Brittany Johnson

Case study
11/17/20

Answer the following Case Study questions.

You have a class of 23 kindergartners, and have 4 special education students currently.
There is one student, "Sophie" that is performing lower than general education peers
and 2 of your special education students. Sophie does not know her alphabet, is unable
to recognize letters, and is unable to recognize her name. It is your sixth week of school
and data is showing that she is making no progress. Sophie has been in tier 3 since the
beginning of the school year, the strategist is not seeing any progress and she is in a
group of 3 students.
1. Is Sophie a student you would refer to SIT for SPED? Why or why not? What are the
steps you would take to identify Sophie? Look at your flow chart.
I would refer Sophie to SPED because she is in tier 3 and has been in school for 6
weeks with no improvement. Six weeks is enough data to provide the SPED teacher
with for further investigation into why she is unable to learn. The steps I would take to
identify Sophie would be to keep track of her behaviors and learning- weather she is
improving or having any behaviors associated with failure to learn the material. I would
try different techniques with Sophie to teach her the material. I would do a lot of hands-
on and verbal. Since she doesn’t know how to read pictures could also be beneficial. I
would refer her to SPED so that they could send a letter or meet with parents to get
permission to evaluate Sophie for SPED.
Steps for identifying someone with a disability: (step 1) recognition, (step 2)
meeting/pre-referral RTI, (step 3) Referral, (step 4) Evaluation, (step 5) Eligibility, (step
6) IEP development, (step 7) IEP initiation implementation, (step 8) Annual IEP, (step 9)
Re-evaluation.
2. Do you tell parents/guardians/educational advocate is possibly SPED? Why or Why
not?
No you do not tell parents or guardians that the student is possibly SPED because that
goes against the protocol. If you were to tell parents you could get fired and be liable for
that students’ medical bills pertaining to that disability. I also wouldn’t tell the
educational advocate that they were possibly SPED, I would state the data I gathered
on the student and provide copies for them. The student needs to be diagnosed by a
doctor to be a SPED student. You can get in a lot of trouble for referring to them as
SPED when they haven’t been diagnosed.
3. What is an alternative activity that you could do for Sophie to learn the letters in her
name? (Describe what you would do 7-10 sentences, I want you to think about where
you would start with her and build upon using the progression of the activity).
To help Sophie learn the letters in her name I would use cheerios (the cereal) to help
her create the shapes of the letters that are in her name. This can be done multiple
ways, we could glue them to paper in the shape of the letters in her name. We could
also use froot loops because they are different colors. Or I could allow her to use them
to spell out her name on her desk after cleaning it. Then afterwards she could eat them
Brittany Johnson
Case study
11/17/20
as a snack. Another way I could try to help her learn her name is by writing her name on
paper and having her trace over it with watercolor paints. Another way to help her learn
her letters in her name could be using liquid glue to write her name on paper. Then
sprinkling glitter on top of the glue. The glitter will dry onto the glue. The end product
would be her name in glitter on paper.
I could also use pictures of letters that resemble animals in the shape of that letter.
Such as a snake in the shape of an s for the first letter in her name. Having pictures of
words that start with that letter may help Sophie to better grasp the concept.
4. What accommodations would you start prior to a meeting about SPED initial
evaluation (remember when data is being taken, we as teachers have to show that we
have made accommodations within our classrooms ) ?
Accommodations I would have given Sophie within those six weeks would have been
extra time on assignments, preferential seating (near me-the teacher) that way I could
help her when needed. I would also see if doing it with technology would help her. So I
would have her do typing and tracing activities on the computer. I would give her
manipulatives to build her name and associate animals with the letters to see if that
helps. I would allow her to go to the ‘quiet place’ when needing a break (area with
pillow-area also used to calm down). I would teach using multiple sources and different
types of methods. Such as; verbal, recorded videos (maybe some of just going over the
different letters used in her name) and I would use picture visuals.
5. What did you find helpful this week, what is something you would like to know more
about?
I found most of the assignments this semester very helpful. I believe they allowed me to
grow as a person and a teacher. One of my favorite lessons was creating the choice
boards, posters, and the behavior contract for students. Something I would like to know
more about is how to deal with violent outbursts in the classroom.