Somewhere between finishing up your child’s summer homework packet and buying school supplies, don’t forget to add one more thing to your summer to-do list– preparing your child for the next school year. Here’s how to leverage a few minutes of summer downtime to prevent back-to-school anxiety and get your child off to a fast start when the new school year arrives this fall.
1. Ask your child’s school principal or guidance counselor if you can borrow the textbooks and lesson plans that will be used in the fall. You can introduce the books over the summer, even if you only flip through the pages with your child and point out pictures of all of the exciting things to be learned in the next grade. Familiarity with the new books, and the type of content within them, makes one less thing for your child to get used to at the start of the new school year.
2. Complete a few lessons or read a couple of storybooks from the next year’s curriculum to provide a fast start for the fall. We try this with our son often, particularly in the area of his strength, which happens to be social studies. Pre-learning keeps him challenged over the summer, and confident in the fall, even if he happens to have a hard time with some of his other subjects.
3. Take pictures of the new classroom and his new teachers. Have your child meet his teacher during new student orientation, even if he has been going to the same school for years. I also try to have an email exchange with our son’s teacher(s) during summer break, just to introduce myself and exchange some information about my son. Most of the time, the teachers have already been briefed about my son’s learning style and his needs, but I like to check in to see if the teacher has any further questions. To their credit, they usually do!
4. If your child will be attending a new school, create a videotaped tour of the new school, including the administrative offices, the office staff, the guidance counselor, the principal, the gym, the hallways, the playground and the classrooms. Follow it up with an on-site building tour while the school is really quiet. That way, he’ll be comfortable getting around the building, and will be familiar with many of the names and places he will see most often.
Most importantly, simply think about what might cause your child to feel anxious and then chip away at the unfamiliar things your child will encounter so that he or she can hit the ground running in the fall.
Tags: autism education
Student orientation is SO important every year before school starts. I can never stress that enough to parents of special needs children.
http://momsofspecialneedschildren1.blogspot.com/2009/02/student-orientation.html
Another thing that is important that needs to be done before school starts is Staff Training. To make sure there is safe learning environment that supports academic achievement for your special needs child, you should request training of all personnel that comes in contact with your child BEFORE the start of each school year. Have this added to your child’s IEP and make sure it is done way before school starts (you may have to call your child’s caseworker, etc. to get the ball rolling). Many schools say they are not required to provide this, but they are.
http://momsofspecialneedschildren1.blogspot.com/2009/03/staff-training.html
File to Give to Teachers at Staff Training:
http://momsofspecialneedschildren1.blogspot.com/2009/01/file-to-give-teachers-for-as-training.html