Running head: LOGANS CASE STUDY 1

Logan Case Study

Jonathan Morgan, Kelsey Crapo & Brian Michalec

Molloy College
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Abstract

In this paper we will be talking about a first grader name Logan, who is diagnosed with autism.

Autism is a developmental disorder where a student struggles with social skills, speech and

nonverbal communication, but also has unique strengths and differences. Throughout our

sessions, we learned Logan excelled in mathematics and ELA activities. We will be touching on

Logans learning styles, as well as his strengths and weaknesses in his education. Logans

learning styles and needs were integrated into lessons that would help strengthen his

understanding of specific topics he needed help in. With the help of pre and post tests, we were

able to create future lessons and make recommendations for the future as Logan gets tutored and

goes through school.

Keywords: Autism, learning styles, interventions, activities

Background:

Logan Louis is a first grader at Elmont Union Free School District. He was born

December 30th, 2009, he is seven years and six months old. He has a diagnosis of Autism and is
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in a general ed setting where he receives integrated co-teaching 5 days a week for 2 hour and 30

minutes. He is also in a group speech setting with a ratio of 3:1. He receives this service 3 times

a week for a half hour. Logan, also receives counseling with other students and the ratio for this

setting is a 5:1 and they meet once a week for 30 minutes. He also receives occupational therapy

in two different settings, his individual session is one time a week for 30 minutes. Then he meets

with a small group for occupational therapy, this group ratio is 2:1 and also meets one time a

week for 30 minutes per session.

Logan is a visual and auditory learner and his strongest intelligences, based off Howard

Gardners multiple intelligences, was bodily- kinesthetic and naturalistic. Logan is also a very

energetic child who is constantly moving. Logan shows extreme interest in DC Comics, likes to

read and his favorite subject in school is mathematics. He enjoys going to the movies and

watching movies on netflix. Logan also enjoys spending time with his family and going to

Georgia to visit his dad and siblings.

Learning Needs:

Logan has shown growth in many areas such as speech, reading, writing and

mathematics. However, for Logan to continue this positive growth in these subjects, he must stay

engaged. Logan may only be able to stay on task for 15-20 minutes and that is if the assigned

work or lesson is interesting to him. When Logan loses interest in the topic being presented, he

will become extremely task avoidant and sometimes, it seems like he is seeking attention.

To keep Logan on task, engaging lessons should be created where he can move around

and not sit still for too long. If Logan seems to become frustrated, he should be allowed to take a

break so he can regroup and complete the task. When Logan starts to show sign of becoming task

avoidant, he will need multiple prompts to remain focused on the work presented.
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Interventions:

The first type of intervention that was used to help Logan with his learning needs, was

brain breaks. These were used when Logan began to get frustrated or when he started to show

signs of becoming task avoidant. When these signs became apparent, we would ask logan if he

wanted to take a walk or go to get a drink of water. This intervention worked, and when Logan

came back from the break, he was able to complete the task at hand.

The second intervention that was used was a choice board. This intervention was used for

Logan to become in control of his work. Logan was able pick what activity he wanted to do first.

If he seemed to be unfocused, it was evident we had to get him back on track and would play a

Kahoot or have him a chance to become the teacher to get him engaged again. Giving Logan the

choice of what he wanted to do cut the distractions and avoidances down.

When it came to the interventions for Logans focus and attention skills, there were a

few that were put in place. The first one was hands on manipulatives, so he would be able to use

visuals for the task. However, these manipulatives became very distracting to Logan. He would

focus or start to stim on these manipulatives and not complete the tasks given to him. The next

intervention we did was we would teach Logan a certain topic and then have him re-teach the

lesson. We did this to see if he was playing attention to the steps. We were then able to measure

how well he understood the process and the certain topic when he was teaching the steps to a

problem.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Logan showed great knowledge in the subject areas of mathematics and ELA. He was

able to understand a topic easily with mathematics and was able to become the teacher and teach

the method to someone else. This showed how much he truly understood all of the topics. For
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ELA, Logan was able to go more in depth into the lessons and make text to self connections and

give more information on what was being taught then we were working on. Most of the time the

information he was giving was higher leveled thinking.

Logan is also very good at explaining his method to how he came up with an answer. He

is able to explain the step by step process he took to complete something. Logan also learns best

using manipulatives, especially for adding in mathematical equations. He needs to be able to

touch the objects to get a better understanding of the numbers and their true meanings. Memory

games are good games for Logan as well because he excels at them and is able to remember

where each card is and their match.

Another one of Logans strengths is the fact that he is an auditory learner as well as a

visual learner. Logan likes to see the end products and see an example, but he also needs to be

able to hear the explanation along with it. Logan also needs to be able to hear emotion in

sentences being spoken to him for him to grasp what the true meaning of something is. He has a

good balance of auditory and visual learning which helps him understand concepts further.

With all of Logans strengths, there are some areas he needs to improve in. Although

Logan needs manipulatives to help him understand concepts, he becomes easily distracted with

the objects. He will continue to play with the object instead of focusing on getting the problem or

task completed. Logan needs to focus on attentiveness and try to avoid getting distracted when

working with hands-on materials. He also is only able to stay focused for about 15-20 minutes at

a time. Breaks need to be given to Logan in order for him to complete the task given to him.

Logan showed an area of weakness when it came to his writing. He constantly had to be

reminded when to use capital and lowercase letters. He would capitalize letters further into his

writing that did not need to be capitalized and began with lowercase letters. He needs constant
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verbal reminders to make sure his writing was correct. Logan needs more practice with his

writing skills, both in school and at home.

When asked to come up with the main idea of a passage, Logan struggled, unless he was

presented with choices. He needs to work on his reading comprehension so he is able to discuss

the main idea of what he is reading. He also struggles to make inferences. He is unable to create

a conclusion he gets from reading or listening using evidence or details.

Logan needs to work on his attentiveness and distractions. Unless he is engaged and

constantly moving during a lesson, be quickly loses attention and becomes distracted with

anything around him. He will focus on one topic to get out of doing work. All of his attention

will go to an object or person around the room and not on the task. Also, if someone pulls out an

object, he automatically became distracted and fixated on that object.

Task avoidant is a big area Logan needs to work on. If he does not want to complete a

task or it is too difficult, he will do anything to get out of the work. He will do things such as go

underneath the table or hit blocks. When Logan reaches this point, it is very difficult to get him

back on track.

Types of Lessons and Assessments:

The first lesson we did with Logan was an addition one, which consisted of single

addition, a couple double addition, and word problems. The pre-test for this lesson was a Kahoot,

which was a good assessment that Logan seemed very interested in. He also liked the fact that he

we was able to go against someone in the group, which seemed to grasp his attention when there

was a competitive nature.The Kahoot consisted of simple addition and two or three word

problems. He scored 9 out of 10 on the pre-test.

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For the activity Logan was presented with a worksheet of word problems. All of the word

problems consist of his favorite superheros, which kept his focus on the activity. While

observing Logan during this activity, we noticed he would draw circles representing each

number then count the circles to find the answers. When we presented Logan with a number line,

it was evident that he has never worked with one before. He would start counting at the wrong

place and when we were trying to teach him to use the number line, he began to become

frustrated.

For the post test we used a Plicker activity and at first Logan seemed to have a difficult

time with the answer card. However, when he saw that a phone scanned the answer card, he was

amazed and interest in the activity. The Plicker consist of two simple addition, two double digit

addition, and four word problems. We noticed when Logan started with double digit addition that

he could answer it in his head without using the manipulatives. However, he didnt understand

the concept of regrouping. He scored 7 out of 8, with the only one he got wrong was when he

had to regroup. However, when you look at the results from the pretest and posttest it shows that

his scores went down. That is because the posttest had fewer questions than the pretest and on

both assessments he only got one wrong.

Another activity we did with Logan was money and their values but we only focused on a

penny, nickel, dime, quarter and dollar. We used a Kahoot for the pretest and there was ten

questions in total. Logan was only able to get five correct. As a group, we believed that he might

have gotten confused because all the coins appeared to be the same size on the Kahoot.

When we started the activity, we presented each coin to him and asked him what the

value was. When we began doing this he started to name each person on the coins. However, he

was struggling with the values of the silver coins. Therefore, we put the coin on a piece of paper,
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wrote the name of the coin and what its value was. Following that, we started a task where he

was provided with task cards that had images of coins where he would have to add them and get

the correct value. On the task card there were three choices for answers that he would have to put

a clothespin on the correct answer.

Logan seemed disengaged in the activity and was just guessing for the answer or saying

the answer, looking for us to tell him if he was right or wrong. We had to use several prompts to

try to keep on task as he became extremely distracted with the clothespin. He was constantly

stimming and playing with it. As a result of this, the group decided to eliminate the clothespin

from the task and had him verbalize his answer. For the posttest, we used the same Kahoot from

the pretest which his score increased by 20% and answered two more questions right.

For an ELA lesson, we worked on capitalization and punctuation. We started with the

pretest, which was a Plicker activity. The Plicker consisted of seven questions which dealt with

asking which word should be capitalized, if the sentence had the right punctuation, and what the

sentence should end with. He did very well on the pretest with only getting one wrong. The one

Logan got wrong was dog, he said it should have been capitalized, but the answer stated it should

be lowercase. However, we should have used the word in the sentence to provide him with more

clues.

For the activity, we provided him with a paragraph where there was no capitalization or

punctuations. He had to rewrite the paragraph and add in the correct capitalization and

punctuation. After five minutes of this activity, Logan seemed to frustrated and losing interest.

He was having a very difficult time with this activity, so we asked him if he wanted to play the

Plicker again and he agreed to that.

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We used the same Plicker again for the posttest, however he got another wrong. When

doing the Plicker, you could tell he was done. Logan kept on going underneath the table and not

focusing on the questions. I believe the activity we decided to use with him took too much of a

toll on him.

We decided to do another punctuation activity because we felt that he needed more time

and work in this area. For a pretest we did a sticker activity, where we provided him flashcards

with sentences. He would have to put the correct punctuation sticker at the end of the sentence.

He scored a six out of ten and after the lesson, we realized some of the sentences could have had

multiple answers.

For the activity, we had Logan create his own sentences using the correct punctuation.

While doing this activity, the group had to verbally remind him to use capital and lowercase

letters. For the posttest we used another Kahoot, which consisted of sentences where he had to

choose the right way to end the sentence with the correct punctuation. We saw a little growth

from the pretest to posttest, with Logan scoring 10% higher on the posttest. We did notice that

Logan needed to have the sentences read to him so he could hear the emotion behind the

statement in order to choose the correct punctuation.

Data Analysis:

Basic Addition: 6/5/17

Kahoot Pretest Score: 9/10 (90%)

Plicker Posttest Score: 7/8 (87.5%)

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The pretest for Student L consisted of a Kahoot with 10 numerical basic addition

questions; none of which required regrouping. The first 6 questions included single digit

addition. The last four included double-digit addition. Student L demonstrated several techniques

to derive an answer including a tally system, creating a chart, and stacking the numbers to

perform addition traditionally. We were amused by the number of tools he already possessed

when it came to addition.

The pretest was fairly easy for him. We did not think he would do as well because his

ability to compute seemed more advanced than what his IEP originally stated. Nonetheless,

Student L performed very well, correctly answering 90% of given equations. The only wrong

calculation he made was when he tried to solve 10 + 12 which he selected as 14.

The post-test was slightly more difficult for Student L since the intervention we had

planned included word problems. Reading comprehension and extracting knowledge from

writings was not one of his strengths as indicated in his IEP. Therefore, the post-test included 8

problems total with 3 word problems included. The word problems included superhero situations

because we wanted to engage Logans schema when it came to his affinity for Marvel and DC

characters. Logan still performed well, correctly answering 7 out of 8 questions. The only

question he answered incorrectly was a problem that required regrouping (12 + 19). He struggled
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with adding the carried over one and resorted to guesswork when his solution didnt match the

answer set. His score for this assessment decreased because we only used 8 questions instead of

7.

Money: 6/7/17

Kahoot Pretest Score: 5/10 (50%)

Kahoot Pretest Score: 7/10 (70%)

For both pre- and post-test assessments, we used the same Kahoot. The first five

questions asked the test taker to identify five money items (a nickel, penny, dime, dollar, and

quarter) while the last 5 questions asked for their value. Student L demonstrated a lot of

guesswork for a good portion of the questions. He was confused by the differentiating values

between quarter, nickel, and dime. Student L also incorrectly answered the question which asked

for the value of a penny. He would guess the answer and look to one of us to see if we would

give him a clue. What was most interesting was how he recognized the presidents on the coinage

and dollar.

The post-test showed positive results to the efficacy of our intervention. Student L

demonstrated considerably less guesswork when taking the Kahoot this time. He correctly

identified the values and pictures for quarters and pennies. The only questions he struggled with
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was identifying the values and images of nickels and dimes. During the intervention, he had

difficulty understanding that the smaller of the two was worth more. We felt he grasped the

concept after the intervention was finished, but the Kahoot may have messed up his results

because the nickel and dime images included in the assessment were the same size picture. This

time he did correctly identify the dime itself but did not understand its value. The other two

questions he answered incorrectly were the two which asked for the image name and value of a

nickel. He correctly answered all questions asking for identity and value of a quarter, penny, and

dollar this time around.

Punctuation 6/19/17

Flash Card Pretest Score: 6/10 (60%)

Kahoot Posttest Score: 7/10 (70%)

We used a low-tech strategy which we thought would be fun and colorful for our pre-test

assessment. Once again, we tried to tap into Student Ls superhero schema by writing out 10

sentences on flash cards which had missing punctuation at the end. Student L had to place a

color-coded sticker with the correct punctuation at the end of each sentence. The flashcards he

did not correctly find the ending punctuation for was one that needed with a question mark and

three that required periods. This showed us that Student L had a difficult time determining when
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periods were necessary. One of these statements may have been interpreted as needing an

exclamation point, so the sentence answer may have been subjective.

The post-test was a Kahoot because it was clearly Student Ls favorite program by this

point in the tutoring stage. The post-test comprised of the same type of sentences and

punctuation answers as the first. Student L correctly answered 7 out of 10 questions correctly but

again demonstrated difficulty deciding when to use a period. He correctly identified only 1 out of

3 questions that required a period. This showed some improvement but not enough to be

significant. It should be noted that this post-test was given during one of the two tutoring

sessions in which Student L exhibited substantial distraction and perseverance. This was

probably due to the fact he arrived 20 minutes late due to inclement weather.

Summary:

Many interventions were used throughout the tutoring sessions to try to strengthen

Logans learning needs. We tried to touch upon Logans learning styles and multiple

intelligences to make the lessons more enjoyable and focused on him. It was evident that all

material had to be shown visually, as well as spoken auditorily in order for Logan to understand

the content. Manipulatives were also implemented to touch upon his visual intelligence to grasp
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the concepts, especially for mathematics. We had to choose the manipulatives carefully to try to

avoid Logan from becoming distracted.

In order for Logan to be successful in the classroom, he must constantly be engaged and

moving around. If a topic or material does not interest him, he will quickly do anything to get out

of the activity or task at hand. He will do things, that at times could seem attention seeking, but

in reality he just wants to be engaged in the lesson. Once you lose Logan, it is very difficult to

get him back on track. A way to get him back on track is to give him a brain break, which is

something as simple as a walk or to get a drink. Giving Logan choices and allowing him to

choose what he wants to do allows him to feel like he is in control over his learning and he seems

to enjoy that power. These are a few recommendations and interventions that we were able to see

that worked with Logan and a great way to get him learning the information.
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References

6 Education Theorists All Teachers Should Know Infographic. (2015, December 07). Retrieved

June 26, 2017, from http://elearninginfographics.com/6-education-theorists-teachers-

know-infographic/

Support Autism Speaks goal to enhance lives today and accelerate a spectrum of

solutions for tomorrow. (n.d.). Retrieved June 22, 2017, from

http://faq.autismspeaks.org/info/faq/?gclid=COXuo8WV2tQCFVK4wAodT7cC-g#1