EDIS 5887 Case Study

Background
We started this school year in the middle of a global pandemic, so I actually never had any in-
person classes or interaction during my student teaching experiences. My mentor teacher is the
general special education teacher for 8th grade at Sutherland Middle School. We have around
13 students on our case-load with disabilities such as OHI, EBD, and SLD. Our students also have
IEP goals in the areas of mathematics, reading, writing, and behavior. It would have been easy
to conduct an intervention in any of the three academic areas if this were a normal school year.
However, we didn’t start academic progress monitoring until there were only a few weeks left
in the first quarter due to confusion in formatting and standard of procedures. Therefore, I can
only do case study in behavior if I want to have reliable data.

Reason for Student M

There are two reasons why I choose M as my case study. First, I want a student that already has
behavior goals written in their IEP. Second, I want a student who is having a hard time
transitioning into the virtual learning environment, which hinders their performance in class.
My case study will be focused on student M’s task completion throughout the quarter and
provide effective intervention to help the student to achieve the goal stated in the IEP.

Student M’s behavior goal

Student M will display the following productive school behavior on a daily basis: will follow
directions given by the teacher, will remain on task, work independently, and work on
controlling himself when he gets angry with 80% accuracy through event recording.

Baseline Data
I decided to collect four weeks of data and use the second, third, fourth week as my baseline. I
understand most data uses three points as a baseline. However, I felt the first week of data
might not be reliable since students are still slowly adjusting to expectation in a virtual learning
environment.
Total Task
Date Weeks # of task complete # Task completion
9/8-9/11 1 3 4 75%
9/14-9/17 2 3 6 50%
9/21-9/25 3 4 10 40%
9/28-10/02 4 4 8 50%
After my baseline observation, I calculated that the rate of improvement per week has to
exceed 3.33 if I want Student M to reach 80% accuracy as the IEP goal stated. I used the median
of 2nd to 4th data points from both axes and plotted my baseline at week 3 with 50% completion
rate. I use the 80% completion rate at week 12 as my final point to find the rate of growth
trendline.
Intervention
After close observation, I realized the previous two weeks of data entry didn’t meet the
expectation of the trendline. I decided to brainstorm for ways that can help student M improve
his class participation such as homework and task completion. I believe communication is key to
academic success, especially since we can’t see what our students are doing behind the screen.
I asked my mentor teacher to talk to the parents so I can have some clues on what students
usually do behind the screen during class. Furthermore, I began to do a daily class check-in on
how the student is feeling and whether he understands the instruction or not. Simple
interactions such as daily check-in allows me to build rapport, provide feedback, and prevent
undesired behavior. I also provided slow and clear read aloud instruction for him when he was
having hard time following the instruction provided by the general education teacher.

Data collection
Total Task
Date Weeks # of task complete # Task completion
9/8-9/11 1 3 4 75%
9/14-9/17 2 3 6 50%
9/21-9/25 3 4 10 40%
9/28-10/02 4 4 8 50%
10/05-10/09 5 4 7 57%
10/12-10/16 6 6 7 86%
10/19-10/22 7 4 4 100%
10/26-10/30 8 6 6 100%
11/02-11/06 9 5 7 71%
11/09-11/13 10 5 5 100%
11/16-11/20 11 8 8 100%
11/23-11-24 12 3 3 100%
Conclusion
After a close comparison between the semester data and rate of growth trendline, I believe this
intervention was effective. Every entry point after week 6 was above the trendline. Student M
had some difficulty completing his tasks on week 9. However, it was still above the trendline. I
found these behavior interventions to be simple but effective, especially in the virtual learning
environment. I would highly recommend other teachers to try these adjustments, especially in
a virtual setting, since we can’t actually assess students’ understanding and wellbeing as
effectively as an in-person class.