Dr. Jim Roche, JD PhD CAGS
REGISTERED PSYCHOLOGIST 01610
REGISTERED MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPIST 26863
Clinical Member AAMFT
Canadian Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology
Advanced Certificate in Cognitive Therapy, Albert Ellis Institute
Offices located in Burnaby, Coquitlam
and downtown Vancouver
(click for a map to our office locations)
Phone: 778.998-7975
             778.330-4659
email: jimroche@gmail.com

ABOUT DR. ROCHE

INDIVIDUAL THERAPY

COUPLE, FAMILY AND MARRIAGE THERAPY

MINDFULNESS BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY

ADOLESCENT/CHILD THERAPY

PARENT EDUCATION

ADHD

AUTISM/ASPERGERS'S DISORDER

ASSESSMENT/TESTING

FORENSIC/COURT
 EVALUATIONS

FAMILY/COMMUNITY MEDIATION

TBI/REHAB/PAIN

TRAINING PROGRAMS

BEHAVIOUR IN BRIEF

PSYCHROUNDS

ASSOCIATES

OFFICE LOCATIONS

EMAIL

HOME

Selected Resources

If you have sites you would like to recommend please email them to me at jimroche@gmail.com

•  Click for Books Suggested at Dr. Roche's Workshops

NOTE: All of these materials are available at the PENT government website for free, to use, copy and distribute. We have taken some of these documents, such as the Positive Behaviour Support Plan and adapted it to meet Canadian regulations.  Complete training and support is available at the PENT web site.  It is one of the best reference sites available on the web for those interested in positive behavioural supports.

• General resources for families and individuals dealing with mental health issues can be found at www.heretohelp.ca or through our mental health resource page by clicking here.

• Canadian Version: Positive Behaviour Support Plan This is the fillable form for writing positive behaviour support plans. Free training related support materials are available at the PENT site listed below

• The Posititive Behaviour Support Plan Scoring Rubric is available to help individuals and teams evaluate the quality of their Behaviour Support Plans. It corresponds with each line of the plan, giving you a scoring criterion, explains fully what is expected, how each component of the plan relates to other components and give clear examples of good answers.

• Heading Off Disruptive Behaviour is an excellent article that outlines the steps a school can take to prevent disruptive behaviour from happening. http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/winter03-04/early_intervention.html

• Overview of Behavior Support Calls-12 minute video - Please wait for video to load for about 3 minutes with high-speed internet connection.
  PENT Cadre Member, Bob Harvell of Poway School District has led Mira Mesa Middle School in a program that attempts to prevent referrals to the office. Instead of discipline for infractions, this program uses "Behavior Support Calls" where an administrator does on the spot functional assessment of the problem behavior. This program exemplifies best practice in data collection, system change and effective practice.

• The Daily School Rating Scale  The Daily School Rating Scale is a data collection form involving 22 questions which look at many aspects of a student's behaviour including behaviours related to ADHD, depression, anxiety, psychosis, academics and the student's individual target behaviours. It is useful for tracking behaviour changes and avoiding the use of narrative records by hands on staff.

• Strong Kids: A Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum for Students in Grades 4-8 from The Oregon Resiliency Project  A complete social skills program based upon positive behaviour support philosophy.  Strong Teens is a similar social skills program.

• The PENT Bullying information sheet, a good place to start your anti-bullying program.

• How to use Time-Away. Time-Away (leaving a class when stressed and feeling anxious) is often used by schools to deal with student anxiety, however, as this article points out its really a procedure to maintain instructional control, and addressing anxiety needs to be a separate intervention. Anxiety is best addressed through specific cognitive-behavioural interventions.

• PENT: Positive Environment Network of Trainers Resources for Writing and Implementing Positive Behaviour Support Plans Resources for Writing Positive Behaviour Support Plans, all FREE . This is the main site for materials related to the Positive Behaviour Support Plan (including a huge training manual and all the agencies power point presentations and great role plays, case studies and sample palns) and leads to many training materials supporting the PBSP. You will also find links to School Wide Positive Supports sites.

• The Oregon Resiliency Project

• Michelle Garcia Winner and Thinking About You Thinking About Me Training and consultation materials for Asperger's and Autism . Check out her new DVD training programs!This is where you can order her many books including "Thinking About You Thinking About Me," by far the best book on interventions for students with Asperger's.

• Vanderbilt ADHD Parent Checklist , and Teacher Checklist. These are the most commonly used checklists for ADHD used by medical professionals. A great supplement to the Conner's scale, and useful in preparing data for parents waiting to see a medical professional. Scoring guides: Parent, Teacher (professional use only).

• What Every Teacher Should Know About Positive Behavioural Supports in the Classroom

• Nine Types of Classroom Academic Adaptations

• Teaching New Behaviours

• A Checklist for Classroom Management

• Tips on Data Collection

• Environmental Supports in the Classroom

• Classwide Systems of Positive Behavioural Support

• The Albert Ellis Institute /Institute for Rational Emotive Therapy This is the site for the Institute started by Albert Ellis focusing on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Besides books, CDs and DVDs the Institute provides introductory training and advanced training sessions. It is bar far the best and cheapest resourse for face to face training in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

• The Beck Institute Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

• Raising Resilient Children: Fostering Strength, Hope and Optimism in Your Child

• The Optimistic Child by Martin P. Seligman, PhD  Resiliency Theory provides us with both an excellent theoretical grounding based in a social version of cognitive therapy, and a complete set of interventions and techniques useful in the classroom when working with children and adolescents with symptoms of anxiety or depression. Seligman's work is also the basis for the work on Resiliency from the University of Oregon and their social skills programs.

• Tony Atwood page for Asperger's . Many books and other resources.

• ACTBC, Autism Community Training provides a listing of service providers and training workshops.

• The Autism Academy is a DVD based training program in ABA techniques for teachers and parents. Cost is about $129.00 USD.

Advocacy and Community Resources

• For more about legal rights (USA) check out WrightsLaw.com  For Canadians this page is still a great resource for developing your arguments and strategies for obtaining appropriate educational services for your child. There is also a parent email group you can join, but be aware the emails are numerous, and the attitude of many of the parents and advocates is confrontational.

• CHADD. Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), is a national non-profit, tax-exempt (Section 501 (c) (3) ) organization providing education, advocacy and support for individuals with AD/HD. In addition to our informative Web site, CHADD also publishes a variety of printed materials to keep members and professionals current on research advances, medications and treatments affecting individuals with AD/HD. These materials include Attention! magazine, the CHADD Information and Resource Guide to AD/HD, News From CHADD, a free electronically mailed current events newsletter, as well as other publications of specific interest to educators, professionals and parents.

• POPARD (Provincial Outreach Program for Autism and Related Disorders) website.

• Friends2Friends, autism support in BC.

Resources for Universal Design in the Classroom

• A useful site for support in using technology in the classroom is www.cited.org

• CAST: Universal Design for Learning

  CAST is a nonprofit organization that works to expand learning
  opportunities for all individuals, especially those with disabilities,
  through the research and development of innovative, technology-based
  educational resources and strategies.

Language Translation and Multiligual Texts

• BookBox is an excellent source for seeing stories in different languages. On this website you can see books in 18 different languages and follow text captions using a technique known as  Same Language Subtitling.

• Bablefish is a site which you can use with digital text when you need a translation. This site can translate entire web pages! If only small selections of text are needed you may use Bablefish or go to another site Foreign Word. Other sites relating to ESL you may find useful include Dave's ESL Cafe, Dictionaries by Language and  Multilingual Munchins

Vocabulary/Concept Development

• To help students process their understanding of new vocabulary words try this site, Enchanted Learning. It provides ready to use vocabulary maps. Lots of early elementary science pages here!

• Visual Thesaurus helps students explore the meaning of words. Its available for limited use on line (free) or, if you like the program, for unlimited use by purchasing the CD version. An entire world of antonyms and synonyms.

• Trouble with vocabulary? If its on a web page a site called Voycabulary (obviously not called Spelling) takes the web site and converts it into a new page where EVERY word is clickable! Click any word on the page and a definition appears. Great for learners struggling with words and dictionary skills.

• For upper level students you may wish to provide access to appropriate study aides such as SparkNotes, Novel Guide or Cliffnotes. All are available on line.

• Graphic organizers are often found useful for these students, and you can find information on these organizers at Inspiration, Draftbuilder, Eduplace and an excellent article by Hall and Strangeman on using graphic organizers at the CAST website.

• Finally, try The Graphic Organizer site.

Text Modification (Similar Text at a Different Reading Level)

If there is a mismatch of the reading materials and the student's reading level there are several solutions. If you have the text available in digital form, from a web page, article from the web and so on, you can use MS Word's AUTOSUMMARY feature. This will highlight important points in most reading materials. Yes, it works better with some than others, but it is a great tool to show students. Its like purchasing a book with the highlights and notes already there! Give it a try on several different text samples. Dave Edyburn and others call this cognitive rescaling. Two articles are available about this technique:

• Edyburn, D. (2002) Cognitive rescaling strategies: Interventions that alter the cognitive accessability of text. Closing the Gap, April/May, 1, 10-11,21 (just click this text)

• Mortensen, S (2002) Action Reasearch on Cognitive Rescaling. Journal of Special Education Technology, 17(4) 53-58.

• Built in speech support for text can is demonstrated at Starr Child and BookBox, shown above. Of course most computers currently have text to speech built in. This site is a critical one to look at as it will demonstrate how a single lesson on the solar system is available at several different reading and cognitive levels. Give it a try! Its available now for your students.

• 100 Book Challenge has a complete program of reading for various grade levels that are differentiated by student vocabulary levels.

Bypassing Reading or Assisted Reading

Many students are simply unable to access printed pages well enough to keep up. For these one solution is finding material in audio format.  Public libraries as well as most bookstores provide books in audio format, however yo may wish to have text-to-speech ability available. Here are several sources:

• Microsoft Reader. You can download Reader for free. Then you can obtain books on-line through most major book sellers, and an enormous number of classics are available on-line for FREE. Yes, FREE! Reader puts the text on your computer screen, you can adjust the font size, and it reads the text. The only drawback is Reader has only one voice, and you cannot adjust the reading speed.  After you download Reader go to the University of Virginia's EText library. You will find thousands of classics, scientific texts, and historical documents on line ready to download to your Reader program (also available in other formats, for instance, to read on your Palm device). Texts in many languages are also available, and the search engine is simple to use

• More free digital books: Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

• The University of Adelaide has free ebooks at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/meta/authors.html

• This is a listing a free ebooks, and includes magazines. Some students may not be interested in the textbooks, but will work with magazines. Remember, web pages described here can take the entire magazine page and read it out loud, or provide definitions of any word a student may not know simply by touching the word. Free ebooks listing

• American Printing House for the Blind has many services available

• Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic

• Other free audio books are available at Audio Books for Free.

• Book Share has digital copies of copyrighted books

• Books Aloud is another possible source

• If you have taught your student to copy digital text into a speech program there are better alternatives that the text to speech program on MS Word or in your computer's operating system. These include: (free) ReadPlease for Windows and TextEdit (in the Mac system software).

• Natural Reader is a complete program for text to speech and is worth looking at. NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words.  NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or Ipod. You cannot ask for more! Being able to easily convert test to speech, and then convert that to an MP3 format for making a CD or putting the material on an IPod is a perfect solution to many learning problems. The entire package is about $39.00. You can download a free trial copy

• ReadPlease is another complete text to voice system. It reads anything on your screen. A free trial version is available, final version costs approximately $79.00

Voice Recognition

• Finally, input is often a problem. Voice input has come a long way. Dragon Naturally Speaking works with MS Word, Open Office, IM programs, email! And with little training time! Imagine if your student could type at the same rate they spoke and with 99% accuracy! Visit the Naturally Speaking website and press the demo button. The cost is approximately $99.00

• Finally, for the student who has difficulty getting the first draft done, and needs HUMAN help with the typing, there is idictate.com, a service that provides a real typist who types what you dictate and emails it to you. Cost, about 1 cent a word! Would you rather have your student waste all their energy and frustration tolerance writing a 100 word first draft, or dictate it for one dollar and now work on editing? There are no set up fees, no minimal use. For some students it is worth the try.

Family Mental Health
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