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Looking for teaching strategies that help children with seizures to learn
Tue, 12/14/2010 - 18:08I am a special education teacher searching for ways to help one of my students learn to read. He is in third grade and has diagnosed Children Absence Epilepsy and ADHD.
He is just now (December of 2010) catching his reading skills up to where he was at the end of second grade. Reads letter sounds and one syllable words in isolation with fluency but gets "stuck" when reading sentences or these same words in context. Appears to just freeze, sometimes starts picking at his fingers, can be (for lack of a better word jump started) by my prompting (start with the ...sound ...) after a few seconds. often stops between sounds in a word and then can't remember what he has just sounded out.
For those of you who have have epilepsy - What helped you to learn when you were this age? What reading programs or strategies were most helpful to you. What insights can you give me in how he might be learning and what I need to do to help him. Any input would be helpful and appreciated.
For parents, teachers, or doctors: I would welcome any advice or input.
Comments
Re:strategies for kids w/seizures
Submitted by wbwo on Wed, 2010-12-15 - 13:46
I'm a parent of a now-21 year old with complex partial epilepsy. I am fortunate that my daughter went to kindergarten reading well. She just learned from me reading to her all the time. However, her desire to read and her ability started to plummet in the 3rd grade. I couldn't figure out why, but teachers were hinting that she had inattentive ADHD. Educational and psychological testing never revealed that, but to make a long story short, after having a dismal 2 years in college we tested her for auditory processing, and she definitely had a problem. I am telling you this because it is very hard to get an accurate diagnosis of what is wrong, (as the comments above point out) so sometimes you have to take a "shotgun" approach. Here are some things that helped her:
1. The audiologist who tested her suggested she use an FM system in class. Most elementary schools have these already. Another audiologist told me that even children with no processing or hearing problems do better in school with these.
2. The audiologist also told me that the brain processed the written word as if it were speech. My daughter scored low on understanding speech in noise, therefore, when she reads ,any noise garbles her comprehension. So maybe you need to make sure your student reads to you in a very quiet setting. (The audiologist told me that noise can be something as soft as the hum of a fan.) My daughter also wears earplugs when she tests.
These 2 changes brought her gradepoint from a 1.9 to a 3.6 the first semester she did this.
My daughter also seems to have a harder time keeping things in memory, so we use this technique of studying: http://theweek.com/article/index/206820/why-good-study-habits-may-be-bad-for-learning. She studies in two locations and it does seem to stick in her memory better. Maybe your student could read aloud to his parents at home, then read the same passage to you at school.
Along the way, we changed her seizure meds, and that may have helped with all of this too. It is hard to know.
Hope this helps.
I'm a parent of a now-21 year old with complex partial epilepsy. I am fortunate that my daughter went to kindergarten reading well. She just learned from me reading to her all the time. However, her desire to read and her ability started to plummet in the 3rd grade. I couldn't figure out why, but teachers were hinting that she had inattentive ADHD. Educational and psychological testing never revealed that, but to make a long story short, after having a dismal 2 years in college we tested her for auditory processing, and she definitely had a problem. I am telling you this because it is very hard to get an accurate diagnosis of what is wrong, (as the comments above point out) so sometimes you have to take a "shotgun" approach. Here are some things that helped her:
1. The audiologist who tested her suggested she use an FM system in class. Most elementary schools have these already. Another audiologist told me that even children with no processing or hearing problems do better in school with these.
2. The audiologist also told me that the brain processed the written word as if it were speech. My daughter scored low on understanding speech in noise, therefore, when she reads ,any noise garbles her comprehension. So maybe you need to make sure your student reads to you in a very quiet setting. (The audiologist told me that noise can be something as soft as the hum of a fan.) My daughter also wears earplugs when she tests.
These 2 changes brought her gradepoint from a 1.9 to a 3.6 the first semester she did this.
My daughter also seems to have a harder time keeping things in memory, so we use this technique of studying: http://theweek.com/article/index/206820/why-good-study-habits-may-be-bad-for-learning. She studies in two locations and it does seem to stick in her memory better. Maybe your student could read aloud to his parents at home, then read the same passage to you at school.
Along the way, we changed her seizure meds, and that may have helped with all of this too. It is hard to know.
Hope this helps.
Re: Strategies that help children with seizures / ADHD to learn
Submitted by pgd on Tue, 2010-12-14 - 19:17
Good question. Thanks for asking it. There is (often) a small or greater relationship between time studying/reading/minutes on task and small, gradual improvements. It seems to me that the child's situation can perhaps be slowly clarified along the lines of: Is it really petit/absence (not ADHD Inattentive)? Is it petit/absence and ADHD Inattentive? Is it ADHD Inattentive with or without central auditory processing disorder (CAPD)? Is it some sort of subtle glitch in some aspect of short term memory, etc.? Also, for educational purposes I would mention books/taking a look at books like: Nerves In Collision by Walter C. Alvarez, M.D., the How To (understand) Hyperactivity book (1981) about ADHD Inattentive by C. Thomas Wild, and the Remarkable Medicine (Dilantin) book by Jack Dreyfus. Some attention deficits are like skips in old phonograph records. Sometimes the skips are fairly unpredictable which means that restudying the same material later can sometimes help fill in the gaps a little. There are no cures for the epilepsies/the ADHDs (simplified/oversimplified answer). A few persons are helped by using the right medicine for what they have (not a cure). Some children have subtle eye tracking difficulties and if the study material is a printed book, having the child use a yellow Highlighter pen can help a little so the child knows exactly what the child has read/didn't read (makes review easier too). You might also try to practice with the child something like having a telephone conversation/being a clerk with a cash register and a customer with an item and vice versa (two way normal human communication). You can have the child read to you and you read to the child with questions and answers coming from both you and the child (aka speech and hearing). Little improvements here and there are likely. Good luck.