INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES STUDENT PROFILE 1

Individual Difference Student Profile

Franchessca M. Hough

Instructor: Professor Raass

EDUC 230: Intro into Special Education

Fall 2019
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Individual Difference Student Profile Essay

At the beginning of this school year I had the opportunity to observe an intriguing young

boy to whom I will refer to as John. I was able to observe John in his first-grade classroom in

one of the local public schools. John is a six-year-old Bosnian male child who is academically

below grade level, categorized as an ELL student, and has a speech with stutter disability. In the

following essay I will review John’s general information, physical development, cognitive

development, and socio-emotional development with a summary of the significant findings.

General Information

As I mentioned in the above paragraph, John is a six year and 10-month-old Bosnian boy.

He is disadvantaged in three ways since he is an English language learner (ELL), academically

below grade level, and has a stutter with speech delays. John is in a general education first

grade classroom and was in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) testing process during my

observation time. John attends a regular full day of school which starts at 9:10am and ends at

3:55pm. John rides the school bus to and from school. I was unable to observe any family

interactions personally, so the information I was given was when prompted with questions to

John and his teacher. John told me he lives with mom and has a beta fish which is also his

favorite color, blue and he named the fish “John” after himself. John also said that his dad does

not live in the house with him and mom. John’s teacher, whom I will refer to as Ms. Smith, told

me that John is an only child and new to the area.

Physical Development

John has a light toned caramel pigmented skin tone. He has short medium brown hair

about an inch long and a deep brown eye color. John also has two moles on his face, one next to
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his nose on his right cheek and one next to his lips on his left cheek.  When comparing John to

his peers in his first-grade class, he is taller and heavier set than the other students.

Physically John seems healthy, but I noticed when the environment around John was

loud, he would cover his ears. I asked Ms. Smith if there was any hearing impairment

explaining what I had witnessed, and she told me no hearing abnormalities were noted for John,

but she had noticed that as well. John uses his right hand for writing, coloring, cutting, and

eating.

John is a very active boy who runs and plays every chance he gets, even when he is not

supposed to be running around. He always has a water bottle with him and is constantly drinking

water. John had a very hearty lunch was packed for him which included sandwich with meat on

potato bread, strawberry apple sauce, ritz cheese and cracker pack, cheese stick, fruit snacks,

capri sun and he got a chocolate milk from the lunch line. John only ate the sandwich, fruit

snacks, cheese/cracker pack and drank his chocolate milk though.

Regarding John’s large muscle development, he seems on track with his age group. He

can climb the jungle gym, swing hanging by arms, and swing across the monkey bars. John was

also able to dribble a basketball and make baskets on a standard height hoop. For John’s small

muscle development, he seems on track with his peers as well. He holds pencils, crayons, and

markers correctly. He can use scissors to cut carefully along lines when he focuses and takes his

time. When he gets tired of having to cut out things for assignments or projects, he quickly cuts

without notice of where he is cutting. Surprisingly John does have problems using glue stick’s

such as taking the top off, twisting the bottom, and being able to apply the glue where he is

intending it to go.
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Cognitive Development

John is in a general education classroom all day. John is in two different Point Of Need

(PON) Groups, one PON group for reading and one for writing. John struggles to pay attention

and on stay task but can complete his work quickly when focused. When being refocused one

day by Ms. Smith, John muttered about ADHD, (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder). I

asked Ms. Smith about John’s comment and she said there was no documentation about him

having ADHD. John was in constant movement every time I observed him, which was on

multiple different days and times of day. John is a brilliant reader. He can word decode and use

phonetics when sounding out words.

When it comes to writing John can spell out the words if they are pictured where he can

copy them onto his paper. In his PON writing group he was asked to write a sentence about owls.

He could not write the sentence even when told multiple different sentences he could write. It

was not until a sentence was written on the whiteboard that he could complete that part of the

assignment by coping down what was written.

John struggles in math greatly. The first day of observations John was doing his morning

worksheet and was having trouble with the math component. The math piece of the worksheet

was coloring in the ten-frame squares associated with the number next to each ten-frame. Once

the instructions were explained he was able to complete the work correctly. During another

observation the class was going to take a math assessment. Once John saw the assessment, he

said that he hates math and became frustrated. While starting the assessment John kept saying

“I’m going to fail” over and over. John was told the assessment was not graded and just to do his

best. He was not able to complete the math assessment and was randomly putting numbers after

the equations quickly to try to finish the whole assessment.

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John has a very limited attention span and must be redirected and refocused often. At

circle time John was not paying attention to Ms. Smith and the lesson she was teaching. He was

kicking his legs, rocking back and forth, talking to peers, and would face the opposite way. John

was always in constant movement during every time I observed him. When asked to work in

groups for assignments, John does not talk to the other peers in his group. If John is upset or in a

bad mood, he refuses to participate in all classroom activities. When given constructive criticism,

such as no punctuation, John sulks and hides his face or gets angry and overexaggerates fixing

the mistake. Somedays John was focused and ready to learn while other days he seemed angry

and refused to complete his work.

John was captivating to watch as his thinking process has been completely internal which

includ sounding out words. He was able to decode and read the sentences ‘I mop a lot’, ‘The log

is hot’, and ‘Rob got a box’ with no hesitation or second thought after studying the sentences

briefly. When reading out loud, John sounds confident and reads with ease.

Socio-emotional Development

John will try to interact with peers but at the wrong times, such as during classwork or

when Ms. Smith is teaching a lesson. Both at lunch and recesses, John tends to play next to his

peers with minimal to no speaking interactions. When playing basketball, John and his peer were

playing next to each other and each had their own ball. When John becomes overstimulated or

over excited, he begins to push his peers lightly and becomes loud.

John is very respectful to adults. He asks permission to go to cubbies or bathroom. John

will ask for help when he doesn’t understand the work. He is very straight forward with what he

thinks about situations, such as when asked about a topic of the book they just read “I know it is

George made a mess because it says it right there.” and he points to the passage. John seems to
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want to please and help his teacher for every task. Another student was given math cubes to hold

onto and he went over picked them up and went to put the away. Ms. Smith asked him to stop

and give them back to the student. He responded with “But they need to be put back”. Ms. Smith

asked again for John to give them back in a little sterner voice and this upset him greatly. He did

give them back to the student then directly went back to his desk, put his head down and was

making huffing/angry noises. John refused to do any work after that as he was mad, and it took

about half an hour before he calmed down enough after Ms. Smith apologized for upsetting him,

to continue with his work. When instructed to leave papers on top of their desk and do reading

after their work is complete, he still gets up and goes to Ms. Smith for approval on his work.

John is also very honest when he is asked questions by adults.

John is very honest with adults. He asked to use the bathroom, but two students were

already using the bathroom. When told he would need to wait until one came back, he said I

don’t need to go. Ms. Smith asked why he wanted to go to the bathroom, and he answered to

hang out with friends.

John seems to have great self-esteem and is extremely confident in himself and the work

he is doing. When being redirected to one assignment to get refocused, he looked at me, rolled

his eyes and said,” I know how to do this”. He is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to his

work as well and wants it to be exactly perfect, whether it be coloring, writing or recording

himself reading.

Summary, Conclusions, and Implacations

John has several areas of need that put him at a disadvantage. My observations were done

early in the school year and John was behind in some subjects, like math and writing, while

exceeding in others like reading. John is in general good health physically, but I think that once
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the IEP screening process is complete he will receive more needed services such as speech

therapy and/or language therapy. Even though John comes from a one parent household, he is

very clean and tidy with nice clothes on and a hearty meal packed for him. Since I had no

interactions with Johns mother I cannot say if his mother is active and supportive in his school

efforts and advocating for John.

John would thrive with help on how to conduct peer interactions. He could also benefit

from learning to control his emotions and how to take feedback. He seeks out Ms. Smiths

approval to the point that he will disregarding the instructions she gave to the whole class.

If John was in my class, I would want to situate him within the classroom where there

would be less distractions, like sitting him close to myself. I would make sure that my classroom

was free of unnecessary posters and decorations as well. John has a lot of energy so I would

deploy Universal Design for Learning, (UDL) strategies such as interactive lessons. Interactive

lessons can be with and interactive whiteboard or hands on manipulatives. John wants and

craves praise so with more praise when a job is done well will go a long way. Having John and

his peers take turns being the teacher assistant can help John stay engaged and focused as he

wants to please his teacher.

With proper supports put in place after his IEP assessment is complete, I believe that

John can catch up academically wise with his peers. With proper speech and language therapies,

I think John can overcome and manage his stutter and progress in his ELL. Being in first grade,

he is still young with a mind is like a sponge ready to soak up all the knowledge coming his way.

I have no doubt with the proper support and early intervention, John will become not only a

successful student but also a successful person.

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