Inquiry Unit Project

1
Inquiry Unit Project

• Nicole Campbell
• Case of Nancy Johnson
• Age 15, Grade 10
• CEP 840, Spring 2005
• Professors Moxley and Shankland

2
Case Study

• Nancy is having difficulty separating her family
  issues at home from her academic performance.
  This has no doubt placed a great deal of stress
  upon her, and she may feel that she is somewhat
  to blame. She also is losing the ability to make
  good moral decisions due to her anger and
  loneliness. It appears that Nancy does not have
  anyone that she can talk to about her feelings,
  so she is resorting to negative attention as a
  cry for help. In addition, Nancy has trouble in
  many academic areas, particularly writing. In
  her short vignette it was noted several times
  that Nancy came across difficulty when she had to
  complete the portion of assignments that require
  writing or note taking (i.e. organizing her
  biology notebook, creating drawings from the
  microscope, taking tests, etc.). She also has
  poor grammatical or communication skills.
  Combined with all of the trials she faces at
  home, we have a perfect recipe for a frustrated
  adolescent.

3
Goals and Objectives

• Conduct a new series of tests for Nancy, looking
  for areas of growth change.
• Based on these scores, set up a meeting with
  parents to recommend counseling/family support,
  and to address the matter of Nancys truancy.
• Provide Nancy with specific strategies and
  techniques to improve her performance in school
  by providing her with any curricular and task
  adaptations and accommodations.

4
Plan of Action (for goals and objectives)

• Nancy would benefit from participating in Writing
  Workshop. This would allow her to learn new
  information regarding the writing process that
  she may not have learned, as well as retain
  information she was previously taught.
• Provide Nancy with spelling assistance.
• Nancy will also receive handwriting assistance.
• Provide Nancy with a math tutor and classroom
  buddy.
• Interpersonal problem solving the FAST and Slam
  methods.

5
Tools and Resources

• Materials needed for Writing Workshop
• Journal for Nancy
• Rubric given to Nancy for assessments (so she can
  make sure that she is completing assignments
  accurately)
• Math tutor and classroom buddy
• Student and teacher created math assessments
• Use the FAST and/or SLAM problem solving
  strategies

6
FAST MethodSource Bos, C.S., Vaughn, S.
(2003). Teaching Exceptional, Diverse, and
At-Risk Student in the General Education
Classroom (3rd ed., p.232) Boston Allyn Bacon.
S Solution Evaluation. Choose the best one.
Remember safe and fair works in the long run.
A Alternatives. What are your Possible
solutions?
F Freeze and Think? What is the Problem?
T Try It. Do you
think this will work?
7
SLAM Method

• S L A M
• STOP LOOK ASK
  MAKE
• Stop Look the Ask the
  Make an
• whatever person
  a appropriate
• you are in the
  question to response
• doing. eyes.
  clarify to the
• 
  what he person.
• 
  or she
• 
  means.
• Source Bos, C.S., Vaughn, S. (2003).
  Teaching Exceptional, Diverse, and At-Risk
  Student in the General Education Classroom (3rd
  ed., p.232) Boston Allyn Bacon.

8
Assessment

• I feel that it is more appropriate to provide
  assessment adaptations or accommodations versus
  creating new materials. Many of the assessment
  data collected for Nancy would be the papers she
  turns in, the ability to positively participate
  in role play activities (where they are
  practicing conflict resolution), and her
  interaction with her tutor and classroom buddy.
  The only assessment method that I would consider
  creating would be for math. I believe that you
  simply have to have paper assessments at times
  for documentary purposes. We use a performance
  tracking system called Scantron at our school. I
  do not know if it is available for high school
  students, but since Nancy is performing very low
  in certain areas this is something that could
  work for her.

9
Assessment (Cont.)

• What the teacher does is go to the website
  and create an assessment for each child based on
  their needs and abilities. It tracks their
  progress in the major subject areas, and also has
  tests they can take on the computer. The program
  is able to detect if the student is making up
  answers and will kick them out of the program if
  they feel this is what they are doing. The
  feature that I like the most is the ability to
  automatically change the level of difficulty in
  the test based on how they answer the first few
  questions. This is how the program is able to
  accurately show you what grade level at which a
  student is performing.

10
How to Know its Working

• Well, assuming Nancy has been re-tested, she
  is attending school (or the residential center),
  her family is in counseling, and she has gained
  interpersonal problem solving skills and
  strategies, I dont see how she would not be able
  to progress. The math assessments would show if
  her performance has increased as they would be
  tailor made to help her in her areas of weakness.
  The decrease in conflicts and anger in the
  classroom would indicate that she is learning how
  to deal with her feelings and hand situations of
  conflict.

11
How to Know its Working (cont.)

• Sitting down with Nancy and showing her how to
  compare her writing samples (drafts and final
  projects, as well as comparing several final
  projects) would show improvements in spelling,
  grammar and writing. Taking all of this
  information and going back to the IEP table would
  be the next step in determining what additional
  supports she needs or if additional changes need
  to be made in her plans and goals.

12
Works Cited

• Bos, C.S., Vaughn, S. (2003). Teaching
  Exceptional, Diverse, and At-Risk Student in the
  General Education Classroom (3rd ed., p.232)
  Boston Allyn Bacon.