Alyssa Carle

SPED Practicum Fall 2016

Preparing for an IEP Meeting Assignment
The student is currently an eight-year-old third grade student with a primary
diagnosis of Autism. His diagnosis is based on his verbal and nonverbal
communication skills, social pragmatic skills, and sensory integration skills.
His IEP meeting this year is a three-year reevaluation. Currently, he is placed
in a substantially separate LINKS classroom and receives speech and OT
services. He has received these services since entering the district in first
grade. With these services, the students progress has been consistent
although his progress is far below grade level.
The student has a good foundation of vocabulary and knowledge and can
read sight words, count up to 50, and has 1 to 1 correspondence. He
successfully uses and navigates technology, can write his name without a
model, knows letters and sounds, and follows simple directions.
The approach for communication is total communication, where verbal
output, sign language, visuals, gestures, and body language are all
supported and encouraged. The student has emerging language, however
has severe articulation difficulties making it sometimes hard to understand
him. Based on speech evaluations by the schools speech and language
pathologist the current focus of his speech services is speech sounds and
proper articulation and pronunciation of words. To help support this, PECs
(picture exchange communication) is incorporated into classroom
communication and routine. Using PECs the student is working toward
sequencing words to create sentences in order to communicate needs and
request wants.
Current concerns are the students high levels of anxiety and related
behaviors, which are impeding his ability to learn and be successful in the
classroom. The students attention can be fleeting especially during a nonpreferred activity. It can often be difficult to get him to sit for an activity, as
he often becomes very fixated on activities or objects causing him to
perseverate on them and become very anxious. Routine has been extremely
important, as the student is very regimented. Transitions need to be limited,
for change is quite difficult for the student. He engages in repetitive actions
such as jumping, running, laying on tables, and water play in the sink. This
ritualistic behavior interferes with appropriate socialization with peers or
participation in academic lessons.
The schools psychologist attempted to conduct a cognitive assessment with
the student multiple times, however was only able to collect minimal results
due to the students unwillingness to attend to the testing. From the limited

results the psychologist was able to share out that the student falls in the
lower percentiles for IQ, spatial ability, and processing speed.
The schools occupational therapist conducted a sensory evaluation and
determined that the student requires strong sensory involvement. The
student has close to age appropriate fine motor skills and engages in daily
living skills such as dressing, toileting, and organizing personal belongings.
Moving forward the student will continue to work on his current goals for ELA
and math. He will continue identifying common objects in pictures, add to his
word base by learning more sight words, and identifying letters by sound. In
math the student can match up to the number 6 to a set of objects and will
continue on making progress with this. He is working on extending more
complex patterns, sorting pictures into different categories, and sequencing
daily activities.
The student will stay in a LINKS classroom and continue receiving speech
and OT services. A behavior intervention plan is being put into place to help
with transitions out of the classroom. As a third grade student he will
participate in MCAS by completing a portfolio as an alternative assessment.