Preparing for OT eval and IEP....need help

[Guest guest]

Ok, Kenzie is six. Has been doing ABA/VB for nearly three years. He is

developmentally approximately early three year old. We moved this summer to a

very small school district in Montana. The district is being great and very

flexible, however by their own admission they know nothing about autism. I have

been training them in every respect. Tomorrow the district is having an OT come

in. They don't have one and have to pay $20.00 per hour and the person has to

travel 100 miles one way....welcome to Montana. Anyhow we are going to do an

eval tomorrow and have the OT set us up on a program to do ourselves. Not the

best of situations but I think I know enough to get us by. He gets speech

therapy for 30 minutes once per week.

Ok, now the IEP. It's coming up on Tuesday. This is the first time that I feel

I have the call to say what I want. He is in a resource room for three hours

per day Monday-Friday. He has a full time aide that works with him for two

hours and his teacher for one hour. I have been training them in DTT. There

are so many things I want to accomplish in three hours that I don't know how to

prioritize. Because these are new people in a new sitting I'm trying to make

everything on his schedule be brief. We basically have a matrix designed in 15

minute intervals. The following is what we have now but I would love

suggestions:

8:15-8:30 Play/snack (He won't eat before school so we built in a snack right

away)

8:30-8:45 Work at table (This is really simple stuff like puzzles to establish

working with the teacher.)

8:45-9:00 Center time otherwise known as independent work. Generally this is

matching to various degrees or sorting.

9:00-9:15 Outside where we work on exercise but also safety skills like " stop "

and calling his name and getting him to respond.

9:15-9:30 Play/color (He doesn't like to color so this is a fine motor skill

we're trying to develop and talk about colors.)

9:30-9:45 Work with teacher. (I am trying to make this DTT time with

flashcards and lot's of verbal operants.)

9:45-10:00 Take a break by walking down the hall and come back and do simple

things with teacher/aide.

10-10:15 Go to kindergarten classroom and do snack time with the other kids

and work on addressing kids by name.

10:15-10:30 Sensory table for a few moments and working with the teacher

10:30-10:45 Go to gym. We plan on working on a variety of gross motor skills

here. They do not have a gross motor room so we have the gym during a quiet

time.

10-45-11:00 Work with teacher DTT

11:00-11:15 Bathroom room break, free time and then prepare to go home.

I think this is an ok introductory schedule for a few weeks. However because I

am in the boonies and no access to tutors I would like to incorporate more DTT

at some point. I'm trying to figure out how much time I should ask for it in

his IEP. The aide is with him all the time so I feel like even though it may

not be DTT he is having interaction with someone.

I know it's tough not knowing my son but I would love some feedback on this.

Thanks so much.

Penny