Region 17 Dyslexia

Education Specialist

Dyslexia/Multi-tiered Systems of Support

Email: chobbs@esc17.net
Website: www.esc17.net
Location: 1111 West Loop 289, Lubbock, TX 79416 USA
Phone: 806-281-5840

TEA has created a Coronavirus Support & Guidance webpage. This will be your best resource for the most up-to-date, accurate information. I recommend visiting this webpage every day for the latest updates and resources. Additionally, TEA will be hosting a daily conference call with school superintendents in order to communicate the most up-to-date information.

Even though our ESC and schools remain closed, we are thinking about the work you have been charged to do at this time. We at Region 17, are all working with you in mind. My office phone has been transferred to my cell phone and I am checking emails daily. Our students and parents are so fortunate to have you! I am here to support you as you support your students!

Many of you are wondering how to serve your students with dyslexia in our new "learning at home" situation we find ourselves in today. You may wonder, "Are we required to provide dyslexia services?" The answer is yes! If your district is providing at home learning opportunities for general education students, then you will need to provide learning opportunities for your dyslexic students.

Things to consider:

• What is the expectation locally?
  
• Are you to provide maintenance skills through send home packets?
• Are you providing virtual intervention expecting forward progress?

Unless you have the capability to provide virtual class sessions, it will be impossible for you to provide the explicit, systematic, interactive monitoring of your students' learning and maintain the integrity of the dyslexia programs you are using. Therefore, you may wish to provide practice opportunities taken from previous lessons. The publishers of Take Flight and RbD have granted permission to scan/send copies of work pages to your students (see below), however we may not video record lessons at this time. I have included other resources below that you might share with/assign to your students.

Whatever you are providing for students, please remember to document, document, document.

• Contacts made with parents
• Contacts made with students
• Copies of intervention provided, etc.

Above all, remember to connect with your students frequently by phone, email, text messages or virtual format. Your students need you, they depend on you for that social emotional support as well as the academic support. What you are doing today and what you continue to do is important. Thank you for tackling this new work and know that I am available to support your efforts.

Several weeks ago, Elizabeth Turner (Lubbock Cooper ISD) shared the plan they had decided to implement for those students who could benefit from maintaining the skills they had been taught through paper packets. Several of you have taken this original idea and "tweaked" it to fit your campus/student needs.

Basically the plan is: (4 days per week)

10 minutes - handwriting practice

10 minutes - instant word reading (sight words); ie: flash cards, word lists, phrases, sentences.

10 minutes - reading; ie: reading with someone, listening to an audio book, reading for fluency, etc.

These minutes can be documented as the services that were provided during the "home schooling" period.

Elizabeth reminded us that our role in dyslexia is to support our students with the skills they need to be successful in the regular classroom. If they are reading for another class, then that reading would count as their "10" for dyslexia. When change is so drastic for us and our students, this simple plan fits our supporting roles. Thank you Elizabeth!

Kyna has assembled many resources that could be sources for dyslexia lesson component support. Please check it out!

https://www.smore.com/sx21c-region-17-rla

A Full Day of Virtual Professional Learning

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From one of the world's preeminent experts on reading and dyslexia, the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and practical book available on identifying, understanding, and overcoming reading problems--now revised to reflect the latest research and evidence-based approaches.