Case Study Tom Meyers EDU 741 University of New England Dr. Susan E.

Israel December 9, 2010

There is a fifth grade student in my classroom named Bobby. He came into my room last year in fourth grade. He has had minimal amounts of success across the curriculum. He has gotten the full battery of special education qualification tests and did not qualify for any special services. He does receive some speech support. There have been some very serious disruptions on the home front. His parents are divorced, his mother has had some company that may have been abusive, and recently, his sister moved out of the house to go and live with the father, leaving Bobby alone. His mother did not come to parent conferences this fall. She has made no effort to contact me for any reason, even though I send Bobs work home for her to see and sign off on every week. He is a fairly likable fellow with a good sense of humor and some occasionally insightful comments during class discussions. He is prone to depression. I would consider his emotional state to be on the fragile side. I feel like the majority of his issues are emotional rather than cognitive. He is a very reluctant student in several areas, most notably with regards to homework. He will write stupid or dumb after his name on some homework assignments. He generally gets a portion of an assignment done in class and that is what usually gets turned in. This causes a lot of problems for Bob. He doesnt study so he doesnt do well on assessments. He will not fix or repair low grades. Because I assign a certain number of pages that need to be read independently, he seldom, if ever comes to literature circle prepared. If I give a quick written quiz on the assigned reading, he usually scores below 50, often earning a zero. When he does get some answers correct, they are from the beginning of the assignment. He seldom has any knowledge of content introduced at the end of a chapter. Consequently, he is always behind and/or playing

catch-up. It is not the ideal formula for academic success. Therefore, he seemed a viable candidate for case study. The first piece of evidence I chose to collect was a reading record from Bobs current reading book. I wanted to eliminate the possibility that the text was too difficult or at an inappropriate level for him, even though it is one of the easiest books in my room. It has a grade equivalent rating of 4.5, DRA rating of 40, and a guided reading level of Q, which is generally considered to be at an early fourth grade level. We had tried several books previously and Bob had not assessed well in any of them. I know he has some skills due to the practice of reading our non-fiction books aloud every day. I am also aware that some fluency issues exist. He read aloud for three minutes, achieving 230 words with 97% accuracy (75wcpm). This is below our schools established benchmark of 110 for the fifth grade. Our low benchmark for third grade is 80wcpm. He made several mistakes with regards to punctuation (ignoring it), but did read with feeling, especially when it came to dialogue. One interesting part of the process occurred afterwards when Bob commented (independently) that he needs to work on not repeating himself so often. I had marked him three times for that behavior during the three minutes. As I have had very little experience with this kind of assessment, I consulted with the schools reading recovery teacher. She had some prior experience with Bobby from fourth grade. In September of 2009, he had tested at a 58wcpm. By March of 2010, it had increased to 90wcpm. Not wanting to have my testing be the culprit, I decided to administer several of her tools. The first was a very simple version of a word list obtained from San Diego State Universitys website. The goal is to identify, in a very preliminary fashion, the subjects

reading level. On the fourth grade list, Bob read several for survived and interped for interrupted. He was able to self-correct when I asked him to try it again. At the fifth, he read scantry for scanty and excused for acquainted; otherwise he got the rest correct. On the sixth, he reached a frustration level missing commercial, appearance, necessity, and relativity, although he did see relative in the latter and read necessity as necessary. The reading recovery teacher had found his instructional level to be grade 3 / grade 4 last year, so I took this as a sign of some improvement. Bob was very cooperative during these sessions and I usually paid him with a little edible like a couple of M&Ms. It reminded me of the discussions we had regarding individual conferencing and how rewarding it could be for the student. He obviously enjoyed a little extra attention. I told him what was going on and how these were rough guides to reading levels. He was so into it, he wondered how he would do on the 10th grade list. We tried it. Not so good. I then tried my hand at a Dibels assessment, using some 4th grade samples. I had Bob read two passages on the page for a minute each, to verify his wcpm number. On the first passage, he scored a 62. On the second, he scored an 88. Averaged together, they yielded a 75wcpm score- identical to the one he had achieved with his reading book. I have also included a writing piece in this collection of artifacts. I had given the prompt of What would your perfect Christmas look like? Included with his piece, is the brainstorming page I ask each student to prewrite. There is clearly an immaturity evident throughout the piece. He had identified a chunk concerning his sister in the brainstorm, that didnt make it into the final piece. He was very pleased with his result and asked to share it during morning journal. Im sure he thought he was being funny with his silent but deadlie night comment. While the paper is rife with editing mistakes,

what concerns me more is the marginal coherence of the whole thing. I would score it at emerging level, at best, and far below the majority of his classmates. The thought that could be his perfect Christmas is more than a little disconcerting. Finally, I have included a page from a recent science test. While the spelling was off and sentences were incomplete, he did manage to capture the gist of most of the information. He got full credit for all these responses. We had read the material together as a class, generated notes, taken a couple of quizzes, and had a review session featuring student generated review questions. Bob spent a lot of time on the exam and did a very acceptable job on this page. His overall score was a self-satisfied 76. Based on these articles, it is clear that Bob has a number of strengths as well as some clears areas of need. While not speedy, he reads with accuracy. He shows a positive ability to read with feeling and uses a clearly identified voice while writing. His performance on the science test demonstrates the capacity to comprehend grade appropriate non-fiction text and apply it to literal assessment situations. The cooperation he displayed while serving as my guinea pig was a contrast to the effort and enthusiasm to daily reading group. I have definitely noticed an increase in the amount of effort he has been investing in a lot of his schoolwork, of late. He has been more willing to volunteer to read aloud from our texts than in previous times. He has also shown some signs of maturity as evidenced from a recent episode when he acknowledged making a poor choice to pout rather than reread five pages from his reading book at teacher request. It will be a giant step in the right direction when he begins to accept more of a personal stake in his own education.

It is evident that Bob has a limited vocabulary. His lack of exposure to good literature is affecting both his enthusiasm for reading and the quality of his writing. He needs a lot more practice in every aspect of literacy, and sadly, we will not be able to count on his after school environment to be very supportive. I did not mention it previously, although it could be easily predicted, but his spelling is atrocious. His lack of discipline and willingness to complete any homework is going to continue to cause problems in Bobbys academic future. The emotional instability of his life will continue to distract and negatively impact a lot of the potential I believe exists for this young fellow. Several things could and should be done. Clearly, his fluency speed is below par. He may well benefit from more exposure to Readers Theater writing. We recently concluded a project that his team really excelled during. He read and reread to make it right. That type of exercise, where he is able to write and practice repeated readings of the material should have a positive effect on his fluency. Instead of assigning a reading group chapter each night, Bob may well benefit from a reduced passage size that he must practice and reread for either the instructor or the group. There may also be some benefit in having him be a reading mentor to some of the younger children, if that can be arranged. Even if the difficulty level is lower, the practice should impact fluency. Further testing with the DRA kit may verify whether this strategy is effective or not. He has shown that he is not ready for the same amount of independence as his fellow mates. I am going to have to be more vigilant with regards to his writing process than some of the others. His brainstorming page was very weak. There is easily enough space in the day for some one-to-one time during the next piece. I will have him come

back for a private conference to try and build a bit more substance into his next piece. We can discuss issues of organization, character, and story. He definitely needs some support while trying to organize a few thoughts to tackle a prompt. I have seen him get overwhelmed by the fact that he is constantly behind and never seems to get caught up. He will occasionally attempt to bargain with me concerning amounts that need to be done. He will offer to do a part if I let him go out for recess, for example. I tried this for a while, but his effort soon lapsed to nonexistent, so I abandoned that particular approach. Although occasionally painful, I think the best approach is one that maintains a high level of expectation with a commitment to consistency. I have already spoken to the principal to arrange for some additional support with Bobs homework issues. We are attempting to build in some additional time during the day when he will be provided a safe, quiet workspace to ensure completion of any assignments found incomplete during a check in time before school. A staff member will be available to provide extra support for any problems that may arise during this time. I believe the accountability factor is critical for Bobbys future success. Lastly, I want to continue his promising developments with nonfiction. He has proven he is capable of retrieving information identified by others as key. Now, I want him to demonstrate his own capacity for distilling what is and what is not critical in a passage. We can start small by focusing on individual paragraphs, and hopefully, progress to several pages at a time. We need to continue building his stamina for concentration. With concerted effort, and a little luck, we should be able to get this boy prepared for future academic success.