I attended a SAT meeting for a fifth grade boy who was struggling in the language arts classes. The concern was initially presented to the parents at parent teacher conferences. The initial main concern was reading comprehension, decoding and fluency were on grade level but comprehension was low. Writing was also a concern that was discussed with his parents but reading comprehension remained the main concern. During the parent teacher conferences the parents requested the SAT meeting and said they would like to move forward to see if their son qualified to receive special education services.
In order to prepare for the meeting we compiled a collection of work to show his parents and the other teachers at the meeting. We also brought documentation of the strategies that we were currently trying in the classroom.
In attendance at the meeting were the student's mother, regular education teacher, the school coordinator, and myself. We started off by discussing the student's strengths and then moved into the areas of concern. The mom was adamant about wanting to find some solution or strategy to help her son. The team discussed the different strategies that could be tried at school and also strategies that could be used at home.
There were some things that we had to consider during this meeting and during the brainstorming. This student is an extremely hard worker and tries his best on everything he does; however, he has a tendency to rush through assignments. Keeping this in mind, we thought of strategies that might help the student develop the skills that he has deficits in, as well as, assisting him with taking his time. The team thought that graphic organizers for writing were needed for all writing assignments. The team also decided that graphic organizers would be beneficial for the student when reading. These graphic organizers could be for the student to identify and organize the main ideas of the story, the story structure (characters, setting, plot, etc), or teaching the student other comprehension strategies (predicting, summarizing, questioning, monitoring). These strategies could be extremely beneficial if they were taught to the student. The mom was willing to implement these strategies at home when he was reading. The team thought this would be valuable for the student because he likes to read at home, but with his mom's help he can further develop his ability to understand what he is reading.
At the end of the meeting, the team decided that they would try these strategies at school and at home and see how the student did throughout the second quarter and then reevaluate and meet again to discuss his progress.