When students transition from the preschool age group setting to the school-age setting, a special education transition meeting must be held, since the service providers change from the county to the school district. Nolan's transition meeting was today, and he moved from CPSE (the Committee for Preschool Special Education) to CSE (the Committee for Special Education).
One of the hard things is determining exactly what Nolan needs. He's quite bright and developmentally on track. He technically qualifies for an IEP in two different ways: the first being "hard of hearing" and the second being "other health impairment." His primary disability is the hearing loss (this affects his education the most), so this is his classification in the school district.
Our elementary school is fantastic and has a Teacher of the Deaf (TOD) on campus. Nolan has some vocabulary gaps and some language processing issues (some of this is due to his fluctuating hearing loss, which has been known to cause central auditory processing disorder - CAPD - in children). In children who are deaf or hard of hearing, this problem isn't referred to as CAPD, but is simply considered an effect of the hearing loss. Nolan needs some pre-teaching and some work on processing phrases, multiple step directions, and auditory discrimination skills in the classroom. The team decided that 30 minute daily sessions with the TOD would be appropriate - these sessions may be push-in or pull-out. "Push-in" means that the TOD will go into the classroom with Nolan, and "pull-out" means that Nolan would be pulled out of the classroom for a one-to-one session.
The biggest debate was speech. Nolan has some speech errors, but the majority are developmental in nature. He has W for L, misses S occasionally, and has the normal speech errors of a four year old (difficulty with R and TH). He does sometimes miss the D sound in words, and will confuse M for N. These errors are related to his hearing, and can fluctuate with his hearing level. Some weeks he has a solid D sound, other weeks it nearly disappears.
In the end, we decided to keep speech therapy, at least for Kindergarten. If the developmental errors disappear and his articulation becomes clearer, then we can always drop it. We'd rather not get behind the 8-ball with his speech, as it is easier to prevent a problem than to remediate one. He'll get speech twice per week at 30 minutes per session, which may be in (very) small groups or individually, as the speech language pathologist sees fit.
There are also a few "alerts" put into his IEP - things his kindergarten teacher should monitor. Nolan's gross motor skills are borderline, and his fine motor skills have come along nicely. Still, we want to watch for fatigue and make sure he is able to develop age-appropriate skills. He still can't hop on one leg like his peers can (or throw a ball well), but that may change over the summer (hint: Mommy Boot Camp is in session this summer).
The meeting went very well, and I am so thankful that we live in the best school district in the area for kids with disabilities. The team at our school really ensures that every child is given what they need to excel!
