Student Profile and Intervention

Part I: Student Profile

After conversing with his current and past teachers and reviewing his

Individualized Education Plan, I’ve collected information to create a Student

Profile for “Brady”, a 5th grader at Franklin Elementary School.

Brady was initially evaluated for an IEP in the June of 2016, when he was

in 2nd grade. He is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder

(combined type) and has significant issues with executive functioning and

organizational skills. Along with these diagnoses, he has additional learning

problems.

Brady lives with his mother and brother with 2 pet dogs. His brother also

has a history of learning disabilities and was also in a cotaught classroom in fifth

grade. They speak English at home. Several years ago, Brady’s parents got

divorced which had a negative effect on Brady. His father lives on the Cape where

Brady and his brother visit every other weekend as well as Summers.

The vision statement on the April 2018 version of Brady’s IEP states “the

vision is to continue to develop and use strategies when he is frustrated in the

classroom to help organize information, process information more effectively and

the see himself as a learner in school”. This is an accurate and concise way to say

the behaviors I would like Brady to work on.

Brady’s IEP is active and has been signed by his parents. Some

accommodations listed on Brady’s IEP include having multiple choice / word

bank, breaking tasks into manageable steps, providing visuals to support auditory
info, giving extra time to process, using a story grammar structure

framework/visual, technology being made available when completing long

written assignments and allowing opportunity to revise upon what he initially

said. The two I focused on were providing visuals to support auditory info and

using a story grammar structure framework/visual. Some content modifications

listed on his IEP include chunking and grouping information, previewing and

reviewing content, instructions on visual strategies, instruction on graphic

organizers, and using of multi-sensory strategies. Some methodology

modifications include small group instruction in and out of the classroom, direct

instruction, and presentation of info at slower pace. MY main modification

focuses are providing instructions on visual strategies and instruction on graphic

organizers.
 Part of the service grid on the document looks something like this, of which I

focused on the third:

Frequency
Goal Type of Service
(5 day cycle)

Given small group instruction and support, the Mathematics 3 x 30

student will improve his mathematics

computation, basic skills, and problem solving.

Given a fiction or nonfiction text at instructional Reading 3 x 30

or grade level, the student will be able to Instruction

comprehend it both literally and inferentially

After direct instruction, using graphic organizers Written 4 x 30

and provided teacher support, the student will Expression

use learned strategies to engage in the grade-level

writing process

Brady receives push-in services with the special education teacher in Math

and often works in small groups in Writing. He has a leveled reading group and

participates in both Math and Reading WIN (What I Need) when necessary. He

responds best to small group direct instruction with visual supports. He does not

have an official behavior plan and is assessed in the same ways as the other

students.
 Brady is generally liked student. He has several close friends and his

humor draws other students to him. Occasionally, students get frustrated with his

inability to focus. He’s usually polite and respectful to teachers unless he feels like

he’s being talked down to. He also treats the specials teachers rudely and

disrespectfully. This may be because he’s had them for 5 years now and needs a

change.

Part II: Intervention Lesson(s)

For Brady’s intervention, I decided to use the Framing Your Thoughts

curriculum and modify it to fit Brady’s learning needs. This curriculum uses

visuals and graphic representations to teach the concepts needed to form full,

grammatically correct sentences. It allows students to see these abstract ideas

more concretely and apply them to their writing. I decided that the purpose of

this lesson was to improve the student’s sentence structure and promote

organizational skills. These are skills I found Brady needed to work on through

compiling the student profile. My objective for the first set of lessons was to use

multisensory processing to make abstract concepts more concrete and

meaningful. The first lesson of the first unit is a very short introduction to the

curriculum. The sequence of activities for that lesson might look something like

this:

1. Activate prior knowledge: show picture frame, compare framing a picture

with framing our thoughts through sentences

2. Show sentence frame: introduce the image, explain how the bump

represents a capital letter and it ends with a period.

 3. Model: the team wins

a. Capitalize T, beginning of a thought is signaled by a capital

b. Put period after wins, the period is like a stop sign, closes the

thought

4. Trace sentence, “a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a

period.

5. Hand out practice: do first one together, student completes the rest.

Brady was not enthusiastic about this lesson. He went into it with a negative

attitude and I worry that means he left without taking in any of the information.

While this lesson was extremely simple, I think it’s a necessary place to start. The

problem is that Brady knows this information and felt bored because of this. If I

were to redo the lesson, I’d try to find ways to engage him more. My teacher

suggested I begin and end a lesson by letting him share a meme with me to give

him motivation to get through the lesson. Overall, I think it will be interesting to

see if Brady has a noticeable growth in his writing after a couple more lessons.