Reading 628
Family Survey
MSU Campus
This paper will discuss information gathered with a family survey completed on November 20th, 2005. I did not use my case study student due to the fact that his parents do not speak English and I did not have a Spanish version of the survey to send out.
The family is a Caucasian middle class family where both parents work demanding jobs for a large corporation. Both parents have college degrees and value sports, work, and education within their family unit. Extended family often comes to Kentucky from out of state in order to assist with the care of the children when a parent is traveling due to the demands of their employment. The Grandfather that comes to help out is a retired teacher and coach. Other friends help out with babysitting on a short term basis when child care is needed due to parents working on the weekends. They live in a subdivision just outside of Murray, Kentucky in a fairly new home that they own. They have three children: two boys and one girl. The first child is a 5th grader, the second one in 2nd grade, and a 2 year old daughter. The child that I am particularly interested in this family is in 5th grade. I will call him A throughout this paper.
A is an enjoyable child. He is friendly, out going, generally well behaved, and well dressed, usually in sports related, name brand casual clothes. He is well liked at school and often has friends over. He is invited to his friend’shome and does a variety of activities with them. His best friend is also highly interested in sports, since his dad is a professional coach. A prefers to be outside riding his bike, playing basketball, football and baseball. He also enjoys riding an ATV with his parents. He plays on local and traveling sports teams for baseball. He has played soccer, football, and basketball as well. His father has also been his coach at the local level in baseball. A also enjoys playing video games. Most of all he likes being outside.
A wears glasses consistently at school and does not seem bothered by them. It appears that he enjoys the social and academic atmosphere within the school setting. He has some problems completing work, yet he knows what is expected of him in the school setting. The lack of completing work is most likely due to the demands of extra curricular activities after school and on weekends.
A has had problems with learning to read during his entire school career. He moved to Murray at the beginning of 1st grade after having moved from another state. Parents changed school districts after 1st grade because they were unhappy with the progress he was making. A’s mother reported that he does not like to read. If he does read a book it is sports related.
His mother reported that he has trouble with comprehension including retelling events and needs to reread a story two times in order to understand what he has read.
A has been receiving Title 1 services for at least the past two years.In 4th grade his DIBELS scores were 24th%tile in fall of 04, 9th%tile in the winter of 05, and 14th%tile in the springof 05. In the fall of 05 A scored at the 18th%tile on the DIBELS assessment. This information tells me that A is not a fluent reader and that this will adversely affect his ability to comprehend information read. I would have to do further assessment to find out why A is not a fluent reader. It may be that he is having difficulty with phonemic awareness, or decoding which will affect his reading rate as well as his ability to comprehend since he is having to use his cognitive abilities for these prerequisite skills rather than using it to comprehend the information read.
Last year, in 4th grade, A went through the REWARDS program as a Title 1 identified student. The REWARDS program reviews vowel sounds and combinations, and word affixes where the students learn how to break multisyllable words into manageable parts in order to decode. This program is a supplemental program to the regular reading instruction.After having gone through this program last year it was determined that A needed a more direct approach to increasing his reading skills since he did not make significant gains in his reading fluency as measured using DIBELS.
During 5th grade this year A is using the SRA Corrective Reading program level B-2. For this reading level and series A will use the decoding strategies of letter and word discrimination, sound and letter combinations, and word endings. A will also work with literal and inferential comprehension. The outcomes for this program are that A will read repeated readings at 120 words per minute with 98% accuracy while reading at about a 4.9 grade level. At the same time that A is receiving intensive instruction for decoding, fluency, and comprehension the teacher also needs to address the issue concerning motivation to understand the reason behind his state of mind. As educators we need to know whether the inability to read efficiently caused the lack of enjoyment or if other interests and family schedules are the cause of the lack ofavailable time and wanting to read.
For A both teachers and mother report that he does not enjoy reading and will avoid the task if at all possible. Due to A’s and his siblings’ high degree of involvement with after school activities and parent’s work schedules his time for reading outside of the school day are limited especially when combined with his lack of motivation. Parents know of the importance of practicing reading at home, but it is difficult to find the time to do so. The other siblings enjoy reading. They both enjoy reading and will read any kind of books.
It is the hope of this evaluator that A will be more successful this year in the Corrective Reading Series. The general outcomes for the B-2 level are that the students will be reading at a 4.9 grade level at its completion. This would be a generally acceptable level for a student presently in 5th grade. I would then suggest looking once again a reviewing the content in the REWARDS program to make sure that he can decoding multisyllable words during his 6th grade year. The next step is to ensure that the lack of motivation to wanting to read has been addressed. These should all lead to success during his middle school years that lead into high school and planning for a career.