Dr. Paul Yellin and Susan Yellin, Esq. presented a webinar for ADDitude Magazine on “9 Ways to Prime Your Child for a Positive School Year." The discussion, with slides and a Q&A session at the end, focused on using the remainder of the summer to prepare for a return to what for most students will be in-person learning this fall. More than 700 attendees watched live and over 6,000 more  signed up to watch it later

The Yellins' recommendations included both steps that parents should take and those that were more focused on student readiness - all keeping in mind that it's been a rough year and a half and that students and their families need a chance to engage in summer activities that are enjoyable and that build social as well as educational skills.

Parents were reminded that this summer would be a good time to review their child's IEP or 504 Plan, and seek to make changes to it, if needed, before school begins in the fall. For children who are taking ADHD medication, Dr. Yellin discussed the importance of working with your child's doctor to monitor the effectiveness and side effects, if any, of medication and to keep a "medication diary" to share with your child's prescribing physician. Dr. Yellin spoke about the importance of frontloading and having a "growth mindset'" as discussed by Dr. Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset.

Both speakers mentioned a number of tools, apps, and websites that could build skills that may be needed to begin the next school year primed for success. These included those that were free and fun, like Bedtime Math to others that are more focused in their approach, such as IXL 

You can access this presentation as a video replay, listen to the podcast episode (#363), and download the slide presentation, with numerous slides and suggestions, from ADDitude, all at no charge.

Back to School Tips for Families

The late August heat wave has made it hard to be outdoors, so we've had extra time to catch up on our reading. We've encountered lots of back to school information that we want to share with our readers.

For New York City Families

New York City public schools don't begin classes until after Labor Day and we know that every year there are students who don't have a school assignment as the first day of classes approaches. The folks at InsideSchools.org have a helpful guide with tips on what to do if your middle schooler still needs a place at this late date. They also offer information on how to contact the NYC Department of Education and its various offices for other school related issues that can arise at the beginning of the school year or later in the term.

Navigating the Start of School

Our colleagues at the American Academy of Pediatrics have an excellent set of suggestions on their HealthyChildren.org website for making the first days of school go more smoothly, especially for younger children. They cover topics ranging from travel to and from school -- on foot, by bus, and even by bicycle. They have tips for how to handle bullying and the best ways to develop good sleep and study habits. And they link to more detailed articles on many of these subjects. It's worth reading.

School Supplies
We've always liked the suggestions from Wirecutter, and they have an extensive list of suggestions for back to school items for all ages, including backpacks, writing instruments, organization tools, electronics, and art supplies. They also have recommendations for laptops for college students. 

Dressing for School Success
Scholastic has some practical suggestions for what young children can wear to school that will enable them to be both comfortable and independent. For older students, parents might want to check out whether their child's school has a dress code, and work together with their child to make sure that they can express their personal style in acceptable ways. And both students and parents should keep in mind that the saying "dress for success" has a real basis in scientific research.

School District Calendars

We've written before about how calendars - high tech and old fashioned paper - can help keep students and families on track. But there is one calendar that every family with school age children should have handy, and which they should review now as the school year begins - the calendar for their school or school district.

Whether this is available online via the school website, or is sent to families in paper format (a vanishing practice in this digital age), the school calendar can be a treasure trove of information. First, the obvious information about when school is in session and when vacations and days off are scheduled should be added to kids' and parents' personal calendars. Also take note of "optional snow days" if you are doing long-term vacation planning for your family. In the event of a snowy winter, school may continue longer into the spring than you anticipate.

Make note of when marking periods begin and end and when mid-term or final exams are scheduled for each semester. This will enable you to work with your child to make sure that he or she is up to date before each marking period comes to a close. Once the marking period ends, it is often too late to make up homework or exams your student may have missed, and this may be reflected in their grades. If your school still sends report cards home with students (another vanishing trend), make sure you know when report cards will be issued.

School calendars can be very basic, such as the one for New York City public schools, or serve as a handbook for families, with information about every aspect of school or district operations - from the tax code for your district to the names and contact information for every building and district administrator. Some districts also include contact information for PTA officers and -- particularly useful for parents of students with IEPs and 504 Plans -- the officers or liaisons to the Special Education PTA, if your district or school has one. For New York City parents whose children have IEPs or 504 Plans, you may also find helpful information geared to the beginning of the school year from the folks at Advocates for Children, with a list of Q & A for families of students with disabilities.

Back to School with an IEP

As summer comes to an end and the new school year begins, there are steps that parents of students with IEPs should be taking to ensure that their children receive the maximum benefit from the services and supports to which they are entitled.

You may have just recently had your annual IEP meeting, or maybe it was held many months ago. In either event, this is the time to review the IEP and make sure you are familiar with the services, supports, and accommodations it provides for your child. Is she due to receive speech and language therapy? Reading support? Extended time on exams? You can't count on your child to accurately report on what goes on during his or her school day. Some children are too young for this task. Others lack the organizational abilities to notice what services they receive or when. And adolescents are often ambivalent about needing and receiving special education services and won't always share with you whether they were getting (and attending) the extra support or accommodations to which they are entitled.

One way to keep abreast of what is going on in school is to set up teacher meetings early in the year and then at some regular interval thereafter. How often this needs to be done depends upon your child's age and school situation. It may be simple to learn what is going on with an elementary child. He or she probably has only one or two teachers, maybe in a co-taught class with both special education and typically learning students. It is more difficult to track the services being provided to a middle school student, one who may have several teachers and half a dozen classes. Even for these students, there may be a single "point person" - perhaps a resource room teacher - who can help you make sure your son or daughter is getting the support to which he or she is entitled.  While high school students may be more aware of what they should be getting and more likely to let you know if there is a problem, they can also "blow off" extra supports. Getting them to advocate for themselves and take responsibility for their own learning, while making sure they get the support they need, can be a delicate balancing act.

Make sure that your child's teachers are aware of the fact that he or she has an IEP and that they have a copy of it and have reviewed it. It happens less often than it used to, but sometimes schools still don't distribute copies of the IEP to each teacher, usually over concerns about student privacy. This misplaced effort to protect students' rights can be a serious problem if teachers don't know what a student needs and is entitled to receive.

One question that parents often ask is how long is too long for services to begin at the start of the new school year. It's rare for services to begin the very first week of school -- but they certainly should be in place by the second or third week of school. Anything later than that is unacceptable and should trigger at call to the head of your child's IEP team. Even if the school offers a reasonable basis for the delay (staff turnover, difficulty hiring new specialists, scheduling issues), the fact remains that your child needs these services and is losing time he or she cannot make up. Keep on top of this issue. And track this issue during the year as well. Turnover or absences may mean your child is not getting services for an extended period, even if things started out fine.

Parents of older students need to make sure their children know is that, more than ever, accommodations on standardized tests like the SAT and ACT depend upon students getting and using accommodations on a regular basis in school. Students who don't use their extended time, for example, may risk not getting extended time on one of these crucial exams, since it may appear that they don't really require this accommodation.

Think about your child's IEP as an obligation of the school to provide your child with "FAPE" - a free, appropriate, public education. Getting the school year off to a good start, with services and accommodations in place and a plan for monitoring these during the year, is the best way to help your child to be successful in his or her new grade.

Helping Young Children Start the School Year

Starting a new school year is a big adjustment for a child at any age, but it can be particularly disorienting for very young children. Preschool- and kindergarten-aged kids are comforted by routines, and so their first time in even the best of classrooms with the most insightful and empathetic of teachers can be a challenge. Here are some ways you can start now, during summer vacation, to ensure your little one’s year gets off to a great start.

• Start setting your child’s biological clock. Summer sleep schedules with later wake-up times can take a while to undo, and your child may launch her first day at school cranky and sleepy if you don’t plan ahead. At least a week before her first day, get her used to the new schedule by dimming the lights in her play area an hour before her school-year bedtime. Be sure to offer her toys or books instead of electronics in the hour before she goes to bed; the quality of light emitted by screens stimulates the brain and makes it tougher to drift off to sleep later. Get her ready for bed following the same routine you anticipate using during the school year (pajamas, brushing teeth, etc.). Similarly, wake her up at the same time she’ll get up on school days and take her through her anticipated school-day morning routine. Learning these steps in advance means your child has one less new procedure to learn when school begins.

• Visit the school a few days before the first day. Narrate the trip there in an excited tone of voice so that the route will feel familiar to your child when you report to the school on the first day. If you can, pop into your child’s classroom and explore the playground. This will help your child begin to visualize what school will be like and help her to feel more at ease on the first day.

• Familiarize your child with his new teacher by referring to her by name instead of saying “your teacher.” If you can find a picture of his teacher on the school website, print it and hang it in a prominent place so she’ll look familiar to your child on the first day. 

• Role play circle time, lining up for lunch, and show and tell with your child so she’ll know what to expect. Play the part of the teacher and recruit stuffed animals or siblings to act as her classmates. 

• Model a positive attitude. When you feel anxious or tired, verbalize your feelings and talk through your plan for energizing yourself and realigning your positive thinking. (“Wow, I’m feeling really worried about tomorrow’s big meeting! I guess feeling a little nervous before a big day is normal. I think I’ll listen to some music I like and imagine myself doing really well in the meeting.”) Watching you will help your child realize that these feelings are normal and give him some strategies for coping with them. 

• Instead of asking if your child is nervous about beginning school, casually ask how your child is feeling about the new year. Resist asking whether your child feels nervous; this suggests that there is something to be nervous about! If your child is behaving normally and doesn’t give you any reason to worry, it’s best to keep worst-case scenario preparations for the initial separation under your hat. Your child will take cues from you about how to feel about the first day.

• If your child seems anxious or you’ve had difficulty with separation in the past, choose something she can bring to school that reminds her of her family. An article of clothing or piece of inexpensive jewelry is an especially good choice because your child can touch it whenever she needs comfort during the day without having to go to her backpack. Give her a bracelet of yours or let her borrow her brother’s lucky bandana. 

One big no-no: Don’t sneak away on the first day. Although this seems like a good idea for the child who tears up every time you take a step toward the door, resist the urge to wait until his back is turned to disappear. Such behavior can do damage to your child’s trust in you, resulting in the fear that you could vanish at any moment. Instead, assure your child that you love him, that you’re leaving him in a very safe place that you have chosen carefully, and that you will see him in four hours, then bite your lip and leave. Chances are good that you’ll have to pry him away from his new friends by pick-up time.

Back-to-School App Roundup for Teachers

The back to school season is upon us. Parents are busily securing school supplies and updating fall wardrobes in order to get their children ready for the new school year.  Teachers are also hard at work during these past few moments of August as they organize their classroom and polish up their curriculum. Even if your schools have started already -- quite common outside the northeast section of the country -- you may enjoy some of my favorite digital learning tools I have rounded up to help usher in the new school year.

 Math Story is an excellent website that uses music to help students learn foundational math skills. The catchy, upbeat songs span a variety of topics from the times tables to fractions to basic procedures.  Each song is integrated into a YouTube video, allowing students to watch visual representations of the words as they are sung.  This is an excellent, multi-modal way to have students master their numeracy concepts.

Sometimes struggling writers are intimated by a blank page and struggle to generate ideas.  Prompts, the handy writing app, gives students access to over a thousand creative writing prompts.  Furthermore, if writers' block hits during the writing process, the app will send additional prompts based on what has already been written to help guide the student along.  This is an excellent way to gently build a student’s independent writing abilities.  Students can then share their writing via email, Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, or Dropbox.

           Touted as the Schoolhouse Rock for the 21st Century, Grammaropolis is an interactive and engaging application and website that uses animated characters whose personalities are based on the parts of speech they represent.  This witty characterization allow students to visualize the roles of the parts of speech and to identify how a correct sentence is constructed. To augment learning done in the digital space, Grammaropolis also has a series of books and videos that highlight a different part of speech using the same characters.  This literacy program is a much more exciting way to teach students about adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions than a traditional grammar workbook.

      For learning and reading specialists, the Reading Record Calculator will be incredibly advantageous during your assessments. The app is a running record calculator and stopwatch with the added benefit of integrated audio recording and playback. Teachers able to play back the audio and flag all errors and self-corrections. From there, the application seamlessly calculates a student’s reading rate, percentage of accuracy, and self-correction ratio. You can than e-mail the data, along with any notes on the book, reading level or student name to yourself or any other member of the student’s educational team.

 Noise control is a vital component of classroom management.  Too Noisy, is a fun app that can be displayed on a computer, TV or Smartboard in order to help teachers maintain an appropriate level of noise in the classroom.  According to the app description, “as the noise level in a classroom increases beyond an acceptable level the noise level meter dynamically indicates the level of noise, and the background graphics within the app change to reflect the noise levels.”  Teachers can personalize their display by choosing from a variety of background images, or setting timers where students can earn rewards for remaining quiet for designated amounts of time.  

·    

Fall News You Can Use

It's hard to believe that today is the start of Labor Day Weekend and that summer is essentially over, even if our calendar tells us we still have a few weeks left. If school hasn't begun for you or your kids, it certainly will do so next week.

So, we figured it would be a good time to corral all the "Back to School" news and fall events that have filled our mailbox over the past week or so and share some of these with our readers.

Manhattan's Symphony Space will be holding its Thalia Kids Book Club this fall, featuring favorite children's books and their authors. Special treats include appearances by author Lois Lowry (joined by actor Sean Astin and his wife Christine), in honor of the 25th anniversary of her Newbery Medal-winning book Number the Stars (October 19th); David Hyde Pierce and Jane Curtin celebrating E.B. White's classics Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little (November 16th); and Natalie Babbitt, who will mark the 40th anniversary of her book Tuck Everlasting (January 25, 2015). Past year's events have sold out quickly, so don't delay getting tickets.

On Sunday, September 14, the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn is holding a free program for children with special needs called "Special Day for Special Kids." Kids and their families can explore the museum before it opens to the public.

Another program at the New York Transit Museum recognizes the particular appeal that trains hold for many children on the autism spectrum. The fall Subway Sleuths program for 2nd-5th graders has opened registration. Contact the Museum's Education Manager Elyse Newman at elyse.newman@nyct.com to learn
more.

The Museum of the City of New York has a series of family "drop in" programs scheduled for fall weekends and school holidays. These are free with museum admission.

Advocates for Children of New York has a Start of School fact sheet for New York City parents whose children receive special education services under an IEP (Individualized Education Program). And a fact sheet for families who are new to the public school system, whose child has not been assigned to a New York City school, can be found on the website of the New York City Department of Education.

Three Tips to Help Make Homework Time Easier

As the school year begins, it's time to think about all the issues your family encountered with homework last year -- and finally take steps to improve things. No one says homework is going to become an easy or pleasant part of family life, but there are things you can do to make it go more smoothly. Here are a few of our favorite suggestions:

Svadilfari

Know the Assignment
There are many reasons a student may not know their homework assignment. Some students have trouble copying accurately from the board. Others can't keep good track of their papers and lose the sheet on which the homework was printed. Still others have handwriting issues and even if they write down the assignment, they can't read their own writing when they sit down to work. If your child consistently has any one of these issues, work with their teacher to make sure they have an alternative way of getting their assignments. Some students work with a homework buddy, others need to show their teacher that they have their worksheets packed in their bag before they leave class. Whatever the system, find one that works. Knowing what to do is the first step in getting the work done.

Homework Needs a Home Office
Think about the kind of space you need when you bring home a project from work. Homework is part of a student's job and he or she needs a dedicated space to work. It can be one end of the dining room table, a desk in their room, or anyplace else in the house. It needs to have a place nearby to store books and long term projects, as well as to be equipped with age-appropriate supplies -- markers and glue, a computer with internet access for research, and access to a printer.

A home office also needs to have an office-like atmosphere. That doesn't always mean silence -- we know that some students (and adults) prefer to work with music in the background. But it does mean that there is no television or computer on, except as needed for research and word processing. This may be impossible to enforce for older students who work in their rooms, but younger students can learn the importance of separating work from recreation if parents model this by their own behavior. Hopefully, good work habits learned early will continue on through high school.

Create a "Launching Pad" for Your Child
Knowing the assignment and doing the homework are only the first parts of the process; your child needs to bring it back to school. Creating a dedicated space for each child to hold all the items he or she needs for the next school day will make sure that homework wasn't done in vain. The launching pad is also a way to ensure that your student has all of his or her other required school items. It should be the place for permission slips, books, gym attire, and anything else that needs to go to school. Ideally, a basket or shelf big enough to hold their backpack can be dedicated to each child. As homework is completed, books are read, and permission slips signed, they can all be placed inside the backpack and the pack then goes back on the launching pad, to be taken to school, fully loaded, the next day.

No one loves doing homework, but planning and organization can make it easier for all.

Back-to-School Tips for Teachers

Photo: audio-lucie-store-it

While students around the country probably have a few days -- or a couple of weeks -- remaining of their summer vacation,  most teachers have started back to school well in advance of their students. These first days back generally include scheduled meetings, but this is also the time that teachers can take advantage of the calm of student-free days to set up their classroom and finish their preparations for the coming year. There are many helpful websites with back-to-school suggestions for teachers. Here are a few that we recommend.

The National Education Association website has resources geared especially for new teachers, including advice on setting up the classroom, dealing with parents, and a list of supplies that every teacher should have on hand. Some of these tips will likely be useful for veteran teachers, as well.

Are you planning a classroom project that requires special supplies? Or are you teaching in an economically disadvantaged area where even basic classroom items are lacking? Take a look at Donors Choose, where "Public school teachers post classroom project requests which range from pencils for poetry to microscopes for mitochondria." These requests are listed on the website and donors can select a project to fund. When the funding goal for a particular request is met, the materials are shipped to the classroom. The site states that they are able to successfully fund 70% of teacher requests. Note that Donors Choose does not accept "in kind" donations but includes links to sites that do.

LD Online has a list of "to-do" items for special education teachers, but we think one item on that list should be a must for all teachers -- ask if any of your students have an IEP or 504 plan. Make sure you have ready access to a copy of this plan, important for all students but potentially life-saving for a student who has a 504 plan because of a medical condition or allergy. For reasons we have never understood, some schools keep these documents locked away with the guidance office, nurse, or elsewhere. Privacy laws do not require this and, in fact, all special education laws (IDEA and Section 504) require that these documents be provided to teachers who will be charged with implementing them. Read this document, know what the student needs and what is required in the classroom.

Whether or not you have already started your school year, we wish you a good one. And if you have a few days yet before you go back, we hope you enjoy the rest of your summer vacation!

Link Roundup

Summer Must-Read for Kids? Any Book (NY Times)

10 Tips for Women Students in Science Fields (U.S. News & World Report)

Getting the Best out of Boys (Teaching Pre-K-8)

A Good Night's Sleep for the New School Year (Science Daily)

---

Photo by Jorge Quinteros

Organizing for School

We are reminded by an essay in today’s New York Times that depending on where you live, the opening of school can be days – or weeks—away. But even for places like here in New York City where classes in public schools don’t begin until Wednesday, September 9th, the relentless drumbeat of ads for school clothing and supplies has been going on for weeks.

It’s not too late to think about what you can do to make this school year more organized and successful for your child – and less stressful for the entire family. We like the suggestions in the book The Organized Student by Donna Goldberg with Jennifer Zwiebel. It may be a new system of managing school papers, or a spot set aside as a “launching pad” for every family member to drop their stuff when they come home and pick it up again when they leave the house, or even the “lump check” that one student we know does every morning as he feels his pockets for his cell phone, keys, wallet and iPod. Even one step towards better organization, done consistently, can make this a better school year.