Term Three

We have been extremely busy this term. We are sorry that we have not got back to you earlier.

What’s Happening
At the moment we have been updating the Student Support Documents and Individual Education Plans for all Junior School Learning Support Students. Secondly, we have begun the end of year assessment of literacy skills for children in Yrs 2 – 6. We use a test devised in New Zealand, the Probe, which we believe gives us very accurate information about the children’s literacy skills. We test all children as a service to classroom teachers.

New Staff Member
In the absence of Ms Ulrica, the school’s educational psychologist, Miss Monica has joined the team under the guidance of Professor Simoes to help our team assess students and to also support them.

Interesting New Tool
The Junior School has launched a new service called Netvibes which can be found on Mr Thompson’s Blog and also the Library blog. There is a section there for Learning Support, the link is

http://www.netvibes.com/stdom#Learning_Support

Take a look and see if any of this information is useful for you. There is also another section which may be useful entitled ‘Just 4 Parents’, the link is

http://www.netvibes.com/stdom#Just_4_Parents

There are many useful links for parents here as well. Just remember that a number of these sites are third party web sites and so they might not all be suitable for young children.

If you have any concerns or queries please do not hesitate to contact us.

Learning Support Team

Term 2

We wish everyone a Happy New Year and of course a good start to the second term.
The LST will continue to work with the children in order to develop the goals that we set together with the class room teachers last term. If you have questions, doubts or requests, please do not hesitate and contact us.
We would like to refer you to this interesting website: http://www.resourceroom.net/readspell/index.asp
There are several games your child can play, both language and math and there is an interesting article about Dyslexia and Math (http://www.resourceroom.net/math/lda_math_fall98.asp).

SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS SEMINAR

United Kingdom Trade and Investment in conjunction with the British Embassy in Lisbon held a Special Educational Needs Seminar at Campus Universitário de Almada on Thursday, 26th November. So that we are always fully up to date with what is happening in Special Needs we were fortunate to attend many interesting and valuable talks. The impact of specialist teaching support results in improvements in pupils’ learning and of equal importance is the noticeable increase in confidence and self esteem. Children feel more able to tackle homework and look forward to attending school.
The area of reading and writing as well as mathematics was once again addressed. Dyslexia is a controversial topic but early intervention and assessment is important as children can be taught strategies to cope and to deal with this – phonological awareness is essential, reading on different coloured paper also helps the child to identify the words more easily and that is why we use Reading Rulers with the children here at school.
A recent report that has come out in England is “The Rose Report” written by Sir Jim Rose and this focuses on the importance of phonic teaching. A high quality systematic phonic reading resource for use at home and in schools is “Trugs” (Teach Reading Using Games) – the website is www.readsuccessfully.com This is designed for primary as well as secondary students.
Dyscalculia is a specific difficulty with mathematics irrespective of an individual’s overall cognitive ability and although this is still an unknown area one of the most effective approaches is through the use of concrete apparatus to illustrate or provide a visual guide to deal with key concepts.
Throughout the Seminar it was evident that the usage of technology is a major tool to success.

Bene Faes and Vivian Bull

Student Support Documents

Dear Parents,

The Learning Support Team is finalizing your child’s S.S.D (Student Support Document) or I.E.P (Individual Educational Plan). A letter will be sent home soon with that document attached, so that you are aware of what learning goals have been set for your child. These learning goals are a result of meetings held with your child’s class teacher.
We would be more than pleased to meet you at an appointed time to discuss your child’s programme. The way to go is sometimes long and challenging, but if we take small steps, we will eventually achieve our goal. Often, your involvement and commitment is not only welcome but very much needed to help your child succeed. During a meeting we can explain to you how you can help your child and what tools we have at our disposal.

Looking forward to meeting you,
Miss Bene and Mrs. Bull

Interesting link:

http://www.ukdyslexialive.co.uk/info/is_my_child_dyslexic.html

Some fun games you can play with your child at home:

1. Staircase Game: works in either language or math.

E.g.: write the four times table on separate cards. Put a card on each stair e.g., (5x4). If the child gets the correct answer (20), he/she can move on to the next stair, where another card will be waiting. Can he/she make it to the top?

E.g.: write each lower case (small) letter on a card and place them on the staircase. If the child sounds the letter out correctly, he/she can move up to the next ‘challenge’. Who knows a treat might be waiting at the top.

2. Driving home in the car?

E.g.: Number Games – Number bonds to 10 -20 -100 – etc.
E.g.: Read the number plates on other cars, add numbers together, are numbers odd or even, etc.
E.g.: Counting back/forward from a given number. Parent says one, then child, then parent again,…. Counting in twos, threes, fours, etc. …
E.g.: Mental Math : addition, subtraction, multiplication and finding factors of a whole number. (Factors of 12? 1, 12, 3, 4, 6, 2)