Case Study Plan

The following blog post is my plan and how I plan on helping improve Jackson's reading abilities while I am working with him at The Learning Academy.

Phonological awareness – I gave Jackson the Yopp-Singer Phoneme Test a couple of weeks ago while I was in the classroom. What we did was I would say a word and he would have to say the sounds of each of the words. Jackson had trouble at the beginning of the test because he was only spelling the words. He wasn't saying what sound each letter made. (ex. dog - d - o - g // instead of say the sound the letter d/o/g makes.) This caused him to get a 73% on the test, which isn't bad, but it shows that there is room for improvement. I noticed that Jackson had problems with words that had long vowel words/words that ended with a vowel. He was never able to make out the correct sounds of each letter and would leave out some sounds all together.

Phonics – Jackson had problem with blends and decoding on the Primary Spelling inventory and being able to accuratley write how the word is correctly spelt. He had problems with words that started with bl and dr. This shows me that he has problems with phonics because he wasn't able to differentiate and correctly write down the write letters. This could be because of the learning disability that Jackson has and he doesn't understand that certain letters go with certain sounds in words.

Oral Language – Jackson's oral language doesn't cause too many problems for him. He is able to communicate and express what he wants to say. He knows when it is appropiate to use social language and talk to his classmates during free time and when he needs to use academic language when speaking to his teacher or an administrator. Jackson doesn't do well when talking in front of the entire class though. When he is called on or a student walks by when he is talking with me, he will get very quiet and look everwhere but the people in front of him. This shows me that he is very shy and possibly even self conscious of his school work.

Fluency - Over the course of the last few weeks, I've concluded that Jackson is not a very fluent reader. I have given him 2 running records now and the first time it took him 1 minutes to read 44 words. Out of those 44 words, he had 4 mistakes. It took him 2 minutes and 1 seconds to read a total of 74 words. The second running record it took him a minute to read 45 words but this time he only had 3 mistakes. For the second running record, it took him 5 minutes and 30 seconds to read 251 words. After working with Jackson for a couple of weeks now, I have noticed that he is very shy and I think that is what affects his school work sometimes as well as cognitive things. I noticed that when Jackson would slow down his fluency or lose his place on the page, it was because the classroom got very quiet or another student walked by. He also seemed to have trouble with keeping track of where he was on the page so then he would begin to stutter and start at a random word, missing 4 or 5 words from the text. Because of this, Jackson has difficulty keeping a constant rate and expressing the tex thus making it difficult to be a fluent reader.

Vocabulary – I have given Jackson the Primary Vocabulary Spelling test. Despite Jackson having trouble with reading comprehension and fluency skills, he is still a very exceptional student because he does extremley well at spelling vocabulary words. When I gave Jackson the spelling test, he took the time to sound out the words and tap them out like they teach in The Learning Academy so ensure that he spelled the words correctly. He had gotten 12 out of the 18 words that I had given him spelt correctly. There was a total of 26 words and I had stopped Jackson once he had gotten 5 words wrong to prevent frustration. This test gave me a good idea as to what types of words Jackson struggles spelling and it showed me that he has problems with long vowel words and hearing the different vowels when the word is said. It also showed me that because he spelt the words blade and dream incorrectly, he may struggle with blends and digraphs.

Comprehension – During the running records that I've given Jackson, he has struggled with fluency and keeping a constant pace when reading a text. He gets distracted by the noise around him and then loses his place so he ends up skipping words and lines all together. This causes him to not understand what he just read and not have good comprehension because the text was cut up so much. Jackson also doesn't treat passages as a long story with sentences, he will just go straight through the text and not stop to take a breath or utilize punctuation. Without taking breaths and treating each paragraph like its own paragraph, he has trouble understanding what he read because he didn't stop and think about what he just read. I've noticed that because Jackson is shy, he doesn't like to read out loud often. He never raises his hand in the classroom and when he is called on, he tries to read or answer the question as quickly as possible to get it done and over with.

1. What language difficulties does the student have?

- After observing Jackson for 6 weeks, based off of all of the evidence I've collected and assessments I've given him, I've come to the conclusion that Jackson has probelms with using proper expression when reading a book or a text and struggle with blends and long vowel words.

2. What cognitive issues seem apparent from the assessments that have been given?

- Through the assessments that I have given Jackson it is apparent that he has a reading disability. He is in the 4th grade and has the fluency of a 1st grader and that's not because the teacher isn't doing her job. Jackson tends to mix letters up, lose his place on the page often and struggle with words causing his fluency and reading comprehension to lack. Another congitive issue that may not necessarily be a cognitive issue is Jackson's self confidence levels. Whenever another student walks by when he is reading to me or he is called on during a whole or small group lesson, he will immediately freeze up. It's very apparant that he is self conscious about his reading skills and if he could he would never share with the class what he wrote. He is friends will the other students in the class, there is only 12 of them, but he may be so self conscious because he is just naturally shy or because he has had so many struggles with reading skills in the past that it has torn him down.

3. Overall, how does this student’s reading acquisition compare to other students his/her age? (What should he/she be doing at this level?)

- If I were to compare Jackson to the rest of the students in 4th grade that are his age, his scores and assessments would vary compared to other students. After giving Jackson the rimary Spelling Vocabulary test, it showed me that he is in the Middle Within Word Pattern Stage. This shows me that he is in line with the rest of the 4th graders out there because he has a good concept of being able to figure out how words are spelt. He isn't as behind in spelling and vocabulary as he is in fluency and reading comprehension. Jackson's fluency levels is way below the average 4th graders levels. Looking at the running records tests that I've given, Jackson has read 45 words per minute. The average 4th grader is supposed to be reading around 110 words per minute. The average 1st grader is supposed to be reading around 50 words per minute. This shows me that Jackson is having a lot of difficulty with fluency and needs improvement there. Jackson is in the 10% for 4th grade fluency because he reads so few words per minute.

4. What additional assessments will be completed on this student? Give the reason for the assessment? (What will the information provide?)

- I plan on continuing to give Jackson fluency tests and performing running records every week after I have worked with him to see if the work that we are doing together is helping him improve. I would be looking for him to increase his word count per minute from 45 to 55. And then possily even 65 later on down the road. Also, after I will have worked with Jackson and focused on his trouble with blends and being able to decode them, I will retest him with the Primary Spelling Inventory to compare and contrast how much Jackson has progressed. The goal would be for him to be able to spell all of the words that have the long vowels in them correctly. I will also give him other informal assessments throughout the course of being in the classroom and then other spelling tests to ensure what I am doing with him is beneficial.

5. What is the initial plan for remediation for this student? Be detailed – Use the 5 Ws and 1H as a framework, and keep in mind the interests of the student.

- My intial plan for Jackson is to improve his fluency and reading comprehension. That is my main concern while I am working with him in The Learning Acadmey because that is what he is struggling the most with. He is in 4th grade and reading on a 1st grade level. Once I have started to see an improvement in his fluency and reading comprehension, then I will start to focus on improving his vocabluary as well. I plan on using the book the Diary of a Whimpy Kid for the activites that I will plan to improve Jackson's fluency because these are his favorite books. This way I have captured Jackson's interest and I can have a consistant set of characters and theme going on. This way I can prepare questions before hand and chose a part in the book each week to read and to work on with Jackson. This way he can improve his fluency and reading comprehension by listening to me model the reading for him and then he can read the passage himself. Then we can use graphic organizers to talk about what we just read and assess how much he comprehended. Every Wednesday I will have something new planned for Jackson, whether it is a set of questions I created based off of the text or flashcards to improve his blends and long vowel knowledge, I will work with him every Wednesday morning.

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