ARD questions & suggestions

May 4, 2012

Hi All,

I have a few ARD questions as well. We had our ARD today and overall it

went very well. Mark will be 6 next month and he is finishing up kinder.

Before you read more, I respectfully ask that the questions and answers in

this email chain stay within this group and not be forwarded or discussed

with anyone outside of the IMDSA community.

Here are my questions:

1. Are all ARD members required to stay for the whole meeting? The kinder

teacher only stayed for 1/2 of the time; she had no constructive comments

and seemed relatively disengaged.

2. What is the law in terms of putting minutes on each activity? The

committee struggled to tell us, other than speech and 45 min in 1st for

math and language arts at the beginning of the day, how many minutes Mark

would spend with the SPED teacher and then back with the 1st grade teacher.

There were lots of positives that came out of the ARD. The SPED teacher is

very excited about the new research that has been published by DSIE and has

signed up for notification on the program! She was also very complimentary

in our participation in providing comments back on the draft IEP and

accepted all of our comments.

One thing I have really learned in my short time doing this is the SPED and

teachers do not always no how to educate kids with DS. I have provided

information, tips, links for free ipad/ipod apps and been engaged as much

as I can be with the teachers. They have all been very appreciative of the

information that I've sent to them. In fact, the SPED went out and

purchased, at her own expense, books on how to teach kids with DS reading

and math and we have incorporated the suggestions into Mark's IEP. The

mistake I made this year is not spending time in the kinder class. Next

year I will spend time in the 1st grade class so I can get to know the

teacher and see Mark's routine, etc.

Thanks for your support and help!

Gwyn

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