Student Introduction

The student I have chosen to work with for the Learner Analysis project is a fifth grade boy who has Autism. He has been a part of the Laredo school community since kindergarten and is involved in the school play, among other activities. I have chosen the pseudonym "Ben" for this student and will be referring to him by that name from this point on.

Ben and his family live in the neighborhood surrounding Laredo Elementary school and he walks to school with his mother and younger sister every day. Ben's mother works at Laredo as a paraprofessional for the SPED department. She works one-on-one with a first grade student down the hallway and is therefore always available for her son. Ben's family is supportive of him and very invested in his education. Currently, they are trying to get him into Aurora Quest, a K-8 school for gifted students. He is considered to be gifted in math, and works with a teacher separately in the afternoon on 6th grade material.

Some of Ben's interests include weather, the number seven, and gemstones. Ben is able to count by sevens  to the number 5,243. There are drawings of the number seven in the some of the classrooms he frequents (homeroom, SPED, and art). He has become less interested in sevens lately and is now very fixated on gemstones. He carries several books about gems with him to school and knows everything about the four C's of diamonds, as well as facts about the rarest gemstones in the world. He will frequently discuss gemstones in Community Circle, a classroom discussion time. Ben would like to be a meteorologist one day.

Ben's IEP was recently reviewed in the annual process and will soon be re-evaluated in collaboration with the middle school team to prepare him for his next step in education. Many of his services are on consult only when needed. He does not receive any weekly time with the SPEd teacher, but is pulled daily for roughly one hour for math support as a gifted student.