Case Report
Introduction
Tutor: Katy Dellinger
Student: Christopher Hoyle
Age: 9 years old
Grade: Rising 4th grader
As a graduate reading clinician in Appalachian State University’s Master’s Degree Program in Reading Education, I tutored Christopher Hoyle for 13 one-hour sessions across the summer, 2010 semester. I conducted an initial assessment during the first few days of tutoring, and I tutored Christopher during the following weeks. Christopher is 9 years old and will be a rising fourth grader at Icard Elementary School in Icard, North Carolina. Based on my assessment of Christopher, he struggles with word recognition in context and spelling, but his listening comprehension is well above average.
Initial Literacy Assessments
A battery of informal, diagnostic literacy assessments were administered to Christopher, including a Reading Attitude Survey, an Interest Inventory, the Schlagal Spelling Inventory, a Word Recognition in Isolation (WRI) test, a contextual reading test, a listening comprehension test, a sense of story assessment, and oral and written composition samples were analyzed.
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.
Christopher arrived the first day of tutoring with a book, indicating to me he enjoys reading. He seemed eager to begin, but was also quiet and maybe a little nervous as we started the assessments. He was very attentive to the directions that were given to him, and it seemed as if Christopher was very focused on doing the best he can. Christopher’s excitement for reading will help him improve with tutoring and practice.
Interest and Reading Attitude Survey
During the first tutoring session, the tutors spend about 15 minutes or so getting to know a little bit about their student that they will be working on. The interest inventory is a list of 18 statements that the tutor reads to the student and has the student fill in the blank. This is a way to find out what the student likes to do such as hobbies. The most important information that the interest inventory can tell us, as tutors, are possible topics for the students to write or read about. The reading attitude survey is completed after the interest inventory. The reading attitude survey is important because it tells us how the child feels about reading. In this survey there are 20 questions with four choices the student can choose from. The answer choices are expressions by the Garfield character. They show an excited Garfield, a mediocre Garfield, a bored Garfield, and a mad Garfield. The tutor will read each statement and the child will circle the expression of Garfield that best represents their feelings about that particular statement. This reading survey compares how the child feels reading for pleasure (recreational) versus reading at school as a requirement (academic). The information provided by this survey will tell us if the child has a negative attitude towards reading in general or if they enjoy it, but only when they can read what they want to read. If the scores from the survey indicates that the student has a negative attitude towards reading then it lets teachers or tutors know that the child will not read enough within a year to make enough progress. Researchers say that a child reading on grade level will read 90 minutes a day, and this is what allows them to make the progress they need in order to make a year’s progress in reading. If a child is reading below grade level and has a negative attitude towards reading, then the child will not make the progress they need in reading. The discrepancy between their grade level and reading level will only increase at this rate.
Based on the results of the interest inventory and the attitude survey that was administered to Christopher, it seems as though reading is something he enjoys doing, more so during his free time than at school. His dad is his biggest role model in his life and he enjoys spending time with his dad on the lake and going camping. He also likes to ride dirt bikes. I knew that Chris was a child who enjoyed reading in his free time because on the first day he showed up with his favorite book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid-Dog Days. His performance on the reading attitude survey indicated that he is in the 93rd percentile of kids his own age of taking pleasure in reading. This means that in comparison to peers his own age he enjoys reading more than 93% of them. He enjoys reading for both recreation and academic purposes.
Spelling
The assessment that was given to Christopher for spelling was the Schlagal Spelling Inventory, a series of grade-leveled lists of words that a student is asked to spell as best as he/she can. There are eight levels of words, each level consisting of 12 words. The purpose of this assessment tells us several things. First of all it tells us at what level to begin word study instruction in spelling and phonics. When studying a child’s errors in spelling, we can also determine what the particular child knows and does not know. A child’s spelling and word recognition are highly correlated with one another. A spelling assessment, like a test of word recognition, presents to us the child’s a working knowledge of how letters work in words is a good indicator of how the child uses them in words.
One’s independent level in spelling/phonics is considered to be the highest at which the child spells at least 90% of the words in a given list correctly. One’s instructional level is considered to be the highest at which the child spells at least 50% of the words in a given list correctly. The frustration level is that at which one spells fewer than 50% of the words in a given list correctly. The test administrator should stop the test when the child misspells 8 or more of the 12 words in a list incorrectly.
As with any child who would be given the spelling assessment, I started Christopher with the first grade list and continued to the third grade list where he misspelled at least 8 of the 12 words in this list.
Level 1 – 75%
Level 2 – 42%
Level 3 – 33%
Based on Christopher’s spelling scores an independent level is unable to be determined. He only missed 3 words on the first grade lists, but because his score was not at least 90% then the Level 1 spelling would not fall into the independent level. It would appear that his instructional level would fall between first and second grade. The score of a 42% on Level 2 would be in the grey area for spelling, but because he missed so many words, I would say that this is his frustration level.
Based on Chris’ errors in both the first and second grade lists, he struggles with initial consonant blends and digraphs in words. He is in the Within-Word Pattern of spelling because he is using some digraphs and blends, but confusing some as well. Some examples from Chris’ spelling includes:
“when” as WEN (Level 1)
“drive” for DIVE (Level 1)
“chase” for CACE (Level 2)
He is also struggling with short vs. long-vowels such as QUEN for “queen”. I also noticed that he is missing his r-controlled words such as SHOT for “short”. Christopher also struggles with consonant doubling such as TRAPD for “trapped” and SHOPING for “shopping”, but this is above the level that Christopher needs to work on at this time anyways.
Christopher understands most of his short vowel words such as “ship” and “bed”. He can also correctly spell sight words such as “cool”, “dress”, and “send”. From this assessment, we will work with Chris on his short vs. long-vowel patterns and r-controlled words. We will also review consonant blends and digraphs.
Word Recognition in Isolation
The assessment of word recognition in isolation gives us an interpretation as to whether or not automatic sight word recognition is an issue in a child’s contextual reading performance. It is also a good indication as to whether or not has good decoding skills based on the discrepancy of flashed vs. untimed scores. Fluent contextual reading requires one to be able to recognize most words automatically. The assessment of word recognition in isolation consists of grade-leveled words from the pre-primer level through the eighth grade level. For each level there is a list of 20 words. For each level there are two scores: flashed and untimed. The test administrator will first flash the words to the child for one-fourth of a second and asked the child to read that word. If the child can, then the administrator will quickly proceed to the next word in the list. If the child can not identify the word after being flashed the word for one-fourth of a second, the child is shown the word again, but this time it is presented to the child without being timed. The test administrator should stop the test when the child’s flashed score drops below 50%.
A child’s independent level in word recognition in isolation is considered to be the highest level at which the child can recognize at least 90% of the words correctly on the flashed presentation. The instructional level for a child in word recognition in isolation is considered to be the highest level at which he/she can recognize at least 60% of the words correctly on the flashed presentation. A child’s frustration level is the highest level at which the child’s score for the flashed presentation drops below 50%. For establishing these levels, the untimed scores san be used at the pre-primer and primer levels. I began this assessment with the pre-primer level list and stopped the administration at the fourth grade level since Chris’ score dropped below 50% in the flashed presentation.
Level PP – Flash 100% Untimed 100%
Level P – Flash 80% Untimed 100%
Level 1 – Flash 80% Untimed 100%
Level 2 – Flash 80% Untimed 95%
Level 3 – Flash 55% Untimed 85%
Level 4 – Flash 20% Untimed 60%
After administering the word recognition in isolation to Chris it seems as though he has relatively strong decoding skills because he scored a 100% on the PP list, the P list, and the first grade list. This tells me that Chris can correctly identify the words after being given time to sound them out. Based on the word recognition in isolation scores, Chris’ instructional level is Level 2 because this is the highest level at which he scored at least 60% on the flash column and also because there is a big drop-off in scores from the second grade flashed score (80%) to the third grade list (55%). His frustration level would be the third grade level because it is relatively close to 50% and because there were several words be did not know even after he was given time to decode the words such as “receive”, “legend”, and “thread”. Chris’ independent level would be considered the pre-primer level according to these scores because this was the highest level at which he scored at least a 90%.
Both the spelling assessment and the word-recognition in isolation assessment agree in establishing adequate knowledge of how letters work in words and as adequate sight vocabulary to support successful reading between first and second grade.
Contextual Reading
This test tells us if a child reads the words in the text with adequate accuracy. It also tells whether or not the child reads with rhythm or cadence. The oral reading assessment indicates to us if the child depends on words in context to determine how to pronounce unknown words or if the child relies on letter-sound cues. This assessment gives us information as to whether or not the child self-corrects their errors that disrupt the meaning of the text. The assessment is administered by the student reading grade-leveled passages aloud while the examiner indicates the mistakes on an examiner’s copy. The oral reading is also timed so that there is an indication of rate for oral reading. The last step is to ask comprehension questions to determine if the child understands what he/she just read.
The second part of this reading assessment is silent reading. The silent reading assessment can tell us how the child reads silently in comparison to their oral reading ability. As children move up each year to another grade, there is more emphasis on reading, especially silent reading. Silent reading can tell us a child’s reading rate and how it compares to the oral reading rate. It also tells us a child’s reading comprehension and the measures of word recognition in context. During this assessment, the student reads a passage silently while being timed and is then asked comprehension questions. Silent reading should only be administered if their oral reading instructional level is at least second grade.
One’s independent level of reading is considered to be the highest level at which he/she can read with at least 98% accuracy, at least a score of 90% on comprehension, and good fluency (rate and prosody) that falls within the range of that grade-level. An instructional level of reading is considered to be the highest level at which he/she can read with at least 95% accuracy, adequate fluency (again based on the grade level ranges), and at least a score of 70% on comprehension. A child’s frustration level of reading is reached when the student correctly recognizes fewer than 90% of the words or reads that level of text disfluently.
To administer the oral reading assessment the administrator will have the child begin the reading passages based on the highest level at which the student scored at least an 80% flash score on the word recognition test. Because the highest level Chris scored an 80% on flash was the second grade level, I had him begin reading at the Level 2 reading passage. After reading the passage in 90 seconds and having a total of 15 errors, Christopher’s oral reading accuracy was 87%, his rate was 79 words per minute, and his comprehension was a 100%. His comprehension was very good, his rate was within the 2-1 level, but his word recognition in context indicated frustration. It seemed as though Chris was a bit nervous as I indicated earlier in the case study, and because he only had one low score I decided to proceed to the next reading level, which was Level 3. He read the Level 3 reading passage in 129 seconds. He had a total of 20 errors and 5 meaning change errors, which was relatively high. His oral reading accuracy was in the frustration level again at 86%. His comprehension dropped to a 75%, and he read at 66.5 words per minute. Chris read this passage very little prosody, which indicated to me that this level is too difficult for him.