Disability Law: IDEA, IEPs and Texas Codes

Federal Law and Disabilities

• The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensures services to children with disabilities nationwide.
• IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services.

Individualized Education Plan (IEP)

• An IEP is a document developed for each public school child who needs special education
• The IEP is created through a team effort and reviewed periodically.
• The purpose of an IEP is to ensure a child with a disability receives specialized instruction and related services.

Texas Administrative Code 74.28 and Dyslexia

• Texas Administrative Code 74.28 mandates that district boards of trustees ensure procedures for identifying and providing services to students with dyslexia are implemented.

Texas Education Code 38.003 and Dyslexia

• Texas Education Code 38.003 requires students in public schools to be tested and provided with treatment for dyslexia.

Diphthong Characteristics

• A diphthong involves two vowels standing adjacent in the same syllable
• Sounds of a diphthong blend smoothly together.
• A diphthong is a complex vowel sound starting with one vowel and gliding into another within the same syllable.
• "oi" in "boil" and "ow" in "cow" serve as examples.

Bottom-Up Reading Approaches

• Bottom-up reading approaches focus on the text itself.
• The approaches proceed from the part to the whole.
• Bottom-up reading emphasizes decoding and understanding the text.
• This approach starts with the smallest units (letters and sounds) and building up to the whole text.

Universal Screening in Education

• Universal screening identifies students at risk for not meeting grade-level standards.
• Universal screening is a step taken by school personnel.
• This process identifies students who may be at risk for poor learning outcomes, allowing for early intervention.

Social Language

• Social language involves communicating appropriately in social situations.
• Eye contact, understanding body language, and taking turns in conversation are key components of social language.
• It includes the skills needed for effective communication in social interactions, often referred to as pragmatic language skills.

Social and Emotional Problems Related to Dyslexia

• Dyslexia can lead to physical and social immaturity.
• Students might have difficulty reading social cues.
• They may have trouble finding the right words.
• Students may exeperience anxiety in school.
• Students with dyslexia may experience various social and emotional challenges.
• These emotional challenges include difficulties in social interactions and increased anxiety related to academic performance.

Percentile in Standardized Testing

• A percentile indicates the percentage of scores in a distribution that fall below a specific score.
• A percentile rank indicates the relative standing of a score within a distribution.
• This shows the percentage of scores that are equal to or less than a particular score.

Phonemic Awareness

• Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.
• Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill that helps students manipulate sounds in words.
• This skill is a key foundation for learning to read.

Structured Literacy Instruction

• Structured literacy programs follow a clear, sequenced approach.
• The programs teach phonics, syntax, morphology, and semantics.
• The programs use systematic and explicit teaching of language structures.

Dyslexia vs. General Reading Delay

• Dyslexia is a neurological disorder with a genetic basis.
• General reading delays can result from environmental factors.
• Dyslexia is an inherited condition affecting the brain's language processing.
• Reading delays may stem from lack of exposure to literacy-rich environments.

Open Syllable

• An open syllable ends in a vowel,
• Open syllables makes the vowel long.
• Examples include "go" or "hi".

Effective Instruction for Students with Dyslexia

• The Orton-Gillingham-based multisensory structured literacy instruction is most effective.
• Such instruction is structured, explicit, and multisensory.

Morpheme Example

• The word "unhappily" contains three morphemes: "un," "happy," and "ly."
• A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word.
• "Unhappily" consists of three morphemes
• Prefix of "un"
• Root of "happy"
• Suffix of "ly."

Executive Function Skills and Dyslexia

• Working memory and organization are executive function skills often impacted in students with dyslexia.
• Many students with dyslexia struggle with executive functions, including working memory, planning, and organization.

Literacy Component Challenging for Students with Dyslexia

• Decoding and spelling are particularly challenging for students with dyslexia.
• Dyslexia primarily affects the ability to break down and manipulate phonemes.
• This leads to difficulties in reading (decoding) and spelling (encoding).

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) Assessments

• RAN assessments assess a student's ability to name familiar objects quickly,
• This correlates with reading fluency.
• RAN tests evaluate how quickly a student can retrieve verbal labels, which is often slower in students with dyslexia, impacting fluency.

Orthographic Mapping

• Orthographic mapping is the ability to store words in long-term memory for automatic word recognition.
• This is the cognitive process that allows readers to recognize words automatically, leading to fluent reading.

Smallest Unit of Sound

• A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language
• Phonemes can change the meaning of a word.

Example of Phonemic Awareness

• Blending /c/ /a/ /t/ into "cat" is an example of phonemic awareness.
• Phonemic awareness involves recognizing and manipulating individual phonemes in spoken words.

Most Difficult Phonological Skill

• Deleting a phoneme from a word is typically the most difficult phonological skill for children to master.
• Phoneme deletion is a more advanced phonemic awareness skill that requires strong auditory processing.

Closed Syllable

• A closed syllable contains a vowel followed by at least one consonant.
• A closed syllable has a short vowel sound because it is closed by a consonant (e.g., "cat").

Syllable Pattern in "Station"

• The word "station" has a vowel team syllable pattern.
• "Station" has the vowel team "ai," which represents a single long vowel sound.

Purpose of Encoding Instruction

• Encoding instruction in structured literacy teaches spelling through phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
• Encoding involves spelling words by mapping phonemes to graphemes.

Critical Component for Reading Fluency

• Rapid recognition of high-frequency words is critical to developing reading fluency.
• Fluency improves when words are recognized automatically without decoding effort.

Orthographic Mapping and Reading Fluency

• Orthographic mapping enables the storage and retrieval of words for automatic recognition.
• This allows words to be stored for instant recall, aiding fluency.

Derivational Morpheme

• The "un" in "unhappy" is an example of a derivational morpheme.
• Derivational morphemes change a word's meaning or part of speech.

Morphology Instruction

• Morphology instruction is helps with spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.
• Morphology teaches word structure, improving decoding and meaning extraction.

Syntactic Awareness

• Syntactic awareness is the ability to understand sentence structure and grammar rules.
• Syntactic awareness helps with understanding how words function in sentences.

Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension

• Using graphic organizers to analyze text is a strategy that improves reading comprehension.
• Graphic organizers help students structure and retain information.

Early Indicator of Dyslexia

• Problems with letter and sound recognition are the most common early indicator of dyslexia.
• Early signs of dyslexia include difficulty with phonics and letter-sound relationships.

Brain Region and Dyslexia

• The left-hemisphere language centers are the brain region most commonly associated with dyslexia.
• Brain imaging shows differences in the left hemisphere language areas in individuals with dyslexia.

Impact of Dyslexia on Reading

• Dyslexia impairs decoding and word recognition.
• Dyslexia affects phonological processing, making decoding difficult.

NOT a Common Characteristic of Dyslexia

• Poor listening comprehension is NOT a common characteristic of dyslexia.
• Most dyslexic students have strong oral comprehension skills.

Effective Intervention Method for Dyslexia

• Phonics-based, multisensory structured literacy programs provide the most effective intervention method for students with dyslexia.
• Multisensory structured literacy is research-backed for dyslexic learners.

Purpose of Progress Monitoring

• Progress monitoring tracks student growth and adjusts instruction.
• Progress monitoring helps educators adjust interventions as needed.

Assessment for Phonemic Awareness Deficits

• A phoneme segmentation test would best identify phonemic awareness deficits.
• Phonemic awareness tests assess a student's ability to manipulate sounds.

Norm-Referenced Test Measures

• A norm-referenced test measures a student's performance compared to a national sample of peers.
• Norm-referenced tests measure a student's performance against peers.

Law Requiring School Accommodations for Dyslexia

• The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 requires schools to provide accommodations for students with dyslexia.
• Section 504 provides accommodations for students with learning disabilities.

IDEA Requirements for Dyslexia

• IDEA requires schools to provide free and appropriate public education (FAPE) with specialized instruction if needed for students with dyslexia.
• IDEA ensures individualized instruction for students with disabilities.

Benefits of Multisensory Instruction

• Multisensory instruction helps students use multiple pathways (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile) to reinforce learning.
• Multisensory instruction engages different learning modalities for better retention.

Example of Multisensory Instruction

• Using sandpaper letters for tracing while saying letter sounds aloud is an example of multisensory instruction.
• Multisensory instruction strengthens phoneme-grapheme connections.

Explicit vs. Implicit Instruction

• Explicit instruction directly teaches concepts in a structured, systematic way.
• Explicit instruction provides clear, direct explanations and modeling.

Key Principle of Structured Literacy

• Systematic, cumulative, and explicit instruction is a key principle of structured literacy.
• Structured literacy is carefully sequenced and builds on previously learned skills.

Spelling Struggles with Dyslexia

• Students with dyslexia often struggle with spelling because they struggle with phoneme-grapheme mapping and orthographic memory.
• Dyslexia affects the ability to store and recall spelling patterns.

Strategy Supporting Spelling Instruction for Dyslexic Students

• Teaching spelling rules explicitly with phonemic awareness reinforcement supports spelling instruction for dyslexic students.
• Explicit spelling instruction helps dyslexic students recognize patterns.

Improving Written Expression for Students with Dyslexia

• Use structured graphic organizers to help plan writing enables students with dyslexia to improve written expression.
• Graphic organizers support idea organization and sentence structure.

Role of Handwriting Instruction

• Handwriting instruction in structured literacy reinforces phoneme-grapheme connections.
  • Handwriting instruction helps solidify sound-symbol relationships.