Case study: Noah

Collaborative curriculum planning for Noah

Noah is in Year 6 and has cerebral palsy with spastic quadriplegia. He is in a mainstream classroom in a primary school.

Noah uses a wheelchair and has functional use of his left hand only. He can use his left arm for support on occasion. Noah has sustained a severe traumatic brain injury. As a result, he has limited vision in his right eye, which is fixed and dilated. Noah uses a powered wheelchair as his sole means of independent mobility. He receives high support from a teacher’s aide for personal care. He requires one-to-one assistance for all school excursions and activities.

Noah attends speech pathology every fortnight to help his clarity of speech and verbal communication. He tires easily and has limited concentration and recall. Noah can read simple stories and discuss what he has read. Instructions need breaking down into short, manageable steps.

Noah is beginning to use a computer independently. However, his typing skills are slow, and he requires a large keyboard. He is working on increasing his speed and accuracy in using a mouse to navigate the computer.

Noah plays wheelchair soccer, swims regularly, and goes camping with his family.

Using collaborative curriculum planning, Noah’s support team identifies that he requires substantial adjustments in all his subjects.

Learning goals for Noah

Noah’s support team decide that his learning goals will be to:

• increase speech clarity
• improve comprehension
• become independent when constructing short texts
• improve fine motor skills
• improve hand-eye coordination
• improve confidence with fundamental movement skills, such as throwing and catching.

Planning and programming – PDHPE

Noah’s PDHPE teacher uses the information and decisions from the collaborative curriculum planning process. He considers appropriate adjustments for Noah for the unit of work on movement skills. He includes them throughout his program, describing ways in which Noah can demonstrate evidence of his learning.