
Team approach
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
Completing a Language Comprehension checklist
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
Combined efforts between professionals from the Provincial Integration Support
program (PISP) and School District #36 ( Occupational therapist (OT),
Physiotherapist (PT), Augmentative Communication Teacher (Aug-Com), Special
Education Assistant (SEA), Resource Teacher, Classroom teacher) and Ms. Adamson
(Jessica’ mother).
Completed by Jessica’s mother and her SEA and Teacher, this checklist focuses on
Jessica’s language comprehension. Ex. How does Jessica demonstrate her
understanding when someone talks to her?)
Look at what motivates Jessica
›
Jessica has a severe acquired brain injury and cortical visual impairment. With
combined efforts between home and school we developed a list of motivators for
Jessica that we considered when developing her IEP objectives (Ex. Humor (funny
sounds), music (soft, with headphones), favorite people (SEA, mom), swimming,
vibrations etc.

Cause and Effect
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›
›
›
›
Jessica entered grade 8 appearing to have no concept of “if I do this…that will
happen.”
As a team, we felt that Jessica needed to have more control over her environment.
If we could teach her to smile consistently, we felt this would have a direct effect on
other objectives regarding the use of a switch for environmental control (Ex. Jessica
will activate her switch to be an activate participant in her art class.) %%%
Given Jessica’s present level of functioning and her motivators, it became obvious
to the OT that Jessica’s smile was her most reliable motor movement to activate her
switch.
We want to teach Jessica to smile on command which would also activate her
switch and give her control over one more aspect of her environment. %%%%

By June 2011, Jessica will smile in order to activate an ultra-light
switch positioned on her right cheek within 8 seconds to play music
on her pod – whiz (I-pod).
(As music is a strong motivator for Jessica, we used her pod –whiz for data
collection. Jessica uses her ultra-light switch daily to help others (operate
an appliance), have a voice (use step by step to greet others) but we are
not collecting data on those activities etc. They simply provide Jessica an
opportunity to practise this objective (to reinforce cause and effect).
Part 2: How do we measure progress?
Data Collection
1. Taking baseline


Taken over 3 consecutive days, this is necessary to determine the starting point
for measuring progress.
As with taking any data, baseline should be taken at a time when student
learning is optimal (beginning of the day, uninterrupted, etc.)
Taking a look at Jessica’s baseline
Objective: Jessica will activate an ultra-light
switch, positioned on her right cheek within 8
seconds to activate her pod whiz.
Procedure: 1.Record the length of time it takes
Jessica to activate
the switch to restart the music playing, after the
music has stopped.
2.Add up the scores in each column and divide by
the number of trials to obtain the average.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Average
Seconds
Jan
19
(Sec
)
7
14
9
15
5
8
18
6
Jan
20
Feb
21
4
6
1
35
12
19
5
6
13
5
9
14
9
33
16
31
10.25
11
16.25
2. Ongoing data collection:
 Over three consecutive days, ongoing data is taken once a
month after baseline data is collected. It’s really that simple!
3. Considerations:
 student health/illness – on what should have been day three of
our baseline, Jessica was absent from school. While this isn’t
ideal, this is the reality for our students and we kept moving
forward.
 best time to collect data – if health is a major consideration, we
found it best to aim for Monday or Tuesday (greater chance to
get in 3 days)
 Trouble remembering? I chose my mid month pay to remind
myself that we need to take another data sample
 Location – quiet space, uninterrupted (Resource room). While
Jessica practises using her switch in her Art class, this is not an
ideal location for collecting data
 Prompt dependency - It was only through our ongoing data
collection process that we were able to see that Jessica was
prompt dependent.
Please record the length of time it takes Jessica to press a switch placed on her right cheek to
restart the music playing after the music has stopped. Then calculate the average time.
Jan
19
(Sec)
Jan
20
Feb
21
Feb
22
Feb
23
Mar
16
Mar
17
Apr
13
Apr
14
Apr
15
May
11*
May
12*
May
13*
1
7
4
13
6
7
8
7
11
5
15
12
16
15
2
14
6
5
4
12
10
9
6
11
11
4
14
13
3
9
1
9
9
10
7
4
6
4
7
8
9
10
4
15
35
14
6
15
6
4
6
3
4
27
30
8
5
5
12
9
27
9
12
3
5
8
5
13
27
19
6
8
19
33
22
7
8
4
3
9
4
15
22
17
7
18
5
16
16
8
4
5
6
11
3
11
12
12
8
6
6
31
14
5
4
4
4
10
2
6
14
9
9
21
12
10
8
9
8
3
6
10
10
10
12
8
6
3
5
19
3
14
7
6
14.3
9.3
7.5
5.1
6.1
8.8
5.7
11.6
16.1
11.9
Average
Seconds
10.25
11
16.25
Prompt dependency It was only through our ongoing data
collection process that we were able to see
that Jessica was prompt dependent.