Thomas is in Year 4 at a metropolitan all-boys school. He has a severe language disorder that impacts on his ability to comprehend oral information and express himself verbally. School-based and national assessment data indicate his level of achievement in literacy is approximately two years behind his peers. Thomas is given extra time to organise his thoughts and construct sentences.
Written expression is challenging for Thomas, as is generating ideas, retrieving memories, and applying spelling and grammar rules. He has been observed to find the act of writing challenging. Thomas’s teacher gives him extra time to complete classwork and tests, simplifies and models her instructions and regularly checks in with him to ensure he is on task.
Thomas receives private speech pathology, and his parents have consented for the school to consult regularly with the speech pathologist to ensure that supportive strategies are used in the classroom.
The learning support teacher at the school summarised recommended strategies from the speech pathologist in a learning profile. This document is stored in a shared drive accessible by staff who work with Thomas. To further support Thomas’s literacy development, the learning support teacher works with him in a small literacy support group up to four times a week in the classroom. The focus of the group is to scaffold classwork and simplify tasks to assist with his comprehension and written output. Thomas’s teacher and the learning support teacher meet with Thomas’s family at least twice per year to discuss his progress and to review the support available to him at the school.