Dori Senatori

M currently prefers solitary play and is inconsistent with her choice making when given two choices on a divided choice board. M’s goals include engaging in parallel and functional play, perform active choice making by asking for more of an object or food, and use her object symbols to make choices or requests.

 

M lives on campus at school so she does not have many opportunities to have social contact with non-disabled peers. When M goes home on the weekend she does have opportunities to play with her non-disabled cousins. M’s mom says that she used to not like playing with them because she didn’t like a lot of noise, but recently she has enjoyed playing with her cousins and seems to be used to the noise.

 

In class M has intermittent social contact with her peers throughout the period through adult led activities and play, with the use of symbols and objects and adult facilitated social interaction during the familiar task. Strategies for teaching social interactions for M are always through a game or task that is meaningful to her. M has opportunities to interact socially when at her dorm, and in the play area she has been observed passing a toy back and forth to one of the other students on the dorm without an adult to prompt her. Community outings are another teaching strategy for social interaction during restaurant, grocery shopping trips, and most recently White Cane Day.

 

Choice making strategies are attempted on a daily basis and have been presented on a divided choice board with M’s familiar symbols and objects during her familiar routine. Other goals for choice making include use of voice-output switches to indicated a choice or need, and recordings of favorite sounds that can be played back if M chooses to listen to them, also a consistent place for M’s basket of objects and familiar symbols so that she can access it and give it to the teacher to make a request or choice.