Meet Bryan: Why are we concerned about this student?
Bryan is a fifth grade student, who is really good at basketball but has spent countless hours writing, erasing, and rewriting his papers trying to make his writing look better. While he receives Occupational Therapy and Resource supports, he is almost always frustrated with the end product of his writing attempts. Because he is embarrassed about his handwriting, he has begun avoiding writing whenever possible. When his teacher, Mr. Martin, observed him wadding up a nearly completed assignment and throwing it in the trash early in the school year, he decided to talk to Bryan and try to find a solution.
Consider AT
Goals : What is it we want this student to be able to do?
When he thought about how to approach Bryan, Mr Martin decided that he would propose a research project and open it to anyone in the class who wanted to participate. There were three other boys and one girl in his class who had pretty significant struggles with handwriting and he thought that they could all benefit from exploring new tools for writing. Mr. Martin met with the fifth grade team and asked for their ideas. As they talked, they identified more than a dozen students who might benefit from some help with handwriting. Most of them had been referred for occupational therapy but did not qualify. They thought that perhaps the OT would be willing to consult with their team and provide some guidance. They were correct, the OT agreed to talk with them at their next team meeting. She talked with them about handwriting problems and showed them some simple tools, including a range of technologies, that could be tried. Mr. Martin decided that he would offer a six week project for any students in the fifth grade who were interested in trying out some different handwriting materials and “research” of how they made a difference. He would meet with them during morning recess on Wednesday of each of the six weeks. Bryan was one of five students that came to the first meeting. He was very clear that he wanted to improve his handwriting and was willing to give up a few recesses to try to find something that would help him to improve the quality of his written work.
Strategies and Tools: What would support this student to achieve the goals?
The OT provided Mr. Martin with an assortment of pencils, pencil grips, different types of paper, slant boards, and portable word processors to try out. Fifteen students came to the first meeting. They developed a plan to systematically try out each item and fill out a research results chart about their reaction to each one. The students decided that if they wrote their findings on the chart using the tool they were trying, it would not only tell in words, but show how each tool worked. They worked with Mr. Martin to develop a form even though it took an extra recess that first week to get it done. Three of the students did not come back after the first meeting. The twelve remaining students began trying the different pencils and other tools and carefully recorded their performance. One of the students got bored and quit the second week. The rest continued to try the tools and many began to see how some things made a difference. For Bryan the slant board combined with the squishy pencil grip seemed to make more difference than the other tools. He decided to use them exclusively during other writing times after the fourth week. At the end of the six week experiment, the students made a graph showing which tools were the most helpful and did a presentation to their classes for which they got extra credit in language arts.
Implement AT
How will we ensure that new tools and strategies are effectively used?
Bryan happily got out his slant board and squishy pencil every time Mr Martin’s class was asked to write. After the fourth time in one morning that Bryan dropped the slant board on the floor, Mr Martin almost decided to take it away from him. He thought that it might cause more trouble than help in Bryan’s writing. Because he knew that Bryan had chosen this tool himself and had originally felt good about it, Mr Martin decided to take another look. Once he did, he realized that the slant board was too big and bulky to fit in Bryan’s desk and he had no other place it could go. Mr Martin asked the school maintenance supervisor to help and she fashioned a shelf under Bryan’s chair that was just the right size for slant board storage when Bryan was not engaged in writing. Once this environmental problem was solved, Bryan and Mr Martin were very happy with the tools they had identified and Bryan showed a marked improvement in the quality of his writing. Because he was also producing more written work, Mr Martin felt free to begin to work with Bryan on some of the composition skills that he needed to learn. They were finally able to focus on using modifier words and noun-verb agreement instead of the mechanics of writing.
Monitor Progress
How do we know the student is on track?
Bryan and his teacher agreed to review his portfolio of written work every quarter and talk about any needed changes. While Bryan’s written products looked better when he used the slant board and squishy pencil grip, Bryan was still not satisfied with their appearance. During one of those sessions, Bryan expressed an interest in trying a portable word processor for longer assignements. Mr Martin was able to provide one that Bryan could take home over the summer which also had a keyboarding program in it. They made a plan for Bryan’s summer goals using the new tool, included his family in their planning and agreed to meet together with Bryan’s new teacher in the fall to review Bryan’s progress and writing improvement program.
Implications
Bryan’s experiences throughout the process of considering, trialing, implementing, and monitoring Assistive Technology was successful in large part due to the role he played in determining the tools that he would use. Mr. Martin’s respect for these choices and determination to support Bryan with the tools further increased their success.
