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Michelle Belanger

December 9, 2012
SEI 525
Curriculum Modifications

Background Information:
Giovani is a friendly 5-year-old boy who enjoys being at school and around
his friends. He has a twin sister and lives at home with her and his mom. He was
born in the Congo and has been in the United States for about 3 years. He has
attended Youth and Family Outreach for about a year on a full-time basis. His
primary language is English however he also speaks French, mostly at home.
Giovani was referred to CDS for a full Developmental Evaluation about a year ago,
due to concentration and social concerns in the classroom setting, and was referred
for developmental and speech therapy. He was discharged from speech therapy
after reaching all his goals and objectives in June of 2012. He receives
Developmental Therapy 2 twice a week and play therapy twice a week. Each
therapy is 1 hour long and occurs one time a week in the classroom and once in the
therapy room. Due to the fact he will be entering into Kindergarten in the fall he is
being monitored by CDS on a quarterly basis to see if his developmental therapy
needs to increase to three times a week. Major concerns are his inability to focus in
large or small groups, carry out simple 1-2 step directions and be able to wait his
turn and share toys. These concerns have caused Giovani to miss a lot of instruction
in the classroom and develop severe delays cognitively and in his fine motor.


Modification #1
Issues or challenges of concern:
Giovani has a hard time in large group settings, such as story time, morning meeting
and song, word play and letters. The instruction is to sit on the rug with the whole
group and listen to the teacher. Giovani crawls throughout the group or will stand
up in the corner and climb on the railing. He ignores redirection by teachers and
continues with the behavior. Sometimes he is asked to leave the large group
because his behavior is distracting for the rest of the group. Other times he will sit
in an interns lap, when available. When he is asked to leave the morning meeting
part of the day, he is often the last child who gets to pick a center to play with at free
play time and this causes him great distress as the center he wants to play in is
usually full by the time he is called to pick a center. (The teacher dismisses the
children by centers, so he cannot be called if not in the group). By keeping him the
large group, he is disruptive by bumping into children or talking while the teacher is
talking, making it hard for the other children in the large group to listen. By missing
story or song, word play and letters he is missing out on key learning opportunities
such as phonological awareness games and pre-reading skills. This puts him further
behind in Kindergarten readiness.
Learning Objective (taken from Giovanis IEP 11/19/12):
Given opportunities within the classroom environment, Giovani will attend to
learning tasks or stories for 15 minutes in his classroom 80% of opportunities over
3 consecutive sessions as measured by teacher data by November 2013.

Description of modification:
For the modification I have come up with two ideas. The first idea came from the
observation of how well Giovani does when he is sitting in an interns lap during
large group times. Having used a wiggle seat with Giovani in large groups and seen
it not work. Giovani would play with it and toss it in the air, even when he sat on the
seat he did not stay still, he was flopping over, most times the use resulted in having
to take the seat away because it provided overstimulation for Giovani. I thought
that maybe the use of a stadium seat, which has sides and a back and almost incases
him, imitating the way it is when he sits on an intern or teachers lap. This is a seat
that is portable and would be kept out of reach of the children. The teacher would
set it up at the beginning of large group times and put it up when large group is over.
The second idea is to give him a fidget toy to hold during large group times. This
would be a squishy ball for him to hold and squeeze, providing pressure for him to
help him concentrate. There would be clear set of rules for him to follow with the
ball and if he did not follow those would lose the ball.
Evaluation:
The procedure used to evaluate the effectiveness of this adaptive equipment would
primary be observation with a tally sheet to see if either of these helped. It has
taken me a while to get the stadium seat ordered so I started with the squishy ball.
My criteria for a tally mark would be if when he has the ball, was he able to complete
the large group activity or not.
After explaining what the ball was and the rules of having the ball, we started
the modification on Monday December 3
rd
, 2012. There are 3 large group times in
the Pre-K portion of the day. I explained to children who asked why he had a toy at
morning meeting that it was something to help him stay in large groups. It soon
became a big motivator for Giovani as he wanted the ball at every large group. In
the first 5 days or 15 large group activities, Giovani was able to sit and attend to
large group 10 out of the 15 times. When he was unable to sit and I had to take the
ball, Giovani became very upset and disruptive and had to leave the group 2 out of
those 5 times. 3 out of those 5 times Giovani was able to calm down and reach the
desired behavior and got the ball back.
My recommendation would be to continue on with the ball. This is fairly easy
to monitor since I am the teacher and can take the ball away or provide reminders of
what he needs to do to keep the ball. This seems to be working at this time.
However I am not sure of how to wean him away from the ball and continue on with
the desired behavior. This is why I still would like to introduce the stadium chair to
large group and see how this affects his attending to large group times.









Modification #2
Issues or challenges of concern: Another area of concern for Giovani is the fact at
mealtime and other small group time he has an extremely hard time following 1-2
step directions to complete the task at hand. At mealtime this looks like him eating
with his hands, even after reminders from teachers and not eating much because he
will play with his food or focus on other things besides eating. Often he runs out of
time when he eats and he cannot finish his meal. We have tried giving him extra
time to eat and it still poses a problem that he misses out on activities after
mealtime because he is finishing up. In small groups this looks like him not
engaging in the learning activities at the table and getting up and walking away.
These both affect Giovani because he is missing out on learning opportunities and a
teacher needs to supervise just Giovani, which makes it hard for the other teacher
left with the remaining children by themselves, while one teacher is trying to
refocus Giovani.
Learning Objective taken from Giovanis IEP 11/19/12:
Given opportunities within the classroom environment, Giovani will attend by
following 1-2 step directions and learning tasks giving to him individually, in small
groups and in large groups in 80% of opportunities over 3 consecutive session as
measured by teacher data by November 2013.
Description of Modification:
The modification I have come up with to help Giovani, especially at mealtime is to
create a picture schedule to help him focus on what needs to be done. The pictures I
added are: Sit down, serve food, pour milk, use utensils, eat food, clear plate (in dirty
dish bin), and return to seat. I made a small picture schedule and introduced it to
Giovani during his therapy time with his DT. I then talked him through mealtime,
reciting the order as I pointed to the pictures. I also asked him what comes next or
what do you do now? This allowed him to refer to the pictures and stay on task.
Evaluation:
In order to monitor the effectiveness of the modification I decided to monitor how
much he ate during the modification and how long it took him to finish his lunch. I
would do this by comparing when he was finished to the other children at the table.
I introduced this modification during center time and implemented it during lunch
on December 4, 2012. After Giovani washed his hands and sat down I showed him
the picture schedule and Giovani followed it. When asked what he was supposed to
be doing he pointed to the picture and repeated what it was he was supposed to be
doing. The first day he needed a lot of reminding about what he was supposed to be
doing and it was pretty constant prompts and referring to the picture schedule. This
lasted the entire lunchtime. He was able to finish lunch at the same time as the
other children. He stayed on task, however it was very time consuming on my part
to walk him step by step through lunch. I tried 2 more times that week and
discovered the same result. It was not modifying the behavior, and if I was unable to
sit next to him and help him with the schedule he was unsuccessful in completing
the tasks. Honestly it was exhausting from a teachers point of view, even with the
picture schedule to keep him on task.
My recommendation based on 4 days of using the picture schedule would be
to continue with it however I would simplify the schedule so it would be easier for
Giovani to follow with much less teacher assistance. Perhaps I would use contact
paper to tape the schedule to the table where he eats so it would be there for him to
look at. I would also go over the schedule with Giovani right before he gets
dismissed from large group to go wash his hands, this would keep in in his mind of
what he needs to do. I would then use verbal cues to remind him of what he needs
to do and what he needs to do next. The pictures I would use would be to just get
him through the eating part of lunch. The pictures I would include in the new
picture schedule will be: serve food, pour milk, and use utensils. I would do this in
hopes that he would not need a teacher next to him throughout the entire lunch and
he would be able to sit and eat independently.

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