Case Study #2: Child Study

Brittany Melefsky

Child Study

11/20.09

Case Study #2: Child Study

1. Contextual & Student Information:

The child that I observed will be referred to as D. D is a profoundly deaf child. I will be looking at him talking/signing with the interpreter that works with him in his mainstream classes’ right after they come back to the deaf-ed room from the first grade mainstream classes. The time is usually right between 12:40-:12:50

I choose this context because it is typically at the same time every day (unless underlining circumstances occur) and it is very accessible to me to watch as a bystander. This is not a time of direct instruction and allows for more spontaneous conversation. The Interpreter often times is giving directions or asking questions to the students in the classroom to prepare them to go to the lunch room.

Topics Discussed:

The topics that seems to come up a lot are inevitably the topic of lunch, because the students are preparing to go to the lunchroom and eat. The topic of “first in line” also comes up at least one time every day and this is where D seems to have the most problems. I also chunked the different topics in to “other” because it was not like the same topic came up over and over again but rather different topics. Such topics included but not limited to Halloween, bring a coat outside, mom and dad or some item the child brought from home.

First in line also seems to be very student initiated because the interpreter would not normally talk about who was going to be first, D would bring it up and get very upset when the interpreter would tell him things along the lines of “sorry” “please move” or “you’re not ready” this is when the communication breakdown would relay escalate. While he would get very upset he was never violent toward other students or adults, he would just throw himself on the floor.

Topics discussed least to greatest

1. First in line
2. Lunch
3. Other

For this study I will be collecting frequency data because the conversations are happening in the allowed 5-10 minute transition periods everyday. Also, frequency seems more applicable in this situation because the child talks for short amount of time on different things rather than diving in to detailabout one topic

Language Assessment Information:

1. Communication Breakdown Indicators (CB) :
2. Motorical- Initially D will open his mouth wide like he is in shock, he will then proceed to will throw himself on the ground, scream and cry and refuse to listen to the interpreter he will often times continually shaking his head no
3. Verbal-D will make loud vocalizations in a ‘yelling fashion”, he will also cry very loudly
4. Visual-initially D will open his eye very wide and as the communication breakdown progressed he will scrunch his eyes, and not look at the interpreter signing to him

Communication breakdowns from most to least sever

D has a hard time understanding why he cannot always be first in line, he often times gets extremely upset because he is not first. This is the topic that he has the largest communication break downs in because D goes in to almost tantrum like behaviors. The “other” topics also cause for communication breakdowns but more of a frustration to D, they do not cause him to cry or throw a fit, and it is more of negotiation with the interpreter. Every once in a while the topic of lunch will cause a break down because the interpreter doesn’t understand what he is eating for lunch, if he brought his lunch from home or D tries to tell the interpreter a different lunch than what he ordered in the morning.

1. First in line
2. Other
3. Lunch

3. Language Intervention Information:

a.I have decided to look at the topic of being first in line when it comes to language intervention because this is the area that D has the most severe, noticeable communication breakdowns. I feel like this is a place where an intervention may help benefit D in understanding why there are times when he cannot be the first child in line. With the communication breakdowns being so severe it makes it hard for him to get directions or see what people are signing to him, because he is crying, on the floor and often times not looking at the interpreter.

b. I think that the most likely cause of D communication breakdowns is that he doesn’t understand that he cannot always be first, because he is profoundly deaf, if he is not looking right at the person signing he is missing directions, often times directions will be given to the other students in the class in sign/speech and he will miss them. This makes it the adults responsibility to make sure that he is gaining all the information that the other students are, even if it means repeating them multiple times in different fashions to make sure he understand 100%

I also think that D finds it very “unfair” when a child other than himself is first in line. He is a bit immature at times and has a hard time understanding that the world does not revolve around him. D is an only child, so the idea of sharing may actually be rather foreigner to him. Also, as we discussed in class he may be much more skilled with communicating with adults because these are the people he is always around and the people that understand him the most, that when it comes to having to take turns being first in line, he feels that other students will/ or do not understand him, so by throwing a tantrum, he will gain the attention of an adult.

I think when it comes to language development D is at the reflexive to patterned stage. This goes alone with what we talked about in class, while D is 6 years old is language age doesn’t actually MATCH his chronological age. By crying out and throwing a tantrum he understand that someone will come to him, this is a pattern that has been established over time both at home and in the classroom. As the communication breakdown progresses he will often time point to other students but not say anything, this taps into the signal to symbols, the adults in the room tend to fill in the blanks for him, and from complete sentence or implied information based just on his pointing. By doing this it is context specific, we all know what he is talking about, but that is because we speak “D’s”language, if he was to do this type of behavior in the lunch room, people may not understand

Objective: D will accept that fact that he is not always first in line, given that he has been prompted when going through the daily schedule and assigned the task of line leader, every other week.. The Communication breakdowns will initially be decrease to3 out of 5 days and over time will no longer cause a break down in this topic area because it will become routine. By eliminating the largest communication breakdown D will hopefully start talking about new and different topics.

Brief description of your language intervention strategy(ies)

The intervention that was used for the study was to assign the “job” of “line leader” at the beginning of the week when the jobs are changed. I also would prompt D when we were going over the daily schedule reminding him that it was not his week to be the line leader, by doing this I was trying to prompt him to remember the pre-assigned “jobs”

D is VERY schedule oriented and I thought it might help to have a visual reminder on the job chart of who is the line leader and that it will be this way the whole week. This really provides almost a script for D as he can see and understand the routines and patterns of the classroom, rather than throwing a tantrum and getting all worked up without the understanding of why he cannot be first in line.

For the intervention-- frequency will still be observed, as I am hoping as the frequency decreases the intensity of the breakdown will also decreases and as the intervention is implemented the frequency AND intensity will decrease in a simultaneous manner

Brief description of the impact of your language intervention strategy upon the occurrence, and/or severity of CB

Over the past week the intervention has been working fairly well. Initially D was having just as many communication breakdowns with the same amount of intensity, but after a few days of the routine being in play, he seems to understand that he is not first in line THIS week. The crying and tantrums has decreased and I have noticed that even a couple times he has let other children go in front of him in the line.

Granted, some days he still gets upset because he was ready first, or the other student was in the bathroom or a various other reasons, however, he quickly accepts that he needs to move to a different position in line and carries on with is day.

I am interested to see how the intervention works in the coming weeks when D is the line leader, I am wondering if this will cause communication break downs with other children towards D because now he is the line leader and the roles are reversed. If this is the case and time allowed I would like to try to implement a different intervention strategy for all the students, possible a object that the line leader has to hold while in the line to mark that they are the line leader, I would also possibly try the ideas of when we are going through the daily schedule on Monday (or everyday for that matter) that the line leader stands up and signs “This week I am the line leader” so that the students are getting the picture of the person attached to the job in a very concrete manner because they are so young.

Reflections:

Now that both the self study and the child study have come to a close I really understand how to pick out when a communication breakdown is happening. I really can see how the motorical, verbal and visual aspect tie in to the communication breakdown as a whole. They all very much depend on each other and are interconnected, providing huge clues and markers to when a breakdown is happening, when a breakdown may intensify and to go about with intervention strategies within the moment. If I can pick out when a communication breakdown is ABOUT to occur with a specific child I can kind of be prepared with a “bag of tricks” to help lessen the impact of the communication breakdown on the child, on other children or the situation itself.

I think the child study project really showed me how to be a “bystander” and remove myself from the situation. I think this is sometimes what teachers have to do within the classroom, especially with children. We need to let kids work though their problems and see how far they get, we can then step in and be the facilitator, or teach lessons to the class as a whole through modeling, role playing or incorporating such language into core subject areas or literacy, social studies, science or math.

When looking at communication break downs I really think that people need to approach from a interactions approach because this gives the child the opportunity to interact and “play” with the language, they need to see what works and what doesn’t in different situations so that next time the situation arises they will have strategies that work for THEMSELVES to transfer form situation to situation. The child could also then have the potential of becoming the “facilitator’ in different context and different situations. I originally didn’t know how much of a impact the interactionist approach would have.

Now I can see how the environment that the child is in be it the classroom, home or out in the community has on the child when it comes to learning language. I think part of learning language is understanding communication breakdowns and how to better oneself to repair these breakdowns within different context, environments or with different facilitators. Often times I think that as a facilitator we may be causing the communication breakdowns and really need to take a step back and evaluate our role within the larger context.

1. Causes of Language Problems:

I have learned that language problems can be caused for a variety for different reasons. Sometimes the child has problems expressing what they have to say because they do not have the language to communicate, this is where parents, teacher and facilitators need to step in and create different situations to up the ante for how much language the child needs. We need to expose students to new and different situations with different people.

Often times we as facilitators and care gives are causing the child to have a communication breakdown and not even knowing it. We are expecting more than the child can handle at the moment, we do not understand the child’s form of communications, so the child cannot appropriately state their needs.

Often times we are mismatching the language age and the chronological age of the student because often times looks can be deceiving especially with a child that is d/hh. This is a huge cause for concern, because how the child looks can be very deceiving. As language facilitators we need to be sensitive to this fact and really tailor language interventions and strategies to the appropriate level for the child.

1. Carrying out a Language Assessment

Language assessments scan be large or small, simple or extensive, but when carrying out a assessment I think it is important to document! Document what happens before the assessment, during the assessment and after the assessment, to get an accurate idea as to if the assessment is working or not. As facilitators we need to make sure the language levels is appropriate for the students needs We also want to make sure we are expecting more and more from the student as time progresses because the more we expect from students and the more needs that they have, the more language they will need to use to achieve what they want.

As teachers or facilitators we want to make sure that we identify and understand the most SIGNIFICANT language problem for students, this is where we want to start intervention. After we have identified these problems we want to make sure we form goals that are realistic to the child’s learning and document the progress of the individual student even within different situations to make sure that we are meeting or exceeding goals, because if this is not happening we are going to need to change the goal for the child to make it more accessible and reachable.

When carrying out a language assessments of children we have to make sure that we are addressing all parts of speech (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics etc) as one part directly relates to the other. All the different parts affect one another, and you cannot work on one without working on the other because the interrelatedness of the different parts. These parts of speech are not totally spate form each other like used to be thought the case.

c. Designing & Implementing Language Intervention Efforts

A large part of implementing a language intervention that WORKS in my opinion would be to like learning with living as we have discussed, if learning is so disconnected form the students it is not going to make a difference to them, especially at the elementary level, the students are so egocentric that the closer the learning is to the students the better they are going to understand and apply it to different situations.

Working with students that are deaf or hard of hearing teachers and facilitators need to make sure they are using formal testing for d/hh students, specific accommodations need to be made within the setting to accommodate for the hearing loss. As teachers of the deaf we want to make sure we bring these accommodations to the forefront of people’s minds when they are testing students. We need to be the voice of reason, and stand up for children when the implication of language assessments is not appropriate or applicable to d/hh students.