Learning Differences

Learning Differences Paper

Eddie* is an eleven year old boy who is in the 5th grade at AMA. He has had significant school behavior problems since early elementary school resulting in AMA as his third elementary school placement. Eddie is a general education student, but receives support from the at-risk specialist. Eddie’s mother reports significant difficulty with his behavior at home. She states he “doesn’t get along” with his 3 siblings, ages 4, 2, and 10 months and his relationship with his stepfather is “questionable”. For the past year, his step grandparents and their 18 and 17 year old grandchildren have also been living with the family. Eddie also has a history of asthma that has placed him overnight at the hospital more than once. He takes medication for his asthma on an as needed basis. Eddie’s mother states that his biological father has a history of similar problems. Currently, he lives out of state and his relationship with Eddie has historically been inconsistent.
Last year, Eddie was almost expelled completely from the school because of his aggressive behavior toward students and defiant behavior toward staff. Eddie was retained for the 2007-08 school year, because his anger issues made it nearly impossible for him to concentrate on his academics. When angry, Eddie throws things such as chairs and books, he also hits other students. Eddie was suspended from school 11 times last year, and 3 times this year. The first time Eddie was suspended this year was when I was out for the day; the other two times were out on recess. Eddies first incident was at the very beginning of the school year and involved a girl on the playground. The second incident was after he had been out for two days from an asthma attack. He walked into another classroom and hit another student for no reason. The last incident was in June. He and a few other students decided to try to pull each others pants down.
Math is an area of strength for Eddie, but he is still not working at grade level. He is able to solve most static and dynamic addition and subtraction problems, and static multiplication and division problems. He has difficulty with dynamic multiplication and division. Eddie has difficulty with all aspects of fractions. His weaknesses are reading, controlling his anger, and not being able to focus or work independently. Since Eddie has a hard time focusing and controlling his anger, he has fallen behind grade-level wise and struggles academically. Even when working one-on-one, at times he has hard time recalling information, especially in reading and behavioral issues. Through observing Eddie, I have found evidence that he may fall in a learning disability category. Eddie demonstrates difficulty attending to tasks and focusing during any independent work time. He also becomes easily distracted, walking around the room and talking with his peers. While wandering the room, I have found him numerous times interfering with other students, talking with them or disturbing their work. I am constantly told by other students how he has bothered them in someway. This could be as simple as talking to them, or as disrespectful as giving them dirty looks, using inappropriate language, or teasing and insulting them. He also likes to argue with students especially if he feels they are looking at him or making fun of him. He has a very low self concept, and acts out to cover up his feelings. Eddie may deny his actions to other adults, but never denies them with me. When confronted by another adult besides myself, Eddie will become defiant. When Eddie has been caught in the “act” of bothering another student, he seems to enjoy the negative attention, thinking that this makes him look cool. Eddie loves to play sports and is on both a football and a basketball team. He says that he wants to play professional sports when he gets older. Eddie is very sociable in class, and wants everyone to like him. Most of the girls are nice to him, but wouldn’t consider him a friend. The boys play sports with him at recess time, but don’t really like to hang out with him either. This is upsetting to Eddie and he doesn’t really feel as if he belongs. Since Eddie is more behind academically than most of my other students I do many one-on-one or small group lessons with him. I have found this to be a benefit not only because I can work at his level, but also because he gets very distracted if there are more students in the group. In these lessons I have noticed Eddie’s eyes are not focused the whole time, but rather looking around the room at any movement or sound that might go on. Also, when reviewing a lesson Eddie does not seem to retain the information. For example, he is still reading at a first grade level. Eddie denies that he has problems in school, and wants everyone to leave him alone. From these observations and evidence I feel one of Eddie’s biggest struggles is defensive patterns. More specifically, I believe his oppositional behavior is to cover up his feelings of inadequacy. He acts out to make him look cool. I also feel that Eddie suffers from weak attention control. More specifically, I feel he has weaknesses in the area of processing, mental effort and consistency, and production control. With this in mind, I feel these areas of weakness disrupt Eddie’s ability to form true friendships in the classroom. Also, I feel these limitations are now inhibiting Eddie from remembering lessons and directions, which is impacting his academics. Throughout the months of September and October, I have had several conversations with Eddie’s parents, along with the school principal, social worker and special education department. In November, Eddie was officially tested. On 10/27/08, Eddie was given the Kaufman Ability Battery for Children (KABC). He achieved the following scores: Fluid Crystallized Intelligence SS 79; Reading SS 69; Spelling SS 73; Math SS 86. On 11/08 Eddie achieved the following scores on the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Second Edition (KTEA ll) Reading Composite SS 69: Math Composite SS 88; Written Language 86: and Oral Language 84. Based on these tests, Eddie is considerably below average in reading. He is low average to average in all other areas. His reading difficulties significantly impact his performance in the general education classroom. Eddie’s ability score and his achievement score in reading indicates a sever discrepancy qualifying him for special education in reading. We will work with Eddie on phonics through the use of phonics games and phonics programs, improving his sight vocabular4y with Dolch word lists and teaching him comprehension skills. Eddie’s mother and I completed the Conners 3rd Edition Short Form and the following t-scores were very elevated in comparison to other 11 year old boys, which suggest further intervention is warranted: Inattention 92, 72, Hyperactivity/Impulsivity 111, 90, 83, Learning Problems 84 and Executive Functioning 75. Due to Eddie’s history of academic difficulty, it is unclear whether his academics are struggling due to his inattention and difficulty focusing, or whether the behaviors are a result of long standing academic deficits. In any case, the distractibility, inattention and executive function challenges appear to be directly impacting his classroom performance in a general education setting as evidenced by his difficulty completing work during any independent work time. Social work services are recommended addressing Eddie’s ability to work independently, which may include developing a system for accountability along with strategies to improve independent executive functioning.
In the beginning of the year my goals for Eddie were to help him stay focused on work so he could gain knowledge in the academics and to get along with the other students in the classroom (i.e. lasting friendships). To obtain this goal I set several objectives for Eddie. First was to give Eddie his own workspace where there were fewer distractions. The second objective was to teach Eddie how to get along with others by using the peace corner and ‘I’ statements when he disagreed or did not like something. To achieve these goals and objectives I had to take baby steps with Eddie. At first, he needed an assigned seat next to me so that I could stay on top of him to focus on work. It was agreed upon with Eddie that if he finished three goals (works) he would be able to take a short mental break. Through research I found that taking mental breaks such as a walk to another classroom or playing a short game helps stimulate a students mind, helping them to work longer when they get back from the break. For awhile this worked well. Eddie would work on three goals, take a break, and than work on three other goals to repeat the cycle. However, it would take him a very long time to complete the three goals, and because he was so close to me, he was disrupting my lessons. Eddie’s work area was moved to another location in the room where he still had fewer distractions and was able to see me when he got off task. Another tip I received through research was that healthy snacks were helpful in stimulating a student’s concentration on work. This activity was implemented within the whole classroom by allowing everyone to bring in a snack for the morning work time. To help Eddie stay focused on what was important to do, we would sit down in the beginning of the morning and decide on his morning goals. When Eddie completed his morning goals, I would write a comment next to it describing how well he completed the tasks. We then would pick his afternoon goals. We would write these goals down in his agenda that would be sent home daily. His parents would read how well he did in class and then comment back the next morning. Eddie seemed to enjoy this incentive when he had good days because he enjoyed being noticed for the good that he had done. However, if he had a bad day the agenda would not make it home and at one point disappeared for a few weeks. To help Eddie with his academics I would make sure to meet with his reading group everyday. He was only reading at a 1st grade level. We needed to concentrate on his phonics skills and comprehension skills. I would help him with any questions he had during work time and notified the assistant that he would probably need the most help with assigned activities if that was the case. If I found he was struggling with a lesson and I could not get to him, I would assign a classmate to help him out. Also, we have an At-Risk aid in our building for students that are falling behind. I made sure that Eddie was on her rotation and they work together three times a week. During this time, I had her reading joke books with Eddie. I found that this helps with fluency. They also used comprehension balls that they would throw back and forth to each other and answer the questions regarding a story we were reading. Finally, to help Eddie with his ‘I’ statements the class had several lessons at the beginning of the year on how to confront people when you are upset with them. We discussed how we state we felt by the action (i.e. I did not like it when you snatched my pencil, it hurt my feelings).We did several role playing activities during our community meetings to practice the correct confronting behavior and had many discussions with how we wanted our classroom to run and get along. I also mentioned that I would accompany people to the peace corner to help mediate if someone was not being respectful. Eddie’s parents were always there for parent teacher conferences. His parents made regular visits to the classroom to monitor Eddie’s progress. The most important aspect for them was the fact that we could finally concentrate on Eddie’s academic performance because his behavior problems were not as big of an issue as before. Eddie’s entire family took an interest in is success. His grandfather would drive him to school early every Tuesday and Thursday, so that I could help him before anyone else came into the classroom. His grandmother helped Eddie with his homework every night. Eddie didn’t always bring his completed work back, but it was being worked on. At one point, even Eddie’s football coach was involved. I would have regular conversations with Eddie’s coach, and we agreed that if Eddie’s work was not being done in class, then he would go to practice, but he would have to sit on the sidelines and complete his work. The biggest outcome from all of my conversations with Eddie’s parents was that we get Eddie’s reading level up. Eddie struggles academically, because he is so far behind in his reading. In the middle of the year Eddie’s goals were revised slightly. At Eddie’s first IEP, we decided that his annual goals would be that Eddie would develop/increase phonics skills, reading comprehension skills, and improve responsible behavior. Specifically, he would be able to decode consonant/vowel/consonant words. Eddie was able to accomplish this goal. Second, he would be able to decode words with a beginning blend/vowel team/consonant digraph. Eddie was able to read many words in this category when found in text, but not in isolation. Thirdly, he would read a selection and be able to tell the beginning, middle and end of the story. Eddie does well with this goal when he knows he has to retell the story. Next, Eddie will be able to tell details about the main character, setting, and main idea of the story. He does well with this when reading is at his just right level. Finally implementing a time management system has not worked so well. The agenda signing worked for a while, but didn’t last. We then tried a check in/check out system using the support staff, giving Eddie an opportunity to walk to another classroom to discuss his goals. Eddie had shown remarkable strides as far as his behavior. We decided to have him take a leadership role and gave him a job on safety patrol. This worked very well until the end of the year, when he was suspended for hitting another student; he was taken off of safety. Eddie does not like the fact that he was retained a year and does not like help from anyone in the building besides me. This does make things difficult especially when I am not there, or when I can not help him. He is improving, but for some reason, he has chosen to latch on to me. Eddie’s biggest challenge going into next year, will be interacting without conflict or disruption during unstructured times. Eddie demonstrates more of an interest in social interaction and peer relationships (which is appropriate for his age), yet he is unable to balance his need to complete school work independently with his peer relationships. It will be important for Eddie to continue in structured extra curricular activities along with chores at home to encourage independent responsible behavior and self-direction. Even though it has been hard, I have seen some major improvements that Eddie has made this year. He has moved up in reading from a 1st grade level to a 4th grade level. He has reached his goals in both phonics skills and reading comprehension skills. We are still working on our management system and after we discontinued the check in/check out system, we incorporated a sorting bin for organization and time management. Unfortunately, Eddie uses the bin inconsistently and has difficulty maintaining on task. But overall, I am very pleased with Eddie’s progress. He is certainly a diamond in the rough. I have learned a lot from this assignment. First of all I learned that a child is different from year to year and different from teacher to teacher. Also, that no matter how defiant or unfocused a student may seem to be, there is always something to celebrate. I have also learned that there are many techniques to helping a student with his/her differences, and if one approach doesn’t work, try, try again.

Appendix

Reference Page

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Levy, Ray and O’Hanlon, Bill, Goode, Tyler Norris. (2000). Try and make me! Simple Strategies That Turn Off Tantrums and Create Cooperation, Rodale Press Sutliff, U. (2004) Nutrition Key to Aggressive Behavior(www. Document). Retrieved: http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/10773.html