ASD and schoolwork - how to help ds integrate facts, spelling, numbers etc into classwork

[moosemama]

I was just wondering what, if anything I can do to help him?

He is academically very bright and does well in tests, but having just been to open evening and been shocked at the state of his exercise books, its clear that he isn't able to 'use' his knowledge effectively within the context of classwork.

eg He is one of the top spellers, usually getting full marks every week without having to practise them, but when I look through his literacy/history/geography etc books, they are full of spelling mistakes and words that have been spelt phonetically rather than correctly, even though in many cases these are the exact same words he can spell perfectly under spelling test conditions.

In the week before the holiday he did the national times table league test, after being off sick for a week and missing the class lead-up and practise sessions. I was worried that he would be upset if he didn't go up a league, so got him to do a quick practise before school on the day, only to find we'd got it wrong and he wasn't actually being tested on the tables he practised. In fact he was tested on a harder set of tables and got 100% straight off without so much as a recap, let alone a practice. Yet, when we are doing homework together, he seems unable to apply his knowledge of times tables to the problems he has been set and this was apparent in his class exercise books as well.

He loves learning facts and figures, is forever reading and absorbing information and is like a walking encyclopedia to talk to, but its like he categorises all that information as 'facts' to be filed away in their appropriate boxes and can't make the connection that those facts can be used in lots of different ways to help him with his work. A bit like a filing cabinet with no cross-referencing system I guess.

Its not a problem for him at the moment, as he does really well in all the tests they are set and the teachers take this into account. (Although in some ways, this masks how much he struggles at school and is precisely why the school took a long time to get around to helping him, as he was a high achiever so couldn't possibly have a problem. )

I do think however, that if we can't help him to learn how to integrate the facts with the classwork, he is going to find it harder and harder to cope with the work he is set as he goes higher up the education system eg essays and more complex mathematical problems (he is currently 8 and in year 3).

Has anyone else come across this or does anyone have any idea how I can help him link the two things together?

My dd1 is a bit younger but her workbooks at school are the same as your ds's, she gets top marks in spelling, loves reading and maths but when i see her work its messy, spelling mistakes and pieces of work that are not finished (half done).

Would it be possible for him to use a laptop at school? would this help him?

moosemama,

I would seriously consider applying for a Statement for your son as this legally binding document will set out his difficulties properly along with support to help him. If he hasn't got one of these by the time he reaches secondary you may well have problems you could well do without.

What have the school done to help him to date?. How much has the SENCO been involved?.
Personally if this school have not cut it I would consider moving him to another school.

As you rightly surmise it is going to get harder for him in future years if his needs are not being met properly and his additional needs are not being met by school at present. His learning is being affected to its overall detriment because he cannot get the words down on paper properly.

I'm not sure they would let him use a laptop. They didn't wan't him to have a writing slope as it would mark him out as different and he already has a problem with being singled out and bullied.

Your dd's work does sound very similar. Ds really struggles to complete pieces of work. His last teacher used to sit at his table instead of her desk to do her own work and so was able to give him a gentle nudge in the right direction every now and again. Unfortunately she was a supply teacher he had from the Autumn Term until April and his new teacher isn't doing anything to help him at all, despite him now having an IEP in place that has a target specifically aimed at finishing set pieces of work.

When he does homework with me he gets merit marks for tidy work and good handwriting. To look at his school books, you would honestly believe they were done by another child. He has problems with fine motor skills and word spacing which really show up in his class workbooks (his handwriting at school is practically illegible). At home I let him do the work himself and help if he gets stuck, but also give him a nudge when its messy and get him to take his time and concentrate (something he struggles with in a noisy classroom). I also encourage him to do a thorough read through and check at the end of his homework, but of course he can't do this at school as most of the time he doesn't even manage to complete the task.

I was wondering if there is some way I can enourage him to develop a sort of inbuilt cross-referencing system that would enable him to use things he has learned to better effect, but maybe I am just asking too much of him and its just not something he is going to be able to do.

I am very systems oriented and naturally work in a very logical system-led way as well as being good at spotting links and connections between things, so we are very different in this respect and its hard for me to get my head round why he can't recall the right spelling for a piece of literacy when, if I sat him at the table two minutes later and asked him how to spell the same word, he would undoubtedly get it right first time.

It just seems such a shame that he is essentially a fount of untapped knowledge, especially as he likes nothing more than sharing his knowledge with others. I also think he finds certain subjects harder at school because he is unable to call on 'known facts' to help him break down the work he is given into more manageable chunks, he has all the information he needs right there in his head, but isn't able to access it at the appropriate time.

Hi Attlia

We are still in the early days of getting the school to help him. They are very keen/willing, but so far not very effective, although we are only on his first ever IEP at present.

Having spoken with the Head and SENCO about his needs their feeling, based on their experiences with other SN children in the school, is that he would be unlikely to get a statement from our LEA. Mainly because he is performing well academically (ie he does well in tests ).

This lack of connection between facts and classwork isn't something I've raised with them yet, as it only occurred to me when I attended the open evening just before half term. We are about to have an IEP review meeting and I thought I would raise it there as our SENCO is very experienced and may well be able to come up with some suggeestions herself. I thought I'd ask here first though as its always to go to these meetings with a well-armed iyswim.

It has to be said the the first IEP hasn't been all that successful, mainly because the teacher he has for this half of the year is really disorganised and forgetful herself, so the exact opposite of what ds needs. So, I'm not ready to give up on the school yet. I'm kind of thinking/hoping he will do better next year with a different teacher.

suggestions not suggeestions

Oops! What was that I said about checking and re-checking.

Although to be fair ds1 was mid-meltdown when I pressed post. Speaking of which, I have to go and bring him down off the ceiling now - I may be some time ...

Hi Moosemama,

re your comment:-

"Having spoken with the Head and SENCO about his needs their feeling, based on their experiences with other SN children in the school, is that he would be unlikely to get a statement from our LEA. Mainly because he is performing well academically"

If I had £1.00 for every time I have seen similar said on here I would have nearly enough money for a trip to Europe!.

My guess for what its worth is that some of those children with SEN have been failed by the school. Please do not believe these naysayers; your DS is intelligent no doubt but his learning is being affected because he cannot get it down on paper properly. This problem will only become more acute the higher up he goes through the school system and he will find it less easy to manage. Also the unwritten social structure of schools can be difficult to navigate for some children and I note your son has been bullied previously probably also because he has such difficulties.

Statements are not just about addressing academic needs, they can help with additional social needs too. He needs a greater level of support that what is being provided currently. They wouldn't even give him a bloody writing slope - their reasons are not good enough!. They are really crap.

Also you won't know re the Statement until you start applying for one (and I would seriously suggest you do such a thing asap); the LEA make the decision as to whether or not to assess, not the bloody school. Sorry but they make me so cross!.

As foe the IEP - another name for them on here is Individual Empty Promise. They promise much but do very little and a poorly written one is meaningless. Also him not having an IEP until Y3 is bad practice - what on earth did the Infants do whilst he was there?.

You Moosemama are his best and only advocate here. You are truly best placed to help him and apart from anything else no-one else will do the donkey work for you. This school won't help him, they certainly haven't to date.

Right, ds1 is now 'cooling down' on his bed.

He didn't have any additional support until year 2, because it wasn't until then that he started to have problems which warranted it. He does have social and communication issues with his peer group, but has a small close group of friends and one very good friend, who are all very accommodating and supportive of him, so to a certain extent these problems were masked until he went into the juniors and the social structure/hierarchy of the playground was significantly different. Of course he also found it hard to cope with suddenly having 8 different teachers rather than just the 1 - 2 class teachers per year he had in infants.

His handwriting has always been bad, but wasn't significantly worse that several other boys in his class as to mark him out as different, until year 2, when the others made good headway in this area and he didn't. He is also left-handed, so a certain amount of leaway (sp?) was afforded because of that.

Believe me, when there is a problem, I fight for him and we will do whatever is necessary to get him the help he needs, but feel that we should at least give the school a chance before we take things any further. Also, there really are no other schools locally that would be an option for him and he actually likes the school he's at - despite his problems, is happy going there.

We are awaiting his assessment at the moment, and I don't feel confident that I understand the scope of his problems well enough at present to be able to apply for a statement. Once he has had his assessment and I have a clearer picture of his problems and needs I will apply for a statement.

Hi Moosemama,

Was wondering what assessment you are referring to here and when this will take place (is this a diagnostic assessment?). Who is this with?.

Junior school can be a real problem for children with social/communication difficulties due to the unwritten social rules that these places have. It does not sound like the Infants prepared him at all properly for Junior school.

I think this particular school have had more than enough opportunity to date and what they have tried has not worked. His IEP is not now being implemented, they don't want him to "stand out" by giving him a laptop and they've told you as well he is unlikely to receive a Statement because he is performing well academically. They do not make that decision!.

You have more than enough "evidence" to apply for a Statement now besides which a Statement can take six months to set up.

I'm sorry to sound so bloody cross over this but I have seen far too many intelligent children with a wide varity or SENs get let down because the school has not been able to or even wanted to get their additional needs met.

Am not suggesting that you're not fighting his corner at all, you certainly need to continue to be fighting his corner because no-one else will do so. Not his teachers, any professionals you get involved with and certainly not his school.

Hi Attila

Ds has a verbal dx of Aspergers and he felt dyspraxia as well, although we have since found out that the Paed that gave us the dx is a bit over-keen to dx and label and we are awaiting a full assessment from the local multi-disciplinary team, whom I've heard are very good. I've spoken to the list manager at the centre and they said it will probably be April 2011!

I do understand why you get so cross about it all, I have my moments too - believe me, but its difficult to give a clear image of the full picture on here. As you know these things are complicated enough to get your own head around, let alone explain in few posts on a forum.

We are currently doing everything we can to get him the help he needs - short of going for a statement. We certainly won't let the school off the hook and are rapidly becoming a rather large thorn in their side. To be fair to them, none of us (dh and I included) realised the extent of his difficulties, as he is very good at pulling the wool over people eyes and also very protected by his group of friends at school.

We (dh and I) have thought about it long and hard and decided that is where we are at at the moment. Obviously this is not set in stone and we are always grateful for the advice/input of others more experienced with this sort of thing, such as yourself, in helping us making these sorts of decions.

Your son sounds very similar to mine. He is 7 and we are awaiting our dx assessment this month.

We have had simialr problems with school.

I have come to the conclusion that the type of support required to provide assistance so that my child reaches his potential will only be obtained by getting a statement.

School's have limited funding and, worse still, they do not really understand ASD problems and how the brain thinks differently. You can sit with my son until you are blue in the face practising gaps between words. Leave him for 5 minutes and they are back in a jumbled line again.

The lack of ability to generalise information/lessons learnt is a real problem and I feel my son will need 1:1 to deal with this.

Attila has helped me on many occasions and speaks very good advice.You must do what you feel is right for you though.

Thank you debs40. Its useful to know that the problems he is having are actually related to the ASD. One of ds's major issues is lack of spacing between words. (That and no capital letters or full stops.) A page of his writing just looks like a page full of random letters. He will put huge spaces within a word, then join two or three words together - his old (supply) teacher said marking his work is a bit like trying to crack a code, but that once you get into the flow of it, it gets easier.

To be honest I wasn't really sure that the lack of ability to integrate his knowledge into his classwork was even an ASD issue, that's why I decided to post on here. The way you put it as an inability to generalise information/lessons makes perfect sense. It never even entered my head that they are two sides of the same coin so to speak.

I find it all so confusing and with no proper diagnosis (paed admitted himself its not his field and was reading pointers from a book while we were meeting with him) and nothing/no-one to compare it to, I don't know what things are normal for his age, a bit out of the ordinary but not too much of an issue or attributable to his SN. That's why I feel I need to wait for a professional assessment to get a clearer picture of what's what. Iyswim. I honestly feel that if we went for a statement at the moment we would be turned down due to my lack of knowledge/information and although I know we can appeal I don't want to waste the opportunity and/or not be taken seriously.

I think I'm just lost in a haze of his behaviours/problems/needs at the moment and struggling to make sense of it all. Not at all helped by the fact that everything is being magnified/exacerbated by his currently being on gluten for coeliac testing. (Don't even get me started on the NHS cock-ups with that particular problem either. )

I would love to home-school him, but know realistically that I couldn't manage it. We spark off each other quite a bit and I'm not the most patient soul in the world. If I'm honest, I see a lot of myself in him and there's a question in the back of my mind (and dh's actually) as to whether I have ASD myself. I also feel that he won't/can't learn about social and communication skills if he's kept at home for the vast majority of the time.

I am probably over-sensitive today anyway. I am sitting here with my 16 month old dd and 6 year old ds2 watching Thomas-the-Tank as ds2 is quite poorly and in pain and so waking screaming the house down several times a night and of course waking his sister in the process. I don't think I had even one hour's sleep last night, hence this post probably not making much logical sense. Ds1 bless him, seems to sleep through it all, despite sharing a bedroom with ds2 - I guess ASD has its uses on occasion.

Hi Moosemama,

Indeed you must do what you feel right as Debs (hello!) says.

Re your comment:-
(my comments are in brackets)

"Ds has a verbal dx of Aspergers and he felt dyspraxia as well (these two can certainly be linked), although we have since found out that the Paed that gave us the dx is a bit over-keen to dx (who told you that?. Do not listen to hearsay) and label (I always see a label as a signpost to getting more help) and we are awaiting a full assessment from the local multi-disciplinary team, whom I've heard are very good (let's hope so). I've spoken to the list manager at the centre and they said it will probably be April 2011!"
(April of next year!. Oh for crying out loud!!. He needs to be seen well before then. So you wait and there is only further delay as a result. Do seriously consider applying for the Statement before then or this will be another school year nearly gone up the spout).

In a few short years as well he will be going to secondary school. How is he going to cope there?. The short answer is he may not at all be able to manage so you have to head off such potential issues at the pass. You need to think longer term. It is a long way off but my DS will go into Y7 in Sept and I remember Y3, seems like yesterday.

There is a lot of help out there available to you re applying for a Statement; don't let potential obstacles like your own perceived lack of knowledge get in the way so you end up not applying. LEAs often turn down initial requests anyway because this is what they do - they rely on parents to give up so this is when you appeal and try again. Besides anything else, the initial letter requesting assessment can be very short. IPSEA have template letters you can use www.ipsea.org.uk.

There is so much pressure on parents to just give up trying to get help/support/1 to 1 via a Statement and I have seen many parents in my real life circle crash and burn due to the extra demands placed on them by their child's additional support needs that don't get met at school for all sorts of reasons. They end up all not managing and that affects family life to its detriment. Please don't let that happen to yours.

Wishing your DS2 better soon.