Kerry Wright EDU7666 Journal Entries
Blog 7 Dr. Signer

Topic Heading

I was involved with a discussion initiated by a parent, who is also a teacher in middle school. The discussion was posted on the discussion boards under the Teacher.net, chat boards (elementary education) from 12/2/08- 12/6/08. The parent was concerned about her son in second grade. The parent was advised that her son needed speech therapy because he was having difficulty with vowel sounds. Her son was classified as gift in kindergarten but was not doing well with reading in second grade. The evaluator advised the parent that problem with the vowel sounds could be related to his reading problem.

This parent lives in a small rural district in Texas and was very stressed about getting immediate help for her son. The parent was also concerned about the accuracy of the evaluation since the parent can understand her child when the child speaks.

One contributor agreed with the speech pathologist that the speech problems can be related to the reading problems. The discussion also centered on the idea that education is a process. The skills need to develop over time. Therefore, it is more important to work on obtaining services that are consistent rather than immediate. This contributor reassured the parent getting help in January rather than December would not be a negative impact on the child. Also, the suggestion to get a second opinion was made in order to validate the information given to the parent about her child. The parent was advised in the discussion to not pay pocket expense for the evaluation or services.

The parent was also given the suggestion to start some activities at home. These activities include vowel work sheets. I had suggested investing in the leap frog pads in order to practice the sounds.

Questions I posed with responses

One of the contributors to this discussion did state that reading problems could be speech related. I never knew that speech problems could be related to reading problems. I have that have reading fluency and decoding. With these cases, I would suggest the children use leap frog pads at home. In class, I would model reading with the students. Since I was involved with this discussion, I plan to recruit help from a speech pathologist to see how I could help these students.


Responses to other questions

This discussion related to my personal life and I really understood how this parent was feeling. I have a child with a disability and I understand the fear you feel with you have a child that needs help. It has been my experience that is accessing services takes a great deal of skills and determination. I felt the fear and confusion this parent was feeling from this posting. So, I felt compelled to share some of my thoughts and lessons learned from my experience with my daughter.

I had responded as a parent and teacher to this posting, but I was so surprised that another contributor agreed with my comments. This surprised me because I realized my personal situations can help with the professional situations.