Case Report for Zach Hamilton

Sonya Elliott

RE 5725

Case Report

07/18/10

Case Report for Zach Hamilton

Zach Hamilton is an eleven year old boy who is going into the sixth grade. Zach is a very respectful and attentive student. Zach came to the reading clinic everyday ready to learn. Zach loves football and played for his school team. His family consists of his mother, father, a younger brother and himself. Zach has been a student at the reading clinic for two previous semesters, the fall and the spring. Zach is a very cooperative student to work with. He enjoyed the different challenges presented to him and never once complained about any of the work.

In the initial testing for Zach we began with the WRI. For this test Zach’s recognition of words in isolation was almost perfect up to the eighth grade level. He scored a 100% on levels PP through fourth grade. For levels fifth and sixth grade he scored a 95%, for the seventh grade level he scored an 85% and for eighth grade he scored a 60%. Based on these percentiles Zach’s instructional level for WRI is seventh grade and for frustration level it would be eighth grade.

For the oral reading assessment Zach scored a 90 word per minute rate with an 84% accuracy score on the fourth grade level. When I went up to a fifth grade passage his scores were 67 words per minute with 66% accuracy. Based on these oral reading scores Zach’s rates were very low for the grade levels. His instructional level would be fourth grade and his frustration level would be on a fifth grade level. Just to make sure that the oral reading scores correlated with the silent reading scores I completed two silent reading passages with Zach. On the third grade silent reading passage Zach scored a 113 word per minute rate with a 100% comprehension. On the fourth grade silent reading level he scored 114 words per minute with a 75% comprehension. Zach’s fourth grade silent comprehension levels correlated with the fourth grade oral reading scores but his words per minute went up by 24 words per minute.

To get Zach started in a guided reading text that was on his instruction al level I began Zach on a third grade text based on his silent reading rate and accuracy. Zach really needed to focus on his fluency and rate. In order for Zach to hear fluent reading, we began our guided reading by partner reading. I would read a page of text and then Zach would read a page of text. We did this routine for about a week using the same text. When we began on the second text, a small third grade chapter book, we changed the order of reading up a bit. I would read the text first and Zach would read the following page. In order to maintain the fluency and rate, when we finished a chapter in the book we would go back to the beginning of the books and I would read the pages Zach read and he would read the pages I had read. This way Zach had heard the entire chapter read fluently to him and he had a chance to read the entire chapter himself. I also made sure to ask Zach comprehension questions throughout the chapter to make sure he comprehended what he had heard/read. Engaging Zach in oral conversation that was fluent and articulated correctly was important to me because his speech was much like his reading, choppy and nonflowing. I thought the more he engages in oral conversation that was fluent and flowing, this would carry over into his reading practices where we were focusing on fluency and rate. By the end of the tutoring, Zach’s fluency had increased and he was reading smoother, sentence by sentence rather than word by word. I found that one strategy that helped with Zach’s fluency the most was proper tracking. At the beginning of guided reading he would let his finger get ahead of his mouth and he would lose his place and have to backtrack through the text, but I reminded him to slow down and track each word and make sure his eyes were following his finger and his fluency showed growth after this.

Zach’s spelling assessment showed that he had all of the short vowel and lower level vowel pattern mastery. Due to this we started him on a doubling pattern word sort based on the spelling errors that were made on the fifth grade spelling list. Zach had all of the initial vowel patterns and sounds mastered due to having been in the clinic before and practicing them then. To start with we started him on a doubling pattern. He had words that had doubling consonants in them and had to sort them into the correct category. For example the word clap, Zach would have to sort it into a column of words that the final consonant doubled or did not. Zach did this with significant ease and we did a spell check with some of these pattern words to see that he had mastered the skill before we moved on to the next pattern. The next pattern we used was the endings –or and –er. Zach had to sort these words from a word bank and from this he figured out what each particular ending meant. We did a spell check on these and moved on. The next word sort was a word stem sort. They were words that began with trac-, therm-, and graph-. Again, Zach sorted these into proper columns from a word bank. Using the context clues from each word he figured out what each stem meant and we did a spell check and moved on to the final word sort. The final word sort was based on the prefixes –in, -re, and –sub. Zach sorted these words from a word bank and came to the conclusion of what each of the prefixes meant. From here I did a spell check on the words, in which Zach got all of them correct. Zach has a tremendous sense of word knowledge. For most of the word sorts it only took him a few minutes to catch onto the sorts and just a few words to find the proper meanings of each particular sort.

Repeated readings were one of Zach’s favorite things to do during tutoring time. He loved the challenge of trying to beat his record rate. To begin with repeated a passage from one of the guided reading selections we had already read. His beginning rate for the first repeat reading was 96 words per minute. He consistently increased with each repeated reading and on the fourth repeated reading he was at a rate of 112 words per minute. This was an overall increase of 16 words per minute on the first repeated reading. On the second passage repeated reading his beginning rate was slightly lower that the first passage at 93 words per minute. By the fourth repeated reading of passage two his rate was 109 words per minute. This was an overall increase of 16 words per minute for this passage. On the third passage his starting rate was 108 words per minute. This was an increase from the previous two passages starting rates. Again, with this passage as with all of the others, Zach’s rate steadily increased with each repeated reading. By the fourth repeated reading his rate was his best yet at 128 words per minute. On his last repeated reading passage Zach’s rate had significantly increased not only in the end product by with the first repeated reading of the passage as well. His beginning rate for this passage was 118 words per minute. This was a 10 word increase from any other beginning repeated reading he had done. By the end of this repeated reading his rate was the highest he had ever scored with 143 words per minute. Needless to say Zach was very proud of this score and so was I.

For Zach, I would anticipate that after a year of the same type of guided instruction he would be reading on a fourth grade level. He will continue to need help in the area of fluency by continuing to hear someone orally read to him so that he can hear fluent reading. In order to maintain rate and fluency proper tracking will need to continue as well as oral comprehension questions based on the text. I would also continue with repeated readings since this is an area that Zach enjoys and challenges himself.