Case Study 1 7th grade student with no documented learning disability: Katie Background Information: Katie has no documented

disability. She appears to be on track in terms of reading comprehension and fluency in comparison to her peers. She tends to fall somewhere in the middle when looking at percentile achievement and mastery of skills. Katie had never been given the option to use the computer for reading and although she may not need extra technical supports she was excited to get the option to do so. She did not know how to use the text reader and it took a while to show her how to make font sizes bigger and smaller to one that suited her. Prior to this study Katie had never used text reading software, I decided to use Kurzweil Katie was reading at grade level in her class so she was administered all passages at the seventh grade level. Par Results: Katie had the highest level of comprehension when read to aloud by an adult reader. She scored in the green level. When reading on her own as well as with the text reader she scored in the yellow range. She read the passage with a rate of 135 wpm which is consistent with where she should be reading during the middle of seventh grade. Katie made four mistakes, one was mixing up numbers, and another was a wrong ending as well as a third being a reversal of letters. The fourth mistake was an omission of a word. For her independent reading Katie scored 8/12 correct but took longer to answer the questions than she did when she scored a 10/12 on the adult reader passage. When using the text reader Katie only got 7/12 questions correct and paused frequently to think about her answers. Katie admitted that she does not enjoy reading on her own or in her own free time. She does like it when her teacher reads to the class. She also said she liked using the text reader but it was confusing to use.

Key Katies suggested reading level= 7th Green: Comprehension scores in the top quartile. Yellow: Comprehension scores in the middle 2 quartiles. Red: Comprehension scores in the bottom quartile.

Results and Recommendations: Completing the PAR gave insight and provided documentation on several important characteristics of Katies reading needs: Katie comprehends most accurately when read to by an adult reader. She can read accurately and comprehend when reading to her but not as effectively when being read to. Katies scores were lowest when using text reader software. She was unfamiliar with this software and it may have caused some anxiety. Although comprehension scores were close Katie did best and prefers best to be read aloud.

Using the supporting data from the PAR, the following recommendations were made: Continue to use 7th grade material as Katie appears to comprehend at the mid to top quartiles. Provide support on more challenging text by making an adult reader available. Allow Katie to keep exploring text reading software. Although, she did not excel using this program she may find it supportive with more added instruction from a teacher and practice. I suggest allowing Katie to try text readers once a week for assignments to give her more exposure. Allow Katie to highlight important facts throughout her reading. She struggles most with recalling basic facts but can usually make inferences and explain main ideas and vocabulary.

Reflection: There are some factors that may have influenced my results. First of all, the assessments were done in a home setting rather than a formal setting. This could skew results if the child did not take the assignment seriously, it may have been more effective to do this task in a neutral location. Second, the child in the study is my sister. Because of this she really wanted to do well and got frustrated when she made mistakes or didnt know answers because she wanted to help me as best as she could. This could show different results than her teacher might see at school where she is less motivated. From completing the PAR I learned two major things. First, I learned that administering the PAR assessment can be useful to creating supports for students who may not have a disability. The child in this study did not have a disability but there were clear areas in which she excelled and needed more work or help. This shows that the PAR is an element that can be applied to UDL. I also learned that it is important to prepare for multiple passages. I started with a passage below her grade level to make sure that it was appropriate and it was way too easy. In order to make accurate recommendations it is important that you find a balance for a level of

passages that is not too easy but where the student is still being challenged. One strength of the PAR is that there are lots of passages to choose from making it easy to set up and prepare for the assessment. However, in contrast I found that most of these passages were boring or dry and didnt play much into prior knowledge of students therefore they lack a push toward motivation.