SPE-350 Special education Law

Case Study and Individual Education Plan Template:

Case Study

Susan is an 8-year-old third grader at Sunshine Elementary School. Susan has a diagnosis of Down syndrome. She is functioning in the moderate range of intellectual disability. Susan has a heart condition, atrioventricular septal defect, and had surgery shortly after she was born to repair the congenital defect. Susan also wears glasses and requires some accommodations for her vision such as preferential seating and enlarged print.

Susan spends most of her day in a self-contained setting, but does attend lunch, recess, assemblies, and special classes with the third grade homeroom teacher’s class. Susan does have motor delays, speech and language delays, and is eligible for speech and language therapy, and occupational therapy. She has difficulty with fine motor tasks and writing. Susan is not decoding words yet, but recognizes 10 functional sight words. She knows her colors, basic shapes, rote counts to 20, and recognizes numerals to 20. She demonstrates 1:1 correspondence to 10 items. She can label many pictures and uses pictures to help her read modified text such as Mayer-Johnson symbols and rebus books. She also uses Mayer-Johnson symbols to keep track of her daily schedule. Staff frequently use the daily schedule to redirect Susan and keep her on task.

Susan is not toilet trained, but does assist in removing her pull-up and putting on a clean one. She washes hands with verbal prompting and a checklist that uses pictures to cue the task. Susan loves messy activities such as finger painting, water play, playing in the sand, and shaving cream. Susan is also friendly and seeks human contact. She lacks awareness of dangerous situations and easily approaches strangers. Staff is working with Susan on appropriate space. She loves to sit on laps, stroke hair, and stroke different textures of clothing. The teacher uses a social story to cue her to keep hands to self and sit on a chair in school next to others (instead of on a person’s lap). Peers get annoyed with her constant stroking of hair and clothes, and it is not appropriate for the school setting.

Susan is currently enthralled with the characters from Disney’s latest movie and likes to look at books with the characters. She attempts to sing the Disney songs, and her parents report she has the latest dress-up clothes and dolls from the Disney store. Parents report that Susan is mostly well behaved in restaurants and will sit in church as long as she has a favorite toy or sensory item to stroke. When Susan becomes frustrated, or does not want to do something, she will sit on the floor and refuse to move. This is a problem during transitions, especially unexpected ones such as fire drills. Susan also needs assistance in resolving conflicts with peers that involve access to tangibles (a toy or food). Susan will grab and run instead of requesting a turn or the wanted tangible.

IEP Template:

Present Levels of Academic and Functional Performance:

Measurable Annual Goals: (Must include condition, content, criteria expressed in observable, measurable terms.)

Reading Goal(s):

Written Expression Goal(s):

Mathematics Goal(s):

Communication Goal(s):

Fine Motor Goal(s):

Social Skills Goal(s):

Adaptive/ Daily Living Goal(s):

APA:Format