Case study: Huong

Collaborative curriculum planning for Huong

Huong is in Year 11 and has speech and language difficulties. This affects his receptive and expressive language skills. 

Huong’s vocabulary skills are developing. He struggles with:

• comprehending instructions or information presented orally
• using complex sentences and grammatical structures orally and in writing.

Because of this, Huong finds it challenging to complete class work and assessment tasks in the timeframe required.

Huong receives a lot of support at home to help him plan and manage his tasks. He has access to special education staff when he needs assistance with assessment tasks.

Huong is interested in early childcare. He aims to go to TAFE when he finishes Year 12 to gain childcare qualifications.

Through collaborative curriculum planning, the school’s special education teacher discusses Huong’s learning goals and priorities with Huong and his parents. They identify that Huong requires supplementary adjustments for most subjects.

Adjustments for Huong

Through collaborative curriculum planning, it’s decided that Huong would benefit from the following adjustments:

• explicit vocabulary instruction and language prompts
• modelling and guided practice of a variety of sentence structures
• scaffolding extended responses
• providing checkpoints for Huong when completing assessment tasks.

Huong’s English teacher considers how these adjustments can be used to support Huong’s learning throughout the unit of work.

Huong’s English teacher also considers the adjustments Huong will need for the assessment task. The chosen adjustments enable Aiden to access the task and demonstrate his achievement on the same basis as other students. The adjustments are:

• going through the task with Huong and ensuring he understands that each part of the task is worth equal marks
• checking Huong’s understanding by asking him to describe what he needs to do to complete the task
• negotiating a topic with Huong for his digital text. Huong will be producing a non-fiction text, as his language skills have demonstrated that he is more competent with factual language
• creating a checklist, including dates, of each element of the task that Huong can follow to complete the task
• helping Huong to create a storyboard for his digital text, using one of the online tools listed in the task
• providing Huong with a matrix to complete as preparation for his writing task.
• providing Huong with a scaffold (DOCX 15.38KB) to complete his written explanation.

The matrix Huong can use to prepare for his writing task looks like this:

Marking guidelines provided with the assessment task will be used to assess all students’ responses, including Huong’s. The adjustments provided for Huong do not impact on the outcomes to be assessed or the knowledge, understanding and skills students are to demonstrate.