Meet John:Who are we concerned about?
John is a 12 year old student in Middle School, who has difficulty with reading comprehension, spelling, and reversing his letters. John is currently reading and writing at the 4th grade level. These difficulties were less apparent when he was 5 and 6 but school work has become more complicated and has fallen behind in all subject areas. In addition, John has been acting up in class, laughing at other students when they read aloud, and generally not paying attention to directions. The school provided counseling and a behavior program with minimal success. Eventually John was referred for evaluation and was found to qualify for special education services.
Consider and Trial AT
Goals: What is it we want this student to be able to do?
The IEP team agreed that John qualified for special education as a child with a learning disability. In writing the Present Level of Educational Performance the team noted that John’s instructional grade level was two years below his current grade. The IEP team then developed a goal around reading based on the Maryland Voluntary Curriculum: John will apply comprehension skills through exposure to a variety of texts, including traditional print and electronic texts. The quarterly objective under this goal states that: John will read a minimum of 25 self-selected and/or assigned books or book equivalents representing various genres with 100% independence. They also decided upon the following accommodations: moved his seat, offered a slot in the after-school homework club, and extra time to complete reading assignments.
Tools and Strategies-How can we support this student to achieve the goal(s)?
The IEP team also recommended that a formal assistive technology assessment be completed. The AT team first looked at the areas affected by his disability. It was clear that John was falling behind in all subjects due to difficulties he had with reading and writing. The AT assessment investigated a variety of tools to let him work independently including a text reader that highlights words and provides John opportunities to turn sound on and off, use word prediction, and control the speed of the computer’s reading. The IEP team considered the results of the AT assessment and determined that John needed to work 1:1 with an aide (90 minutes per day), using a multi-sensory approach to work on basic reading skills, to learn how to use the text reading software, to choose appropriate materials at his 4th grade reading level, and to work with electronic quizzes on the texts chosen. This 90 minutes is the same amount of time that students are required to read each day. The team planned that eventually, the aide would shorten the time she works directly with John as he becomes more skilled and independent. They set benchmarks and review dates when they would look at his need for an instructional assistant again. Implement AT: How will we ensure that new tools and strategies are effectively used? While the tools and software that the team chose for John was easy to learn to use, there were many things that people needed to do in order to make sure that he had them available and could use them. John’s team first took a look at his Middle School program and identified the people who would be his primary supporters during the day. The aide had already been assigned to work with John on his reading program and to teach him to use the computer, but there were other things that needed to be done to ensure effective implementation of John’s plan. They decided that John’s Language Arts teacher would be assigned to provide a wide variety of books at his reading level to help him meet his reading comprehension goal. The special education teacher was assigned to work with the aide on planning John’s daily instruction and identifying next steps for him in the reading curriculum. Once the big picture things had been decided, there were still tasks that needed to be done to support John’s use of the reading software. Someone needed to find books in electronic format for John to read and make sure that they were at the appropriate level for his reading and language comprehension. The district’s AT team provided a number of web resources where electronic books could be found, but someone needed to download them and make sure that they were appropriate for John. They decided to talk with the school Librarian. She was thrilled when they showed her the new tools they were using and told her what they wanted to do with them. She immediately recognized that there were many other students who could benefit from electronic books and text reading software and asked to have the same program loaded on the computer in the library. In exchange, she agreed to spend some time downloading electronic texts that would be just right for John’s reading program.
Monitor Progress:
How do we know the student is on track?
After the team had made sure that the school would be ready to help John with his new tools, they worked together to pull all the parts of his program together into a coordinated plan. They asked themselves question like, “How would we design a data collection “trail” to monitor John’s progress while working with the aide?” and “How will we know when he has worked independently enough to reduce the aide time?” They wanted to make a plan that clearly showed how the new tools and strategies they had identified were working for John throughout the year. The team decided to start with the benchmarks and timelines they had identified for John’s work with the aide. They reviewed them to make sure that the aide knew what to do if John made rapid progress and met a benchmark before a review was scheduled. They also wanted to make sure that she knew when to ask for help if things weren’t going well with one of John’s tools or strategies. In order to help with program review, the special education teacher developed some record keeping sheets for the aide to use. One simply asked her to record what she did with John each day in his reading instruction and what his reading comprehension score was for that day. Another was a record of what John read using his computer software and what his comprehension was when he used that tool. Finally, because part of John’s program was to learn to use the text reading software independently, the team developed a list of the specific tasks that John needed to do to operate the software. The aide was asked to check each task John did on a daily basis and the level of support he needed in order to do that task. When John was able to use his new software without help, the team agreed to meet again and decide what the next steps would be for reducing aide time and increasing the integration of his tools and strategies into his general education program.
