Jim in School

Jim is a very successful student. He is an active participant is all class activities and who completes all assignments in a timely manner. However, this has not always been the case…

The hand fatigue that Jim experiences due to his medical condition has made it difficult for him to keep up with the written work that is expected of students in his program. His teachers reported that, although Jim did very well in all other activities and the content of his written work was superior, his actual production of written work was significantly slower and less legible than that of his peers; Jim typically was able to produce only 50% of the written work completed by the other students in a given length of time. Jim’s only IEP goal has been related to increasing this percentage.

However, the accommodations that had been provided to him during previous years – pencil grips, extended time to complete work, and shortened assignments – were not robust enough to help him as his written assignments lengthened and became more complex earlier this year. In addition, Jim, his teachers, and his parents were all concerned that continuing to provide extended time and shortened assignments might actually impede Jim’s opportunity to benefit from his classes.

After much discussion, careful consideration, and extended trials, Jim’s IEP team decided that, in addition to the pencil grips, Jim’s written productivity could be augmented through the use of a system of several Assistive Technology devices - existing classroom computers, his family’s home computer, an electronic keyboarding device, a small voice-recorder and a USB flash memory drive that could be easily transported between computers.

The team also decided that Jim could make the decision about which of the devices were most appropriate for each writing task as long as the quality of his finished products was at the expected high level.