upper elementary case study copy

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Upper Elementary Case Study !

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! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Krista Miller RDG 503

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Assessment Log and Anecdotal Records ! Date

Duration

3/27

40

Informal Reading

Student A was shy at first, answering with one

minutes

Inventory (Child

word answers. She did not seem to want to

Interview)

talk much about her family or hobbies, but did

total

Assessments Given

Notes and Reflections

express a positive attitude towards school and reading. Elementary Reading

Student A liked circling Garfield, this activity

Attitude Survey

seemed to put her more at ease as it includes an element of fun.

Interest Inventory

Student A had a hard time with this activity, she wasn’t comfortable “grading” the books.

McCracken Word

Student A liked to read through the lists very

Recognition Test

quickly, which led to some errors. When we revisited the words she had missed, she was

Lists E-J

often able to correctly identify them for the untimed portion of the test which showed skill at decoding.

Informal Reading

There were some distractions as we were in the

Inventory Passages

hall such as classes walking by. Overall

Levels 3.2 and 4

Student A was very attentive. I’m starting to notice a difficulty with vocabulary, she can read most words, but does not know what they mean.

Krista Miller RDG 503

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Date

Duration

Assessments Given

Notes and Reflections

4/9

4o

Informal Background

Student A was much more open this time. She

Questions, Family

told me all about spring break and told me that

Language Discussion

she is multi-lingual. Her parents speak Arabic

minutes total

and English as a second language. Perhaps this is one explStudent Ation for her vocabulary issues? Informal Reading

Once again there were some distractions as we

Inventory Passages

were in the hall. She really started to struggle with comprehension today and was answering

Level 5

“I don’t know” during the hearing capacity test, demonstrating frustration.

Elementary

Student A was vey excited for this portion. She

Qualitative Spelling

loves to spell and was very confident in her

Inventory

spelling ability.

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Background Information and Context !

Reason for Student Selection - Student A attends a school at which I am a frequent substitute teacher. I have subbed in her classroom before and have developed a rapport with her teacher. Her teacher recommended Student A for this study as she has been struggling with reading comprehension. Recently, her comprehension struggles have begun to affect her science and social studies grades. Her teacher is hoping that a more in depth assessment will help to pinpoint the problem. Significant Developmental History - Student A’s teacher is not aware of any significant developmental history. School/Instructional History - She has attended the same elementary school since kindergarten and has never had any behavioral issues. Student A has never repeated a grade. In the past few years, her teachers have begun to notice a comprehension problem. She reads at or above grade level, but is not able to comprehend what she is reading. She does not receive any special support. The problem is now starting to affect other subjects (as mentioned above) which she has previously done well in, so her teacher is very concerned about future implications if this issue is not properly addressed. Home and Cultural Environment - Student A is nine years and 11 months old, her birthday is April 16th. She is of Arabic descent. She was born in the United States and speaks English fluently as her primary language and Arabic as a second language. She noted that her parents try to speak English when she and her two siblings are present. She appears to have a very supportive family who provide help with school work and value spending time together. They travel for vacations and she plays on a soccer team. Student A is the oldest of three, she has a sister (8) and a brother (6). School Environment - Student A is in the fourth grade and is educated in a selfcontained classroom. There are 30 students in her class. Her teacher is very structured and has great classroom management skills. There is a great deal of parental involvement at her school


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which includes a very strong parent club. I administered this test at her school, in the hallway, at a table that is set aside for reading instruction and assessment. !

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Attitudes and Interests Rationale It is essential to determine each student’s attitude towards reading and writing. As

McKenna and Kear report, “the student’s attitude toward reading is a central factor affecting reading performance” (1990). These attitudes influence how often children read and write which greatly affects their potential to become independent and effective readers and writers. Children decide early on if reading and writing are enjoyable, so it is important for teachers to help them develop positive attitudes towards these subjects. One way to do this is to build on their interests, but first these interests must be uncovered. Documentation and Findings To reveal these attitudes and interest, I conducted three surveys which are attached. They are as follows: 1. Informal Reading Inventory Child Interview (Appendix A) 2. Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (Appendix B) 3. Interest Inventory (Appendix C) Student A was reserved when I administered the child interview. She did not go into depth on any of the questions, despite efforts on my part to draw more out of her. She appeared to be slightly nervous and opened up much more the second time we met. However, I did learn that she really enjoys reading and writing. She prefers fiction and does not like to read science texts. This is perhaps due to the comprehension issues her teacher had mentioned. She enjoys writing stories, but doesn’t like writing for homework. The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey yielded interesting information. Student A’s raw score, put her in the 78th percentile rank overall. This would demonstrate the fact that she does enjoy reading and it does make her feel happy when she does it, but it is not her favorite


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thing to do. Her recreational reading score of 30 put her in the 54th percentile and her academic reading score put her in the 90th percentile. There is a significant gap here, which should be explored further. She has a much stronger enjoyment for reading in school than at home. The only question she scored with the very upset Garfield was “How do feel about getting a book for a present?” The survey also shows that she would rather be playing than reading. School perhaps provides a more structured environment in which she doesn’t feel that she is missing out on anything as she reads. At home there could me many other things competing for her attention. Also, there may be a larger variety of books available at school which could affect her attitude as well. Also of note is the fact that she does not like when her teacher asks her questions about reading, which ties into the comprehension piece. Lastly, Student A completed the Interest Inventory. She enjoys reading a wide range of topics. These include jokes, the jungle, drawing and painting, friendship, families, monsters, horses and computers. There were only three that she really disliked, sharks, famous scientists and love. Her wide range of interests is a strength, as there are many subjects that can hold her interest and help to create an even more positive attitude towards reading. Recommendations and Strategies Since Student A does have a wide range of interests, it would be most beneficial to capitalize on this strength and to work on her attitude towards reading at home. One strategy that I would suggest is the Digital Talking Books Approach. In this approach, students read along with a CD, or access books online from websites like tumblebooks.com or www.razkids.com. These sites have hundreds of books to choose from which plays into her broad interests. A lot of stories include comprehension questions and audio to help with difficult words. Student A could read along with the story as it is read to her, or can choose to read it on her own. I would encourage her to read the same stories several times to reinforce learning. A second strategy that could be used is Collaborative Reading. In this strategy, Student A would read a selected article or chapter of a book with the teacher, another student in the room or a parent. She would then reread the same text at home, trying to keep a fluent pace. Students could then come back together the next day to really discuss what they had read and to reread it to each other. This would help her to prioritize her reading at home. Both of these strategies not only help to keep her interest but will build comprehension skills as well.

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Word Recognition (Isolated) !

Rationale It is imperative that as readers develop, they are able to identify words with automaticity. “Indeed, fluent word identification appears to be a prerequisite for comprehending text. If a reader must slowly Student Alyze many of the words in a text, memory and attention needed for comprehension are drained by word Student Alysis” (Houghton Mifflin, 1997). Since Student A is facing a comprehension problem, this is an especially important piece to the puzzle. Documentation and Findings To assess Student A’s words recognition skills, I used the McCracken Word Recognition Test, supplied in Appendix D. I started with List E. She is in 4th grade, so I simply went back three levels to allow her to build her confidence. Student A scored in the independent range (90-100%) on lists E, F and G, only missing two words between the three lists. She struggled with list H, scoring a 68% which put her in the frustration range (69% or less). I decided to keep going, as she was still above 60% and only two points shy of instructional. Surprisingly, her score rebounded to 80% on list I, which is in the instructional range (70-89%). List J was our final list. She scored a 60% and was starting to get frustrated with the assessment. List H is the 4th grade level word list, so it did throw a wrench into the data, but it is important to note that she was at 88% on the untimed portion of that list. Distractions should be taken into consideration as we were in the hallway and there were often people passing by. Student A’s responses were quick and automatic and it was evident that she can identify many words accurately by sight. Seeing that Student A is in 4th grade, she appears to be at grade level in regards to word recognition. She is at a 3-4th grade independent level, a 5th grade instructional level, and a 6th grade frustration level. Student A has strong decoding skills as evidenced by the gain from timed to untimed on each list. The times that she missed word endings, she was rushing and when we returned to the words she correctly identified them. She did not appear to have any trouble with segmenting words when decoding, this was another


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strength she had. Upon Student Alyzing her mistakes, 18/25 had to do with vowel difficulties. Short vowels were specifically troublesome for her. Recommendations and Strategies Student A may benefit from additional support in order to help her recognize more words automatically. She specifically needs instruction in vowel sounds. Building on Student A’s strength of being able to identify many words already, I would use the Using Words You Know activity . This activity is designed to help students build on the words they already know to decode many other words. Students sort words into families and learn to recognize patterns in words. Teachers can focus on the 37 most common spelling patterns, but I would be sure to include words that relate to the short vowel sounds that she is struggling with. This activity would not only add to her list of sight words, but would also work on those vowel sounds as well. I would also use the Guess the Covered Word strategy to strengthen her skills. For this activity, students are forced are think about what makes sense in a given sentence and to pay close attention to letters and sounds. The covered words are revealed one letter at a time and teachers can focus on digraphs, blends, vowel sounds or any other type of spelling convention. This would build on her decoding strength, but also force her to pay careful attention to vowel patterns and word endings.

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Word Recognition (In Context) Rationale Word recognition in isolation can be valuable when measuring a students sight

vocabulary and when Student Alyzing some decoding skills. However, it does not account for fluency, accuracy, meaning or context clues. “Assessing word recognition in context is crucial, as it is more reliable and has a more direct impact on reading comprehension than words recognition in isolation” (Christ & Cramer 2011). Word recognition in context must be examined to further discover what decoding strategies students are using and for teachers to get a picture of their student’ slevel of accuracy, error and self-correction. It also provides valuable miscue data that teachers can use to plan additional support for students. Documentation and Findings I began this portion of the assessment at level 3.2 which is equivalent to level G on the McCracken test, the highest level Student A was independent in. Student A read level 3.2 with 97% accuracy. She also read level 4 with 97% accuracy. For both she was at the independent level. On the level 5 list, Student A had a total of 18 errors which puts her at 93%, at the instructional level. I would have continued to list 6, but could not due to time constraints. All documentation is provided in Appendix E. Upon reviewing her miscues, Student A had several strengths. First of all, she often selfcorrected. This shows that she is monitoring her comprehension. Secondly, she rarely omitted any words. This shows that she is reading thoroughly and carefully. Now on to her weaknesses. I noticed that Student A relied solely on phonics when decoding new words. This led to several mispronunciations (7), most of which affected meaning. She did not appear to be using any context clues. Her most common error was substitutions (46%), often with very common words that she is familiar with. For example, she substituted “and” for “the.” Something else to keep in mind is that the first two passages were fiction and the last was non-fiction. It contained more scientific terms, most of which she mispronounced, which brings to light her current struggles in science. On average, there was a 54% difference


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between her absolute and adjusted WRC scores. This shows that approximately half of her miscues resulted in meaning loss. This is a significant amount in my opinion. Recommendations and Strategies Based solely on this assessment, without taking comprehension into account, Student A is reading at grade level. However, she does need to work on mispronunciations and substitutions. One strategy that could help with this is Paired Reading. Student A would read a selected text with a partner which would help to improve her fluency and get her away from relying so heavily on the phonetic cueing system. Her partner could help her with both the substitutions and mispronunciations she is struggling with. She would then do the same for her partner. Student A likes to read aloud so this would build on her strength.

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Comprehension (Oral) Rationale Comprehension is the goal of reading. Reading is a construction of meaning and

comprehension questions tell us if a student is reading for meaning and if they are understanding what they are reading. It is important to assess comprehension after oral reading, silent reading and after listening to another person read to determine how student comprehension is affected depending on the context. Oral comprehension assessments can demonstrate if students are taking in information when they read aloud, or if they are more concerned with just getting the words right. Miscue Student Alysis can also examined in regards to meaning loss, as teachers can use their oral reading to better understand possible reasons comprehension questions were missed. Documentation and Findings Student A appeared to be very comfortable reading aloud and her scores reflect that she was reading for meaning. However, her oral comprehension is well below her word recognition in context score, which does denote a problem with comprehension (documentation provided in Appendix F). On level 3.2 she earned an 80% which put her at the bottom of the independent level. Level 4 took her down to 60%, at the bottom of the instructional range, and level 5 had her well into frustration range at 20%. Student A’s strength was recalling facts, she got all of those questions right and recalled the information easily. Inferential questions were easy for her in the first two passages, which were fiction. She struggled with them in the non-fiction piece and answered all of them incorrectly. Vocabulary questions were her biggest struggle. She was not able to define any of the terms at any of the levels. She had mispronounced 2/3 of them when reading and struggled to come up with an answer when I asked her what they meant. Recommendations and Strategies Student A needs support with vocabulary and making inferences. Vocabulary will be discussed in a later section, but as for making inferences, I would begin by using the ThinkAloud Approach. Here the teacher models active reading. The teacher stops throughout reading to make predictions and clue students in to what he/she is thinking while they are reading. The


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teacher models how these thoughts may change as reading continues. This strategy will help Student A to develop self-talk which will help to improve her inferential comprehension skills. Keeping in mind that her strength was recalling facts, using this method will build on her ability to recall details by having her recall what she is thinking and predicting as she reads aloud.

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Comprehension (Silent) Rationale Silent comprehension should be evaluated and compared to oral and listening

comprehension for inferences to be drawn. A student may perform better on a silent reading assessment if they have anxiety when reading out loud. It is essential that students are able to comprehend what they read aloud and silently. This assessment will help teachers to know if students are active readers when they read silently. Documentation and Findings Student A’s scores for silent comprehension are very similar to those for oral comprehension. This would reflect the fact that she enjoys reading aloud and feels little pressure doing so. For the silent portion, on level 3.2 she scored a 60% (instructional level), on level 4 she scored the same, and on level 5 she scored a 20% (frustration). Once again, she got all of the factual questions right, had some trouble with inferential, and answered all of the vocabulary questions incorrectly. She demonstrated the same strengths and weaknesses that she had during oral comprehension. Documentation is provided in Appendix G. Recommendations and Strategies As mentioned previously, Student A is very good at pulling out facts, but is struggling with comprehension, specifically defining vocabulary and and making inferences. There are two strategies that I would use to work on these issues. First of all, I would use Anticipation Guides. These guides are a great way to access prior knowledge, provide purpose for reading, introduce new vocabulary and to improve comprehension. Students are introduced to vocabulary words before they read, which in Student A’s case would aid in pronunciation. They are also revisited several times in reading and class discussion to cement learning. Anticipation guides are a great tool to really engage students in their reading as they are actively searching to confirm their initial responses while reading.


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A second thing that I would do is a Question-and-Answer Relationships activity (QAR). This activity helps students to be active readers and to answer different types of questions, both explicit and implicit. Readers share their thinking during this activity, as well as pointing to why they answered as they did. This would really give Student A a chance to learn more about how to approach inferential questions and would allow her teacher to further see her thinking patterns.

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Listening Capacity Rationale It is imperative to assess listening capacity as it often represents a child’s comprehension

potential when decoding problems are removed. This assessment can be very insightful, it let’s a teacher know if comprehension problems are truly more about reading problems. Often times a student’s word recognition ability might not have kept pace with their vocabulary development. This assessment can bring awareness to this issue. Documentation and Findings I administered the IRI by starting at a level 3.2 and alternating back and forth between oral and silent readings. Once Student A finished level 4 at 60% for both oral and silent, I decided to start administering the listening capacity portion as well (Documentation provided in Appendix H). She scored an 80% (independent) on level 4 and a 60% (instructional) on level 5. These scores were both significantly higher than her oral and silent scores which indicates that she can comprehend at a higher level than she can read. Once again, her strength was in the factual questions. This time she only missed one vocabulary word and still struggled with inferences, missing 2 out of 6. By the time of this test, Student A was showing signs of fatigue and was beginning to show a disinterest in questions by answering “I don’t know.” Recommendations and Strategies Student A is able to comprehend better when she is listening which suggest some type of reading lag. She was also able to define a vocabulary term which is perhaps because she did not have to struggle with pronunciation. Even though Student A’s listening comprehension is higher than her oral and silent capacity, I would recommend using Listening-Thinking Activities to further build on these skills. This strategy would be perfect for Student A because within the lesson, the teacher demonstrates text interpretation and requires students to practice it as they listen. This can improve active listening skills. It also gets students to think aloud, so the teacher can better understand their frustrations or confusion about a story. Teachers model asking “I wonder” statements while reading which students should always be doing.

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Vocabulary !

Rationale

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Vocabulary continues to grow throughout life, and students must acquire new vocabulary in order to be fluent readers, good comprehenders and to be successful in subjects with very specific content related terms. Blachowicz & Fisher state that “Research indicates that vocabulary knowledge is highly correlated with overall reading achievement. In addition to affecting reading performance, vocabulary knowledge affects a student’s ability to participate fully in both social and academic classroom routines. (2005) Documentation and Findings As mentioned in the comprehension sections, Student A is struggling greatly with vocabulary. The data I am using for vocabulary Student Alysis comes from the reading comprehension evaluations mentioned previously. Of eight questions, she missed seven of them. She has trouble pronouncing new words as she is relying heavily on the phonetic cueing system which leads to a loss of meaning. Perhaps the fact that she comes from a bilingual family may play into this. This also explains her struggles in science and social studies as those subjects contain many specific terms that you do not find elsewhere. Recommendations and Strategies I feel that Student A needs additional vocabulary instruction more than anything else. She struggles to pronounce words and to define them, which shows that she may not be familiar with them at all. I really like the idea of having a “Sticky-Note New Word Day.” This can be done weekly, and will allow students to write down new words that they come across on a sticky note. They then try to figure out what the word might mean using context clues. This is a skill that she needs to improve as well. The teacher can choose to have students share these words or to collect them and create a vocabulary board. To culminate the activity, every week the class can vote and pick the “Most Wonderful Word” of the week. This would build on Student A’s joy of reading and also stresses that it’s okay if you don’t know a word, we all come to words that are new to us.


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One way to improve vocabulary in content areas to is have a Scavenger Hunt. Cunningham and Allington based their example on a weather unit (2007). Students would be given a list of weather related vocabulary and would have to find objects or pictures that represent the terms. They would then present their items to the class and discussion would follow. This method allows students to explore the terms on their own. Additional tools l that I would use are graphic organizers. There are many vocabulary maps that are available that can help students to build vocabulary. These allow students to list synonyms and antonyms and sometimes draw a picture to increase their understanding. There are many available depending on the types of words that are being introduced.

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Spelling and Writing Rationale There are several different developmental stages of spelling and it is important to

determine which level students are at to provide enriching spelling instruction. Spelling is also “one of the best ways to evaluate phonic knowledge...as students must think about each letter and sound and then synthesize these sounds into words” (Walker, 2012). Much can be learned from words that are misspelled as they give you insight into a student’s thinking. Spelling can be assessed through a spelling inventory or more authentically by evaluating a student’s writing. Writing can also be a key to a thorough evaluation because it provides insight into a student’s mastery of language, vocabulary base, spelling patterns, syntactic mastery and ability to express ideas among many other things. Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain a writing sample from Student A for purposes of assessment. Her teacher was not at liberty to provide me with that. Documentation and Findings I administered the Elementary Qualitative Spelling Inventory for the purpose of spelling assessment. Student A was very excited to participate in this portion, as she was confident in her spelling ability and mentioned that she really enjoys the subject. Documentation is provided in Appendix I. Overall, Student A correctly spelled 16/25 words (64%). Her feature score was higher at 74% demonstrating that she is able to spell parts of words correctly, if not able to spell the entire words correctly. This also demonstrates her ability to segment words, which is shown also on words 21-25. This is a definite strength of hers. According to the feature guide that accompanies this test, Student A needs support in two areas. The first is unaccented final syllables (25%) and the second is reduced and altered vowels (20%). I had also noted an issue with altered vowels during the word recognition test which is confirmed here. Using the error guide, it is apparent that she is in the late “Within Word Pattern” stage and on the verge of being in the early “Syllables and Affixes” stage.

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Recommendations and Strategies Seeing that Student A enjoys spelling and has scored in one the latter stages, I would build on what she already knows by using the Nifty-Thrifty-Fifty strategy. This will introduce her to “50 words that include examples of all the common prefixes and suffixes as well as common spelling changes” (Cunningham & Allington 2007). She is already familiar with many of the “chunks” within these words. There are exponentially more words that students will be able to decode once they master these fifty which is why it is such a valuable strategy. As far as writing, I have not evaluated Student A’s writing but feel that the Story Mapping strategy (fiction) and Summarization strategy (non-fiction) would be helpful to her regardless of her stage of writing. These strategies both require reflection after reading and a processing of the story elements/content. They would give her purpose while reading and would help with comprehension as well.

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Reflection on Diagnostic Process !

Student A has great attitude towards reading, especially reading in school. She enjoys a wide range of genres and enjoys writing and spelling as well. She is a hard worker and her teacher reports that she is a pleasure to have in class. Her greatest struggle is with comprehension, specifically vocabulary. It was difficult to estimate her reading level as her comprehension scores were so much lower than her word recognition in isolation and context. I decided to place her at the following estimated reading levels (Diagnostic Data Sheet provided in Appendix J): Independent: 3.2 Instructional: 4 Frustration: 5 Hearing Capacity: 4 I based this decision largely on her comprehension scores. Even though she can read fluently and accurately at the 4th grade level, her comprehension was very low so I did not feel that this would be a good independent level. She also struggled recognizing words in isolation on the timed portion at this level. Reading repeatedly at level 3.2 will build on her good decoding skills and allow her to focus on reading for meaning and mastering the comprehension component of reading. Student A would benefit from additional vocabulary support and strategies to improve active thinking and questioning while reading. She is a delightful young lady and I am sure that she will be successful if given the proper support. Two things that may have affected this study are the fact that I was not able to obtain a writing sample and the time constraints that her teacher had. A writing sample would have been valuable in diagnosing spelling patterns and vocabulary usage and I would have liked to have administered several additional IRI passages. I also would have preferred to be in a quiet, low traffic area, rather than a hallway.

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References

Blachowicz, C.L., & Fisher, P.J. (2005). Integrated Vocabulary Instruction: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners in Grades K-5. Retreived from http://www.learningpt.org/ pdfs/ literacy/vocabulary.pdf Christ, T., & Cramer, R. (2011). Assessing word recognition and fluency. Michigan Reading Journal, 43(1), 7-23. Cramer, R. ( 2004). The Language Arts: A Balanced Approach to Teaching Reading, Writing, Listening, Talking, and Thinking. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Cunningham, P.M., & Allington, R.L. (2007). Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Education Place. (1997). Word Recognition Skills and Strategies. Retrieved from http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/teach/rec.html. McKenna, M.C., & Kear, D.J. (1990). Measuring attitude toward reading: A new tool for for teachers. The Reading Teacher, May Issue, pages 626-639. Walker, Barbara J. (2012) Diagnostic Teaching of Reading. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

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upper elementary case study copy

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