BrainSTARS: New Learning Jeanne E. Dise-Lewis, PhD, Margaret Lohr Calvery, PhD, and Hal C. Lewis, PhD, BrainSTARS: Page 1 of 2

Use classroom performance, rather than global scores on intelligence and achievement testing, as your guide to instructional objectives and modifications.

All academic content areas

Use everyday activities

1. As a general rule, if your student has an IQ of 85 or lower, interventions and instruction will be most beneficial when provided in normal day–to-day environments (classroom and home) rather than in pull-out therapies or extra-curricular tutoring.

2. Reinforce and reward your student’s efforts to use strategies.

Change the environment

1. Effective interventions will be linked specifically to the cause of the error or problem. Carefully analyze student errors, and determine WHY they occur. For example, if a multiplication problem is incorrect, is it because the student cannot remember number facts, does not understand place value, cannot "carry" a number correctly, has numbers misaligned, or does not understand the procedure? Identify the problem step or steps, and teach these separately.
2. Schedule a daily study hall to review new assignments and to reinforce new learning.
3. Because of brain injury, your student will require redundancy and repetition. Increase opportunities for review and practice by:
   • team teaching, if possible
   • informing parents about school topics
   • reducing the number of topics your student is expected to master in each class
   • carrying one theme across several content areas
4. Provide a model for your student to follow (such as a sample of a subtraction problem which requires regrouping, or a sample topic sentence and two supporting details).
5. Shorten lengthy tests and homework assignments.
6. Allow extra time to complete tests and seatwork.
7. Explain the connections between new and previously learned information.
8. Grade your student on the accuracy of completed work. Do not penalize him for non-completed items.

Teach new skills

1. Encourage and teach use of appropriate compensatory tools and materials (a number line, counting blocks, calculator, number facts chart, real coins and money, a clock face with moveable hands, videotapes to introduce or reinforce textbook information, a note taking buddy, a reading buddy, spelling and grammar checking computer program).
2. Teach explicit learning strategies, such as:
   • previewing content
   • reading titles and headings
   • following a model
   • highlighting words or sections which tell who, what, where, why, when and how
   • self-checking and self-correcting after short intervals
   • reciting and rehearsing information to be learned.
3. Teach concepts through multisensory instruction: written, oral, pictorial, tactile, and kinesthetic.

Reading

Use everyday routines

1. Suggest that your student try reading material aloud, instead of silently, to see if it increases comprehension, memory and attention to task.

Change the environment

1. Provide books on tape or large print books. Textbooks on tape are available from Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic (1 800 221 4972).
2. Provide guided reading questions, outlines, and organizers.
3. Write page number to find specific answers next to each question on the worksheet.
4. Decrease amount of independent reading required.
5. Provide a competent oral reading buddy.
6. Provide your student with a set of books he can keep at home to highlight or underline.

Teach new skills

1. Teach strategies which "good readers" use, such as pre-reading, previewing, and self-questioning.
2. Teach important vocabulary before beginning a new passage or unit.
3. Teach color-coding strategies (yellow for main idea or topic sentence, green for relevant details, orange for explanations or definitions, etc.)

Math

Change the environment

1. Do not require your student to copy problems from the board.
2. Provide a model or models of correctly completed problems on worksheet.
3. Provide space on worksheet for all computations. Have your student circle her final answer at the end. Don’t use separate answer sheets.
4. Reduce quantity of required problems; emphasize concept, process, correctness, completeness, and self-checking over quantity.
5. Provide number facts table and/or number line for computation.
6. Provide list of rules, formulas, steps to follow, flow chart, and examples.
7. Use manipulatives and visuals such as blocks, abacus, number line, coins, and fractions wheels.
8. Match level of instruction to functional needs of student, for example, let a ninth grade student take Consumer Math, rather than Algebra.

Teach new skills

1. Teach the use of graph paper or vertically lined paper to enhance organization and spacing.
2. Teach use of calculator and functional math procedures (estimating amount of money needed for purchases) instead of continued focus on calculations.

Use everyday routines

1. Provide opportunities to practice math skills in natural settings by having your student:
   • figure out what time lunch period is over
   • estimate how much time she has to get to class
   • estimate the amount of money needed to purchase a snack
   • use a measuring cup to make macaroni and cheese
   • make change from a school store purchase
   • figure out how many rolls of crepe paper are needed to decorate the school gym for an upcoming event

Written language

Use everyday activities

1. Use a clipboard to stabilize paper.
2. Encourage your student to write down telephone messages, copy a short announcement, write down the results of a class vote, etc.

Change the environment

1. Decrease written language requirements: assign a “scribe” or use fill-in-the-blanks, true-false and matching formats for test questions.
2. Allow tests to be read aloud, and let student respond orally.
3. Allow student to dictate rather than write.

From BrainSTARS, Brain Injury: Strategies for Teams And Re-education for Students, © 2002 Jeanne Dise-Lewis, PhD. Used with permission. The manual is available in English and Spanish. For more information or to order copies, call 720.777.5470 or chris.moores@childrenscolorado.org. A short video on how to use the BrainSTARS manual is available at www.youtube.com/BrainSTARSprogram.

Jeanne Dise-Lewis, PhD is a child clinical psychologist, director of the Psychology Program for the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at The Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Psychiatry and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Dr. Dise-Lewis is a Magna cum Laude graduate of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania (MS in Human Learning and Development), and the University of Denver (PhD in Child Clinical Psychology). A member of the faculty of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center since 1984, Dr. Dise-Lewis has extensive experience in working with children and families of individuals who have acquired brain injuries. For the past 23 years, she has been the director of the Rehabilitation Psychology Services at The Children’s Hospital, creating several innovative programs of services for children who have medical needs and their families. She has developed workshops and presented papers nationwide in the area of pediatric traumatic brain injury.  She has been the principle investigator of three federal grants and has developed the BrainSTARS Manual, along with other innovative consultation programs regarding acquired brain injuries in children and adolescents. She is the PI of a grant funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention titled “An Investigation of Outcomes associated with Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury” and currently is the co-director of a Personnel Preparation grant funded by the US Department of Education, “Preparing School Psychologists to Meet the Needs of Students who have Acquired Brain Injury.” 

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