The end of the school year

I spoke with Miss Kat's teacher today. We have really great news! Miss Kat is well above grade level for her math skills and has achieved her "need to be at this level by the end of Kindergarten" reading level as well. She is doing great!! I would say I was proud, but that would imply that *I* did it! It wasn't me, it was all Miss Kat and the best teacher in the whole world MISS AIMEE!!!!!!

In other news, the principal of Miss Kat's school sent me an email asking our intentions for next school year and how we were feeling about the therapy Miss Kat is getting in school (see this post for details http://misskatsmom.blogspot.com/2009/03/ugh-maybe-im-giving-up.html) She was hoping the therapy had improved since the school SLP came and visited one of Miss Kat's private therapy sessions. I responded by saying:

I have been unable to observe another speech pullout with Katrina since the SLP has visited with our therapist. But it seems unlikely that (SLP) will make a 180 degree turn around and suddenly have the skills to work with deaf children. I highly doubt that if Katrina attends (Bi-Bi school) next year that we will continue to have therapy with (SLP). She is clearly unqualified and ignorant to the needs of a CI user. I would hope that if we continue at (Bi-Bi school) there will be an option for appropriate therapy.

We are attending a special summer school with very intensive and specialized one-on-one instruction and assessment. We are hoping to return in August with more information and a better idea of what environment and services she will need.

I want to be perfectly clear. We intend to have a bilingual, bimodal child. Katrina has the right to access the curriculum through her native language, ASL AND she has the right to appropriate therapy.

We really have no idea what we are going to do for school next year. I feel like every available choice handicaps her in some way.

1. Stay at bi-bi school- She doesn't get any auditory input and gets VERY poor speech services
2. Go to oral class- She starts off SO far behind and doesn't continue to improve her ASL skills
3. Mainstream- She has no friends and is unable to communicate with her peers independently

What is a family to do??? Shouldn't all the professionals involved want what we want: a bilingual, bimodal child?! Is that really so impossible?

School Play

Miss Kat's school put on a completely student written, produced and directed school play. It was part of the 100 year anniversary of the Utah Association for the Deaf. It was a very interesting play, and night! Miss Kat was a fairy dancer. Here is a clip of her performance. She is the doll all dressed in black!

Semester Progress Report

Miss Kat's therapy semester ended last week. We received her "progress report" this week and it was great news!

Long Term Goals:

1. Katrina will increase receptive language through auditory information only using her cochlear implant by February 2010.

2. Katrina will use her cochlear implant to develop spoken language by February 2010.

3. Katrina will increase the complexity of her auditory skills by February 2010.


Nice and vague, right?! These are just the overall goals that we have for the next year.

Short Term Goals

1. Katrina will detect and repeat the Ling 6 sounds + "no voice" with auditory only presentation with 100% accuracy across three consecutive sessions.
Goal Achieved

She had some trouble with "ooo" vs "mmm" when she was first activated, but a follow up MAPing fixed that right up!

2. Katrina will demonstrate auditory discrimination of vowels in words presented in a closed set of four with 80% accuracy across two consecutive sessions.
Goal Achieved

We used words that had the same beginning and final sound, with only a vowel change (i.e. boot, bite, boat, bat). Her baseline was 40% (knowing one word plus luck guesses!) She achieved 85% by our last two sessions.

3. Katrina will increase her identification of familiar objects when named using auditory only information to 50 picture or objects as a cumulative measure.
Goal Achieved

She got 54 objects identified. The list did not include colors or numbers, which she also knows. Her baseline was 12 words.

4. Katrina will increase her spontaneous use of meaningful expressive language to include 50 single word approximations or word combinations in communication with clinician as a cumulative measure.
Goal Achieved

74 total word approximations! These are all spontaneous and she had several 3 word sentences recorded! Baseline was 22 words, but that was 2 months post activation. Pre-CI it was literally Momma, Daddy, and baby, that's it.

5. Katrina will demonstrate auditory comprehension of highly familiar phrases with reduced supersegmental pattern differences with 70% success across two sessions.
Goal Achieved

She got 81% and 85%. The phrases were things like "Pat your head" and " Touch your toes". She did very well.

WAY TO GO MISS KAT!!!! What a difference 5 months and one implant makes!