Brittany Martinez
Dr. Huebner
SPE 4603 Assignment
October 18, 2010
Parent/Student Activities
Activities for Students with Down Syndrome
The activities that I am presenting are dealing with a student that has down syndrome. The
focus of my activities is to present activities that are visual, hands on, interactive, relate to life
experience, minimal fine motor demands, short and long term memory aids, and shortened tasks
that parents can do with their children. The student that I am focusing on building activities is
named Susan and she is a third grader with down syndrome. Susan’s parents are worried that she
is falling behind in her academics, particularly in her handwriting, coin counting, being able to
write about ideas, and her understanding of timelines. In order to encourage Susan’s parents to
continue working on her skills that they are concerned about at home and to help give ideas on
fun, engaging activities, I have devised four short lesson plans to address their needs.
Susan, like many other students that have down syndrome, struggles with her fine motor
skills, such as handwriting. Because handwriting requires motor skills and muscle coordination,
a few activities that do not necessarily demand handwriting words may be beneficial in
increasing Susan’s muscles and coordination. Below I have listed a brief lesson plan that Susan’s
parents can use to help her with her handwriting skills.
Concept/Objective: This lesson plan is designed for children in Kindergarten through fifth
grade. At the end of repeated activities and lessons the student will be able to trace eighty five
percent of letters without going out of the lines, an increased awareness of muscle coordination,
and be able to write whole sentences without going more than a fourth of an inch out of
designated writing areas. This lesson plan should be implemented over a long time frame and
should not involve more than thirty minutes of teaching at a time.
TEKS: Writing 15 a. Gain more proficient control of all aspects of penmanship.
Exploratory Activities (Introductory/Focus): To introduce the concept of handwriting, there
are many activities that Susan’s parents can use. One activity that Susan’s parents can use is to
show Susan her name written in many different large fonts, such as, times new roman, bradley
hand itc, impact, marker felt, zarfino, and Apple Chancery. Showing a student with down
syndrome examples of different handwriting focuses on visual learning and showing a student
their own name in different handwriting styles, such as listed below, make the lesson relate to
real life experience.
Susan- Times New Roman
Susan- Bradley hand itc
Susan- Impact
Susan- Marker felt
Susan- Zarfino
Susan- Apple Chancery
Concept Development Activities (Procedures/Activities): 1. Parents can build muscles and
increase coordination by beading with letters. Parents should begin with hand over hand guided
practice and move on to independent beading when Susan is able to bead eight consecutive beads
in a row without dropping any. 2. Susan’s parents should work with her on twenty-thirty piece
puzzles in order to fine tune fine motor skills and to practice the patience needed in mastering
handwriting. 3. Susan’s parents should work with her on painting large alphabetic letters on a
large white sheet in the color of her choice. They should begin by practicing painting with the
hand over hand technique, move on to Susan filling in dashed lines forming letters by herself,
and finally painting large letters by herself. 4. After Susan has had practice beading, doing
puzzles, and painting letters, next Susan’s parents can work on tracing. Susan should be allowed
to choose a large black and white picture off of the internet to place under tracing paper. Susan
will begin the activity by being guided in tracing with her parents. When Susan feels comfortable
enough on her own tracing, she should be allowed to do so independently and then to color in her
pictures to work on more fine motor skills. 5. Lastly, Susan’s parents should tape up a large
white
sheet across one wall in their home where Susan is allowed to “graffiti”. Susan’s parents should
begin with the hand over hand technique making graffiti letters, have Susan connect dashed letter
lines, and finally create her own graffiti letter artwork.
These activities will be helpful to Susan because they relate to her personally, they involve a
freedom of choice, they are designed to be short and fun, they minimize fine motor demands and
gradually work up to independent writing, they are hands on, and they involve visual learning, all
of which are helpful tools in education students with down syndrome.
Closure: Susan should be able to list different types of writing styles and perform different
handwriting activities. Parents should ask the question “Is it important to be able to write
legibly? Why?
When it seems that Susan has mastered the handwriting activities, Susan’s parents should ask
her to choose someone in her family to write a letter to, in order to demonstrate their handwriting
skill. The letter should be a brief half a page letter about anything that Susan wants to write
about.
A second skill that Susan’s parents are concerned with is her ability to determine coin value.
Because many students with down syndrome have needs in relating abstract concepts to real life
experiences, Susan’s parents should work on activities concerning the counting of money that
relate to Susan’s life. Three things that Susan likes are eating at McDonald’s, cooking, and
working on the computer so I have devised a lesson plan below that focuses on these hobbies.
Concept/Objective: This lesson plan is designed for students third grade to fourth grade and
should be done over a span of a few weeks. After many lessons, Susan should be able to count
all
coins up to a dollar, count out money up to fifty dollars, and add and subtract amounts up to a
difference of one hundred dollars.
TEKS: Math 1 c. Determine the value of a collection of coins and bills.
Exploratory Activities (Introductory/Focus): Susan’s parents should first take a handful of
coins and toss them onto the ground. Susan and her mom should see who can pick up the most
coins and count out how many coins each of them has. Next, one of Susan’s parents should again
take the same handful of coins and toss them onto the ground, but should now see who can pick
up the highest amount of money, thus, introducing the topic of different types of monetary value.
Concept Development Activities (Procedures/Activities): 1. Susan’s parents should go to the
grocery store and buy ingredients to make her favorite meals from McDonald’s, for example,
fries, salt for the food, hamburger buns, meat for hamburger, pickles, and so on. Susan should be
with her parents at the time and should note the price of each item. 2. One of student’s parents
should become the designated food distributor. Susan’s parents should label each bag of food
with the total amount of food and then divide the total price by the quantity of food in each bag,
figuring out the price per unit. Susan is not expected to divide the price per unit, but she be
informed of what it is her parents are doing and how they took these steps, in other words, she
should be aware of the process of configuring a price per unit. 3. Susan should get to decide what
she wants to order from the parent who is the distributor and should then purchase the items that
she wishes to make at her McDonald’s using exact change that she will have in her cash register.
4. Susan’s parents should help her cook and prepare the food and then they should help her set
prices for each item on a price list, allowing her to make a small profit off of each item. They
should then discuss the meaning of the word profit. 5. Susan’s parents should purchase a meal
from her McDonald’s requiring change to be given back to them. 6. Susan and her parents should
figure out how much of a profit she made off of each item and as a total. 7. In order to play on
the computer, Susan and her parents should come up with a chart that says how much she must
pay for every minute that she uses the computer. 8. Susan should be required to make
transactions in order to play on the computer.
These activities will be helpful to both Susan and her parents because they explain an array of
life experiences, processes that she undergoes throughout her daily life, and allow her control
over her learning. Susan’s parents should begin by teaching about exact change and move on
after Susan is able to give exact change correctly ninety percent of the time. After Susan has
mastered exact change, her parents should introduce inexact amounts of money, requiring change
to be given. Susan should be able to give change to her parents with an accuracy of eighty
percent in amounts under fifty dollars.
Closure: Susan should be taken to McDonald’s and purchase her own meal with money earned
from her McDonald’s business. Parent’s should discuss with her what people use their
knowledge of counting money for and how it is important in her life.
A third academic concern that Susan’s parents have is in her english writing. Susan has a
difficult time understanding the process of writing and her stories are often written with no
particular order of events. In order to address this problem with writing, Susan’s parents should
engage in interactive and visual activities, such as, the activity listed below.
Concept/Objective: This lesson plan is designed for students from grades second to fourth and
should be implemented within a course of lessons, lasting no longer than thirty minutes each.
After these series of mini lessons, Susan should be able to brainstorm story ideas, using an idea
organizer, line up events in the order that they occur, list subtopics under
each event, and create a story using all of these elements.
TEKS: Writing 14 a. Write to record ideas and reflections c. Write to communicate with a
variety of audiences.
Exploratory Activities (Introductory/Focus): Susan loves dogs so in order to introduce the
topic of writing, Susan’s parents can read her a story about dogs and then read Love That Dog
about a boy exploring the writing process, his thoughts on different types of writing genre, and
the topic of his dog. Susan and her parents can then discuss what she thought of the two stories
and if they inspired her to write about a topic in particular.
Concept Development Activities (Procedures/Activities): 1. Because of Susan’s love for dogs,
Susan and her parents can create a visual idea organizer by drawing a large dog house with
wooden planks on them. Each wooden plank can contain one of Susan’s topic ideas for her story,
thus creating a graphic visual organizer. 2. After Susan selects a topic, Susan will have rungs that
will go on a ladder that she will write the events of her story on. 3. After Susan has completed
her rungs filled with story events, Susan and her parents can create a “doggy” ladder leading up
to a dog clubhouse. At the top, their will be a dog clubhouse drawn by Susan and leading up to it
will be a ladder. The ladder will only have the two sides to it and will not have the rungs. 4.
Next, Susan will take the rungs that she has written her story events on and will place them
between the two wooden poles in the order that she wants them to occur, with the first event
located at the bottom of the ladder and the last event at the top near the doggy clubhouse to
create an event ladder. 5. In the next step of the prewriting process, Susan will take different
colored ribbons that she has written an idea about each event on and tape them onto each rung.
Each rung should have at least three colored, descriptive ribbons and each ribbon should be taped
to the rung that it describes. 6. Finally, Susan will begin the writing process, making sure to write
about each rung and its descriptive ribbons before proceeding to the next event.
This activity will be an effective prewriting and writing tool because of its hands on and
visual appeal. The prewriting process will no longer be a piece of paper with abstract ideas, but
will embody Susan’s interests and help her to create a story with a timeline of events. Because
Susan helped to create the prewriting process and took an active role in creating the project, she
will be more likely to remember to follow a chain of events in her story and create a piece of
writing that will reach more audiences.
Conclusion: Susan should choose two people to share her story with, whether they be parents,
her friends, her neighbors, or other family members. Susan’s parents should review the
prewriting process that she demonstrated.
A fourth academic area that is of concern to Susan’s parents is her understanding of history
timelines. Susan is still trying to grasp abstract ideas, such as, a timeline in history and needs
some extra help at home. Below I have outlined a lesson plan that Susan’s parents can do with
her in order to help her grasp the concept of a historical timeline.
Concept/Objective: This lesson plan is designed for students second grade to fifth grade and
should be done over in different sittings. After this activity, Susan should be able to plot events
on a timeline with a ninety percent accuracy, create her own timeline, and interpret a timeline by
answering four out of five questions correctly about dates of events when looking at a timeline.
TEKS: History 3 a. Create and interpret timelines
Exploratory Activities (Introductory/Focus): Susan’s parents should begin to introduce the
topic of her own personal timeline by talking about main events that have occurred in her life,
such as, her birth, the birth of her brother, their trip to Hawaii, when they moved to Texas, etc.
Susan will then be asked to list some of the events in her life that have been important to her to
be included in the timeline. Her parents should explain that just like her life where things
happened at certain times, history has had a timeline where certain important events have
occurred.
Concept Development Activities (Procedures/Activities): 1. Susan and her parents will look at
a photo book of her life and select pictures to make copies of that represent important events that
have taken place throughout her life. Susan can draw pictures of events that have occurred if
there are no photos on record of them. 2. Susan’s parents should estimate about what season and
year each event took place on and draw a timeline that lists fall, winter, spring, and summer of
each year of Susan’s life. 3. Susan should place pictures and drawings on the appropriate season
and year of her life that they occurred with assistance from her parents. 4. Susan’s parents should
then have Susan help them to create a timeline for their marriage, partnership, or experiences
together and should follow the same steps. 5. Susan should select a business that interests her, a
city, or another subject area that has a timeline and research its events. Then, she should follow
these same steps and place the events in the correct timeline area, this time with specific days,
months, and years listed on the timeline.
Conclusion: Susan’s parents should ask her five questions about each timeline and she should be
able to accurately interpret the timelines eighty percent of the time.