INDIVIDUALIZED EDUCATION PRyOGRAM (IEP)

Marc

In April of his kindergarten year, Marc had just turned 6. He is a lively boy with diagnoses of autism and developmental delay. He participates actively in many school activities at his neighborhood elementary school. While he still spends much of his time in the resource room with his special education teacher Ms. Wharton and several assistant teachers, he is now able to work with his peers on some kindergarten activities, including morning circle, some table work, recess, and physical education—about 30% of the school day. When his team meets, the kindergarten teacher Ms. Kwan provides regular updates on the literacy and math work that she is teaching and on Marc’s performance in kindergarten activities. Next year, he will spend more than half of his time supported in first grade, including lunch. Marc communicates mainly through pictures symbols and sometimes with problem behavior. He has started to use single words and phrases to ask for help (“milk,” “zip,”), to request favorite activities like tag and going outdoors (“go out”) , to greet others, and to protest activities that he wants to stop (e.g., loud intercom announcements). He enjoys computer activities and will play alone with blocks or LEGO® for long periods of time. Marc follows a picture schedule throughout the day, which involves getting a pictured item from his schedule, matching it to the activity location in the room, completing the task, and then going back to the schedule for the next pictured item. He has learned to respond to some single schedule words on a list in place of pictures. He uses a structured work system where he completes kindergarten work, such as matching sounds to pictures and writing letters, first with one-to-one instruction, then independently in the resource room, and finally in the kindergarten classroom. Next year, he will transition more of his work skills to the first-grade classroom.

Marc does not eat in the cafeteria yet at school, but his team is working on this now with the goal that he will be eating alongside his peers before the end of the school year. Just last week, with a picture schedule of the steps involved, he was able to go through the line, get his food, punch in his payment number (from a model), and return to his classroom to eat. Marc also has expanded his food repertoire from earlier this year and eats more of the school lunches, but does not consistently use utensils. Marc is not yet toilet trained. His team is currently gathering baseline data to assess the times that he is most likely to eliminate and will start instruction during summer school. He washes his hands using a picture schedule to prompt him, wipes instead of blows his nose, and is becoming more skilled at buttoning his clothes and pants. Because Marc’s teeth are not healthy and he resists tooth brushing, his team has developed a plan with his family and the regional autism specialist, Ms. Soroka-Smith, to gradually desensitize his dislike of tooth brushing. They will use a social narrative about tooth brushing, along with a task analysis of easy to difficult steps that progress from getting used to various brushes and toothpastes away from the sink, shifting to the sink area, tolerating some teeth being brushed, and gradually increasing the amount of time that his teeth are being brushed. Marc’s team members are excited about the progress that he has made during the year, and they expect that his involvement with his kindergarten and first-grade class will increase the likelihood that he will develop relationships with other children his age.