Comprender el SLD y la dislexia en educación especial: 2025-2026 Seminario Web

Again, good afternoon, and welcome to today's state webinar, hosted by the Partners Resource Network. My name is Ginner Aguirre, and I am part of the team of Presenting with me is Mrs. Joanne Randall de la Garza, and from the Partners Resource Network we have Marjoriana Antunez, and today's topic is how to understand SLD and dyslexia in special education. Now we have some reminders. This webinar is being recorded, sorry, and the recording will be posted on our site, Zettex. The chat function is only available if you need technical support. However, you can ask questions in the question and answer section. The presenters will review their submissions, which will help us with clarifications and frequently asked questions in the future. There will be no live Q&A today. Now, a little bit about SpeDEX. SpedEx is Texas' special education information center. We are a collaborative project between the Educational Services Center of Region Ten and the Texas Education Agency. We help parents understand their rights and responsibilities under IDEA, and we facilitate collaboration when there are concerns between parents and the school district. We also serve as a resource for educators. We offer phone, email or live chat support for families and professionals, webinars like today's, and resources. Our contact information is on the screen. Now we'll hear from Marjana Antunez for additional information from the Partners Resource Network. Go ahead, Marjana. Very good afternoon everyone, thank you very much for participating in this webinar. I'm Marjana Antunez and I represent the partner resource network. Partners Resource Network is a nonprofit organization that operates the Texas network of information and training centers for parents. These centers, or PTI, are funded by the Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. In Texas, these four projects, PTIs, are known as PACT, PATH, PN and Team Projects. Our mission is to empower and support Texas families and people with disabilities and special health care needs. We do this thanks to a network of highly qualified regional coordinators who know local policies, services and resources, as well as state and national guidelines. PRN provides training, information and personalized assistance at no cost to Texas families and youth, and we serve parents of children and youth with disabilities from birth to twenty-six years of age, as well as for self-defense youth ages fourteen to twenty-six. Once again, we are thrilled to jointly participate with Inspectec and Region Ten in today's webinar. Thank you very much, Maria Ana. We'll hear more from Marjia Ana a little later after the presentation. Now, once again, welcome to our seminar today. The information we are going to present is being presented in English by Michelle Reeves and Don Van Der Hill. Michelle is the education and intervention specialist in dyslexia, and from the Texas agency, the Texas education agency, excuse me. Don is the assistant technical manager in special education, also for the Texas education agency. The information they are presenting has been translated into Spanish, and we will be sharing it during the webinar in Spanish today. Our agenda for today begins with an overview of the special education evaluation process. Next, we'll look at specific learning abilities, including dyslexia. Now I'll give the screen to Joanne. Thank you, Janet. Let's start with a quick review of the special education evaluation process. When I mention parents in this presentation, this term includes biological or adoptive parents, foster parents, legal guardians, a person acting in place of the biological parent and who lives with the student, or is legally responsible for their well-being, or a surrogate parent. The form shows an overview of the special education evaluation process for parents. This form and other additional forms must be given to parents when a student is referred for a special education evaluation, or when a parent requests an evaluation. Parents have the right to request a special education evaluation at any time. Schools are required to refer a student for evaluation when a disability is suspected that might require special education services. The steps in the process include referral, consent to evaluate, evaluation, determination of eligibility with an ARD, and developing the IEP. If a student qualifies, an individualized education program, or IEP, is developed and implemented as soon as possible. The first step that is taken is a referral for special education evaluation. A referral is required by law when a public school believes that your child may have a disability that requires special education services to be successful, and is called a request for special education evaluation when parents do so. It should be addressed in writing to the appropriate staff member. The school will respond by informing you if it will proceed with an evaluation. The school must respond in writing within fifteen school days. The second step in the evaluation process is consent. You will be asked if you consent to the school evaluating your child. Consent to evaluate is a permission you choose to give for specially trained personnel to evaluate and evaluate your child in specific areas, and a consent is used by the school to start the schedule by which your child's evaluation must be completed. With some exceptions, the evaluation must be completed within forty-five school days. The third step is evaluation. The evaluation is carried out by a group of trained professionals. The evaluation is called a Full Individual and Initial Evaluation, or FIE, for its acronym in English. This includes a written report of educational recommendations, information about your child's strengths, interests and challenges. Professionals with training in suspected disability should be involved, for example, someone such as a licensed dyslexia therapist, if dyslexia is suspected. An evaluation is also performed at no cost to you. If you don't agree with the school's evaluation, you can request an independent educational evaluation, or IEE, for its acronym in English. A person outside the school would be responsible for carrying it out. The fourth step is when the admission, review and withdrawal committee, or ARD, meets to determine if your child is eligible for special education services. The ARD committee is a team made up of you, teachers, people who have special knowledge about your child, and some professionals with special training on suspected disability. ARD, too, is at this meeting, your child's evaluation report is discussed. Your child's strengths and areas of need are identified and then determined if your child has a disability and needs special education services. Once the evaluation report is completed, the ARD committee usually has thirty calendar days to determine eligibility and prepare the IEP or EF. The fifth and final step in the evaluation process is the individualized education program. If your child is eligible for special education services, the ARD committee will also develop an individualized educational program, or IEP. An IEP is a set of information that identifies your child's disability, shows current strengths and areas of need. It identifies the goals you should work on, and shows the special education and related services that are necessary for your child to succeed. The UIP is also a document that a school must follow once the process to prepare it has been completed, and you give your consent for your child to receive the services. Services would begin as soon as possible. You have the right to participate in the preparation of the EEP and to accept or refuse to allow your child to receive special education services. Thank you, Joan. And it's very important, as you said, that parents have that right. Thank you for sharing such valuable information. Now we'll talk about specific learning disabilities. We will do a quick review of what those disabilities are. As Joanne said, a special education evaluation must be performed by trained and knowledgeable staff. This is referred to as a multidisciplinary team, or MDT, for its acronym in English. The MDT team performs the special education evaluation. These people include the student's parents, the student's general education teacher, evaluative staff, such as a school psychologist or other staff with specialties, and a person with special, special knowledge about dyslexia, and other specialists, if needed. A member of the MDT team should observe your child in the classroom where they are experiencing difficulties. Your child will not be singled out. This is just another adult in the classroom who is probably sitting in the back of the classroom. The evaluation report described, once or more, is in eight areas of performance that are insufficient for your child, and these are oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading, reading fluency, reading comprehension, mathematical calculation, and solving mathematical problems. These are the eight areas of underachievement seen in evaluations. Now let's look at the four types of data or information used when writing an evaluation report. As we said, the eight areas of inadequate academic achievement are identified using multiple sources of information. One of the members of the multidisciplinary team, the MDT team, may ask you to participate in an interview or complete a parent information form. Your input is very important to complete the evaluation report. Information provided by teachers and student work samples also provide valuable data. The evaluation report goes beyond just presenting test scores. Information is also used about how the student has been progressing in the curriculum corresponding to their school grade. In addition, other evaluations, such as student performance, are reviewed in state and local evaluations. These are all important sources for determining the evaluation. Now, it's very important that your child has received proper instruction in reading and math. Sometimes, being absent from school for several days, or if there have been natural changes to the school calendar, such as hurricanes, ice and snow, can affect your child's learning. Your child's learning will be compared to that of others in your class, school, or school district. There are exclusion factors that must be considered before identifying your child with a specific learning disability. For example, if your child has a visual, hearing, or motor impairment, intellectual disability, or emotional disability. Also, if there are environmental, cultural or economic factors. And, equally, it has to do with their language competence. Dyslexia is one example, and it meets the definition of a specific learning difficulty, or SLD, under federal standards. Dyslexia, if identified, if identified, must be documented and used in the student's evaluation report, and in any resulting IEP or individualized education program. Keep in mind that an SLD in basic reading and/or reading fluency is the same as saying dyslexia. We will be using the term dyslexia throughout this session. Now we'll talk about dyslexia, what it is, the features you might notice, and required instruction that school districts must provide to support students. Much of the information that will be shared comes from two key resources, the 2002 Dyslexia Guide, and Dyslexia and Related Disorders in training for parents. During this time, we will highlight some of the most important points from both documents. We'll also show you where you can access those resources, as well as additional information so you can review them at home whenever you want. To begin, let's talk about what dyslexia really is. Many people believe that dyslexia means seeing letters backwards, but that's a common misconception. Dyslexia has to do with the way the brain processes the sounds of spoken words, and this affects reading and spelling. What exactly is dyslexia? The word dyslexia was coined from Greek roots, which mean difficulty with words. Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that makes it difficult for the brain to process sounds in words, making it difficult to read and spell. It's not due to poor teaching, lack of effort, or vision problems. Now let's take a look at the updated definition of dyslexia from the International Dyslexia Association, or IDA, for its acronym in English. In 2005, IDA published a new, more comprehensive definition based on the most recent research and the experiences of students, families and educators. Janet will explain this updated definition on the next slide. Thank you, Joanne. Now, we've divided the definition into smaller parts to make it easier to understand. Let's start at the top of the slide, the one that says, a specific learning disability. This means, as Joanne said earlier, that dyslexia is a real and recognized learning difference. It affects how a person reads and spells, but it doesn't reflect intelligence. This classification is aligned with the People with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, which guarantees that people with dyslexia receive the legal rights and educational services to which they are entitled. Dyslexia is characterized by difficulties reading words and/or spelling, which involve accuracy, speed, or both. So what are reading and spelling difficulties? This means that children with dyslexia have difficulty reading individual words and not writing them correctly. This is often the first thing families like you notice. Now, how do they involve precision, speed, and spelling? Precision is about applying the right sounds to each letter or part of a word. Speed means reading softly and naturally, almost as we speak. Spelling refers to the writing system of a language. Different languages have different orthographic systems, and this also influences what dyslexia looks like in each one. Now we'll move on to the causes of dyslexia, which are complex. That is, there is no single cause of dyslexia. It comes from a combination of genetics, brain differences and environmental factors. No one is to blame. The genetic, neobiological and environmental causes that act throughout development are that a child may inherit risk factors, have brain differences in language processing, and be influenced by early experiences. All of this is at the same time. There are also underlying factors, such as phonological and morphological processing. Children with dyslexia often have difficulty processing phonologically, meaning they may have difficulty noticing, remembering, and working with the sounds of words. Because reading and spelling require connecting sounds with letters, these challenges make it difficult to learn to read and spell. They may also have difficulties with morphological processing. Morphemes are the significant parts of words. In Spanish, the examples are like, house, sea, so, so on, the syllables. These units of meaning are important for reading and spelling, especially in languages where the structure of words is closely linked to how they are written. Now, when we talk about the phrase, but not universal, it means that phonological and morphological challenges explain much, but not all, of the reading and spelling differences seen in dyslexia. There are also secondary consequences. The consequences of dyslexia can affect growth in reading and writing, and can also affect psychological well-being and future job opportunities. This can include difficulties with comprehension, challenges in the written lesson, lower academic performance, and importantly, dyslexia can affect psychological well-being, contributing to anxiety, low self-esteem or depression, which can influence professional opportunities later in life. In Texas, we have the manual on dyslexia. The purpose of the dyslexia manual is to provide procedures for school districts, charter schools, campuses, teachers, students, and also you, parents, for early identification, instruction and accommodations for students with dyslexia and other related disorders. This manual contains a list of the main characteristics of reading and spelling difficulties associated with dyslexia, which include difficulties in reading words in isolation, accurately decoding unknown words, and that is when you cannot correctly apply sounds to letters in an unknown word or in a word that has not been taught. It also influences the student in the oral reading part. That's when they often make mistakes or try very hard to pronounce the words. Your reading may lack natural intonation or expression. Slow reading also makes comprehension significantly difficult. Now, when we talk about spelling, these are the main characteristics of dyslexia, this difficulty with spelling. Students with dyslexia have difficulty spelling because they have a hard time relating the sounds they hear in words to the letters that represent those sounds. This can make it difficult to remember spelling patterns, such as all syllables, to divide words into parts, or to write the same word in the same way and others. These difficulties are not due to lack of effort, but are directly related to the way the brain processes language. After hearing about these difficulties, it's natural for you as parents to feel worried. But this is where hope emerges. We have educational programs designed precisely for these needs. When students receive explicit, systematic, and multisensory instruction, they can achieve consistent and significant progress. Although these features can be challenging, we want you to know that there is strong and effective instruction available, and it works. Students with dyslexia can and do learn to read and spell with appropriate support. The effective instruction we speak for students identified with dyslexia is an evidence-based program. An evidence-based program for dyslexia is considered specially designed instruction, or SDI, for its acronym in English. Therefore, a special education service must meet the requirements of the law on education for individuals with disabilities. That is, evidence-based instruction on dyslexia is only available to students who are served under IDEA, which prescribes legal requirements for special education and related services. The evidence-based program on dyslexia will be documented as a special education service received at a special education location. The ARD committee, which includes you as a parent, will document the frequency and duration of these services in accordance with the requirements of the program based on evidence of dyslexia, unless the ARD committee is adding or expanding the necessary SDI to meet the student's needs. This dyslexia manual also details the components necessary for the instruction and delivery of evidence-based programs on dyslexia. That can be seen on pages thirty-nine to forty-one of this manual. These components are research-based and designed to meet the unique learning needs of students with dyslexia. The fundamental components based on teaching evidence include phonological awareness, which is recognizing and manipulating sounds in words, which I can't do now myself. Association of sound and symbol, which is phonetics, the sounds that these letters make, what a sounds like, or what m sounds like. Silevation, which are the fragments of words in parts. Spelling, knowing how to spell words, and orthographic patterns. Morphology, which are prefixes, roots, suffixes. Syntax, knowledge of how those words are organized into sentences and their meaning. Reading comprehension, understanding what you read. And reading fluency, which is how we read as if we were speaking, fluent, naturally and with expression. Now, there are mandatory components in teaching dyslexia. It has to be simultaneous, multisensory, visual, auditory and tactile, known as DACT. And other terms for this are multimodal. Students learn through visual, auditory and tactile experiences at the same time, seeing, hearing, speaking and writing. This strengthens memory and understanding. This teaching is systematic and cumulative. The skills follow a logical sequence, from simple to more complex, Cumulative, from simple to more complex. That means that students review and practice previously learned material so that the learning sticks. Explicit teaching means that there is nothing left that the student can figure out on their own. Skills and rules are taught directly step by step. The teacher models the skill, provides guided practice, and then the student practices independently while receiving, uh, stepping back immediately. Teaching is also diagnostic. The teacher continuously observes how students respond and adjusts instruction, if needed. If one skill is mastered, they move on to the next one. This ensures that teaching progresses at the appropriate and individualized pace for your child. Now, too, in this program, having teaching without aesthetics. This teaches students to build or combine words from their individual sounds. Students learn how to make the smallest sounds of language and then combine those sounds to read words. And at the end of the components, we have analytical teaching. This teaches students to divide whole words to understand how they work and to recognize patterns that will help them read and spell new words. As we have said, this teaching teaching must be explicit, systematic and intentional in its approach. This teaching is designed to take place in a small group environment. Evidence-based instruction on dyslexia must be effective for students with dyslexia, delivered by a properly trained and faithfully implemented instructor, and this is mentioned in the manual on dyslexia on page thirty-eight. The manual also points out that, although the components of teaching students with dyslexia include good teaching principles for all teachers, the explicitly and intensity of teaching, fidelity to program descriptors, grouping formats, and teacher training and skill are totally different from basic classroom instruction and must be taken into account when making individual placement decisions. You can also see more information in the manual, on page thirty-eight. For more information on evidence-based instruction on dyslexia, please see chapter four of the Dyslexia Handbook. Now, a frequently asked question from parents says, how do I find a highly qualified dyslexia tutor who understands dyslexia and offers evidence-based teaching. There are several types of highly qualified educational providers in dyslexia. Among them are dyslexia therapists, or CAUTS. There are also dyslexia practitioners, or CALP, specialists in dyslexia, uh, and structured literacy, and also dyslexia interventionists, in structured literacy. All of these professionals have completed rigorous and specialized training in structured literacy and intervention with dyslexia, far beyond general education teachers. On this slide, you'll see several directories that you can use to locate qualified vendors. The first is the find and alta professional directory, or find a registered professional. There is also the list of other certified providers. The International Dyslexia Association, or IDEA, also offers a provider directory with professionals who meet these IDA standards. And the Center for Effective Reading Instruction has a directory of accredited dyslexia and interventionist specialists. In addition, if your child receives dyslexia instruction at school, you can also ask your current dyslexia provider if you know someone certified who offers private sessions. They often have recommendations or can help you find trustworthy options. Before we finish, we want to make sure you know a really useful resource. The Texas education agency has a website dedicated to dyslexia and related disorders. This site is the best place to find the most current and reliable information on dyslexia and dysgraphia in Texas. Please see the link on the screen, which is TEA dot Texas dot gov, and dyslexia, and you can go to that link, and there is information in Spanish as well. Thank you so much for attending today's webinar. Sorry, Joanne, I was so excited about the presentation that followed today. I was going to say, wow, excellent work, Ginette, to say that. Thank you again for attending this webinar today, and we always thank you for your time, commitment and dedication to supporting your child. And now I'll turn to Mrs. Marjana Antunez to give us more information about the Partners Resource Network. You two were like a chorus. Nothing more than. But again, thank you very much to everyone, a lot to Ginette, a lot to Joanne for all the information. It should be noted, I mean, when I am listening to the presentation, and I know that the parents who are listening, who are, are going to see this recording later or who are watching it right now, will be more interested in dyslexia, but I want to make a small note, because I know that many parents are always asking about the evaluation process, and I think that the information given today by Jeanine and Joanne is extremely important, especially since many parents and many families start to wonder at the end of the year school, and if I request an evaluation now, when will it be ready when we can sit down and when can we have this, a plan, an IEP so that our son can have better services, our daughter? So I think this is a great seminar to round off all the seminar sessions during the year, fantastic and very practical information. So, once again, thank you very much to everyone, to Ginette, to Joan, region ten and respectively, for today's presentation. On the screen you are seeing the contact information of partners resource network, telephone, email, our website. Do not hesitate to contact us, do not hesitate in any of the methods you decide, there will be someone on the other side waiting for you to help you. Again, thank you very much, very, very good afternoon. Thank you, Marianna. And also on the screen we have the information from SPECtX. If you have questions about special education, please connect with us here at SPECtX. We are your special education information resource. We are happy to help you and our information, as I said, is on the screen.