Cody is an eight-year-old boy diagnosed with autism.
Cody tends to perseverant on things that are dangerous. He often verbalizes glass is dangerous, it cuts your eye, call 211, go to the hospital. Cody also tends to stare off into space and is socially inappropriate. Cody had been placed in severely handicapped classrooms that consisted of children with severe cognitive and physical disabilities.
Cody was provided with a one to one aide through BCRC. Currently, Cody is in a new program designed for children with autism. The student to teacher ratio is two to one. The stimulation in the classroom has been reduced to a minimum to provide an appropriate learning environment. Cody is not able to identify letters or numbers. It has been reported that Cody had severe behavior problems that became the focus of his educational goals rather than academics.
Cody appears to have good auditory processing skills and demonstrates this through his ability to attend to stories that are read to him. He is able to ask questions about the story and answer comprehension questions. His visual processing skills seem to be low; he is not able to trace lines or discriminate shapes. Cody needs to be taught according to his learning modalities.
I believe that Cody should focus on academics, as his behavior in this new environment seems to be under control. Cody has demonstrated that he is able to learn. He has picked up many science concepts from listening to stories. According to the psychologist his IQ has been identified in the low average range. Books appear to be natural reinforces for Cody. He would enjoy being able to read to himself.
It is for this reason that I believe that teaching Cody to read would enhance his quality of life. At back to school night, I met with Cody’s mom. At that time, I asked her to think about what she would like Cody to be able to do in a year. She immediately responded that she and her husband had always hoped that Cody would learn to read. She reported that previous experiences with his teacher had led them to focus on self-help and behavioral goals.
Cody loves to listen to stories. It is used as a reward in the classroom. He prefers to look at a book over anything else in the classroom. For these reasons, parent interview and classroom observations, I have chosen to teach Cody pre-reading skills. Due to time constraints, I will focus on teaching Cody to identify the letters a,b,c,d, and t and to produce the phonological sound.
After he has mastered the sound with symbol, I will focus on blending the sounds to produce consonant vowel consonant words ( cat, bat, at ). Mastery will consist of 80 % accuracy over seven days. These tasks will be single step. This information will generalize for Cody because he has a natural love for books. Once he has mastered a few sounds, he will be able to read a short a book on his own. The task that I chose for Cody is a single step task.
A plastic letter is placed in front of Cody. He picks up the letter, feels it. After feeling the letter he identifies it. After hearing himself identify the letter, he makes the appropriate hand sign. While feeling the hand sign, he makes the phonological sound. I assessed Cody in three different ways.
The first was to assess his expressive knowledge of the alphabet. This was done by placing plastic letters of the alphabet in front him and requesting him to name it. The discriminatory stimulus was Its the letter. Cody was not able to correctly identify any letters of the alphabet. I tested his receptive knowledge by placing the plastic letters on the table in-groups of five and asking him to Give me A and so on.
He incorrectly identified the letters. The assessment was done four times for receptive knowledge and four times for expressive knowledge. The baseline data for each area was 0. See appendix for the assessment form. I also assessed Cody using the task analysis assessment form.
Cody was able to trace the plastic letter independently three of .
