Complete Background

Jackson is a 9 year old boy in the 4th grade and attends school at The Learning Academy. His favorite subject in school is recess and his least favorite is math because it is difficult for him and he is bad with numbers. Jackson's favorite thing about school is that you get to learn something new everyday. If there was one thing that Jackson could change about school it would be to make math lessons shorter. Despite Jackson not liking math, his goal for this school year is to improve his math skills because they are only okay right now. If he had the chance to learn any language possible he would learn French because it would be cool to know another language and if he ever went to France he would be able to speak the language.

Jackson's birthday is on October 19th and his favorite color is green. He has two brothers and hey love to play basketball together on the weekends. They don't have any pets at home and if he could have any pet in the world he would have a dog because people say that a dog is a boy's best friend and he wants to experience that. He loves to play baseball and basketball and wants to be a famous baseball player when he grows up. Jackson's favorite food is pizza and his favorite TV show is Spongebob. His favorite book series is Diary Of A Whimpy Kid and he owns all of the books at home. He likes that series the best because he can relate to the main character and he thinks it's funny. Jackson also loves the movie Dairy Of A Whimpy Kid because he enjoyed the books so much. His favorite Disney character is Captain Jack Sparrow and he likes to stay up late rather than get up early.

As I've observed the class I've noticed that Jackson continuously places his head in his hand and rest it on the desk often. He doesn't raise his hand often during group discussions and tends to yawn throughout morning work and Orton Gillingham. Jackson has a habit of constantly moving and fidgeting during the lessons. He bounces against the back of his chair and rests his head often when he he writes something down. He covers his face in his sweatshirt often and tends to yawn and stretch in his chair during class. During the lessons, whenever the teacher asks the students to share their work, Jackson tends to be the last to share. Most of the time he only shares because Ms. Swan asks him too. When Jackson shares he speaks very quietly and Ms. Swan ends up repeating it to the class.

All of these obversations lead me to believe that Jackson is not a morning person and tends to stay up later than he should. Ms. Swan told me that she chose Jackson for me to observe and work with throughout the semester because he was one of the shyest students in the classroom but he was willing to answer all of my questions and was excited to be interviewed. She is hoping that working with him will help get Jackson out of his shell and make him more comfortable working with strangers and in groups.

The Garfield Inventory test showed me that Jackson is in the higher percentile range for recreational reading. This shows that he enjoys reading in his free time. The survey also showed that Jackson is in the middle percentile range for academic reading. Jackson enjoys to read but not when it is mandatory or required for school and learning. When he was given the Yopp-Singer Phoneme test he received a raw score of 16/22, 73%. He struggled more at the beginning because he wasn't taking the time to think about the sound that each letter makes. He was more focused on spelling out the words rather than their sounds. But then Jackson took more time when it came to sounding out the words because he didn't have any trouble with numbers 14-22.

We have given the students fluency tests and read books together in small groups since being in the classroom. Each time Jackson is asked to read something to me or the other student teacher in the classroom, he shows comprehension and understanding, but he has trouble with fluency so his score is always low. After giving Jackson the Primary Spelling Inventory test, Jackson had gotten 12/18 words correct. This test measures how well students can decode, classify blends and spell common words that increase in length and difficulty. Jackson did well on this test, but he could use work and help with words that have two vowels in them and he may have difficulty with blends. The tests that we've given our students have shown me that Jackson does well when it comes to looking at words individually or spelling them out, but his fluency could use improvement.

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