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Questions:

1. Does the Conclusion and Reflections section address the student’s weaknesses?

2. Are there any areas that do not flow or that seem unorganized?

3. Are there any comments that seem biased or harsh?

4. Are the recommendations for future instruction adequate?

Case Study

Name: M
Grade: 3
Age: 8
Dates of testing: September-November, 2010
Examiner: Katherine Barrood
Date of report: December 17, 2010

A. Introduction

Philosophy

Being a proficient reader is imperative to becoming a lifelong learner. Developing proficiency in reading is a cumulative task. A child’s learning progresses through developmental stages, with subsequent skills building on previous knowledge. I believe in using a variety of techniques to teach the many skills and strategies that good readers need. Literacy instruction involves teaching multiple strategies to decode words, read fluently and read for meaning. A reading specialist should teach decoding skills and fluency within the context of comprehension-oriented reading instruction. The learning environment should be inviting and child-centered, nurturing and supportive. Every student should feel comfortable enough to take risks.

A child is an individual, each with his or her own maturity and pattern of growth. A reading specialist understands that children learn things differently and that they learn at their own pace. Furthermore, a reading specialist understands the need to teach in different modalities such as auditory, kinesthetic, and visual. Effective literacy instructors take the time to understand each child. The instructor accepts each child for who they are and works to move them forward. The instructor promotes individualized education and is committed to developing instruction which meets the needs of all students.

Assessments are used to guide teacher decisions about instruction. Reading assessments should be used to determine a student’s instructional level, specific areas of difficulty and to document growth. The reading specialist should use student assessments as well as evaluations of lesson effectiveness to improve teaching as necessary.

Word recognition difficulties underlie the vast majority of reading problems. I believe that sound literacy instruction includes lots of time for reading both orally and silently, vocabulary instruction, word study, explicit instruction of a variety of decoding strategies, fluency practice, writing and opportunities for listening and speaking. The ultimate goal of a reading specialist is to teach children that proficient readers apply multiple strategies flexibly as needed to make sense of text.

As a reading specialist I anticipate working with students as well as teachers. In addition to offering support to teachers in regards to literacy instruction, I will be assessing and diagnosing students who have reading difficulties. Working with individual or small groups of students, I will use assessments to guide my teaching of a variety of reading strategies. In this occupation I can give children two of life’s greatest gifts, a love of reading and the capability of becoming a lifelong learner.

Overview of Case Study

Presented in this case study is a summary of my time spent with a student who has reading difficulties as reported by his parents and teachers. I worked with him individually over the course of several weeks. I have indicated the assessments that I administered and stated the results of each. I have included an analysis of the various test results followed by recommendations for future instruction.

B. Background Information

My tutee M, is a third grade boy at a suburban public school. He is 8 years old and he is the middle child of three boys. He lives with his mother and father, both of whom work full time. He plays football, basketball and baseball. His father coaches teams for all three of the boys in the family. M likes to read and he sometimes reads before bed at night. He likes to read Horrible Harry, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and fairy tale books. Overall, M is a friendly and cooperative young boy.

For the past few years M has been receiving basic skills instruction in reading. He is reading six months below grade level according to his second grade teacher. When M was tested at the end of second grade, he was deemed borderline for receiving services in third grade. In lieu of receiving basic skills instruction this year in third grade, M was placed in a regular education classroom that has an in-class special needs support teacher. M often works with the support teacher for his reading instruction.

M and I met for ten one-hour sessions in the evening at his home. M’s mom reported that he looked forward to our sessions together. M was attentive, cooperative and maintained a positive attitude for the better part of our sessions. There were occasions, however, when M appeared tired and restless or was easily distracted.

I spent the bulk of our time together assessing M in a variety of areas related to his reading ability. I planned activities for M based on the assessments I administered in an effort to improve M’s reading ability. I usually alternated activities and assessments during our one hour session.

C. Tutoring Summary

Reading Attitudes

I gave M an interest survey, Tell Me What You Like. He graded 32 topics with a grade of A (really like it), B, C, D and F (can’t stand it). I found out that he likes sports, outdoor activities such as camping and fishing, animals, science fiction, and his family. He’s not too fond of spiders, ghosts, or cooking and he can’t stand sharks.

I interviewed M with the Burke Reading Interview. I discovered that M likes to read and he expressed a desire to read more challenging books. He stated two reading strategies that he usually uses when he comes to a word he doesn’t know. He “taps out” the word, or he skips the unknown word and reads on to see if can figure it out in context. He knows that his friend is a good reader because, “he knows every word in the book.” M mentioned the same two reading strategies whenever he was asked how to help another person who was having difficulty reading. He mentioned that his mother taught him how to read, and that he is a good reader because he, “never gives up.”

I used the knowledge I gained from the interest survey and the reading interview while selecting reading material that I thought would interest M. I also made an effort to turn our learning activities into games so that M would develop a positive attitude toward our sessions together.

Informal Reading Assessments

I used the Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 to assess M’s oral reading, silent reading and listening capabilities. I administered the QRI-5 over the course of several weeks. I determined M’s independent, instructional and frustration levels in all three reading modes using the QRI-5.

I administered the QRI-5 graded word lists in an effort to determine a starting point for the reading assessments. M tested independent at the Primer Level, instructional at Level 1, and reached frustration at Level 2. M had the following miscues when reading the graded word lists:

Father as feather

heard as hard

brain as bran

I note that M’s attempts at the words included correct initial and final sounds as well as a close approximation of the medial sounds. As the words got more difficult, M’s attempts at the word did not always include correct initial and final sounds, and the approximations of the medial sounds were incorrect. For example he read the following:

Shiny as sing

Pieces as pass

Suit as shout

Based on the graded word list results, I began with a Level 1 oral reading assessment. I have summarized the results of all the informal reading assessments into three categories as follows:

Oral reading

M tested independent at the Pre-Primer 3 Level. He tested instructional at the Primer Level through Level 3. He reached frustration at Level 4.

I administered the PP3 Level twice on separate occasions because the first time I administered the PP3 Level, M exhibited an overall lack of focus during our session. Though he read the first PP3 passage quickly and with only two miscues, he was not able to retell the story or answer the comprehension questions. He noted that the passage rhymed, so he may have been primarily focused on the rhyming words at the end of each line instead of attending to the meaning of the passage. When I re-administered a second PP3 QRI a week later, M read the passage without any miscues, retold the story with great detail and answered all the comprehension questions correctly.

Though M tested instructional at Level 3, I note that he did not self-correct as many of his miscues toward the end of the passage. I have seen a trend in M’s behavior where he seems to give up instead of working it out when the material is at a difficult level, and he has been working for a length of time.

M had a lot of miscues with the Level 4 passage and spent a great deal of time trying to decode the unfamiliar words. He was only able to retell 6 out of 68 ideas and his comprehension was at the frustration level. I conclude that M had difficulty comprehending the Level 4 passage because he focused all of his attention on decoding the words and thus was unable to understand the meaning of the passage.

Silent Reading

Before beginning his first silent reading assessment M stated that he preferred to read silently and that he usually reads silently in school and at home. M read the Primer Level passage with a reading rate of 124 words per minute. That was the fastest reading rate for him to date.

M tested instructional at the Primer Level through Level 3. He reached frustration at Level 4. As the reading passages became increasingly difficult, M’s reading rate slowed down. Overall, however, his silent reading rate remained faster than his oral reading rate for the same level passage. Thus, M reads faster when he reads silently.

I note that when M was reading the Level 4 passage he used his finger to mark each line as he read it. I hadn’t noticed M using that strategy with easier text. He also had a lot of difficulty coming up with ideas for the retelling. In fact, before beginning his last silent reading passage M expressed a strong dislike for the retelling portion of the assessment. He said that he disliked retelling the passage because he “can’t remember everything in the story.” The retelling may be more difficult for M as the text becomes more difficult. M could be focusing on decoding the words and thus has trouble remembering the content of the text.

Listening

M’s first listening assessment was also his first expository passage. He was quickly and easily able to recall 19 out of 54 ideas in the passage. However, while he answered all the explicit questions easily, he missed three out of four of the implicit questions.

M tested independent at Level 3 and instructional at Level 4. He reached frustration at Level 5.

Reading Comprehension

I primarily used the retelling and comprehension question portions of the QRI-5 to assess M’s comprehension abilities. I note that M had an easier time retelling the passages for which he obtained an independent comprehension score.

I administered the San Diego Quick Assessment. I started M with the preprimary card and stopped him at the Grade 4 card. He read all the words on the preprimary through grade 2 cards. He missed three out of ten words on the grade 3 card. He was able to read two out of ten words on the grade 4 card. These results indicate that M reads independently at the second grade level and reaches frustration at the third grade level.

I assigned an independent reading book, Marvin Redpost Kidnapped at Birth by Louis Sacher. M was asked to read a chapter or two as homework between our sessions. I used the book as a tool to address M’s reading comprehension, retelling and fluency.

Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

I administered the Informal Phonics Inventory. M was attentive and cooperative during the assessment. He scored 74 out of 93 total points. More specifically, M knows most, if not all, consonant sounds, digraphs and initial and final consonant blends. He had a lot of trouble with the short vowels and long vowel digraphs. He had miscues with the following words:

Led, sup, hug and rot

Loaf and coal

Gain and aim

Heat

Town

I administered the Test of Phonemic Awareness. M was able to identify teacher generated rhyming words, but he had difficulty generating a word that rhymes with a teacher prompt. He was able to isolate, identify, categorize, blend, add, and delete phonemes. However, M did have difficulty substituting one phoneme for another to make a new word. I note that both times M was required to generate new words on his own; he experienced difficulty with the task. M also had difficulty segmenting beginning and ending cluster phonemes.

M has not mastered the short vowel sounds yet; and though he did seem familiar with the fact that vowels make two sounds, he didn’t know which sounds were short and which were long. He also had no idea what causes a vowel to change its sound. He vaguely remembered a rule about an ‘e’ at the end of a word, but he couldn’t verbalize what the rule was.

I created a set of short vowel picture-cue cards. I laid out the cue cards at each of our subsequent sessions so we could review each of the short vowel sounds every week. I told M to refer to the cards whenever he was unsure of the short vowel sounds while we worked.

I played rhyming word games with M during our sessions. I asked him to generate rhyming words for my prompt. I also played phoneme substitution games. I was very explicit in my request, “Change the /m/ in ‘melt’ to a /b/ to make a new word.” M was able to substitute phonemes easily for beginning and ending sounds, but had more difficulty substituting medial vowel sounds such as, “Change the /i/ in ‘snip’ to a /a/ to make a new word.” He also had trouble when I asked him to, “Change the /w/ in wept to /sl/ to make a new word.”