Home/School Connections
Studies have shown that students have greater academic achievement when their parents are involved in their education; September is a great month for cementing positive and productive connections between home and school.
Building and Maintaining a Good Relationship with Your Child's Teacher
The best way to support your child's needs is to build and maintain a strong, positive relationship with all the people at school who play a role in educating your child. And, make sure your child knows that this is a team effort — you're all working together to help him or her succeed! This article presents some good advice on how you can foster a sense of partnership with the teacher and administration to support your child's education.
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The Teacher's Role in Home/School Communication: Everybody Wins
Successful, responsive and productive schools share one common trait: They solicit, encourage, facilitate, and promote parental communication. Written in a "do's and don'ts" format, you'll learn to DO be positive, DO use a communication sandwich, DON'T let situations fester, and much, much more.
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Building Trust with Schools and Diverse Families
If families are to trust teachers and other school staff members, they must believe that school personnel are qualified, fair, and dependable, and have their child's best interests at heart. Assessing the level of trust, actively welcoming students, and highlighting school successes are just a few of the suggestions within this article that can help teachers lay the foundation for great relationships.
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Skipping to Nowhere: School Attendance
Regular school attendance is critical to academic success, yet a new report from the Get Schooled Foundation reveals young people are often unaware that skipping even a few days of school can dramatically affect their grades and even decrease their odds of graduating. Further, students who skip a lot of school say their parents could have a big impact on improving their attendance, but for the most part their parents don't know how often they cut class. Get Schooled's findings are also available as an infographic.
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ADHD and Communication
Good communication isn't always easy to achieve. It's a balancing act between stating your point and needs and listening to another's. Knowing how to find that balance can lead to creative problem solving. Dr. Mark Bertin, a developmental pediatrician and contributor to LDOnLine, offers a brief but helpful communication checklist.
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Featured Partner: Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of the Council for Exceptional Children
The Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) is one of 17 special interest groups of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the largest international professional organization dedicated to improving educational outcomes for individuals with exceptionalities, including both students with disabilities and the gifted.
We encourage you to visit TeachingLD to view their materials and to learn more about the organization.
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Advice: What tools can help my son with LD learn a foreign language?
Question: My 15-year-old son has a language-based learning disability. He has now started taking required foreign language classes and is struggling with vocabulary, verbal exercises, and exams. Are there any technology tools or software programs that might help him?
Answer: Learning a foreign language can be frustrating for a student with a language-based learning disability. Many of the same elements that may have posed problems in English (letter sounds, decoding, spelling, grammar), can cause difficulties in foreign language learning… (Read on for more)
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Glossary Term: Connected Instruction
A way of teaching systematically in which the teacher continually shows and discusses with the students the relationship between what has been learned, what is being learned, and what will be learned.
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Featured Resource: Citizens Together
"Citizens Together," revised and refreshed according to Common Core State Standards, integrates newspapers into study of the Bill of Rights. This curriculum guide for middle- and high-school students can be used for Constitution Day on Sept. 17, or at other times when teachers focus on the nation's founding documents and their significance today.
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Learning Store Resource: A Guide to Collaboration for IEP Teams
With so many complex, challenging, and emotionally charged decisions involved, participating in an IEP meeting can seem like navigating through a minefield. But now there's a practical guide to managing these meetings with a high level of awareness, safety, and confidence. Developed for administrators, teachers, resource professionals, and parents, this skills-based book will help you work as a unified team to design, review, and modify IEPs for children with special education needs.
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Conferences — Mark your calendars!
Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD) 34th Annual Conference on Learning Disabilities
October 10-11, 2012
Austin, TX
Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA) Annual Conference
February 13-16, 2013
San Antonio, TX
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Research: Public Perceptions of Learning Disabilities: Accurate or Not?
The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) collected data from a random sampling of 1,980 adults in the United States, evenly distributed across males and females, via an online survey in August 2012. Results reveal the need for more education about the causes, treatments of, and treatments for learning disabilities, and a better understanding of the rights of learning disabled people in the workplace. See specific results from this survey by reading the Executive Summary from NCLD.
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