1/24/2022
Topic:
Students with Disabilities
Jacqueline Collins
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Several years ago in third grade I had a very creative student with ASD. I'll call him Steve. Steve was highly verbal and in my opinion extremely intelligent. Like many with ASD, his interests were very specific, and learning outside of those interests was difficult for him. Though he was highly verbal, his disability affected his written communication. We transitioned him to using the computer and voice recognition for responding to prompts, but this accommodation was not allowed on the state assessments. He received accomodations that allowed one on one testing and reading aloud of test items. I found that if the test administrator was patient, Steve could answer many of the questions on tests but first he had to tell you everything he thought of when presented with the question. This was very time intensive. When the actual test was administered, he did not respond as well to his administrator as he did in my classroom, and he did not pass the third grade reading exam. The decision was made at the administration level to hold him back. I disagreed, I felt that Steve was able to show his comprehension in other ways and that having him repeat third grade would be detrimental. Steve would create extremely detailed drawings of the events in the book we were reading, but was not able to answer the comprehension questions. His drawings, however, showed that he comprehended the reading material. I was very disappointed in the administrations decision in Steve's case. The parents were also frustrated with the decision and ended up removing Steve and putting him in a private school. I felt like we had failed Steve by not recognizing his comprehension skills as displayed by his drawings. |