Show # 99- Elaine Weitzman, Hanen Centre

In this episode, I talk with Elaine Weitzman from the Hanen Centre. The Hanen Centre is an international organization focused on helping parents and educators enhance the language and literacy skills of young children. The programs they have been developed are research-based and the information they offer parents is practical, easy, every day things we can do to truly enhance how our children learn.

The Hanen centre has come out with a yearly calendar that gives parents and teachers a month by month, week by week resource of how to specifically help build critical language skills for young children. This is a straight-forward, easy to use guide to doing simple things that can have a big, long term impact on your child's education and literacy.

To give you some perspective on how important this is, a recent show entitled "Going Big" on This American Life by Ira Glass featured a segment regarding the Harlem Children's Zone, an ambitious program focused on helping parents help their children in the same way the Hanen Centre does- and it's working miracles in terms of improving children's scholastic outcomes.

It's simple things, like reading to your child, asking them questions, talking about emotions, answering those endles "Why?" questions that help spark your child's curiosity about the world and encourage them to develop these critical skills necessary for later literacy and academic success.

Please contact the Hanen Centre through their website at www.hanen.org. The calendar for 2009 is now available, and sample months are available on their website.

Click here to listen to Elaine Weitzman, Hanen Center- Developing Early Language Skills with your kids

Sharon Martin, Speech and Language Pathologist

In today's show, we feature an interview with Sharon Martin! Sharon is a well-known for being part of the DivaCast, best described as five girlfriends talking about what matters to them, and having fun doing it! Sharon's becoming a part of the LD Podcast, because she's also a Speech Language Pathologist (also known as an SLP) teaching in schools in Georgia.

Sharon has her Masters in Education, Speech Language-Pathology and is licensed in Georgia, and is a member of many professional organizations for SLP's including the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA), and National Student Speech Language Hearing Association, (NSSHLA).

Sharon has worked with special need students who ranged from profound/severely impaired to mild articulation disorders. This work has included students with learning disabilities, language impairments, autism, down syndrome, mitochondria, CP, cochlear implants, apraxia, phonological processing disorders and emotional behavioral disorders.

She has also participated in specialized training and tasks forces involved with Response to Intervention (RTI), literacy/language interventions, and special education regulations. Sharon's planning on becoming a regular part of the show, and future shows will focus on topics like Response to Intervention and IEP's.

In this show, I also talk about the results of our "Daily journal" over the summer experiment, getting kids back to school and trying to keep them organized. One question I received by email recently asked:

"What type of planner or organizer would you recommend for kids with LD? The one we get from school has really small writing areas, making it hard to fit in all the information, let alone notes back and forth from home and school."

My recommendations:

What most kids need: Big space to write, securely bound, monthly and weekly views.

What I've tried for myself and the kids:

Personal Digital Assistants, like Palm Pilots; various calendars and systems, wall calendars, wipe-off dry erase calendars, etc. Electronic versions of calendars, ranging from Google Calendar, to the calendar/alarms on my various cell phones, and Skoach, an online calendar/task management system developed in part by well-known and respected ADHD researcher, Dr. Kathleen Nadeau. (Also a prior guest on the LD Podcast).

What Really Works for Me- paper calendar/agenda with both weekly and monthly views. Usually, the medium to large ones give me enough writing space- mini ones are far too small.

Brands I like:

Mead actually has a a website to help you choose a planner (I was surprised to find this out!)

The Quick Notes Calendar from At-A-Glance has weekly and monthly view, along with plenty of spaces for notes and reminders. This runs about $20.00

TimeToo has some interesting looking family trackers, but you kinda have to choose between weekly on monthly, not both. The RSVP space on the bottom is a great idea- these are almost perfect.

The GoMom planner from Daytimer has that weekly/monthly views, and is a good basic planner-a "mommed" up version of the At A Glance.
Mead Upperclass Student Organizer - Available plain ($12.99) or with a bungee cord to keep closed ($13.79) This one can work well with kids or adults- not a bad choice for that master family calendar.

Secret Indulgence and Pricey Version- Levenger has a bunch of interesting products, based on it’s "circa" system- a way you can pretty much customize notebooks. This means you can add what you need- to do lists, expense reports, notes, etc. and rearrange, without losing anything and maintaining the pages securely fastened together. (If you wanted to try it to see if it works, the 2008 agenda is down to only $4.95, and might be a good investment if you think you might like the flexibility it offers.)

Downsides- expensive and addictive. Runs calendar year, not academic year. I do use this notebook system, more than the planner, to organize projects, in part because the paper is thicker than normal and is fantastic to write on, and I can move stuff around easily as needed. It is more of an initial investment, but I do refill them, and I love these notebooks.

Click here to listen to Sharon Martin

Show #90- Amy Ford Hebert- Write On Handwriting

The LD Podcast Is officially two years old!

We all know how important reading is; equally important is the next step along the literacy pathway- writing. Writing requires that we synthesize our thoughts, and then express them, coherently, in text. For kids with learning disabilities, this can present a unique challenge. Some children have fine motor issues that make the physical act of handwriting difficult, which then acts as a barrier to developing good written expression. And interestingly enough, the answer to these problems isn't always as simple as teaching kids keyboarding or how to use programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking (Although these skills can help struggling writers immensely).

Other children may be overwhelmed with keeping their ideas straight long enough to express them on paper- the open-ended question that asks “Write whatever you want” seems to siphon any idea right out of their head. And for others, problems with organization or impulsivity can keep them from expressing themselves in an orderly, coherent way.

Today's guest, Amy Ford Hebert, has developed a computer program to help coach kids through the formation parts of print and cursive letters, and then take that practice and transfer it to the page. Write On Handwriting is a multi-sensory approach to handwriting geared mostly towards the classroom, but we are trying it at home this summer, along with daily journaling, to help both of my children work on the mechanics of handwriting as well as fluency in producing written expression.

And shockingly enough, the Nation's Reportcard on Writing, published by the Department of Education reports that only 33% of the nation's 8th graders are writing at the profiecient or advanced level- only 2 % at the advanced level. This means two thirds of the students are writing at a level that makes the demands of the classroom a challenge for them, largely because they do not have the skills they need to meet the demands they face. We need to do something to change this.

Handwriting is just one of the many factors that influence a child's written expression and output. Unfortunately, if the written output is poor or illegible, kids often get labeled as careless, sloppy, messy, or "not putting enough effort into their work" which certainly does not encourage them to write more. What may be something as simple as a fine motor problem becomes a moral failing in the eyes of teachers, and then a battle of wills can easily follow, where no one wins and the child certainly loses.

Amy has inspired me to put more resources about writing, handwriting and the writing process on the website- you'll find a new page under the Specific LD Resources menu addressing writing. Next week, we'll finish our interview with Amy Hebert, and I'll give you an update on how our home writing program for the summer is going.

Click here to listen to Amy Ford Hebert, Write On Handwriting