ACADEMIC SKILLS

Simon is a ten year old boy who we have worked with since 2010. He was diagnosed with ASC when he was four and has been at a mainstream school since aged five with full-time support.

His Parents and teachers identified some key concerns… so we have worked with Simon on better integrating into his mainstream school placement over the past two years. One specific aspect we have addressed in the past year is his ability to access the curriculum presented in class.

In order to do this, we have worked on increasing both the accuracy and the speed at which Simon can complete both written and verbal multiplications (focusing initially only on x2, x3 and x5 tables). This has taken the format in weekly sessions of ten-fifteen minute sets of teaching on various multiplication problems. The graph below illustrates the steady increase in verbal fluency across all taught times-tables. The levels taken in July show a slow, delayed and frequently incorrect responding.

On the Y axis you can see the number of multiplication problems he is able to solve in 60 seconds, on the X axis represents time.

Each data point shown represents the average of any given set (e.g. in May 2013, three lots of 60 second samples of performance, on the ‘x2 table’ were taken, with the average number of sums given correctly equalling twenty-five).

Initially Simon would comment on being timed, resisting the task through delay tactics, unrelated questions and fiddling with objects.

Today- he no longer delays his responding to task and often asks to try and ‘beat his last score’.

This specifically targeted intervention at home, has seen generalisation to school- where he now participates in math lessons; raises his hand to answer questions and has shown his peers that he is capable of doing things they can do. Working towards greater fluency with his academic skills has been an important part of the success he has achieved this year.