IEP and scribes

Post Reply New Topic

Does anyone have a scribe as part of their child's IEP? My son is in 6th grade, and while he's ok now, we'll be moving to the DC area this summer with larger schools AND as a middle schooler. He was only diagnosed with AS at the end of his 4th grade year, so we've only had one full year of IEP under our belts and are still working on tweaking everything.

DS's writing is disorganized, missing details etc. If I get him to dictate to me, most of this corrects itself. I don't know what a scribe will do in the classroom, but my thoughts are that with the higher grades, comes more note taking (more opportunities for him to become anxious due to speed), less "forgiveness" for mistakes, etc. Is this something a scribe could help with?

Thanks in advance!

Our school would not provide a scribe. Money and the budget being one obstacle the other that we needed to find something that would help our son but also allow him to try and improve his note taking.
I didn't think about the cons of a because I was so focused on "he needs to have good notes to succeed"
I didn't think about the cons of a scribe
-The first one depends on your child and to what degree others think about him. My son what others think is a biggy. At the pre-teen/teenage level having a scribe follow my son around school would make him stand out even more then he already does. Give the bullies one more thing to taunt him about and make him even more uncomfortable in a class setting.
-He would not be trying to take notes and as he gets older this is a skill that might develop but we would not know this if he wasn't at least trying to take notes.

What we ended up doing was compromising with the school
Our son takes notes that he can understand. No teacher is allowed to grade or try to improve his note taking. That was more important in middle school when the were trying to teach note taking skills. In Middle school the teachers would provide our son written information about what was covered. One teacher would give his lecture outline, another talked to a classmate who had extremely good note taking skills and the teacher would photocopy her notes and give that to our son. From the info provided by the teachers my son could study what the teacher found to be important, could expand his notes if he had missed something or the pace had been to fast.
The special ed room took it a step further and would talk to him about what he wrote down vs what he could have wrote down. He has a wonderful memory so they ended up teaching him to just write down key words that would just jog his memory or that he could look up later if he didn't remember.
For high school he is still allowed to have information from the teacher but he has to ask the teacher for it. Something we are still trying to decide if it works or not. Some days he will ask but days he is stressed or the teacher seems upset he will not ask even when he knows he needs to.

My son is in the 3rd grade and is on a 504 plan. The school will not put him on an IEP. He has problems writing so the teacher will scribe for him. And then for his home work I have to scribe for him if it is more than I one word answer. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I know that he has problems but someone else writing for him, I feel that he should be encouraged to do this on his own. I found a summer program at an Occupation place called COTI that offers a program for writing. It is called Scribble to Script. The group is designed to provide handwriting enrichment and support for children struggling with the mechanics of writing such as correct letter formation, reversal, sizing and placement on a writing line.Stations will include sensory motor and writing activities that will emphasize a whole body approach to learning. The children will experiment with a variety of strategies to assist with handwriting including pencil grips, slant boards, and handwriting paper. Have you tried occupational therapy for your child? Any thoughts on this?

My son has a friend who has real difficulties with handwriting and his IEP states that he can do all work on a computer and not have to hand write anything.

Also.. what about a micro recorder.. During lecture time they can take notes but also record it so they can go back and add to their notes later.. That seems totally reasonable and takes the pressure off of missing something.

I'm going to try and put my son in a summer program at COTI for handwriting and see if that helps any. The program will only take 6 children. Maybe I am just to new to all this and feel that if someone is writing for him or is just using a computer that he will not ever be able to write. I just feel that the school should try occupational therapy or something. I just feel that they are not trying everything they can.

My son's IEP gave him permission to use a scribe, or to dictate, but only actually provided him with one when there was an available volunteer in the classroom (it was not required). The elementary school did provide him with a tape recorder, but he didn't like using it. He preferred to come home and have us scribe for him.

In sixth grade he was given an Alphasmart and given OT services that focused exclusively on getting his keyboarding up to par. At home, we continued to do a combination of scribing and having him take a turn typing. Towards the end of the year we transferred him into a study hall class where a resource teacher could work with him on a combination of scribing / editing / otherwise assisting. His IEP gave him permission to use computers for all his written work, to use study hall for assistance, and to have us scribe at home based on our judgement.

Over the summer we encouraged him to keep keyboarding.

Seventh grade was focused on getting the rough drafts from the keyboard into punctuated and spelled form. OT pronounced him keyboard proficient even though I wasn't thrilled about it; still, he met their minimum standard and that was that. His IEP gave permission to use all the modern technological tools available for writing and editing, and he was programmed into a study hall class to work on the editing process (prevents the teachers from thinking us parents wrote it for the child).

The issue of teachers wondering if you wrote for the child is quite real, btw, and another reason to wean off all scribing sometime in middle school. I don't blame the teachers and, quite honestly, it's tough to strictly scribe when your child makes huge grammar errors. And scribing does not allow the child to practice spelling or punctuation at all.

I'd say that now, in eigth grade, my son is fully keyboard proficient and only uses assistance for proofing (which he does need a lot of!).

Writing is a multi-task process, as one member of our IEP pointed out, so scribing is very useful while they learn to form and organize thoughts. But you have to keep working on the self-sufficiency skill of a keyboard. A 6th grader is finally ready to run with the keyboard, so take advantage of it. Get the OT help so that your child can start to stand on his own in a year or two. It was our goal for our son to start highschool without any need for a scribe or other help that required him to rely on a person, and that goal has been accomplished. Got to say, HUGE relief!! !!

We are, btw, still working on the note taking issues, but keyboarding is also a reasonable solution there (biggest issue being how to teach a format that makes sense). If you can get a tape recorder for note taking, I think that would work, but most common is asking the teacher to supply outlines. Except, we never got anywhere with that and my son figures he keeps it all in his head and doesn't care ... like I said, still working on the note taking.

Good luck!

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 09 Apr 2011, 5:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I didn't find the OT through the school to be very helpful with the physical writing. And they did work on it. Sometimes I think maybe the answer was more: more exercises, more practice ... something we should have duplicated at home, that we didn't. But, honestly, it's a mute point. My son, now 13, keyboards beautifully, and we live in a world where computers are everywhere. He can handwrite legibly when he has to do, but it is slow and difficult for him, and his hand cramps up quickly. Still, it's enough for the limited times there are no other options.

I agree that your school needs to do something to address the difficulty, or your child will get frustrated with all aspects of writing and not engage in the many functions of it that he could be learning and becoming proficient with. Scribing is basically the way most people go, with the goal of weaning the child from it when they are developmentally ready to become proficient with a keyboard (around 6th grade). I prefer scribing to other options like tape recorders and voice software because it keeps the child engaged in the process, and they can take turns doing parts of the writing so that they do get some practice. But, scribing requires that someone be there for the child, so it tends to work more as a homework solution than an in-class one.

My son also did tracking excercises in resource in elementary school and other work designed to help him write but, end result, he's a keyboarder. He's happy. He can produce his own work. He considers it problem solved.

My son has dysgraphia as well - we do have a scribe as an accommodation on his IEP for writing "compositions". He's in fourth grade. Anything more than a sentence or two is what we defined as a composition. His processing limit for writing words seems to be around 10 words right now.

We went the OT route, both independently and through the school. I had to explain stimming to the school OT! :O Their writing eval consisted of having the student copy a line of text and if they can do that, they don't qualify for OT through the school, because, "It doesn't affect him academically." Obviously some big changes are needed here. Me at this meeting, "But......that's not writing. That's copying. It's not the same thing. He can copy just fine, he just can't get the information from his brain to the paper...." OT, "Well, that's how we do the test. If he can copy a sentence, then he can write". Big changes.

In my guys case, the dysgraphia is a processing issue, not all of the "easy" interventions (as far as the school is concerned) didn't work - pencil grips, keyboarding, slant boards.

We (teachers and I ) thought we were going to have a huge fight on our hands with the school board when we asked for a scribe. The regional ASD specialist warned us about the OT eval and that they would be very resistant to allowing/providing a scribe. Our ESE teacher in particular was very worried that they weren't going to allow scribing, especially since this year is a big standardized test year with a writing component. She kept a very detailed log of how much Julian could produce with her scribing vs. left on his own. With her scribing, he was producing 200+ words in 30 minutes. When left to himself, his limit is about 10-12 words.

I called the ESE supervisor for this area a few weeks before the meeting and expressed my concerns with her, about how I already had it set in my head that the school system was essentially going to let my kid fail - but....her response actually surprised me. She said that if this was already being done in the classroom as a successful accommodation, then there was no reason not to allow it, both for testing and in the classroom. Maybe we're just lucky. Maybe is has something to do with the standardized tests given in fourth grade (one of which is writing). Whatever. I'll take it.

So, now we have a scribe. As another accommodation, we asked for the teachers notes, in place of Julian having to take class notes himself. And don't be afraid to call outside of the school - sometimes the ESE coordinators don't know the answer, but somebody in the system should. Don't take no for an answer. If he needs an accommodation, ask.

Elizabeth

Thank you... Sometimes I feel like such a tool around here... I just learned a new word...

dysgraphia

My son has this problem.. He cannot write a coherent paragraph... He can write, messily and only slightly large. He can learn spelling words with LOTS of practice... But cannot seem to understand how to form a proper idea on paper. After two or three sentences he just repeats a prior sentence, maybe wording it in a slightly different way.

Definitely something to ask his counselor about.

Thank you.

No. Demand. If necessary go over their heads. Know your rights and your kids rights and don't just ask for them insist on them.

This thread does have me realizing how many things I let go simply because I am intimately familiar with the budget situation in our district, and I do think it is appropriate to allow that to be a factor. For me, demanding they pay a scribe for my child would have meant they would have had to pull resources from some other critical program. I worked my tail off fund raising for years just so the teachers wouldn't have to worry about photocopying homework pages. And so on ... we're in a district that is on pretty critical life support and providing an amazingly responsive IEP team regardless, and achieving competitive test scores regardless. So, for me, the question was always "helpful" v. NEED. In my son's case, the concept of a scribe was easy to replace with the purchase of a tape recorder, so the school went with a tape recorder. But they also encouraged parents who wanted to volunteer in the classroom to take up my son's case, and that worked, too. It wouldn't have occurred to me or anyone on the IEP team that it was necessary to have a paid person on stand by for this relatively infrequent need. We definitely talked about if an aid was needed, and certainly scribing would have been part of the aid's duty list, but I never felt his needs rose to that level.

And, the more I think about it, the less sure I am that I would have WANTED a separately designated, paid scribe for a child that otherwise did not need an aid. My son knew he wasn't expected to write more than he was comfortable with, and that when the time came for him to need assistance, it would be found for him. In that way, he learned to figure out for himself when need existed v. when a short cut would do, and he learned to advocate for himself by asking for help at the right times. The message he got was that help is there for you, that the people in the world know this is extra difficult for you, but you have to let people know when you want that help. From the beginning he was very involved in the selection of his accommodations, and when they would apply, and I think that is part of how he is growing into the relatively confident young man he is. OK, maybe that was always his personality, and I know some AS individuals would rather fall through a crack rather than ever advocate for themselves, but you do have to wonder.

I do draw a distinction between helpful, and needed. My impoverished district has never let me down on any need, they have always made it happen without hesitation, and perhaps part of that is because I've carefully never asked them to spend money on helpful. If you've got a district with money to burn by all means grab it all, anything that might seem helpful, but if you've got a school that is struggling to make ends meet like so many are, then understanding how your child's needs might sit in relation to all the other needs the district must address seems like common sense to me. You can tell a district what they must do all you want, but if the taxpayers aren't coughing up the funds, it tends to mean robbing from Peter.

And ... I'm not meaning any of this to suggest that this one parent shouldn't advocate for her child if this is what that child needs, but I do get frustrated seeing posters use terms like demand when we're talking about a service that I happen to know my son did totally fine without. I have a 13 year old with severe processing AND physical issues when it comes to writing, and he is now writing ON HIS OWN, having gone through the process I already posted. He ENJOYS writing and he's started about 5 different books. There is no barrier to worry about; the handicap is effectively worked around, and we didn't lose the war (comfort with writing) to win the battle (finishing assignment x). There is no better result to achieve than the one we got, IMHO. I've been proud of our schools for handling it so well and I've been proud of my son.

DW_a_mom wrote:

<There is no better result to achieve than the one we got, IMHO.

Absolutely. Our goal is also eventual independence in "written" expression, which I do think will come in time, hopefully in the form of keyboarding. I've seen some of your posts about how you helped your son achieve this, and I'm very hopeful and thankful to you for sharing that info.

As far as demanding things? You really do have to choose your battles. At one of our initial IEP meetings, we were all warned by the ASD specialist to be careful what we asked for, since once something was part of that document, it had to be done, whether the school currently had the resources to supply it or not. Yes, it's their responsibility to do that. if needed. No, they can't disallow something just because it costs a lot of money - if it's necessary. But the sad reality is that funding in public schools is scarce and as much as I sometimes tend to forget, my kid is not the only kid who attends public school. I'm sure I could ask for a lot more, but what we're doing now is working.

Which is how we get to that choice of needed or helpful (which I think is a great point). Any intervention/accommodation used by the school need to have measurable results, as far as they are concerned, especially things that cost $$$. Almost all of our helpful accommodations cost absolutely nothing, but they do a huge amount of good, both for the teachers and Julian. Our scribe is on an as-needed basis - generally 3-4 times a week just during writing class - he doesn't need a full time aide otherwise.

Hello -

I am a special education teacher working with 5th-8th grade students. I do add "scribe for documenting thoughts and ideas" on several of my student's IEPs, and not just those with autism. Many of my students can give me their ideas verbally, but to keep them in your head, get them down on paper and then organize them - no way! I have heard and read that the process of taking ideas and writing them down is one of the most difficult processes we must learn to do. For some of my kids just the physical act of writing can be painful, let alone keeping track of what you were going to say, spelling it correctly and then writing it down ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

I try to take the ideas of my students, write them down, discuss with them the order that they will talk about them with, etc. so they have something to look at and follow during the process of writing. If they need more help than this, I will also take their phrases (supporting ideas) and write those down, but then ask them to turn them into complete sentences. This has worked for several students that have become successful writers. The task is still difficult, but they can do it. The other thing is just helping them brainstorm ideas. Sometimes just to begin the process is the most difficult task itself.

I also frequently utilize an accommodation of peer or teacher notes so that the students who struggle with writing, struggle with both writing and listening at the same time, or students who cannot read their own writing or write to slowly can gets the notes they need to be successful on their tests and assignments. This gives them the chance to sit and really listen to what their teachers are saying. I figured this out when my own daughter went to college with a 504 and had this accommodation. I suggested that she at least try to take notes and then supplement her own with what she was given. She informed me that I didn't get it. She couldn't write and listen at the same time - we all learn so differently. I do like what Brenda D. suggested in that as the students get older they can get these notes, but need to be responsible for asking for them. Being a self advocate and being responsible aren't always easy to teach or learn!

I also have Alphasmarts or Nanos available so that my students can utilize a keyboard in the classroom rather than handwriting lengthy assignments.

Another accommodation is that daily work such as assignments are not graded down for spelling errors (of course when spelling is not being assessed).

Good luck to you!