IEP Meeting

Today is Dylan's IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting at St Gerard's. Met with Ms Vasugi (principal), Francis (main teacher of Early Intervention Class), Mr Vasu (Speech therapist), & Bimal Rai (Ed/ Psychologist) to discuss Dylan's goals for the period of Oct 07 to Mar 08.

Very proud to hear Dylan showing greater interest in teachers & kids, gentleness & affection in approaching his classmates, and being interested in circle time, eg when a picture has become out of sight as the teacher leading the circle time shows it to some other kids, he leans over to look. Overall, he's able to focus and complete individual tasks, but more easily distrated in group setting.

Learnt about play therapy at the school every Tuesday whereas with Dylan's current schedule of only attending Wed-Fri there (with Mon-Tue at AAS), he'll continue to miss it. Told them I am trying to put Dylan in AAS in the morning next year, which may entail his switching to other days in AAS. Eg. Ms Vasugi was mentioning that by working on big actions of handpainting on the easel, the kids can slowly progress to tabletop prewriting/ writing activities. I'll put Dylan on 5 day week for a month in St Gerard's come 19 Nov when AAS has school holiday.

Also, there's clearly wisdom to have Dylan do OT in St Gerard, rather than privately, as the issues worked on by OT can be passed to the teachers. Will follow up with Sheralyn to schedule perhaps fortnightly sessions.

One of the greatest take-away today is to have my concern that the RDI & ST objectives (trying to / not to elicit specific response) may conflict, resolved, through dialogue with Bimal & Vasu. In fact, Bimal thinks eg. objective of turntaking can be worked on even as I do echoe mic activity with Dylan. That the activity can be turned into a nice regulatory pattern, even if Dylan merely makes a sound, but not the same as I did.