Luke was seen in his room for a 45-minute occupational therapy treatment session. Focus of treatment was on improving his bilateral integration/hand usage, fine motor development, graphomotor skills, postural control and sensory processing/organization for improved general performance in various environments. Upon arrival Luke was non-complaint with most presented tasks. Luke was seen in his room for today's session. Provided Luke with vestibular input on spooner board as we went fishing for sight words. Luke enjoys moving and learning and was able to stay on task with fair to good success for reading his sight words. Continued in his room working at table on impulse control and turn taking with "Connect Four" travel game and the 5-second rule game. He is getting better at turn taking and waiting his turn but continues to struggle with having his opponent get points and definitely has a difficult time if he thinks he is losing or is going to lose. Lastly, met with Luke's mother go over his standardized test results on the BOT and progress over the school year. We discussed what he has to work on moving forward in regard to occupational therapy treatment.
Richard was seen in his room for a 45-minute treatment session. His session focuses on improving his postural control, integration of retained reflexes, visual motor skills and integration, fine motor skills, dexterity, manipulation, ocular motor development and graphomotor development/keyboarding as an alternative means to written communication. Richard was seen outside and in his room for his treatment session today. He is getting excited for the end of the school year. Today we worked outside on ocular motor skills and graphomotor development. Luke was able to track and hit a wiffle ball with a bat 3/5 times during today sessions. We continued outside using chalk on the cement to practice writing Richard's first and last name in cursive. Richard needed min-mod auditory cues to write his first name and wrote it several times. OT provided with a visual demo and example to copy to write his last name in script. Richard appears proud that he is able to write in cursive; however, needs more practice to make this a functional form of written communication. I hope he continues to practice writing in script this summer and in the future. Great session.
Joshua spent the majority of the period with Ms. Nicole working out college plans. When Joshua returned to class we had just a little time left to work on SAT Math Prep.
Today we got more practice with our ruler and protractor. We practiced hypothetical situations like what figures can you create with one set of parallel lines, an angle measure of 115 degrees and 65 degrees. The activity gave Aiden the chance to draw figures with different perspectives and decide if there is only one possible solution or several. When we got to a stopping point Aiden mentioned his work in art. I offered that we go to the art room and he could work on it. He was excited but also simultaneously felt guilty. I told him it was ok, we could go together and he could show me what he's been working on. So we did just that. We all socialized and Aiden explained to me the Orcs he's been working on.
Today I offered Ben to help him clean out his room, but he said he did not want to. I told him that teachers are helping students get their things organized and I was willing to help him, but he demanded he was not going to do that. I wanted to finish our lesson on exponents which stemmed from a problem he had difficulty with on the MAPS test. During his test, he said, "Look at this!!" I did and realized it was a problem within his ability, but yet to him he was taken aback by it. So today I wanted to show him how, if you break it down, the problem could be manageable. During the explanation, he questioned why negative exponents cannot be left in the answer. I explained to him how simplifying means to reduce to lowest form (ie we don't say 20/5 we say 4). Then he said he doesn't care about it and it makes it more difficult for him. He said, "I'm never going to be able to learn this if you keep calling it negative exponent". I realized he was going to question anything I said, so I sat down and we paused. I asked him what I can do. He said that I needed to go slower to help him. I said sure, I can do that. Then he said, "Actually, you've done this all year." I said, "Ok Ben, you are really going to be like this to me? I think I've been extremely fair in accommodating you this year. Both academically and personally, with the way you've treated me. This behavior might work to push other people away but you're not running me off, I'm here to stay." He was quiet the rest of the period working with his legos.
Today Andrew and I spent the first half of class in the art room to assist the teachers in a conference. Then we went back to his class and pulled some SAT problems. I gave him a problem similar to what we were working on yesterday: The coordinate Geometry of circles. He remembered what to do. Next, I gave him a problem where one of the centers was at zero. The equation looked different to him, so he had to determine when there are no visible numbers, it implies the coordinates are zero.
PJ and I spent the class period cleaning out his room. We gathered the items he wants to keep and threw away the items he wanted to discard. We organized his things into two boxes. He pretended to cry because it made him feel sad the end of the year is here.
