| Learner Profile | Simeoni is in his late 20’s. He left school at age 14 because he said, “he wasn’t learning anything”. He had lots of small jobs but always got into arguments over complaints that he had not done the job that he had been told to do. He knows he can’t get ahead without better reading and writing skills. He has work skills but that is not enough. He has to be able to read better. |
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| Short Term Goal | Read at the 110 level to pursue his educational goals. |
| Demonstration | Simeoni must read a passage developed by his tutor containing words from his known sight vocabulary. He must then figure out unknown words using context or root words and explain to his instructor how he figured them out. |
| Skill and Level | Uses a variety of strategies to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words (for example: uses the context, breaks the word into syllables or other recognizable units; uses a dictionary; uses phonics) |
| Effect of the Learning Disability | Simeoni is unable to decode using sounds. He needs to expand his choices beyond “I know this word”, “I don’t know it”. He guesses words based on what the word looks like and not what it means. |
| Accommodation | Simeoni is not evaluated on his ability to use phonetic based skills, only sight and context cues. |
| Learner’s Words | “People always told me not to guess what a word was. They used to say sound it out. Well I just can’t. I’ve really tried but I can’t. Now that I know some different ways to figure out a word like what word fits or makes sense. It’s great. I was always told to look for little words in the words and sound it out. That didn’t work neither. Now my tutor taught me to see if I can find a base word - root word he calls it - and that sometimes helps me figure it out. I like that he doesn’t always tell me to sound it out.” |