Connecticut stands northeast of New York City, and is in easy reach of New York and Boston. The southwest corner of the state forms part of the New York commuter belt and has excellent transport connections. The state is served by two airports, Amtrak, Greyhound and Peter Pan buses and has good Interstate road links. The closeness to major cities make it a popular shopping and tourist destination. Continue Reading »
The federal law governing special education is called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. It is codified in Title 20, United States Code, starting at section 1400. It was initially passed in 1975. A number of major reauthorizations have taken place. The two most recent were in 1997 and in December 2004. The December 2004 changes took effect, for the most part, on July 1, 2005. The changes made in the 2004 Act are numerous and varied, but perhaps not revolutionary. Continue Reading »
If your only experience visiting Connecticut has been driving on Rt. 84 from Danbury to Stockbridge, or along I95 from New York to Providence, then you haven’t experienced the true beauty of the Litchfield Hills in Northwestern Connecticut. Driving through the scenic and sometimes mountainous areas of the area, you are surrounded by lakes, rivers and beautiful farm country. You won’t see strip malls, or even grocery stores in most of the towns here. It is a quiet and peaceful region, where people come to get away from it all.
Continue Reading »
The most common and disabling communication gaps are seen in kids with expressive language dysfunctions. Their weaknesses take several different forms. There are some students who have trouble with words; either it is hard for them to find the words they need when they need them (so-called expressive dysphasia) or they simply possess inadequately developed vocabularies. In the latter case, a student has trouble learning and incorporating into her speech newly acquired words. Other students have trouble with sentence formulation. This is a big problem in elementary schools. A child may know what he’d like to say but then have serious problems constructing a grammatically correct sentence to convey his thoughts. Such trouble may make him reluctant to speak or it could cause him to “dumb down” his ideas to fit them into a simple sentence. What a shame! Continue Reading »