LD Summary 1

Learning Disabilities Summary

Emily Flower, Abi Gallagher, and Mackenzie Mantione

Dr. Maria Nahmias

The University of Arizona

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Student Description

For our paper, we will be calling our student Ethan. He is a sixth grader at Mountain

Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona. Ethan qualified for Special Education in reading and

writing. He is in general education classes, but goes to the resource room several times a week

for extra help. Ethan has a horrible time decoding and figuring out words, but his comprehension

is amazing. He can answer questions and tell you exactly what happened in the story. His

strength is comprehension. His weaknesses are decoding, and writing. When he writes, he has a

hard time keeping the letters in the lines and has a lot of trouble with reversing. Ethan was

observed while working on adding and subtracting decimals. He went through the tasks quickly

and only missed two of the problems.

The teacher would not let us use the entire IEP so we will be using examples from his

IEP.

Goals and Accommodations

Because of Ethan’s trouble with decoding, his goals are mainly in that area. His teacher

is going to work with him on learning strategies for reading. One of his goals for decoding is that

he will use word identification strategies on at least half of unknown words. Another area is

writing. Because he has such difficulties with writing, it takes a longer time for him to write. An

accommodation for his writing is that he will type his writing assignments instead of writing

them.

Reading, Writing, and Written Language

Ethan presents areas of need in fluency, prosody, and decoding. When reading, Ethan

struggles to maintain a steady and smooth pace. His reading exhibits a great use of repetitions

and hesitations. Although sight words and other grade level words do not seem to trouble Ethan,
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he continuously finds difficulty in unfamiliar words that should be known at his grade level.

Substitutions and omissions are used in attempt to counter this area of disability. His hesitation

when attacking an unfamiliar word, results in repetitions of words. Often Ethan seems to be over

focused on reading material, concentrating very hard to simply read the words. He reads in a

forced loud tone. Ethan is not very attentive to punctuation. While reading a passage, he tends to

combine sentences and does not recognize different punctuation marks and their

importance. Self-corrections are demonstrated throughout his reading. Ethan is aware of his

difficulties in fluency, prosody, and decoding and pushes himself to overcome them.

Comprehension is Ethan’s strength in reading. Despite his trouble in the other areas of

reading; fluency, prosody, and decoding, Ethan is able to bring meaning and understanding to the

material he has read. He has a very high and detailed understanding of the stories he reads. The

student is able to tell back events and characters within the reading using strong description.

When asked content-based questions about the material, Ethan is able to present the correct

answer. It sometimes takes more time for him to come up with the answer, depending on the

length of the material. This is interesting when looking at his difficulties in reading. Ethan seems

to struggle to completely read the passage but manages to answer questions correctly. There are

no parallels between Ethan’s inability to read the passage and his strong ability to answer the

comprehension questions.

Ethan’s overall writing ability is weak. Visually, a problem area for Ethan is handwriting.

He struggles with spacing and letter formation. Written work done by Ethan presents inconsistent

spacing. The spaces between his words are either too small or overly dramatic. There are large

gaps between paragraphs also. His handwriting is large and messy. Words are written beyond

line boundaries on the page. Ethan’s work looks as though it was written on a plain piece of
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paper, where there are no lines to stay on and maintain formation. The poorly structured spacing

makes reading his work difficult. Ethan also struggles with letter formation. He often uses

reversals for letters, which happens when constructing numbers as well.

Written language is another area where Ethan has trouble in. It takes him twice as long to

translate his thoughts onto paper. The overall structure of his writing is delayed. There does not

seem to be any rules of beginning, middle, and end. This may be due to weaknesses in fluency

and decoding. The inability to process these areas may translate into Ethan not fully

understanding basic construction rules. When his thoughts are finally relayed onto paper

however, Ethan’s writing is detailed and descriptive. The complete structure may not be apparent

but his understanding of information is. This could be directly because of his strong

comprehension ability.

Social Studies

Ethan is interested and engaged when learning topics in social studies. He enjoys

researching information about content areas being discussed. His positive outlook on the subject

area results from his interest in storytelling. Frustration areas that express difficulty within social

studies are due to weaknesses in reading and writing. When asked to read information in the

book, Ethan is hesitant. Social studies textbooks introduce numerous unfamiliar and tough to

read words. Since Ethan is aware of his difficulty with reading, he tends to avoid reading to learn

the material. He has been successful and prefers to read with a voice reader that he can follow

along with the text. Difficulty in writing alters Ethan's success in this subject. He prefers to type

notes on the computer. This allows him to follow and keep up with the information taught.

Because of his high comprehension ability, Ethan’s writing is strong. He provides detail and

understanding of the topics. Geography is progressing successfully for Ethan. Due to Ethan’s
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difficulties with visual spatial elements, he does not fully understand relations of physical

features on the map. He has a hard time grasping the concept of relational spacing. However,

Ethan’s determination to understand maps displays great potential in this topic area.

Mathematics

Number Sense:

Ethan does not qualify for Special Education services under a disability in mathematics.

However, his learning disability in reading and writing affects how he performs in math as well.

Ethan struggles with the orthography of the English language, including numbers. Although

Ethan has good number sense and is aware of each number, he struggles with writing them.

Ethan reverses the numbers when writing them down for a math problem, which can sometimes

alter the meaning of the problem or answer. Also, Ethan struggles with organizing his problems

and keeping things in order and lined up on the paper. So, even though Ethan has an

understanding of number sense, often times it looks as though he struggles with it simply

because of the writing aspect associated with mathematics.

Calculations:

Ethan is very confident in his mathematical calculation abilities. Ethan is able to

effectively implement the concepts that he learns in the classroom to the assignments that he is

given to complete without any additional help. Ethan moves at a good pace when completing

assignments and solves the majority of the problems correctly the first time around. When he

was working on a worksheet involving adding and subtracting fractions and decimals, he worked

quickly and only missed two questions. This shows that Ethan understands the mathematical

concept of calculating the sum and difference of fractions and decimals.

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Mathematical Reasoning:

Overall, Ethan understands the underlying meaning behind the math that he is expected to

perform. Ethan does not just know the mathematical calculations and how to solve a problem, he

also knows what the math concepts mean and why you solve problems certain ways to get a

correct answer. For example, when Ethan was learning about and practicing problems involving

fractions and decimals, he knew what the fraction and/or decimal represented. Ethan was able to

explain that fractions and decimals represent the parts of a whole. Not only is Ethan able to read

2/5 as two-fifths, he also understands that this fraction represents two pieces of an entire five-

piece figure.

Problem Solving Strategies:

Ethan has a good sense of the strategies he can use to problem solve why he got an

answer wrong. The most effective problem solving strategy that Ethan uses is to review his

answers and analyze what he did wrong in the calculation. Usually, when Ethan spends the extra

time to review his answers, he will find what he did wrong and will know how to correct it. If

Ethan is struggling to find the issue within a problem, the next strategy he uses is to refer to

similar problems that he did correctly or the notes that he took on the lesson. It is uncommon for

Ethan to be unable to identify what he did wrong and how to fix it in order to get the correct

answer.

Behavior, Attention, and Motivation

When watching Ethan and talking to his teacher, he doesn't really have behavior issues.

Like most other kids, his behavior depends on the other kids in the classroom. He is normally

very quiet, but when certain other boys are in the room, he will talk very loud and try to get
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attention. He likes when people work with him one on one, and he will also talk loud then, but

not as much. When he knows about a subject he also gets excited and wants to tell everyone else

about it, and the teacher has to keep him on track. During math he pays attention to what is going

on, even if he is not doing the problem, but when the group reads together he gets distracted

easily when he is not reading and then has trouble finding where they are in the book. When he is

reading, he likes to stop and talk about something that he thinks goes with it, but then again, the

teacher has to pull him back into focus of what they are doing.

He really enjoys being with Ms. Palmer and he knows that if he does not do his work, or

does not behave he will not get to go work with her. He also enjoys using the iPad when they are

finished early. Another motivator that not only Ethan, but the other kids have as well is that if

they finish their work a little early, they get pretzels and can talk about whatever they want.

Ethan really enjoys being able to say or show that he knows how to do something, so Ms. Palmer

makes sure to show his other teachers that he can do some of it. He also likes to be with new

people and sometimes if she has a new person she will let them work with Ethan so he can talk to

new people if it is something he understands.

Recommendations and Accommodations

Ethan does better on assignments when Ms. Palmer does a review of the lesson with him

before beginning the work that the general education teacher has assigned. Overall, this

seemingly small accommodation is beneficial for Ethan and helps him in all subject areas. Ethan

would also benefit from being in the classroom without the group of boys that get him off task.

In addition, Ethan should be encouraged to help other students when he is confident in his

understanding of concepts, especially with math.

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One recommendation to help Ethan be successful in mathematics is to use the large-

square graph paper. Due to his learning disability in writing and with written language, it makes

it difficult for Ethan to organize his calculations when doing math. So, by using graph paper,

Ethan will be able to line up his equations and perform calculations more fluidly. Also, since

Ethan struggles with number reversals, it may be beneficial to have some type of number chart

that Ethan can use to reference how the numbers look and copy them to make sure that the

numbers he has written are correct and not reversed. Since Ethan loses track when copying

things from the front board in the classroom, it may be best to have this number chart on his desk

and as a handout so that he can take it with him from class to class and is only copying from a

short distance, which will minimize the chance that he will lose his place when copying.

This same idea as a letter chart would benefit Ethan as well. Ethan struggles with letter

reversals in addition to number reversals, so having a chart with all the letters for him to use to

check his papers would help him catch his mistakes. Also, a current accommodation that Ethan

has in the classroom is to type his papers instead of writing them. Ethan takes longer than most

students when he is expected to actually write something, but by having Ethan type things out, it

will limit the time it takes him to complete writing assignments and limit his exhaustion. In

addition, it may be beneficial to have Ethan use raised line paper when he is expected to write

something instead of type it. The raised lines will help Ethan realize where he is and is not

supposed to be writing. Also, in order to help Ethan with inadequate spacing when writing, his

teacher could teach him explicit tricks that he can use to make sure that he does not have too

much space between words, like using his index finger to check for proper spacing.
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References

Cohen, R. (2016). Personal Communication on Teaching Strategies for Reading, Writing, and

Social Studies.

Nahmias, M. (2016). Personal Communication on Teaching Strategies for Mathematics.

Palmer, J. (2016) Personal Communication on Student Abilities.

Sunnyside School District. (2016). Ethan (Sixth Grade). Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

Tucson, AZ.