Assessment and intervention for a seven-year-old student with dyslexia

Special Needs Intervention

Client Profile

Brenda is a seven-year-old second grader that has been identified as dyslexic. She has significant delays in pre-literacy and numeracy skills have been identified through both formal assessment and performance in classroom activities. Work samples demonstrate that Brenda has difficulty sequencing and recognizing word phenomes and putting them together for reading and writing activities. Brenda does not demonstrate the ability to recognize phenomes in words. Brenda frequently reverses letters and/or the whole words when performing literacy tasks.

An interview with Brenda's teacher reveals that other than her problems associated with dyslexia, Brenda's development and functioning is on target with a majority of her peers. She tends to display shyness and introversion when called upon in class to perform activities associated with literacy and numeracy. She is polite and participates actively in class activities. She is a pleasant child and normally social with her classmates. She gets along well with both adults and other children.

Her condition was first discovered through classroom observation when it was observed that Brenda had particular difficulty performing activities such as copying from the board and beginning reading skills. Brenda's teacher has observed the Brenda is easily frustrated when attempting to perform tasks which she finds difficult. Brenda has support from our parents and siblings at home who work with her and participate in the program by doing extra activities with her outside of school hours. Brenda's mother stays in close contact with the school regarding Brenda's progress and school work.

Interventions

Dyslexia is a learning disability under the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act of 1992, Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act of 1991, and the DDA Standards for Education 2005 (Dyslexiaustralia.com, n.d.). Under this set of standards education providers must comply with each part of these acts in the provision of education in terms of enrolment, participation, curriculum development, delivery, and provision of support services. Under these provisions, educators must make reasonable adjustments to make certain that the student with disabilities has the same opportunities and choices that are available to students without disabilities (Dyslexiaustralia.com, n.d.). The following will address a plan to provide Brenda educational opportunities that focus on her individual educational needs, yet met the requirements of the above legislative acts.

The learning plan will address Brenda's dyslexia using a variety of activities to help her overcome her key issues with visual processing. The following describes four lessons that will be a part of the intervention plan. It describes assessment issues and measurement of progress. The goal of the following activities will be to provide an education that capitalizes on Brenda's strengths and that addresses her primary challenges.

Activity 1: Learning to focus on a task

Duration: 1/2-hour

Learning Issue/Goal:

To provide an environment where Brenda can perform her work without distraction and to teach Brenda strategies to help her cope with noises and distractions in the regular classroom setting

Activity:

Brenda will be moved to a quiet location and taught to cover areas of the paper upon which she is not currently working with another piece of paper. This will help Brenda focus on smaller portions of the work, rather than being distracted by extemporaneous stimuli.

This assessment does not address a particular Australia curriculum goal, but it is a necessary skill for all grade levels. The inability to concentrate on a single task, including isolating information on a written page, is a common dyslexic trait. In order to effectively respond to and produce written work, the student must be able to block out the rest of the page and the stimulus around them in order to focus on the task at hand (Dyslexia Intervention, n.d.). This activity is designed to address Brenda's deficiencies in this area, as indicated by the assessment.

Formative Assessment:

Formative assessment will occur through observation of Brenda during the performance of these tasks.

Summative Assessment:

The goal of the activity will be for Brenda to be able to use these adaptive skills to concentrate on work for a period of 20 minutes at a time without distraction. Brenda will be able to take breaks as needed.

Goals and Expected Educational Level and Outcome:

The goal of this activity is to train Brenda to filter information so that she can concentrate on the relevant task. Brenda will learn important coping skills through this activity. The goal is to provide Brenda with tools that she can use throughout her school years to build her skills of concentration on a particular task.

Activity Source:

Adapted from: Dyslexia Intervention (n.d.). Accommodatign Students with Dyslexia in all Classroom Settings. Retrieved from http://www.dyslexiaintervention.org/accomodating_students_with_dyslexia

Activity 2: Anticipation Guides

Duration: 1/2-hour

Learning Issue Goal:

This activity teaches a pre-reading strategy to activate the student's background knowledge to motivate them to read a story. Dyslexic children often view their world holistically. The activity in this session will capitalize on Brenda's strength of viewing a problem holistically, as identified in the assessment.

Activity:

Brenda will be able to choose abook from the school library that looks interesting to her and that is age appropriate. Without opening the book, she will be asked a series of questions about what she can tell about the book by looking at the cover. The facilitator will then open the book and go through it page by page. Brenda will not be asked to read the book, but instead will be asked to anticipate what she thinks will happen in the story based on the pictures. After she has made it through the entire book, she will be asked to use this knowledge to read the words on the page. Brenda will first be asked to identify any words that she already knows on the page and then fill in those that she does not know using he pictures. Eventually, pictures on the page will be replaced by phonetic combination. Brenda will be able to decode words phonetically through repetition of this strategy.

If Brenda reaches a frustration level with this activity, she will be redirected to return to her previous knowledge of the story based on the pictures to decipher the words. If Brenda does not make it through the entire book by the end of one session, she can continue over several sessions.

Formative Assessment:

The facilitator will observe Brenda's tracking and ability to anticipate what the story will be about. The facilitator will also observe Brenda's interest and engagement in this activity.

Summative Assessment:

The goal for this activity is for Brenda to be able to decipher difficult words in a passage from outside information 3 out of five times by the end of the intervention period.

Goals and Expected Educational Level and Outcome:

Anticipating story content through pictures is a common strategy utilized by first and second grade teachers. This activity extends this principle to a greater detail than typically occurs in a group setting. It is expected that through repetition of this exercise, Brenda will be able to utilize her ability to view situations holistically to decipher specific words on a page. Brenda will utilize her strengths to decode words on a page to gain confidence in her own reading ability. It is not expected that Brenda will be able to accomplish this task in four lessons. The goals is for Brenda to be able to read and write on a level that is comparable to that of her peers.

Activity Source:

Adapted from: Teachers.net. (2011). "#3283. Reading Strategy: Anticipation Guides." Retrieved from: http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/3283.html

Activity 3: Clapping Names

Duration: 1/2-hour

Learning Issue Goal:

The goal of this activity is to build awareness of syllables by clapping the syllables in their names and other words. This is an important step in learning spelling sound sequencing. Brenda was found to lack these sequencing abilities through an examination of her work samples.

Activity:

This activity will be modeled by the instructor using names of varying lengths. The instructor will pronounce the name one syllable at a time, while clapping each syllable. Brenda will then be asked to clap along and identify the number of syllables in the word. This activity will then be extended to her own names, names of other familiar people that she knows and other words.

Formative Assessment:

The instructor will observe Brenda during the activity and will adapt and correct as necessary throughout the activity.

Summative Assessment:

Brenda will be able to clap and name the number of syllables 8 out of 10 times by the end of the four sessions.

Goals and Expected Educational Level and Outcome:

Brenda will learn to recognize that words are made of segments and that these segments have different sounds. Through this realization, Brenda's ability to spell words will improve. Once Brenda understands syllables, she will be able to begin decoding the phenomes in each syllable, thus building spelling skills. A work sample of second grade spelling tests revealed that Brenda consistently gets 9 out of 10 words incorrect. The goal of the study will be to improve her spelling scores to a point where she consistently gets 7-8 out of 10 spelling words correct. This will allow Brenda to advance at the same rate as her peers.

Activity Source:

Adapted from Adams, M., Foorman, B., Lundberg, I. & Beeler, T. (2011). "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children." Reading Rockets. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/408/

Activity 4: Initial Phenomes.

Duration: 1/2-hour

Learning Issue Goal:

The goal of this activity is to help Brenda separate the sounds of words from their meanings. This activity will teach Brenda that if an initial sound of a word is removed, a different word may result.

Activity:

The instructor will explain the concept that sometimes when the initial phenome of a word is removed, a different word will be formed. The example given will be words like "fear," which results in "ear" when the f is removed. The instructor will pronounce the word elongating the initial consonant and have Brenda repeat it in this manner. Then the instructor will have Brenda do the same thing with the new word that is formed by the removal of the first phenome "e-e-e-ar." This activity will be repeated with many different words on a list.

Formative Assessment:

The instructor will observe Brenda during performance of this activity and will offer encouragement and praise when a second word is derived from removal of the initial phenome.

Summative Assessment:

Brenda will be able to recognize the initial phenome of a word 5 out of 5 times.

Goals and Expected Educational Level and Outcome:

This activity is expected to help Brenda improve her spelling and writing scores in the classroom. It will improve Brenda's ability to recognize word phenomes and to see relationships between them. This will help to improve Brenda's spelling ability so that she is performing on-par with her peers.

Activity Source:

Adapted from Adams, M., Foorman, B., Lundberg, I. & Beeler, T. (2011). "Phonemic Awareness in Young Children." Reading Rockets. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/408/