Learning Disabilities Summary 1

Learning Disabilities Summary

Sydney Prystowsky & Lily Kanefield

SERP405/505-FA2015

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Abstract

We have been observing Amy*, a 15-year-old student at Flowing Wells

high school since early October of 2015. She is a student who is in the ILS

(independent living skills classroom) part time and who is in the general

classroom some of the time. Amy reads Independently at a first-grade level.

She has a processing disorder, some reading, writing, and math difficulties,

and inattention. Amy is very social with both the students and the teachers

in the classroom. She shows great interest in learning, but also shows lots of

frustration when a problem is difficult to solve.

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Reading

When first observing Amys reading we assisted her while reading a

magazine about chimpanzees. Our initial thoughts were that Amy didnt have

a lot of decoding skills, was a very choppy and slow reader, and that she had

little comprehension of what she read. However, in order to get more

information on Amys reading skills and areas of need we conducted a QRI

with her. When first looking at her decoding skills something that we noticed

was that she was would often guess words based off the first letter of the

word. Some words that Amy misread during the QRI that gave us the

indication that she was guessing words instead of decoding them was in

passages three and four when she read, change for challenge, frying for

frightening, complete for company, population for promotion, and would for

should. These are what I would consider to be more challenging words,

however, based on our knowledge about Amy I dont think they are words

she couldnt sound out, therefore, I think she was just not using or doesnt

understand decoding skills. These kinds of mix-ups did change meaning

within the passage and also showed a high lack of inattention, which Amy

does often struggle with. Amy also had a lot of trouble with word endings,

she would often add, omit, or mix up these endings (ed, s). This made us

think that Amy has little experience and or exposure to tense usage, and

therefore, led to more trouble with comprehension. Her misunderstanding of

tenses was shown in many of the passages she read when she switched,

know for knew, wont for wanted, is for was, and met for meet, worked for

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works and so on. Overall, Amys reading shows that she does have

knowledge of some site words and a few decoding skills, however, she needs

a lot of improvement in decoding skills and in her ability to pay noticeable

attention to what she is reading. Behavior wise, Amy often fidgeted during

reading, looked around the classroom, would pause and not want to continue

reading, and had a hard time reading more than one passage in a sitting.

This led us to believe that a lot of her miscues were due to her knowledge,

but some had some relation to her inattention.

When looking at Amys comprehension we noticed that her retell skills

were very low, when she was asked to tell what happened in the passages

she read immediately after she read them she could barely recall half of the

information. However, when asked to answer specific explicit and implicit

questions she had much better results. This showed us that Amy does

comprehend at least some of the information that she reads, however, she is

much more successful when she is prompted, opposed to when she is just

asked to recall information. In higher level passages Amy guessed on a lot of

questions which was very obvious in the results of her QRI, however, we

contributed this not to her not understanding the information but that she

was frustrated with the difficulty and was experiencing some fatigue after a

long day and lots of testing.

When looking at Amys fluency the biggest things that we noticed is

that she read very choppy, often ignored punctuation, and was very

monotone throughout her readings. She was often omitting and inserting

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words, which we believed only added to her influent reading. Amys fluency

has a big impact on her reading, her miscues often changed meaning, her

speed often got her frustrated in how long finishing passages took, and her

ignorance of punctuation often made sentences not make sense.

In our opinion reading is one of the areas that Amy needs the most

work in. For Amy to be able to succeed in the ILS classroom and hopefully

one day in the work force she needs to learn some decoding skills, needs

tense help, fluency improvement, and skills for comprehension.

Writing and Written Language

When looking at Amys writing and written language skills we noticed

that a lot of her reading difficulties are translated over to her writing. Amys

spelling is at about a First Grade level; she is unable to remember simple

words, such as site words and other often seen words. Much like her

difficultly in decoding words as she reads, Amy has a very hard time

sounding out words that she wants to spell. She has a lot of vocabulary

knowledge, and, therefore, shows a lot of creativity while writing, however,

unless she asks how to spell the words she desires to use her work is often

illegible due to the poor spelling. Something very interesting we noticed

about Amys spelling is that she will often misspell words for other similar

looking words, such as spelling everything for anything, or dog for duck. The

interesting thing about these misspellings is that when asked to read what

she has written she will not read the word she has actually spelled out, but

she reads the word she was intending to write. We were very interested in

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why Amy was doing this and when discussed with the teachers at Flowing

Wells, we came to the conclusion that she often guesses in her reading and

writing that she has confused some words so many times that those words

are very difficult for her to distinguish anymore.

Amys handwriting is in most situations very legible; she was very

consistent sizing of letters, good usage of lower and uppercase letters, and

good spacing between letters and words. One thing that Amy does display in

her writing, however, is the reversal of some letters. She often reverses b

and d, and p and q. When Amy copies texts her writing is very neat, and very

well written. When a reversal occurs during a text copying activity, Amy will

usually always correct her mistake when asked to revise and reread what she

has written. When writing from memory we noticed that Amys writing is

much more forced and much slower, she often puts a lot of pressure on the

pen and paper. We contributed these actions to her processing time and

frustration of what to write. Another thing we noticed is that when writing

independently she will use a much more limited vocabulary, most likely due

to spelling. Her use of punctuation in her writing is either nonexistent or very

incorrect. This is not very surprising considering her omission and insertion of

punctuation in her reading.

Looking at Amys overall writing skills, we noticed that she has a lot of

potential in her writing. Amy is very creative and has a lot of background

knowledge and life experiences that could be very useful in her writing.

However, her spelling holds her back a lot in her writing. We think that typing

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might be a great help for Amy because it could allow her to have options for

spelling and it will allow her to be more creative.

Mathematics

When looking at Amys math abilities, her ability to complete simple

addition and subtraction is very high functioning at about a second-grade

level. She is very comfortable using a calculator and enjoys typing large

addition problems into the calculator for fun. One thing that Amy does in her

classroom that works on real life math problems is the work she does for the

class bake sale. Amy is the cashier of the bake sale and has to collect money

for baked good, give change, and calculate the total money collected at the

end of each bake sale. These skills are those that could even be used in a

future job for Amy. These are all strengths in Amys math abilities; however,

she does struggle in some other areas. Amy needs a lot of help in her

mathematical processes. She often doesnt know what computation she is

supposed to be using in a problem unless it has been provided in the

question or someone informs her of what to use. Amys biggest struggle in

math is doing word problems. She has such a difficult time decoding the

words in the word problem she cant even figure out what the problem is

asking of her. When broken down, and explained Amy can easily compute the

problem at hand, however, she needs assistance to get to that point. Amys

math difficulties are something that could use some work, however, a lot of

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them stem from her reading difficulties. Her basic math calculations are

easily computer and often correct.

Cognition and Behavior

Amys processing time in school is mild and moderately slow. Part of

this is due to her difficulty to pay attention while learning topics in class. Her

attention span is 30 minutes at max and then it becomes difficult for her to

stay focused. In order to refocus, she walks laps on the track to get back on

track. Also, she has trouble remembering information. She often needs

prompts to help remind her of information and tasks she needs to

accomplish on her schedule. We noticed the prompts improved her memory

and her memory became quicker when she was given structure and cues.

Furthermore, she has a limited vocabulary. Her background knowledge isnt

very broad and this could be a contributing factor of her limited vocabulary.

Overall, Amy is very well behaved and never speaks out. If she is getting

reckless she automatically removes herself from the situation. She is a great

listener and has a desire to learn.

Strengths and Suggestions

For Amy there is room for lots of improvement, and because of her

general good behavior and desire to learn we believe that she has the ability

to grow a lot as a learner. Amy is already a very successful student with her

positive attitude, amazing social skills, and her willingness to participate in

any activities to grow as a student. Some of Amys strengths include her

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math calculations, her interest in learning, and her wonderful handwriting.

Although, she is a very successful student in general, Amy still has some

areas where she needs improvement. To work on her reading skills, we

believe that she needs some direct instruction in; decoding skills, tense

agreement, fluency, and comprehension. In order to work on those skills, we

think she could be really successful just doing small reading games, learning

some good reading skills for comprehension (such as a reading chart to be

filled out during passages), or even following a program such as mind play. In

order to work on her writing we think that Amy will already become more

successful in spelling due to so much reading instruction; however, we also

think that she could be very successful working on a computer which will

allow her to use more words and spell them correctly. Finally, when looking at

her math, we think that with continual practice Amys math skills will be

where hoped for her transition from the ILS classroom, and that with all the

reading help she will be receiving word problems will be more easily broken

down and understood. Amy was a joy to work with and gave us a lot of

information into the life of a student with a learning disability.

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References

Observations at Flowing Wells High School

Test Data (QRI Assessment, November 11, 2015)

Student Assessments and Writing Samples

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