PARENTAL REPORT FOR ANNUAL REVIEW
(EVIE REES-SHAH) APRIL 2002
A
progress report is provided below where the headings have been used to match
those normally found in school reports. The Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA)
home programme was started at the end of November 1996. This report deals with the following areas
of progress:
5. Information Technology Skills
7. Design and Technology Skills
9. Art Skills
10. Music Skills
11. Science Skills
12. Geography Skills
13. History Skills
16. Personal and Self-help Skills.
Before the ABA programme:
Evie was
effectively a mute child. Receptive language (understanding) skills were 11
months at age 3 years 5 months. Expressive language skills were 7-9 months when
tested at age 3 years 5 months.
Four years ago (Feb. 1998): Evie named
known objects (80 words known expressively) and had nearly 20 sentences
beginning, “I want”. She had limited commenting, e.g. she said, “cat” if she
saw a cat. Receptive language had increased dramatically.
Three years ago (April 1999):
The
number and type of use of language and communication increased. Evie used language to recount past events,
comment on the mood of self and others, communicate needs, express preferences,
share experiences, and to tell and recount stories.
Evie had
an expressive object label list of hundreds of words. We no longer kept a tally
of the words she was using, as she was picking vocabulary up in a more normal
fashion. (This was true of other parts of speech as well as nouns.) She was
using language to comment more fully, such as by saying, “Daddy is cooking”,
“The dog is dirty”. She was
spontaneously and appropriately asking questions, e.g. “where’s Alice?”,
“what’s in there?” She was using some pronouns and several prepositions
spontaneously, appropriately and accurately, e.g. “I clapped”, “Pooh Bear is
under the basket”. Her use of
adjectives improved, e.g., “it’s light blue”, “it’s blue and green and orange”.
Her jokes became more sophisticated, e.g. she would feed a toy dog and would
say, “Scally burped! Naughty Scally”.
She used social language, e.g. to say, “sorry Mummy” if she had done
something wrong. She could tell us what
she did on a day, e.g. “Mummy and Daddy and Evie went swimming”, “Mummy and
Evie went to Lookout”, “on Sunday we went to zoo”. She made up stories
imaginatively, e.g. she told us about a monster, she would describe its size,
appearance and colour, and what he did. She could re-tell a story she had
heard, e.g. she could tell a simple version of the Christmas Nativity story.
Her ability to request improved, e.g, she would say, “I want ‘Not Now Bernard’
video”, having seen that video advertised in a television trailer.
She was
using more normal intonation, and was sharing moments with peers and adults.
Her articulation was improving, such that strangers found it easier to
understand her. She would greet or say
goodbye or goodnight to people spontaneously. She involved herself with quite
complex scenarios with her toys and she loved dressing-up. We could bargain with her and explain what
was going to happen, such as saying that Daddy had gone to work, that we would
go later to visit friends, and what we were going to have for supper. She was
no longer reinforced on the home programme immediately by food or toys, but
either just by verbal praise or by means of a star chart for doing really good
work. She had basically learnt to obtain reinforcement from the task itself.
2 Years Ago (April
2000):
Evie’s
receptive language skills dramatically improved, and this was demonstrated
across a range of settings and people. This was also backed up by her
improvement in the formal language tests as testified to in the private speech
report of that year. Her expressive language was becoming frequent, meaningful
and appropriate. Pragmatic use of language improved,
In
summary, the following key areas of progress emerged during that year:
·
more profound understanding of spoken language;
·
learning new words and phrases naturally;
·
making links between her areas of knowledge and past
experience;
·
starting to predict the future;
·
using abstract linguistic concepts such as certain
pronouns and prepositions appropriately;
·
Many of her language skills were starting to be
displayed in her mainstream settings;
·
using language to recount past events, to share
ideas, to enjoy stories, to communicate detailed preferences, to show off her
creations, to socialise, and to display considerable humour and enjoyment of
life.
1 Year Ago (April
2001):
A
significant refinement took place regarding Evie’s ABA programme, namely, to
switch from a Lovaas model to a Verbal Behaviour (VB) approach. Details of this
approach are based on Skinner’s work on language.
As a
result of changing the emphasis of the teaching style, dramatic improvements
were made in Evie’s language skills, as outlined below. Current goals are also
shown where relevant:
a) Her
ability to MAND (request and demand attention) had hugely improved. This was
significant because increased MANDing leads to increased talking especially spontaneous
speech. This was evidenced in the points below;
b) There
was a marked increase in her ability to point things out (demanding attention)
for example, she would, when necessary, precede her communications with a
remark such as:“Listen, <person name>” . This made her speech easier to
understand, as she was signaling her intent to communicate with the listener,
and this was highlighted by speech therapists;
c) There
was an increasing interest in her ability to point things out (shared
attention); for example whilst sharing a video she would say, “It’s Scamp!”,
“He’s all muddy!”
d) She
was sharing stories, toys, memories with people who come to visit.
e) There
was a higher incidence of MANDing for information (asking questions), and also
she would ask a bigger range of questions. She would ask regularly and
appropriately, “what’s that?”, “who’s that?”, “what’s in there?”, “what’s
wrong?” and “where?”. We worked on teaching and generalizing the following
questions: “why?”, “when?” and contextual questions;
f)
There was a more sophisticated ability to request
things. Before she was asking primarily for reinforcers (food, toys,
activities). Now she was asking much more to visit places and people, e.g. to
visit grandparents or peers. She would spontaneously go and get her calendar
and plan visits to people or to see different places, and loved to anticipate
favourite outings;
g) She
understood everyday activities better e.g. she knew that on Mondays she went to
Kids Club, on Wednesdays she went skating, etc;
h) She
was able to predict the future better and to anticipate, for example she knew
that Lady and the Tramp 2 video was coming out on March 12th, and
she put this on the calendar and eagerly anticipated it.;
i)
She was able to discuss her day and the past better.
She delighted in talking over with me what she did and often did this
spontaneously, not necessarily in response to a question. She showed clear
understanding and enjoyment of this. For example, she will say, quite
spontaneously, “I went swimming I went to Coral Reef. I went with Becky and
Mummy. I went down the slide the wrong way. I hurt my side!”;
j)
She was able to plan better, for example she
delighted in making lists and packing for holidays and for planning future
activities. She spent a lot of time writing lists of different items to be
packed preparatory to actual packing for her Easter visit to her grandmother’s
house and for her Brownies Pack Holiday. She loved to put such events on the
calendar. This was linked to her literacy work too in terms of writing scrap-books
in diary form and having a conversation using concept maps. Thus her ability to
think ahead and plan progressed well;
k) She
was having conversations. This was built up gradually using the “intraverbal”
language structure. So, for example, we would have a conversation about a
favourite Disney video, by initially asking what is her favourite video, then
we might ask what is her favourite part, who are the characters, what happens,
why she liked it, what was it like, etc. More and more of these conversations were
becoming spontaneous sharing experiences and did not feel like language
“drills” at all;
l)
Narrative skills dramatically improved, in terms of
vocally creating stories and being able to recount what she did during the day.
For example, she changed her Toyland stories to a version of the Tooth Fairies,
and all the character names had to change, so Mr. Plod became Mr. Police Rat,
Noddy became Giselle, Big Ears became Fabian, etc. She showed enormous humour
and love of sharing in this;
m) Verbal
reasoning was improving, although this was still a teaching target. We worked
on developing her ability to answer “why” questions;
n) Predicting
thinking in terms of next steps, choices, and planning improved, and these
areas were also still objectives on the language programme. We would ask whilst
watching a story or reading a story, “what do you think he’ll do?” “Why?” and
this was going well;
o) Imaginative
thinking was also emerging, including an understanding of people’s emotions in
real life and in stories and videos. Again, this was also an ongoing target.
She was learning more complex emotions other than just her previously mastered
ones, such as “guilty” and “embarrassed” rather than just “happy” and “sad”;
p) Expression
and clarity were also targeted on the language programme, e.g. we would ask her
to pretend to be the Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear or Baby Bear whilst reading
Goldilocks during a Literacy lesson. Her clarity and rhythm greatly improved so
she was more understandable by those who did not know her so well, and the speech
therapist commented favourably on this;
q) She
showed a flexibility and imagination in her thinking, so she enjoyed tales
where the version is different. For example, she received a copy of “Revolting
Rhymes” by Roald Dahl, and she found it hilarious when Little Red Riding Hood
took a gun from her knickers and shot the wolf dead;
r) She
liked to play language games such as a Guessing Game in which she would guess a
character based on clues;
s) She
started to be the “asker” in the Guessing Game, albeit with a little prompting,
which was a very significant step;
t)
She started to answer, “what are you thinking?” type
of questions, a significant move in terms of understanding her own thoughts and
being able to express them.
Goals:
These
were listed as:
-
continuing to target conversational skills,
especially to develop this with peers;
-
working on listening and attention skills in
mainstream settings;
-
verbal reasoning, planning, making choices, and
discussion of past events.
Now (April 2002):
When the
speech therapist assessed Evie recently she commented that she thought Evie had
made more progress this last year than any year in which she had seen her. For
details of progress, see her report.
We have
also been fortunate enough to have been able to obtain the services of an
Associate of Dr Vincent Carbone as our ABA consultant. Dr Carbone is a US
practitioner and a leading practitioner in the ABA field and specializes in VB.
In
general terms of progress as seen from the parental point of view, Evie this
year is talking much more spontaneously and frequently. Her language is used to
share experiences, to make jokes, to recall past events, to express interest in
planning something for the future, and to explain her desires. These are
sophisticated now, for example, not just requesting things she wants instantly,
but being able to talk about people, places, and events she wishes to see and
do at a future date such as planning for her holiday to Scotland. She is happy
to talk about personal experiences and favourite stories with adults she knows.
In addition she is starting to show scrap-books and explain events (with
assistance from a tutor) to a peer. We are currently targeting her to request
things (“MAND”) from peers on home play dates, and she is just starting to do
this. She is also just starting to answer direct questions from peers to
herself.
Evie is
also playing more complex verbal games now such as I Spy, and the “Alphabet
Game”, where she will answer a question in the form, “can you tell me a
<category name> beginning with <letter name>?” This is quite a
sophisticated verbal game for a child with her background. Even more exciting
is that she is now starting to make spontaneous requests for information by
asking us questions, without being taught, for example she made up a
game, “What is the opposite of…?” and also she spontaneously asked us to name
categories in the Alphabet Game. Since
we have to teach her how to ask every type of question (“MANDing for information
is a very hard task for children with her profile) these spontaneous untaught
MANDS are very pleasing and significant.
In
mainstream settings we have recently asked staff to target Evie’s listening
skills more and we are fading back on prompts by the tutor, and she is
beginning to respond well to this. She will answer direct questions now when
addressed by known staff, e.g. Brown Owl at her weekly Brownies group. She does
not as yet communicate verbally without assistance directly to peers at
mainstream settings, and we are targeting visuals and assisting her to do this,
for example, by helping her show things she has made to peers at Brownies.
Thus the
next year will focus on listening at mainstream settings in groups, building
conversation skills, and generalizing and improving communication skills
outside the home to peers as well as to known adults.
Before the ABA programme:
Evie had
no letter or reading skills.
Four years ago (Feb. 1998):
She could
read about 100 word-cards (taught using the “look and say” method).
Three years ago
(April. 1999):
We
started Evie on the Oxford Reading Tree Scheme, and she spontaneously requested
and shared these books, as well as reading them by herself. She loved them and delighted in making
drawings from the scenes described in the books. She could read many books at Level 2 and 3 and some favourite
books at Level 4 on this scheme. She was also progressing well on phonic
reading both in the ABA programme and with lessons with a Montessori
(mainstream school) teacher. As well as
spelling words we asked her to spell, she would ask to spell more. For example, if we said, “spell rug,
rr-uh-guh” she might say, “where is Noddy?” and she would get the pot of
letters and spontaneously spell, “Noddy on rug”. She delighted in spelling and
would often get the pot of letters and spontaneously sit on the floor spelling
words out of formal teaching sessions, asking for my help if she needed it. She
would also spell things if requested without the aid of a pencil or of letter
templates, for example, we would ask her to spell “wet” and she would sound out
the letter phonic sounds.
She was
well on the way to becoming an independent reader. She read many types of text
– simple recipes, poetry, reading scheme books, and a diary. I wrote a diary entry of what we did
together every day, in fact she largely dictated the story to me. She watched intently as I wrote it down. She
loved to read and re-read this account.
Two Years Ago
(April 2000):
·
Reading
for Understanding:
We built
on Evie’s reading abilities and using the Oxford Reading Tree and Ladybird
schemes with Evie, including easy-reader stories. This year we especially
targetted meaning and story understanding. Evie could answer a good range of
questions, including “who is it?” (plus variations e.g. “who’s that?”; “what’s
his/her name”), “what’s he/she/they doing?”, “what’s happening (plus variations
e.g. “and then what happened?”), questions concerning emotions, where a
character lives, what is the book title, and she was starting to address causal
properties by answering “why / because” type questions. She now knew a range of
traditional stories, such as Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. Evie could recount
a simple story line from the accompanying pictures if the text was hidden. She
demonstrated this skill for the speech therapist during a home visit at the
beginning of the year. Evie started to show a love of stories and nursery
rhymes where the story-line was changed from the original and given a twist.
·
Literacy
Hour:
We
changed our style of teaching to prepare Evie to access the Literacy Hour. This
means that we worked on good sitting skills, with Evie sitting among peers on
the floor in a Circle Time format, and listening to the tutor, who sat on a
chair next to a whiteboard, playing the role of the teacher. We targetted
putting hands up, and responding to questions when asked. In addition, we
worked on the sorts of tasks carried out by children in the Literacy Hour. For
example, Evie could sequence parts of a story, and fill in words in sentences,
using the whiteboard and taking turns to respond to “class” questions. She was
compliant, and enjoyed this level of activity.
·
Story
Time:
We worked
on making our story time like the format at Evie’s Reception/Year 1 Class.
Again, she sat on the floor with her peers and we targetted putting the hand up
to respond to questions. She joined in and read part of the story when asked,
and showed good attention and receptive skills. Her ability to sit and share at
story time were being transferred across to mainstream sessions, such as school
and junior church, where she would sit readily for a 20-minute story and showed
she had both enjoyed and understood it.
·
Stories
out of therapy time - trips to the theatre and cinema:
Evie
visited the theatre and cinema to see full-length children’s productions. She
sat through the whole viewing, and showed clear enjoyment and understanding.
After seeing a Beatrix Potter production at a local children’s theatre, for
example, she chatted about what the Two Bad Mice did, about how the kittens’
clothes were put in the water in “Tom Kitten”, etc. She answered questions
afterwards appropriately, and was perfectly well behaved throughout.
1 Year Ago (April
2001):
Evie
showed clear enjoyment of stories and reads from story-books, comics and
reading scheme books. She enjoyed poetry and non-fiction too, although we
looked at targeting more of this type of work, as recommended by our Teacher
Consultant. Evie continued to demonstrate comprehension and great enjoyment of
what she had read, and she spontaneously linked stories to similar events she
had witnessed, videos she had seen, or other stories she knew. Her love of
reading was backed up by her written work – see below. We continue to undertake
Literacy Hour style activities, which Evie enjoyed and did well in. Evie would
often read constructively by herself out of therapy, as well as bringing books
for me to share with her. Technical reading skills continued to be very strong,
and Evie used a range of strategies to decode words. We worked on encouraging a
reading of blends to assist this, and Evie found this very easy.
Goals:
Goals
from last year were listed as consolidating work on reading with phonics and
comprehension work, and to increase the breadth of her reading, e.g. poetry and
non-fiction.
Now (April 2002):
Evie’s knowledge of phonics is very strong and she
has no problem reading blends. Sight-word reading has always been a strength
and she finds this very easy, and is able to read work of greater complexity.
Work on comprehension has greatly improved, and we
have worked on asking questions to ensure she is able to understand events and
characters in story books. This is linked with writing activities and talking
about events she sees in stories viewed on video. She enjoys reading poetry and
is beginning to show an interest in non-fiction, usually if it is about animals
or geography (linked to places of interest, e.g. maps and information about
where she is going on holiday). Her favourite poetry is usually humorous, and
she is especially fond of Roald Dahl. Her favourite non-fiction book is called
“Artic and Antarctic” (by Barbara
Taylor, a Dorling Kindersley book), which she reads as a shared book rather
than a reading book with her tutors. She shows she enjoys and understands this
by selecting all her polar animals from her toy zoo animals, and playing with
them appropriately as the book is shared. She picks up information quite easily
now from sharing such books, for example we were both surprised to find out
that there is a bird that looks like a penguin but can fly and is called an
auk. She is linking her interest in reading and animals with her growing
knowledge of geography. For example, she likes to get her globe and find out
where the animals live. When asked now to describe a polar bear (“TACTing” or
labeling an object is a current language target), she will provide quite a bit
of detail. For example, she will say something like the following: “A polar
bear is a kind of animal. It has fur and four paws and eyes and ears and it’s
white. It says roar! It chases seals. It lives in the Arctic.”
Another area of growth is in the type of book she
is reading. She has progressed from Oxford Reading Tree to older children’s
books such as “The Magic Finger” by Roald Dahl, and the “Horrid Henry” series
of humorous story books by Francesca Simon. Currently she reads these with a
tutor rather than alone, but she reads parts then the tutor reads, and she is
able to demonstrate understanding of the text and also great enjoyment.
Another area of improvement which should be noted
is her ability to listen during Story Time. We have worked on reading the big
book text in unison, both with adults and with peers when we have children
around to play on a play date. This has greatly helped her expression in
reading, and this skill has transferred across to her own individual reading.
Another area of great interest is cartoon books.
Her favourite are Disney books, and she reads these (usually aloud) to herself
for a lengthy time out of therapy, and clearly understands them when asked
questions. We use her interest and enjoyment of these to transfer into Writing,
Conversation and Art activities. She will often make drawings spontaneously
from events in the books.
Another area to note is general everyday reading.
She will go into a building and read all the notices. She is used to reading
recipes during her Cooking activities. Thus, in general, she is seeing a lot of
written material and using it meaningfully in her everyday life.
Before the ABA
programme:
She would
not even hold a pencil. When we started
the programme she had a palmar grip at best. She would not scribble much less
draw or write.
Four years ago
(Feb. 1998):
She could
write her own name, produce half-a-dozen simple drawings and copy a dozen
letters. She had a tripod grip.
Three years ago (February 1999):
She could
competently produce all lower-case letters of the alphabet and was learning
some upper-case letters. Her grip was
improved and the formation of the letters more fluent. She was starting to copy
whole words. When she drew something she spontaneously asked the tutor to write
the words underneath, e.g., she asked us to write, “green monster and
Superted”, and she copied this on ruled paper underneath. She was also starting to produce spontaneous
stories, which she asked the tutor or parent to write down.
In
addition she had learned to spell 3-letter phonic words on request (e.g. “spell
ram”), and she could do this either verbally or in writing. She was also
starting to write her own words and sentences spontaneously, e.g. “the princess
was playing at top of castle”, although the spelling was not necessarily
accurate for some non-phonetic words. She would also now spontaneously label
her drawings, using whole sentences if necessary, again guessing the spelling
where necessary, or asking for help.
Drawing:
was much improved too, and she spontaneously drew whole scenarios both in and
out of formal teaching sessions. For example, she drew a Superted, Rupert Bear
and monster scene from her imagination. She would spend many hours during the
evening out of formal therapy time simply drawing and writing, and involving
those around her in her “stories”.
Two Years Ago
(April 2000):
Evie
could write simple stories, e.g. of past events, such as a day at school. This
was partially assisted, for example, she would ask for help with the spelling
of a word. She enjoyed making a drawing to accompany it, and made several books
during the year of which she was very proud:
·
A home-made “Where’s Spot?” book;
·
A home-made ABC book;
·
A home-made Zoo book;
·
A home-made Animal ABC book;
·
A home-made School book, where she filled out an
entry for a session in school, complete with drawing;
·
A home-made book, where she described events, such
as her trip to a cinema.
In
addition, we concentrated very much on targetting her independent writing
skills. So for example, we could leave her to complete a set of literacy
worksheets, which might include spelling tasks, matching (e.g. Opposites,
Functions), and so forth. The tutor sat some distance away, not prompting Evie,
unless she asked for help. The tutor might even leave the therapy room for a
short while. At the end, Evie would bring her work to the tutor, saying, “Look,
I’ve finished”. The tutor then marked the work, and Evie was learning the
difference between a cross and a tick, and would spontaneously correct her
incorrect spellings when the tutor showed how a word should be spelled. This
level of independence was a big step from her abilities of a year before, and
again demonstrated the effort that the home programme team was making towards
preparing Evie for school.
In
addition, Evie was also learning to play a range of literacy-based games, which
she played both at home and school, such as Rhyming Lotto and Hangman. Hangman
was a great favourite of several of Evie’s normal friends, and she would play
this game with her peers. In addition Evie would spontaneously write future
events that she was looking forward to, e.g. on her calendar, and would come to
show us.
1 Year
Ago (April 2001):
We worked
on letter formation, spelling, and creative writing, as described below.
a) Creative
writing took a big jump forward since the previous year. Evie re-wrote a whole
book entirely, changing the story from “I want a Cat” by Tony Ross to “I want a
Cow” She asked the tutor to scribe it for her, changing details with only the
odd suggestion from or discussion with the tutor. Similarly, she typed up a new
version of “Peace at Last” by Jill Murphy to “Three Mice at Last” on the
computer, consistently changing the characters to the three mice from the
Cinderella story. Both of these projects were entirely Evie’s own idea, and she
would often change parts of a book or story either to something similar or to
something funny;
b) Letter
formation using lower-case was well-established, and we targeted capitals. Evie
was learning about sentences and remembered about full-stops most of the time,
and could use exclamation marks appropriately;
c) Spelling
was good, and we followed a more systematic programme following the Teacher
Consultant’s advice;
d) Literacy
activities were covered by joint writing, and across the curriculum by linking
with Science and other subjects;
e) We
also scribed Concept Maps for Evie to aid conversation and formal exercises,
along the lines suggested in the Teacher Consultant report Evie found this
quite new in formal teaching like science, but loved to do this for
conversational topics, like planning her Easter holidays or Brownies pack
holiday;
f)
She spontaneously produced lists to plan for things
e.g. Brownies Pack Holiday.
It
was very disappointing that the school did not return Evie’s school spelling
exercise book, and some of her best creative writing, as both clearly showed
her skills in these areas.
Goals:
Goals for
last year were listed as moving Evie forward into using cursive writing, a more
structured approach for teaching spelling, and richer techniques for enhancing
creative story writing by means of Writing Frames.
Now (April 2002):
Evie
likes to make books and this is encouraged on our Writing programme. She made a
book called “The Tiger who Came to Tea” which is based on the story-book of
that name. This book was a summary, totally unprompted, which Evie wrote using
just the pictures from the text as a reminder of the events. She stayed on-task
for this activity for one and a half hours, first listening to the story, then
making her own book from card and paper, then doing a drawing, and finally
writing a summary in her own words, and guessing the spelling when she did not
know them. One such example was picked up by Jayne Court, our Teacher
Consultant, when Evie wrote “boughet” for “bought”, and we were advised to
start using the Cripps books on Spelling as a guide, as she was really quite
advanced now and needed a more structured approach with more difficult words.
In
addition she is writing stories, although as yet we have not used Writing
Frames much, and this remains an ongoing goal. She enjoys her own stories and
stories based on books or videos she knows, and she now has a very great number
of known stories available to her, which she makes use of widely. She recently
went on a trip to the Vet to take her aunt’s cat for a check-up. She adapted
this experience by writing about Pilchard (Bob the Builder’s cat) whom she
described as going to the vet for an “injechun”.
She has
started to use cursive writing, and is doing templates for this, which she
finds reinforcing and is quite good at. She sometimes writes her own work in
cursive, but usually still prefers to print, and this is fine as they represent
different writing goals, and we are in no rush for her to write spontaneously
in full cursive until she has had more practice.
Another
area of work has been more practice in capitals, and she enjoys these so much
she will actually want to write in them totally, which we actively discourage
to ensure she writes in proper sentences with a capital at the beginning and a
full-stop at the end.
We also
ensure she continues to do her concept maps and writing “to-do” or “to pack”
lists (actually she does the lists spontaneously anyway) to work on language,
but of course she is also getting writing practice too.
We are
starting to do more work on work-sheets with her where we target specific
language or cognitive goals, e.g. conceptual opposites or categories . She
enjoys doing these, and we are also putting in some spelling work of this
nature too, with which she does well.
She also does writing outside of therapy, for
example I will encourage her to write a thank you letter to someone. Sometimes
she will write me a note about something she wants me to buy, or sometimes she
will sit happily painting words she knows and making them into pictures. She is
thus exposed to a wide range of writing activities, not just doing writing
exercises.
Evie also prepared work of a high standard for her
Brownies Writing Badge, including writing her own creative story, a letter to
someone, and a Glossary.
Before the ABA
programme:
She could
not articulate any of the numbers and had no knowledge of numbers at all.
Four years ago (Feb. 1998):
She could
count to five and answer the question, “how many?” up to five.
Three Years Ago (April. 1999):
She
understood the concept of zero. She could count to fifty. She could do addition
worksheets, e.g. “3 + 7 = ?”. She could do subtraction from 10 with
encouragement. She knew her Montessori Short Bead Staircase, which is one of
the basic steps for work in Montessori mathematics. (She learned this after a couple of demonstrations.) She could
manipulate Montessori number rods and Montessori Seguin Boards and perform
related bead work (teen counting and 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 matching). She could
count backwards from 10. She could
measure objects using a centimetre ruler and could write down the results in a
worksheet format. She could manipulate
worksheets to do with money, e.g. counting the number of pennies in a purse,
drawing the requisite number of pennies, counting and writing the total of
different objects. She could do dot-to-dot puzzles up to 20, and could do
worksheets such as colouring x number
of items, or drawing x number of
items. She could recognise and name the coins and notes of the English currency
system.
Two years ago (April 2000):
Evie
continued her work with the Montessori mathematics beads. She demonstrated
understanding of number by learning to match the written labels to the
requisite number of beads up to 100. She learned to work with a Hundred Square,
and named all the numbers and could find numbers, beginning to see the
patterns, e.g. 10, 20, 30, etc. She worked with tens, units, hundred and
thousands, again using specialised Montessori equipment. She learned to do
basic addition and subtraction using a range of tools. We also worked on
improving her independence, that is, having her complete mathematical
worksheets on shape, addition, subtraction, matching, etc. Evie also started to
learn how to use number lines to carry out addition. She completed worksheets
using a range of mathematical concepts, with the tutor situated some distance
away, perhaps even leaving the room for a time, to simulate the independent
work skills needed for a school situation. We would play a tape of school-room
sounds (her actual class at school engaged in a group activity) to teach her
how to attend to a task whilst coping with background school noise. She coped
with this very well. Evie also learnt to recognise fractions, was learning
about time using a clock, and could demonstrate an understanding of number
concept in everyday contexts, e.g. counting out items for her teddy bears to
have a tea party. We started working on play with toy money to generalise her
understanding of the money system.
Numeracy Hour:
In
addition worked with Evie using a new style of teaching to allow Evie to
participate in the Numeracy Hour. This involved front-of-class type teaching,
so that Evie sat on the floor with her peers, answering questions. This
included things like singing a number rhyme together, then she participated by
coming to the whiteboard and writing the sum, e.g. if we sang “Ten Green
Bottles”, and two bottles fell off, she would spontaneously write the full sum,
10 – 2 = 8. The school teacher and classroom assistant both witnessed this when
they came to see Evie on a rare home visit.
Similarly she enjoyed playing games with normal peers such as “Five
Currant Buns”.
One Year Ago (April 2001):
Evie had
a spell when she did not enjoy mathematics, and on the Teacher Consultant’s advice
we have varied the resources used and targeted a more verbal approach, and she
grew to enjoy doing mathematics. She could count in twos and tens verbally to a
hundred, without a visual, and learnt to do so within a very short time. She
was learning to do this with applications such as money, eggs, rods, etc. She
was starting to learn odd and even. She already had a strong ability to do
written mathematics with the Montessori equipment, but our focus this year was
more on the verbal strategies used in the national numeracy strategy, and we
used the techniques from the discipline of Verbal Behaviour (VB) to prompt this
appropriately, and Evie responded extremely well to this.
She would
bring me a resource that she liked, for example the Hundred Square, and
spontaneously do mathematics games outside of therapy, which was very welcome.
We targetted teaching new skills and transferring them across to real-life
applications and play, as specified in the Teacher Consultant report of that
year. We are also did more board games and so forth that practise numerical and
mathematical skills such as pairs, snakes and ladders, “Bus Stop”, and so on.
Evie enjoyed making home-made board games that focussed on her favourite
activities, such as BBC characters in her children’s magazines. Significant
progress in mathematics and in Evie’s enjoyment of mathematics was seen by the
Teacher Consultant in just two months in between visits that year .
Goals:
Goals
focussed on those set forward by the Teacher Consultant.
Now (April
2002):
Evie is
consolidating skills in numeracy and is starting to use her fingers more
readily, though she still does not enjoy this. She is also using rods,
Montessori beads, cubes, counters, Compare Bears and other mathematical
materials to practise sums and enhance her knowledge of patterns on her Hundred
Square. She has learnt about sets and we have done work on separating items and
saying why they are the same and why different, which she has enjoyed. This is
important, as this was a conceptual area of cognition that Evie found extremely
difficult in the past. She has had more practice with number lines, although
this needs more work. She is also continuing to work on number stories, to
teach her to apply her basic mathematics into real situations. We also try to
generalize mathematics as much as possible, for example, by weighing and
counting in Cooking activities or on everyday Science and Design and Technology
projects. We have also practiced verbal techniques such as chanting numbers in
a range of counting types (e.g. range counting, forwards, backwards, in twos,
tens, etc).. She is using twos and tens counting in real applications, for
example, counting two pence and ten pence coins She has also increased her
knowledge of 3-D shapes to include shapes such as prisms (hexagonal, octagonal,
etc). She shows great enjoyment and sense of exploration when using these, for
example she will try to balance the cone on its point and spontaneously point
out, “Look Mummy, it doesn’t balance!”. We can then go on to try some causal
reasoning and ask her why it does not balance.
We are
currently looking to investigate a system called Numicon that will help her
mathematical mental abilities, as we feel this is the next step for her. Much
of what she does is built around using verbal strategies and recording, both
useful, but for her to be able to know number bonds and do mental addition and
subtraction instantly, she will need a stronger mental image to manipulate.
Before the ABA programme:
Non-existent.
Two Years Ago (April 2000)
Evie
attended school on Wednesday afternoons since September 1999, where the teacher
sometimes ran a computing lesson. Evie gradually learned to sit and listen to an
explanation of the activity, and then to take her turn doing the activity on
the computer, with assistance from her
ABA shadow.
In
addition, we did computer studies with her on her home programme. She learnt
the basic parts of a computer, and could name the monitor, disk drive,
keyboard, mouse, speaker, modem and printer. She used a range of Dorling
Kindersley software, a favourite being, “Now I’m Reading”. She showed great
enjoyment, laughing at the funny parts of the software. She especially enjoyed a
guessing game and a spelling game, and her mouse skills really improved. She
could move the mouse competently and drag items independently, and could enter
and exit the software herself.
One Year Ago (April 2001)
Evie used
the computer as an optional tool spontaneously, and loved to write stories or
re-write existing stories using the word-processor. She also continued to like
playing games, e.g. numeracy games using several Disney packages. We also did
some language work with her whilst she was on the computer, such as asking her
questions about sequences she saw, getting her to predict and explain computer
video sequences, and she was happy to share in this. Sometimes she would also
ask to work on her own, which was understandable, and was much preferable to
her previously favoured way of showing this, which was to push someone away or
to issue a little scream of annoyance. She could switch the computer on from
scratch to operate her software independently, and often elected to do this out
of therapy, playing completely appropriately without any self-stimulatory
behaviour. If she got stuck she would also come and ask for help, again, a
welcome improvement on either giving up or giving the small annoyance scream.
Goals:
Goals for
last year were to teach Evie how to access the world-wide web, which had many
web-sites for educational use for young children, as well as teaching her how
to use new technological tools such as the digital camera.
Now
(April 2002):
Evie’s
own computer does not have access to the internet, so we have limited the web
searches to supervised browsing, mainly concentrating on children’s sites of
interest, e.g. The Tweenies, which she enjoyed. She enjoys seeing the digital
camera used and often asks for a photo to be taken, although because of its
expense this is again supervised. In other areas Evie is largely independent,
and she mainly uses the computer both as a selected activity during therapy and
also outside of formal therapy to play her academic, Disney or BBC character
games by herself. I have however purchased a new resource called “ ICT in Action by Scholastic”, which will
teach her more formally some of the areas covered in the National Curriculum.
We have purchased full Microsoft software for this scheme.
Before the ABA
programme:
Evie was
physically very able, but very difficult to control and could not wait her
turn.
Two Years Ago (April 2000)
Evie was
allowed to attend school for PE on only a few occasions, as the school would
not agree to two sessions per week as specified in her Statement of Special
Educational Needs. She enjoyed PE, and made a start getting used to the routine
of changing, following instructions to her group and to the class. She also found
parts of the PE lesson difficult (for example, when the children screamed
during team games), and became anxious, and it was a shame that the school did
not listen when we asked for a different type of session for her attend in
school, e.g. literacy and numeracy. This would have provided a more structured
and quieter (and therefore less stressful) activity for her, and would have
improved her self-esteem as she finds these tasks relatively easy, especially
literacy.
In terms of
home programme support, we also worked on PE activities to try to support her
school lesson by working on balancing, movement and bean-bag skills.
One Year Ago (April 2001)
Evie
learnt to ice-skate independently during this year by means of her Education
Otherwise class. She became a very competent skater, and sometimes liked to
skate with the other children of her age, sometimes on her own. During the
previous year, she used to insist on holding my hand or the tutor’s hand, and
could be very anxious at times.
Ball
skills improved as well, and she learnt this by herself. She was also much more
confident at roller-skating at home, and liked to do this when she visited
friends too. She enjoyed informal dancing at home and she also did music
interpretation and movement with banners at her church kids club. She attended
Education Otherwise Sports Days and entered into most games, thoroughly
enjoying herself. She also still loved
to go swimming, and was very confident in the water without water aides. Evie swam
for the first time in deep water unaided, again showing her determination to
succeed when she really wanted to do something. Similarly, on Brownies Pack
Holiday, she thoroughly enjoyed herself learning to paddle a canoe boat for the
first time (on her own), whereas some of the girls found it quite frightening
and asked to come back to shore. She was willing to try new sports, e.g. she
tried archery at Pack Holiday too, but in the event did not like this as she
found the bow heavy.
Goals:
Goals set
for last year included helping her to learn to ride a bike, to swim
independently, and to consolidate her ice-skating skills even further. Ball
skills needed to be improved, as well as perhaps trying new games that peers
often enjoy, such as badminton, taught at Evie’s E.O. Kids Club. However, we
wanted to go very much with Evie’s motivation, as we believe it is important
that she enjoys physical activities and is not coerced into doing them.
Now
(April 2002):
Evie was
not interested in riding a bike, so we did not pursue that. Because of
time-table clashes she had periods when she was not able to visit the ice rink.
Hence, it was very encouraging that when we went this week she was still very
confident and very fast. Her tag and ball skills have been worked on, and are
much better, and she is improving at hockey which they teach at Kids Club and
which we work on at home. She has also improved at football, though she does
not enjoy the team games much because they are very physical. She was not able
to go swimming owing to some health problems, so that is still at around the
same stage. She has learnt to line-dance at her church drama group and she
shows good balance and co-ordination generally in all physical exercise she
undertakes. If she does not want to participate in a sport, we do not force it,
as there are a huge variety of sports to select from, and she succeeds well at
those in which she has an interest. She does however have a great deal to learn
about team games, which are very challenging for her, and she still has to be
assisted with these at Kids Club. She needs more work on understanding rules,
passing a ball to a member of the team, and generally finding it motivating and
worthwhile to be in a group of very noisy and sometimes quite animated children.
Before the ABA programme:
Ev