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I am curious about how those of you with SN kids in a school setting keep informed about your kid's progress and daily happenings, especially if your kid is non-verbal. Not talking about major incidences or IEPs, just the day-to-day stuff.
For the last three years, we got daily notes home, handwritten (if they had time/ remembered). But this year, the teacher uses an online program called Classroom Dojo and I am a bit addicted to it The teacher can post photos and events to a page that parents can check, and also give positive and negative points to either the whole class or an individual student for things like staying on task, group participation, getting out of your seat etc. I check it several times a day and love it, I know what sort of day my boy is having before he gets off the bus.
Honestly, make friends with someone that works at the school and will tell you what is really going on. This is what worked for me when my son was in school. I also substituted as a teacher's assistance in the school system which got me "the fly on the wall" view. My son ended up mostly homeschooled.
I had good communication while my son was in elementary school. Last year, as a 6th grader in middle school; NOTHING!
OMG; so frustrating. Also since he transitioned "levels" he was forced to attened the "in boundary" school vs the middle school his whole peer group was transitioning to AND this meant the transportation services per the IEP resumed so I lost that face time in the hand-over too.
Nothing I ever put in his backpack was ever seen, including a mandatory form that I signed. I actually had to go to the school, retrieve his pack, dig out the form & take it to the office myself.
By the end of the school year I was at the school 3-5 days per week. Sometimes announced but sometimes not.
7th grade started 4 days ago. There has been a huge turnover in staff. I have been there 2 out of the 4 days; I can't just saftey pin stuff to his shirt EVERY day!
Sounds like a cool online tool you have; I'm going to look into it. Maybe it's something our district could use.
I am curious about how those of you with SN kids in a school setting keep informed about your kid's progress and daily happenings, especially if your kid is non-verbal. Not talking about major incidences or IEPs, just the day-to-day stuff.
For the last three years, we got daily notes home, handwritten (if they had time/ remembered). But this year, the teacher uses an online program called Classroom Dojo and I am a bit addicted to it The teacher can post photos and events to a page that parents can check, and also give positive and negative points to either the whole class or an individual student for things like staying on task, group participation, getting out of your seat etc. I check it several times a day and love it, I know what sort of day my boy is having before he gets off the bus.
Just out of curiosity, can you see just your son's scores or the scores of all of the other children in his class?
Just out of curiosity, can you see just your son's scores or the scores of all of the other children in his class?
We have used Class Dojo too. We also have used remind 101 where you sign up for emails from the teacher that are blasted to the entire class. Middle school has been worse at communicating than k-4 for us.
Class Dojo is not used for grades, but for behavior and class stuff like assignments or field trips, etc. They cannot allow parents to see other kids grades.
We cannot see anyone's grades except our own child's grades and their is a different system for that.
When I taught, daily home notes were required. They were fairly specific... had to include at least three pieces of academic data, all behavioral data, any relevant medical/health, what was eaten for lunch and how much (most of my students had autism and food aversion, and many had food tolerance expansion goals), toileting/hygiene data when it applied, etc.
All home notes were kept in communication binders. They were intended to be two- way, but parents rarely used them to write back.
When I taught, daily home notes were required. They were fairly specific... had to include at least three pieces of academic data, all behavioral data, any relevant medical/health, what was eaten for lunch and how much (most of my students had autism and food aversion, and many had food tolerance expansion goals), toileting/hygiene data when it applied, etc.
All home notes were kept in communication binders. They were intended to be two- way, but parents rarely used them to write back.
When I taught special education daily notes for each child were expected but not officially required, at the elementary level and for the students in the cognitive disability program at all levels. While they not as detailed as in TabulaRasa's situation they were very, very time consuming. Unfortunately, there was not any time allotted in the schedule to do the notes. Almost 100% of the time the elementary special education teachers (at least the ones in my district) wrote the notes during their 30 minute "duty free" lunch while they were eating their lunch. Any important things that happened in the afternoon needed to be added the next day or hurried added while teaching.
It was a particular problem when I taught Early Childhood Special Education as the students were only there for a half day so I could not write notes during my lunch period, plus many parents expected lengthy, detailed notes each day. I had one principal who in the same teacher evaluation chastised me for not writing a note to each parent each school day AND chastised me for writing notes to parents while I was supervising & interacting with the children, with the teacher's aides, while they doing "free choice" play or eating snack. He said that I should be focusing 100% on the children. I asked him when I should be writing the daily notes but he did not have an answer for me.
In my experience most parents wrote back about once a week, a few parents jotted a brief response note every day (some just drew a happy face or signed their initials to show that they read my note) and almost every year there was at least one parent who wrote lengthy notes (sometimes multiple pages) each and every day.
In my district, therapists were also expected to write a note to parents at least once a week or once every two weeks. They also did this during their lunch periods or while they were providing therapy to that child.
I supervised a teacher who had a great way of communicating with parents. The class as a group wrote a "summary of the day." She used pix writer on her whiteboard. Each student contributed to the summary. She printed a copy for each student to give to parents. It worked well. I know that doesn't cover behavioral issues for individual kids but it gave parents a pretty good idea of what happened at school.
We have used Class Dojo before, and this year we have Remind. It is just whatever the teacher chooses. Back in preschool we used to get detailed therapy notes in our notebook each time a therapist came to work with my daughter, but they don't do that now in elementary. I don't get a whole lot of daily communication now, but I can send the teachers email if I want to communicate with them and they will answer.
When I taught special education daily notes for each child were expected but not officially required, at the elementary level and for the students in the cognitive disability program at all levels. While they not as detailed as in TabulaRasa's situation they were very, very time consuming. Unfortunately, there was not any time allotted in the schedule to do the notes. Almost 100% of the time the elementary special education teachers (at least the ones in my district) wrote the notes during their 30 minute "duty free" lunch while they were eating their lunch. Any important things that happened in the afternoon needed to be added the next day or hurried added while teaching.
Extremely time consuming.
The way we were able to do them is because we were a 1:1 school. It's not possible to be so individually detailed if you have to do a bunch of them a day.
The reason they were expected (and the reason we were 1:1)was because we were an ABA-driven facility for students with extreme behavior, many of them exhibiting dangerous maladaptive behavior with high frequency. In order for the therapy to be effective, exhaustive data had to be taken, analyzed, and communicated to all members of the treatment team, including families.
They had to be completed in the last half-hour of the day, so that all behavioral data for the day could be included. They were written on streamlined forms, but still required individualization and detail, and were usually written during the pocket of time at the end of the day when the student was able to access a given an earned behavioral reinforcer, which was often simply getting some time to do a leisure activity while relatively alone (obviously, 1:1 is pretty intense for individuals with autism all day long, and a bit of space at the end of teh day was welcome). We had floater paras who helped monitor during this time so that home communication could be completed without there being supervision issues. But everything was built to accommodate a very tight ratio.
Therapists did separate notes, but were bundled in.
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The teacher can post photos and events to a page that parents can check, and also give positive and negative points to either the whole class or an individual student for things like staying on task, group participation, getting out of your seat etc. I check it several times a day and love it, I know what sort of day my boy is having before he gets off the bus.
