Collaboration around facilitating emergent literacy: Role of occupational therapy

ABSTRACT

The article uses a case study to illustrate transdisciplinary perspectives on facilitating emergent literacy skills of Elsa, a primary grade student with autism. The study demonstrates how a professional learning community implemented motor, sensory, and speech/language components to generate a classroom model supporting emergent literacy skills. Assistive technology used included a speech-generating device, picture boards, an alternate keyboard, and a talking word processor.

Elsa was 6 years old and had been diagnosed with autism. She used a multimodality communication system including verbalization, a speech-generating device, and a picture/text communication board. Elsa sought intense sensory input (oral, deep pressure), and had very low muscle tone; additionally motor-control challenges restricted her classroom participation. In structured settings, she could join dots to produce a vertical and a horizontal line. However, she could not independently participate in paper and pencil activities to produce recognizable results.

A collaborative approach was used to facilitate this student’s engagement in the typical curriculum; it utilized research-based information from the disciplines of regular education, special education, occupational therapy, and speech language pathology, with the intervention supports delivered in the regular education classroom. Apart from addressing specific performance components, occupational therapy worked to enhance the discipline-specific interventions provided by all team members to optimize Elsa’s classroom functioning. Issues involved in interprofessional collaboration and the solutions adopted by the team are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergent literacy
• interprofessional collaboration
• role of occupational therapy

Acknowledgments

Our heartfelt thanks to Elsa for her patience as we learned from her, to her parents for their continual support to the educational process, and to our families for their patience through the many hours we worked at home. We acknowledge the work of Cathy Pravel, speech-language pathologist, and Sandra Willhoff, classroom teacher, whose expertise formed a major part of this collaboration on literacy. Sincere thanks to the administration of Sycamore Community Schools, particularly the staff of Blue Ash Elementary school and Elsa’s peers, for the support that made this endeavor successful.