The report pinpoints students' abilities and areas of need down to the sub-skill level and provides teachers and parents with a detailed and easy-to-read analysis of every student’s proficiency levels. Reports detail which skills students have mastered and those skills to prioritize next for instruction, thereby supporting reading and math success for every student. You can request to obtain and go over the reports in Math and/or Language Arts for your student with your special education case manager. Let's look at an example of the Math report for a mock student:

One of the featured services the SPED Transition team is offering this year is workshops. SPED Transition Workshops are being planned and are taking place all across the state. These Transition Workshops allow our Transition Teachers to engage our students in intensive discussions and activities on a particular subject or project. This also provides our students and families with the opportunity to ask questions on topics that are of high interest to them. The workshops are being offered in addition to the regularly scheduled Transition SAI ( specialized academic instruction).

Some of the workshops that have already taken place include:

• Social Skills in the workplace

• Self Advocacy

• Career Workshop-Job Shadowing

Some of the workshops are part of a monthly running series and include:

• Social Skills

• In the workplace

• Greeting others and conversation topics

• Enhancing verbal communication

Some of the workshops that are in the works include:

• Getting your Driver’s license

• Social Skills ( continuation of a monthly series that explores different aspects of social skills).

• The 4-Parts of Executive Functioning. Each part will be explored in a separate workshop.

• The first workshop will focus on Task initiation.

If you have an idea for a workshop or would like to see something specific, please contact your SPED Transition Teacher!

Navigating the holidays can be hard for many kids with learning and attention issues. Kids often face demands during holidays that they might not normally face. Large gatherings. Long meals. Interactions with different people in new situations.

These demands don’t only make holidays stressful. They can also behavior issues. One way to avoid problem behavior is to help your child identify holiday challenges and brainstorm strategies ahead of time.

This downloadable worksheet can help your child do just that. It includes a checklist of common holiday challenges. Your child can go through the list and mark off ones that apply—or come up with additional ones. If your child is young, you can work on it together.

The worksheet also includes strategy charts. Have your child fill out one for each challenge marked on the checklist. These charts have three sections: My Challenge, What Usually Happens, and What I Can Do Instead. (See the bottom of the worksheet for an example.)

You may have to help your child come up with strategies. For ideas, explore tips to help with: gift exchanges, social situations, food allergies and sensitivities, restrictive clothing, cabin fever, understanding and participating in holiday traditions.

Thinking through challenges (while also recalling holiday successes from the past) is a great way for your child to build self-awareness. And planning strategies in advance can help your child feel more in control when holiday challenges come up.

Working in a team can be really hard work for students with autism and other social or processing challenges. It’s emotionally, socially, physically and mentally draining for some, downright scary for others. And the effects of this stress and exhaustion can last longer than one lesson, it can impact learning for the rest of the day or even all week. In fact, for some students who find teamwork activities to be daunting, even the mere possibility that they’ll have to do it at some point can increase their anxiety about being at school.

Why is group work difficult?

• Unpredictability
  

For many students with autism, it can feel like group work happens without warning. Suddenly hearing the words “Find a partner” can trigger anxiety or panic before the task has even begun. Teammates usually change with each activity, so it’s difficult for them to predict ahead of time who will be in their group. This lack of control over the task or its outcome can be especially stressful for students who need routine, or for those who have high standards of perfection for their own work.

• Group selection
  

This task places huge demands on language, social skills and executive functions like planning and attention, which are all areas that can be challenging for kids with autism and other special needs.

• Shared physical space
  

Huddling together on the floor or around a desk can be intimidating and overloading for students who are hypersensitive to touch and smell. This kind of work also changes the rules for personal space, which can be confusing for some and overwhelming for others.

• Transitions
  

Every time the group splits into teams requires a shift in attention, environment and sensory input which can be uncomfortable and demanding for some students. They have to disengage from what they’re doing and adjust to a flood of new information.

• Sensory overload
  

Group work is often noisy and chaotic. There might be close body contact, chairs being moved in and out, the smell of paint or markers, many voices talking at once and visual distractions. Which all adds up to a lot of additional sensory information to cope with on top of all these other additional demands.

• Reliance on social skills
  

Collaboration places heavy demands on the ability to negotiate social situations. Students need to quickly form a bond with their teammates, understand what the group expects of them and when it’s their turn to talk. They also need to accept the potential limitations and mistakes of other students in their group, and not only resolve their own conflicts but find a way to cope with those between other group members. All of this can be very stressful for those students who are still developing these kinds of complex social skills.

What can you do to help?

This simple prompt below is a mini task analysis of the steps of working together in a group and can make a world of a difference in making this abstract and mysterious activity manageable for students. If your child works in pairs or groups in your independent study environment you can:

1. Review this prompt before every instance of group work;

2. Provide modeling along with reviewing the steps;

3. Keep these posted in your room for easy access and so your students can reference this sheet as well!