Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE STUDENT PROFILE ESSAY

Individual Differences Student Profile Essay

Emily Ivy

Instructor: Professor Raass

EDUC 230: Intro to Special Education

Spring 2019
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Individual Difference Student Profile Essay

I chose to do my observation on a sweet little boy with the biggest personality, whom I

will refer to as Timmy. I have been observing Timmy at a public school not to far from where I

live. He is a ten-year-old boy who has a chromosomal condition referred to as Down Syndrome,

which comes hand in hand with an intellectual disability. (Coleman, Gallagher, Kirk, 2015). I am

going to elaborate on my observations regarding Timmy’s general, physical, cognitive, and

socio-emotional development in relations to what we have been studying this semester.

General Information

Timmy lives at home with his mom. I actually got to meet her in his IEP meeting. She

appeared to be very involved in his development goals. She voiced how she works with him at

home on his goals. He spends seven hours every weekday at school similar to general education

students, and doesn’t attend daycare or anything of the sort. On Wednesdays, however, he spends

five hours at school since it is an early release day for all students.

Physical Development

As I previously stated, Timmy is a ten year and three months old Caucasian boy in the 4th

grade. He has hazel eyes and brown hair and is overall in good physical health. His physical

development is definitely noticeably atypical from the other students. Other than his medical

diagnosis of Down Syndrome, he was also diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. His mother

believes he has some hearing loss, but it hasn’t been tested and confirmed or denied yet. It

definitely is postlinguistic hearing loss since he has developed speech and language. (Coleman

et al., 2015) Those who have Down Syndrome, often have hearing loss so this is something that

isn’t unexpected. He had tubes put in his ears which seems to help him hear better and has
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slightly improved his articulation for speech. He is left handed, which is normal for kids with his

disability, along with having low muscle tone, which makes it difficult for even the fine motor

skills such as holding a pencil, buttoning his clothes, and using zippers. The extended resource

room has tools to assist with these actions. The teacher brought out the devices for me to hold

and to try out.

The physical activity he is partial to includes but is not limited to running, swinging, and

hanging from objects. These activities help Timmy with his gross motor skills such as balancing

and body coordination, as well as fine motor skills such as grip strength, and hand, arm, and

finger coordination. (Coleman et al., 2015) Timmy is rather small for his age, so he prefers

playing with younger kids who are more his physical size and who have closer to the same level

of intellectual maturity as Timmy. If he is at recess, he will stand in one spot and watch all of the

kids his age and older play, but as much as he wants to swing or hang from the playground toys

at that time, he won’t until the older kids go inside. It is as if he is intimidated by those who are

bigger than him.

As far as nutrition goes for Timmy, he is a pretty picky eater. It is all about textures for

him with his food, as well as how messy it is or could potentially be. They are working on this at

home and at school. He has to at least take two, “no thank you,” bites to be able to not eat it.

Every time they offered him chocolate milk, white milk, or juice, he always immediately without

hesitation chose white milk. He usually would choose one food item on his tray and would work

on eating it the entire lunch. He would say he was done before he even really tried any other food

on the tray. No real patterns of types of food, just random.

Cognitive Development
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Timmy attends a regular public school; however, he spends the majority of his school day

in a resource room with about six other exceptional students, and three teachers. He rarely goes

to his general education classroom. If they are doing crafts, or specials he will sometimes attend

his regular class, but he tends to get overstimulated his teacher said, and will want to go back to

the resource room. They have Occupational Therapy where two ladies come in and work with

their class. I was lucky enough to be able to attend his IEP meeting with his mother, the principal

of the school, his resource teacher, his general education teacher, and the two Occupational

Therapy teachers where we discussed his academic strengths and weaknesses, as well as other

strengths and weaknesses his mom felt were imperative to discuss. During this meeting, it was

really great to see the examples of how Timmy’s learning environment goes beyond the

classroom. His mother seems to be working on his IEP goals at home, as well as creating

additional goals for him, continuing that structured learning in this additional environment.

For Language Therapy, he is able to complete one to three-word utterances. He is better

at colored pictures and is a visual learner according to his teacher. His goals for Language skills

are to improve on receptive and expressive language skills by 3/5/2020.When given verbal

cues, increasing expressive communication by using four to five-word utterances to inquire,

comment, or describe four out of five opportunities. Also, when given indirect model, improve

language skills expressively demonstrating understanding basic concepts (spacial, temporal,

etc.) in seventy percent of opportunities. For function Life Skills, they discussed how he loves

attention from adults, and he loves helping, and being the helper at school.

His strengths are that he now tolerates textures in two of four given opportunities. Also,

ignoring environment distractions to focus on work one out of four given opportunities. By

March 18th, 2020, they want him to be able to ask for help without being prompted. While I ate
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snack with them for a few days, he asked me to open his milk please a few times, without me

asking if he needed help. He also has a goal of being able to identify fifteen out of 20 community

survival signs in three of four given opportunities. Currently he is only able to identify four to six

signs. His strengths for functioning academics are that he can answer twenty-five, “where”

questions. He can match twenty-five categorial items. Timmy can verbally spell his name two

out of four given opportunities. However, he can identify his first and last name with one

hundred percent accuracy. He is able to consistently read four sight words. He is also able to

identify numbers five through ten consistently, and five to fifteen with a forty five percent

accuracy. However, he can count to twenty without visually seeing the numbers, just from

memory. He can count by tens with one hundred percent accuracy, as well as by fives to twenty-

five. He knows which coin the penny is, can identify twenty-two upper- and lower-case letters,

nineteen letter sounds, which was previously only eight, and the days of the week in order with

100% accuracy. He has another goal for coins, which is to name coins and the amounts three out

of four opportunities and they are going to document the data weekly.

He usually works for toy time. Lawrence Kohlberg actually mentions this level of moral

reasoning as a reward. Timmy’s thought process is, if he does his school work, he will be

rewarded with his favorite toy. So, he definitely is in the Pre-conventional level of moral

reasoning as described by Kohlberg. (Johnson, 2014) Buzz lightyear really seems to motivate

him the best these days. When he earns this free time with his toys, it is usually three to four

minutes, and then he is back to work. The days I observed Timmy, he worked on Starfall.

Because of his lack of muscle tone and fine motor skills, they have a modified computer for him

that is a touch screen. This internet site was teaching him letters and sounds accompanied by

pictures. One activity was a matching game and he really struggled with this concept. He just
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kept clicking cards, without trying to remember where they were to be able to spot matches. He

kept saying the game wasn’t working every time they would flip back over. Or he would say,

“uh oh, try again.” However, he was doing great with the letter identification, sounds, and the

associating pictures, and really was able to quickly navigate through the site. He also worked

with the teacher and another student on letters and sounds with flashcards, and he did pretty

well!

He has a short attention span. He kept standing up and looking around when working

with the teacher. While he was making bread in gen ed with a one on one helper, he was

supposed to be kneading the dough in the zip loc baggie, but after a few seconds he was looking

around the room, and other times he was playing with the helper’s teacher lanyard. He fidgets a

lot and has a hard time sitting still. I noticed that he was not acting young and wild in his gen ed

class while we were in there, and his teacher stated that he usually acts like a ten-year-old in his

regular classroom. I was able to get him motivated during his lessons and crafts with enthusiasm;

making it seem fun and guiding him. Sometimes he requires hand over hand assistance with

things such as writing and gluing. However, he isn’t always the one to participate in class unless

prompted to. During Occupational Therapy, the other kids were answering questions left and

right regarding the book being read to them, however Timmy was looking all around the room,

laying down, turning around, going under the table, and playing with his shoes. He also really

will watch others, especially when they are participating, but he still doesn’t initiate his

participation. They didn’t really ask him any questions directed at him during this time. When

teachers initiate conversations and questions with him, if they are just requiring yes or no

answers, he always says yes. Occasionally he will answer with no. Therefore, they must be more

specific with him.

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Jean Piaget has a theory that includes four stages of Cognitive Development. They are

sorted by age. Even though most kids Timmy’s age are in the Concrete Operational Stage, I

believe that Timmy is still in the Preoperational Stage. I believe this because he is able to

complete tasks such as using words and pictures to represent objects. I believe he still thinks in

concrete terms, and he is able to use his imagination while he plays pretend. I don’t believe he is

ready to be considered in the Concrete Operational Stage yet because he is still doing things

such as kissing girls without really thinking and understanding that maybe the feelings and

thoughts of this being okay aren’t reciprocated. I don’t believe that he is really able to organize

his thoughts and the idea of conservation is definitely not there for Timmy yet. (McLeod, 2018)

He prefers to play with kids in this age range as well who think more like him and are closer to

his size physically as well as being closer cognitively.

Socio-emotional Development

Timmy is a very observant kid. I noticed throughout my time observing him, that he

would just sit back and watch others. Occasionally he would mimic their behaviors. Since he is

rather small for his age, he prefers to interact with peers who are younger than he is. He tends to

get overwhelmed while interacting with any students who are the same age and or grade as he is,

as well as older kids. When he would sit in for general education activities, he would just sit

quietly and watch the students and his teacher. Eventually he would ask to go back to his special

education classroom. He seems to be comfortable with the other kids in the special education

classroom of all ages. They did mention in his IEP meeting that he was going through a phase

where he was trying to catch and kiss girls, however I didn’t see any such behaviors while I was

there. He seemed more reserved. He did seem to love being a helper. One day it was raining, and

during an indoor recess, one of his peers has cerebral palsy, so she has trouble with her fine
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motor skills. She asked if Timmy could help her build stuff with blocks, and when I asked him if

he wanted to help her, he got excited and said, “yep.” He was being super careful while helping

her.

Apparently with some adults, Timmy is pretty stand offish and sometimes doesn’t want

to listen to them. This really surprised me to hear because he was always excited to see me and

wanted to show me what he was doing or eating as soon as I would walk through the door. He

was always listening to his three teachers any time they would ask him to do something. I never

observed him being defiant towards them. He would also interact with the office ladies daily to

get him medicine at lunch time, and he seemed to really like them. He would walk in smiling, get

his medicine, tell them bye, and walk back to class to eat lunch.

Summary, Conclusions, and Implications

Even though Timmy is behind on typical development compared to his fourth-grade

peers in all areas of development, Timmy is growing and learning every day at his own pace. He

has really made leaps and bounds regarding his cognitive development, which they continue to

help him improve on. Currently, they are really working on his language, physical, and socio-

emotional development. They have been improving, but he is currently developing at a

Kindergarten level, making his development atypical. Helping him strengthen his

communication is a priority.

Honestly, I feel this student could greatly benefit from a one on one paraprofessional for

the entire school day. Not necessarily a Behavioral Interventionist since he seemed well behaved

every day I was there, but someone who can just assist him in all aspects of his day for his

physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development. I felt that Mrs. S’s special education
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classroom is short staffed, and the teachers mentioned it quite a few times. I could tell that they

were stressed out. This lack of teachers resulted in the students with behavior issues, and or more

severe exceptionalities getting priority for assistance and guidance. Many times, Timmy was just

sitting on the ground by himself playing with toys, watching the other students and teachers

interact, or they would stick him on the computer by himself on the program, Starfall, where he

would just click things randomly, even on the Kindergarten level that they had him on. I don’t

feel that during this computer time he was learning anything additional; just burning time.

In my opinion, they needed to have some sort of daily lesson plans for him. Things to

accomplish each day whether it be learning new things or simply reviewing. These are

modifications that I would try if Timmy was my student. I feel he could also benefit from more

social and academic consistency daily, but this goes back to the fact that they are short staffed.

When students, such as Timmy, are cheated out of their specials every day because they can’t

attend without a special ed teacher tagging along, and they don’t have enough coverage to

provide one for each student during these additional classes, students such as Timmy are not

getting the equal education they are promised. Those specials such as library and p.e. expand

their cognitive, physical and socio-emotional development just as much, if not more, than their

special education class so they should be going every day, or as many days as possible.

To wrap things up, Joey is a very bright and capable student who is making great strides

with his cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional development, however I feel with more support

available to him, and the other students for that matter, he could progress in his development

even more rapidly than he is now. He is still so young and has so much potential. He just needs

some more extensive guidance, and the sky is the limit for Timmy; just like every other student

at his school.
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References

Coleman, M.R. Gallagher, J.J. Kirk, S. (2015). Educating Exceptional Children 14th Edition.

Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Johnson, A. P. (2014) Social and Moral Development; Erickson, Marica, Kohlberg, and Gilligan.

https://www.academia.edu/8345468/SOCIAL_AND_MORAL_DEVELOPMENT_ERIC

KSON_MARICA_KOHLBERG_AND_GILLIGAN

McLeod, S. A (2018). Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. Simply Psychology.

Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html