As a teacher’s assistant in a classroom of students on the autism spectrum, one of my responsibilities is collecting data to pass along to my lead teacher. Recently, I’ve begun to gather data on a student to asses her grasp of prepositional phrases and spatial concepts.The decision in question is whether to include these concepts within her speech goals when her IEP is updated this fall. The data that I have gathered thus far is her accuracy in identifying spatial concepts in relation to a picture, when choosing from a field of four (under, above, in, beside). The data was gathered using an existing independent work task in a file folder, on which she matches words to pictures.
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Examples of Prepositions from http://pearlsofprofundity.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/ the-difference-between-a-preposition-and-a-participle/ |
Technology can support
gathering this data by providing tasks for her to complete. For expressive
identification of these spatial concepts, the iPad application “Preposition
Builder” is available. It is easy to use and understand, contains nine
modules with three concepts each, and the drag-and-drop feature encourages the
development of fine motor skills—which this specific student can benefit from. Further,
the application offers
“statistics to track individual student progress,”
according to the developer Mobile
Education Store. For receptive identification, a SMART Board presentation
can be developed that requires the student to move an object in a new direction
for each slide (ex. “put the bird IN the birdhouse”, “put the bird UNDER the
birdhouse”). The presentation can be printed with her responses to use as data,
and then reset for future use. The same presentation, or a variant of, can also
be used for other students that need to practice the same spatial concepts.
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iPad Screenshots from the Preposition Builder app |
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