For Summer 2010 Clinic Tutors: Re 5725

Tara Kivett

Case Report______

FOR SUMMER 2010 CLINIC TUTORS: RE 5725

Introduction:

Cassie is a 10 year old girl who will be in 5th grade this upcoming school year. She was recommended for receiving additional reading instruction during the summer. As a graduate reading clinician in Appalachian State University’s Master’s Degree Program in Reading Education, I conducted these initial assessments on June 23, 24, and 25.

Initial Literacy Assessments

A number of informal, diagnostic literacy assessments were administered including: an interest inventory and reading attitude survey, a Spelling Inventory, a Word Recognition in Isolation (WRI) test, a contextual reading test, a listening comprehension test, a Sense of Story evaluation, and analysis of oral and written composition. These assessments were given to determine Cassie’s independent, instructional, and frustration levels in the areas of Reading, Writing, Word Study, and Being Read To. A student’s independent level in a particular area is the highest at which he or she can successfully work without instructional support. The instructional level is the optimal level for working with instructional support. One’s frustration level is that at which he or she can not readily benefit even with instructional support.Cassie’s affect was favorable during the testing period. She worked diligently at the tasks and seemed focused at doing her best. When we got to the contextual reading assessment she seemed less sure of herself and was not as willing to make mistakes. By the end of the assessments Cassie was ready to move on to another task.

Reading and Interest Inventory

The interest inventory consisted of eighteen fill in the blank questions that I asked Cassie. Her answers allowed me to get to know her interests for possible books and writing topics. Cassie reported liking the subject of Math as well as the hobbies of softball and shopping. She expressed an interest in horses and the beach.

The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey is a pictorial survey made up of twenty questions. It provides quantitative estimates of children’s attitudes toward reading. The child circles her answer using Garfield who shows different emotions for each question. Cassie’s responses seem to indicate that she does not like to read for enjoyment when given free time at home but she seemed to be okay with reading at school when she is asked to by a teacher. Cassie needs to read books on her instructional and independent level on topics that she is interested in to develop a more positive attitude toward reading.

Spelling

This assessment consists of eight grade leveled word lists, each having 12 words, ranging from 1st to 8th grade that the student is asked to spell to the best of his or her ability. It allows us to see what orthographic knowledge the student has and it provides a list of words containing features (word patterns) typically learned at each grade level. The highest level at which the student can spell correctly at least 90% of the words is considered to be the independent level in spelling and phonics. At this level the student has most likely automatized spelling to sound correspondences and can use these words freely in writing without having to “sound them out”. The highest level at which he or she can spell at least 50% of the words correctly is considered to the instructional spelling/phonics level. At this level the student can be guided by a teacher and can accommodate new words and patterns into their existing knowledge of how letters work in spelling. The frustration level is when the student spells fewer than 40% of the words correctly. Errors made at this level cannot be analyzed for areas of need or possible instruction as they are making guesses beyond their current orthographic knowledge.

Here are Cassie’s results:

Cassie was independent at level 2 with a score of 100%. She is instructional at levels 3rd and 4th with a score of 58% and she made five errors on both lists. I chose to use 58% as her instructional level due to her mastery of the 2nd level words. Her frustration level is 5th where she spelled 33% of the words correctly and made eight errors. Cassie is a phonetic speller and writes the sounds that she hears in words. She has a mastery of blends and diagraphs (short, train) and is using long vowel patterns correctly (scream, queen). She is in need of instruction in knowing when to double consonants, drop e, or do nothing when adding inflected endings. This is evident in her spellings on list 3 and 4. She spelled chasing (chaseing), batter (bater), and stared (starred). Cassie also made errors in words that contained r-controlled vowels spelling thirsty (thursty), scurry (scury), and preparing (prepareing).

Word Recognition in Isolation

This instrument tests the child’s automatic recognition and word attack of printed words and has ten 20 word lists at levels of preprimer to eighth grade. The words on each list are flashed to the student for about ¼ of a second each until they misread a word. Then the word is opened up,untimed and they try again. The highest level at which a student can identify 90% of the words on the flashed presentation is the independent level of word recognition. These sight words if found in text should be able to be read fluently and without decoding by the student with no help from the teacher. The highest level where the student can read 70-89% of the words on a flashed presentation is the instructional level of word recognition in isolation. When the child’s recognition falls below 50% it is considered his or her frustration level. Cassie’s results are charted on the next page:

Cassie was independent on level 3 in word recognition in isolation where she scored 95% on the flash presentation and 100% on untimed. She is instructional on level 4 at which she scored 60% on flash and 80% on the untimed presentation. Cassie had similar results at her frustration level 5 with 65% on flash and 75% on untimed. Cassie read the words on lists preprimer through level 3 mostly with ease. I chose level 5 as the frustration because when given the untimed presentation she scored 5 % lower than at the untimed portion on level 4. When Cassie got to level 5 she made guesses that didn’t include appropriate vowel sounds and in some cases real words as she had been guessing on other levels. For example instead of saying frontier, Cassie guessed “forest” and “farnister” and “server” for surrender. She made up the words “circumstack” for circumstance and “ramchanging” for rampaging. Cassie’s spelling performance predicted she would be reading at levels 3 and 4 instructionally and Cassie’s instructional word recognition in isolation correlated with these results as she was instructional at level 4.

Contextual Reading

Cassie read passages at increasing grade levels of difficulty both orally and silently. This was used to assess her ability to read words in the context of a passage. The independent reading level is where he or she can read with at least 98% accuracy, good fluency (rate and prosody), and score at least 90% on comprehension. At the instructional level, the student is expected to read with at least 95% accuracy, acceptable fluency, and 70% comprehension. The student’s frustration level is when he or she can not recognize at least 90% of the words of the words accurately, reads disfluently, and answers less than 50% of the comprehension questions correctly.

Cassie’s results are charted below:

Oral Reading Silent Reading

I started the test at level 3, form A because Cassie scored 95% on the flashed presentation in word recognition in isolation. At this level Cassie read with 89% word accuracy, acceptable speed and 83% comprehension. These numbers indicate that this is Cassie’s frustration level but her speed was pretty good at this level and she made 16 errors. However, of those errors she inserted 4 words in one spot and she self corrected four errors. I was curious to see how she would do at level 4 which was also her instructional level in word recognition in isolation so I had her read this passage. Her scores were very similar to the level 3 passage with 89% accuracy, 107 words per minute but this time her comprehension fell to 32%. Given this data 3rd and 4th grade levels are frustrational for Cassie. This did not match up with her results from the Spelling inventory and word recognition in context as I had expected. Cassie scored 93% accuracy, very fluent reading, 120 words per minute, and 80% comprehension on level 2. I chose this as Cassie’s instructional level because comprehension was still good and she read fluently. Out of the eight errors that she made only two were meaning change errors. Cassie’s independent reading level appears to be level 1-2 where she read with 96% accuracy, very fluently, 107 words per minute, and 100% accuracy. Cassie did make four errors on this passage but she self corrected three of them and only one affected the meaning of the passage. Cassie seems to know a lot of words and how letters work in words but she is less confident in reading them when in a passage. She seemed to read the words that she thought were going to be in the passage rather than concentrate solely on what the words were. For example, she read “Thud was the sound (supposed to be noise) I hear, and then I saw my pup laying (supposed to be lying) in the street” on the level 2 passage. At level 2 in silent reading, Cassie scored 100% on comprehension and 149 words per minute. Her scores at level 3 were 15% comprehension and 135 words per minute. Her independent silent reading level seems to be 2nd grade which is not far off from the oral reading in context results. These results also indicate that comprehension is a weakness in silent reading as well. Cassie’s difficulties, therefore, seem to be in attending to the words on the page and slowing her reading pace to attend to comprehension. She needs much practice in reading at levels where she can trust her ability to depend on her sight vocabulary and her knowledge of how letters work in words at level 2.

Listening Comprehension

For this assessment I read Cassie passages beginning at her grade level 5 to assess her comprehension when she does not have to attend to word recognition on her own. After listening to the 5th grade level, Cassie scored only 15% on comprehension. When I read her the 4th grade level material she scored 85% which is her instructional listening level. This result was higher than Cassie’s oral reading in context for comprehension but still lower than expected for her grade level. It seems that Cassie’s difficulties in comprehension are due to her lack of attention to words in passages as well as concepts and language used in stories at her current grade level.

Sense of Story

This can be assessed by asking a child to retell a story that has been read to him/her. In their retelling it is noted if they include story elements, organization of ideas, and sentence structure. I first read Cassie the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Afterwards I had her retell it to me. She included 6 of 8 story elements (setting, characters, sequenced events, descriptions, conversation, and an ending). Using a scale of a to e with e being the most complete information give, Cassie achieved a score of C using chronological sequence linked by the words and then. In sentence syntax, Cassie got a score of C which means that she used complete sentences. The highest that she could have gotten was E which would have meant she used the book language from the story throughout her retelling. When I had Cassie listen to another story called “Poor Old Dog”, one that she had never heard, she gave me a retelling that warranted the same scores that she received on her first retelling. This retelling was shorter but included the same elements and still lacked feeling of characters and book language for transitions in the story. Cassie can retell a familiar or unfamiliar story with many details yet leaves out feelings of the characters and did not add any emotion into the story such as when the bears discover their things have been tampered with after arriving home. Also, she tends to link her ideas with words like “and” and “then”. I later found that this was similar to the way that she writes in connecting ideas.

Writing

To assess Cassie’s ability to compose a story I had her first tell me a story orally that I transcribed and then asked her to write the same story down without listening to it. The reason for this assessment is to see how free the child is to get his or her thoughts down on the paper as compared to how freely they communicate their ideas orally. Through their oral and written compositions I can monitor story elements that are included as well as sentence structure and spelling. I had Cassie tell me a story of a time that she was happy after I shared my own story. When telling me her story, she included 5 out of 8 story elements (setting, characters, sequence, description, and an ending. When she wrote her composition down she also included the same 5 out of 8 elements. She left out a beginning, feelings, and conversation. Feelings is an element that Cassie did not include in either of her retellings so this makes me think that she needs assistance in using this to get her message across in her writing. When she told her story she again used “and then” in her composition so she scored a C in organization for chronological sequence and syntax. However, in her written piece she got a score of D, using introductory, closing, and connecting words and phrases. She included phrases like “but when”, “a week later”, and “you could tell”. Although her phrasing was better she seemed to not be sure of where to end a thought and often put periods in the middle of a sentence. It seems that Cassie needs help organizing her ideas into coherent thoughts and varied sentence structures to make it more interesting to readers. While Cassie included some details, they were not developed and work in this area is also needed.

Instructional Plans and Progress

Plans were made across the instructional areas of reading, writing, word study (spelling and phonics), and being read to as a result of the conclusions drawn from the initial assessment. Tutoring lessons included activities in these four areas and were adjusted according to Cassie Sain’s progress and needs.

Reading

I selected text on Cassie’s instructional level of 2. I conducted Directed Reading Thinking Activities (DRTA) with materials on her instructional level. Throughout the reading I stopped at points of anticipation to have her predict and recall information from the text with questioning such as “What do you think will happen next?” and “What did you read that makes you think that?” Cassie has read one level 2 book and two level 3 books. After Cassie read a level 2 book I realized that Cassie could probably read a level 3 book based on her word recognition and fluency. She was able to make predictions and give reasons to support them. I moved her to level 3 books because of this for DRTAs. While this material was more challenging, Cassie read fluent enough to maintain comprehension and was able to make reasonable predictions. Fluency is a concern for Cassie so repeated readings were conducted with these texts. Often I recorded these re-readings so she could hear her fluency and note the changes with the repeated readings. I recorded this so she could see her progress, and she and I rated her prosody on a range of 1 (choppy), 2 (somewhat fluent), and 3 (very fluid and smooth). The books that Cassie read were Seabiscuit, How Not to Babysit Your Brother, and Shoeshine Girl (chapter book). Cassie needs to continue to read books on her instructional level of 3rd grade and practice fluency for 40% of the time allotted for literacy instruction.

Writing

I asked Cassie to dictate and write personal narratives and compositions in areas of interest with an emphasis on organization and revising successive drafts. We worked on five pieces with successive drafts. Cassie told me her story orally and then she wrote her story down. On the next day we discussed details that she could add to the piece and revised it. She included more details as we progressed in her own writing, often finding the places on her own and using complete sentences when she edited. Cassie still had trouble organizing her ideas so we focused on this in her last two pieces. We worked on punctuation in two pieces and Cassie became more mindful of this in her next piece. Cassie needs to continue writing for 30% of the time allotted for Literacy instruction during the day, focusing on organization and stretching out moments by zooming in on one focused event and adding many details about it so that the reader can picture it in their mind.