Andie Deschapelles

SERP 301

Benchmark Part I

26 September 2017

Target Student Background Information

In my classroom, the child that I have been focusing on, as my target student,

is a second grader named Ana (child’s name has been changed for her privacy). Ana

is seven years old and attends Hendricks elementary school. Ana has a specific

learning disability so she has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) with goals and

accommodations that are addressed in the classroom.

Ana’s IEP also references her strengths and weaknesses in the classroom.

Through observations and looking at Ana’s IEP, I learned that when Ana is reading,

she loves to look at the pictures, she can give brief summaries of the stories after

they are read to her and can sound out most words correctly with support from an

adult. I have also noticed that Ana has difficulty with letter and sound recognition.

To help accommodate for this in the classroom, Ana has an alphabet chart at her

desk she can reference as well as access to a word bank of uncommonly used words.

Ana is also pretty good with writing conventions and usually remembers capitals,

punctuation, and spacing. She has very neat and legible writing but she does write

slowly.

Last year, Ana showed a lot of improvement with her timed addition math

facts. One of the things that Ana needs improvement on in math is her math

calculations and problem solving. In the classroom, we give Ana extra time to think
and use guiding questions when helping her solve math problems. Ana also has

access to a number line and hundreds chart that she can use to help her solve math

equations.

Something that is particularly interesting about Ana is how shy she is in class.

This is interesting because she is actually a very social child and has a lot of friends

at school. A lot of times children who are very social, like Ana, are chatty in class.

However, Ana does not participate in class discussions and does not ask questions in

front of the entire class. Instead, she will save her questions until she can work one

on one with a teacher. Ana will become even more shy and quiet when she is

struggling with class content. She will often lose visual contact and attention and it

seems like she is no longer actively listening. One of the accommodations that we

make for Ana is giving her additional time to express her thoughts and form

sentences. I am hoping that this additional time can help Ana gain the confidence

she needs to participate in class discussions.

Ana has many goals included in her IEP that we would like to see completed

by February of 2018. In language arts, her goals are to increase her letter naming

ability to 57 letters per minute and to increase her ability to identify letter sounds to

48 words per minute. Her goals also include improving her

receptive/language/retrieval skills by recalling details, summarizing and connecting

ideas. We would also like to see improvement with Ana’s receptive language skills

by following directions with multiple elements and improvements in expressive

vocabulary.
 Ana also has goals regarding her math skills. By February, we are hoping that

we will see an improvement in counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 100. Additionally,

we would like to see Ana demonstrate improvement to add and subtract within 20.

Ana has additional accommodations that will help her in all subjects and

should be used for all class work, assignments, and assessments. These

accommodations are:

 Reminding student of daily routine

 Sitting student near a peer who will be helpful

 Helping student with strategies to retain information

 Using manipulatives and visual aids

 Giving more time to complete written and math assignments

 Giving extra test time and ample response time

 Having tests administered individually

 Providing student with multiple choices to answer questions in order to

assist with memory retrieval

While researching Specific Learning Disabilities I came across IDEA’s

definition of this high-incidence disability. In general, “the term specific learning

disability means a disorder in 1 or more of the basic psychological processes

involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder

may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or

do mathematical calculations” (“Specific Learning Disabilties”). I thought this

definition was interesting because although the disability is considered “specific,”

the definition itself is very general. One child with a specific learning disability could
have a completely different set of diverse abilities as another child who also has a

specific learning disability. I think that this makes it even more important for us to

really get to know our students so we can know how to best accommodate them in

our classroom.

According to the Center for Parent Information and Resources, there are

some common accommodations used in the classroom that can help children with

learning disabilities. Some of these accommodations include breaking tasks into

smaller steps, giving the student more time for tests and classwork, and letting a

student with writing difficulties use a computer to help with spelling and grammar

(“Learning Disabilities (LD),” 2010). In my classroom, we are using most of these

accommodations and more to help Ana. However, one of the accommodations that

we are not using is letting her use a computer. As I mentioned previously, Ana has

really neat handwriting but she does write very slowly and has difficulties with

spelling. I am wondering if using some sort of computer to type would help Ana or if

it would hurt her because she would not get as much practice with writing by hand.

One of Ana’s biggest challenges is identifying letters and letter sounds. I think

this is one of her biggest challenges because it affects her ability to read and spell.

During my research about learning disabilities, I read an article about beginning

reading. It was very interesting because it talked about how the act of learning to

read is unnatural (Fitzsimmons). This article talked about using phonological

awareness activities to help children listen to the sounds that letters make instead

of looking at written letters (Fitzsimmons). These activities “build on and enhance

children’s experiences with written language and spoken language” (Fitzsimmons). I

feel that these activities may be difficult for Ana at first; however, we would start

with easy words and slowly progress to harder words. I think these activities would

help Ana with her letter sound recognition because these types of activities would

break down the words for her. I think these activities would really help her reading

proficiency too because she can use these skills to help sound out the words

independently.
 Resources

Fitzsimmons, M. (n.d.). Beginning Reading. Retrieved September 26, 2017, from

http://www.ldonline.org/article/Beginning_Reading

Learning Disabilities (LD). (2010, June 16). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from

http://www.parentcenterhub.org/ld/#teachers

Specific Learning Disabilities. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from

http://www.asha.org/advocacy/federal/idea/04-law-specific-ld/