teachers - should I ask to go back a few stages on ORT?

[lingle]

DS2 is 7, year 2, language delay, on SEN for social communication skills. no behaviour problems, no learning difficulties, extreme visual learner, socially anxious and awkward though has made one strong friendship.

He can "decode" fluently but his speaking and listening were assessed last year as being below national average.

This September, the teacher sent him home with ORT level 3. I noticed he seemed much more able to talk about the pictures than before - finally ready for this. So I pretended I couldn't see the pictures at all and got him to tell me the story in his own words which he did haltingly and with much prompting.

I really felt that we'd "struck the right note" - found exactly what he needed to work on.

But this week he came home with a level 5 book. Decoded it fluently, explained factually what it meant - all fine. But it was too long and complex a story to do the "tell me in your own words what happens" trick - to really build up the layers of the story.

Would the teacher be sympathetic to a request to take home "the ones we missed out" so I could continue trying to build up his explaining skills? these are really poor.

the other thing is that I see a lot of notes on getting him to say how characters are feeling. This is tricky because DS2 reads body language and facial expressions and tone of voice very well but sometimes his language comprehension problems mean that he hasn't followed the thread of a story so doesn't know how the character feels and the ORT pictures are (let's face it) pretty cheesy and don't convey emotion. I'm pretty sure that he is mechanically saying "happy" "sad" or "angry" because that's what ginger bear group did last year......So I think if we focussed on stories within his experience about things that matter to him, the "describing feelings" thing would come naturally...... is there a way to convey this to the teacher without sounding as though I'm in denial?

[Fuzzymum1]

It can't do any harm to ask. If you feel that's what he needs then I'm sure the teacher would (or at least should) be sympathetic.