Visual Acuity, Visual Processing/Figure-Ground and Visual Tracking (A-1-3)
The first set of assessments examines the child’s visual acuity, processing and tracking. AJ passed each assessment leading the examiner to conclude that, the child has average visual performance and, future struggles throughout the exam would not be due to a deficit in these areas. The examiner needed to pause after the conclusion of the third visual assessment and assist in re-regulating the child. AJ became silly during the visual tracking segment was laughing and making comments about how the assessment made his face feel. The examiner gave AJ time to laugh, validated his feelings and then inquired if he was ready to move on. He stated he was, and the examiner …show more content…
As the word lettering spaces became greater his pace slowed. However, AJ was able to chunk the letters and recognize them as real words. He was able to filter out the distracting dashes (which he did make mention of when reading “ought” which was read as throughout) and access his lexicon to pair the visual with the word in his long term memory. Similar to the Reading Word Analysis, the words AJ missed were multisyllabic and, he was tying meaning to part of the word, missing the whole. For example, “fast/en,” “allo/ance,” and “school/ar/ship.” This difficulty with multisyllabic words has been noted in the classroom on a recent school wide assessment. AJ will often assign value to the part of the word he knows and can struggle to chunk and then read the whole word. However, with explicit instruction and practice around this skill, AJ will be able to consistently chunk regardless of the …show more content…
However, he has lagging skills in specific areas that, should be targeted. It is suggested that the special education teacher explicitly teach syllabication of multisyllabic words and provide practice through word study. AJ may benefit from additional practice with prefixes and suffixes and word analysis. In regards to writing, it is clear that AJ struggles with verbal planning and creating stories when given a stimulus. AJ would benefit from explicit instruction complete with a template and integration of technology to appeal to his visual memory. The special educator should consult with the occupational therapist and generate ideas to assist AJ to shift his paper while writing or drawing to ensure he is capturing his actions while they are occurring versus after the fact. Additionally, AJ would benefit from additional spatial awareness