Reading Practicum Case Study

I.

Background Information

My case study childs name is J. J goes to M Elementary School and is in the first grade.
She is a female and lives with her mom, dad and younger sibling. At home her parents care for
her as well as her brother who is under 1 years old. My mentor teacher has explained to me that
in the beginning of the year, J would come to school without her homework completed and she
would often lose her take home folder, needing a few replacements. My mentor teacher also
informed me that she still has not heard back from the parents about conferences as she has sent
two follow up emails after the first initial email that was sent to all parents. For kindergarten she
attended a school in the district called I L Elementary School. While she was there she received
extra support for her learning. She came to M Elementary at the beginning of the first grade
school year. J is a happy child. She likes to laugh and play with her classmates and enjoys talking
about things she likes such as Shopkins and The Littlest Pet Shop. In the classroom J usually
needs a bit more guidance than her peers. When she comes into the classroom in the morning she
has a checklist on her desk that reminds her of things she needs to do in order to be ready for the
day. J often needs guidance while completing the tasks on her checklist because she gets
distracted. She sometimes needs one-on-one support while unpacking her school bag, especially
if the class is asked to do something they usually do not do in the morning, i.e. making sure her
Halloween costume stays in her school bag (she kept taking it out, saying she had to un-pack).
During morning meeting the students greet each other but J often struggles with remembering
her classmates names, even after much practice. During instructional time I often walk around to
provide support for students and J is one of them. Keeping her on task and focused is sometimes
an issue, but not always. Sometimes J calls out during whole group instruction. It seems as if she
is trying to talk over the teacher, or to share something she thinks relates to what they are
learning or talking about. J seems to enjoy small group instruction and has really great days
where she is focused during the entire lesson. J said she enjoys reading books about cats and
dogs.
During reading and language arts J receives the same instruction as the rest of her peers.
The first grade classes as a whole switch teachers for phonics, depending on their level, and they
come back to their classroom for reading instruction and writing workshop. During reading, the
teacher introduces a new skill or enforces a skill they just learned through a mini-lesson and then
the students practice these skills during their independent reading or with their partners. For
writing workshop the class receives a mini-lesson and then they go back to their desks to write.
For the most part, J keeps up with the pace of the rest of the class during these times that I
observe. Sometimes I have to provide one-on-one support in order to help her catch up but this
does not happen often.
While attending field during the week of November 14, 2016, I found out that J was to
now be pulled out for learning support during phonics, reading and writing. This was decided
because J was struggling with her decoding of words. Her teacher and the support team decided
that it would be most beneficial if she stayed in learning support during phonics, reading and
writing because it provides one-on-one support that she was not receiving all the time in the
classroom.

II.

Assessment and/or Literacy Strategies/Activities

During the semester I have done many activities with J, as well as collecting assessments
from my mentor teacher that J has completed. In the beginning of the semester I read with J a lot.

I wanted to understand the way that she reads, strategies that she knows and strategies that she
needed to work on. I also worked with her one-on-one during phonics instruction. The first time I
worked with her one-on-one I remember having to help her sound words out with her fingers and
then blending them together with a swooping motion. J would sound the words out, but when it
came time to write the words out she would replace the first sound with the last sound, resulting
in her words being written almost completely backwards. For example, if the word was frog, she
would isolate each sound and then blend them (/f/r/o/g/- frog). Then she would sound the word
out again and write it as gorf. I tried to focus in on the first sound with J, asking her to identify
the sound as the letter f. she would do this sometimes but it was inconsistent.
Something I have come to identify with Js performance is inconsistency. Some days J
does fantastic during phonics, reading and writing and other days she struggles in one, if not all
of those things. In some lessons that I completed with J, such as a small reading group or the
punctuation bingo game, she did fantastic. In other lessons, like the CVC board game and
reading strategies lesson she struggled. These are things that she showed an understanding of
during previous observations. When I meet with J during reading I ask her to pick a book from
her bag to read to me. When she reads there are times when she can read the entire book and then
give a summary of the book. She can even extend her thinking with the books and provide
inferences that may have not been so obvious in the book. Other times when I meet with J for
reading she struggles with the words she reads, such as reading the word click as chick. When
this happened I helped her break the word down. She was able to read the word right after
breaking it down but when she read the word on the very next page she read it as chick and not
click. During that reading I continued to help J focus in on that word and the sounds, as well as
other words that were in the story.
My mentor teacher provided me with three different assessments for J:
- DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency
- DIBLES Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
- Running Record: Assessment for Independent Reading Levels
Progress Monitoring of Nonsense Word Fluency:
Js teacher performed this assessment with her on four different occasions between the
months of October and November. During each progress monitoring J struggled with reading the
whole word correctly. She broke down the letter sounds but when it came to blending she
struggled. Instead of having a steady rising line on the graph for her progress monitoring, J has a
large dip before the score goes back up.
Total Correct
Letter Sounds
(CLS)
Total Whole
Words Read
(WWR)

10-18-16

10-26-16

11-2-16

11-10-16

27

17

16

26

10-18-16
In the first assessment she attempted lines. In the first line she got 12 out of 14 sounds
and 3 out of 5 whole words read. The second line contained 14 sounds and she correctly got 12,

and she again read 3 out of 5 whole words. J skipped the third line and moved onto the fourth.
While reading the fourth line she said 3 out of 14 letter sounds correctly and had no whole words
read.
10-26-16
In the second assessment J read 2 lines. On the first line she said 8 out of 14 letter sounds
correctly and had no whole words read. On the second line she said 9 out of 14 letter sounds
correctly and again had no whole words read. While pronouncing letter sounds on both of these
lines a common mistake observed is that she is not correctly identifying letters.
11-2-16
In the third assessment she attempted lines. On the first line J said 5 out of 14 letter
sounds correctly and had no whole words read. On the second line she said 10 out of 14 letter
sounds correctly and had no whole words read. J skipped the third line and moved onto the
fourth. In the fourth line she got 1 letter sound correct and no whole words read. During this
assessment J is again replacing letters with other letters. For example, the nonsense word was sek
and she said zik.
11-10-16
In the fourth assessment she read 3 lines. In the first line she said 12 out of 14 letter
sounds correctly and had 1 whole word read. In the second line she said 12 out of 14 letter
sounds correctly and had 4 whole words read. In the third line she read the first word backwards
(wov as vow) and she did not attempt anymore words in that line.
Progress Monitoring of Phoneme Segmentation Fluency:
Js teacher performed this assessment with her along with the previous DIBELS that was
done. J progressed quickly with this assessment between the first and second assessment but she
had a dip during the third before going back up during the fourth assessment.
Total

10-18-16
35

10-26-16
48

11-2-16
40

11-10-16
47

10-18-16
J read 4 lines on the first assessment. During this assessment she got 11out of 12 sounds
correct on the first line. On the second line she got 10 out of 14 sounds correct and on the third
line she got 10 out of 13 sounds correct. Finally on the fourth line J got 4 out of 12 sounds
correct.
10-26-16
During the second assessment J read 5 lines. On the first line she got 10 out of 12 sounds
correct. On the second line she got 11 out of 13 sounds correct. On the third line she got 9 out of
12 sounds correct and on the fourth line she got 12 out of 13 sounds correct. On the fifth line she
got 6 out of 14 sounds correct.
11-2-16
J read 5 lines during the third assessment. On the first line she got 10 out of 12 sounds
correct. On the second line she got 8 out of 14 sounds correct and on the third line she got 9 out
of 11 sounds correct. On the fourth line she got 10 out of 12 sounds correct and on the fifth line
she got 3 out of 14 sounds correct.
11-10-16

In the fourth assessment she read 5 lines. On the first line she got 11 out of 12 sounds
correct. On the second line she got 10 out of 13 sounds correct and on the third line she got 8 out
of 13 sounds correct. On the fourth line she got 9 out of 13 sound correct and on the fifth line she
got 9 out of 14 sounds correct.
Running Record:
I was able to observe Js assessment for her independent reading level. The book J read
was Laundry Day by Karen Hjemboe. Before J started reading my mentor teacher gave her a
preview of what the book was about. She also wanted to see if J new any good reader reading
strategies. J told her that good readers, Read a book all over again. If they get stuck on a word
they skip it or say it out loud. J predicted that the book would be about putting in a lot of
laundry but she could not recall the word for a washing machine, or washer. During the reading J
kept replacing the word in with the word I. For example, one sentence read, In go the
socks and J read it as I go the socks. The teacher stopped her and had her check the word a
few times before she got it right. Each time the book said in, J said I and needed to have
teacher prompts in order to say the word correctly. On page 3 of the book J came across the word
pants which she pronounced packs. She decided she was going to sound the word out and
sounded it out as p-a-n-t-s but then blended it as packs and then again as picks. On page 5 J
pronounced socks as shocks but quickly self-corrected.
After the book J was asked to give a retell. She stated, They put in pants and socks and
stuff. They also take it out when its done. Then they went out of the room because theyre all
done their laundry. J then went on to make an inference of what may have happened if the book
continued. She said, Maybe theyll put it away because theyre all done. After the retell J
answered four questions and got a score of 3.5 out of 4.
During the reading Jane had 2 miscues that she did not self-correct, thus putting her at a
92% accuracy rate for level C. The teacher concluded that level C was not an independent
reading level for Jane because in order for it to be an independent reading level she had to be
able to read with at least 96% accuracy. She decided that J would stay at level B for her
independent level but that she would pick two level C books for her independent reading in order
to practice. The goals that were set for Jane were to blend correctly and to have accuracy with
her sight word identification.

III.

Evaluation

After reviewing the assessment results and looking back on Js performance during the
activities that we completed together I am able to gather her strengths and roadblocks in both
reading and language arts. Js strengths consist of being able to sound out words, retelling stories
and inferencing. J is also very resilient. During my time spent with J I never saw her become
frustrated or give up. She takes the task or challenge that she is presented with and she tries her
hardest to get through it. She always has a smile on her face. Some roadblocks that J comes to
face with are blending words and correctly identifying her sight words.
If I were to stay throughout the rest of the year in the classroom there are some
suggestions I have on activities that will help her with blending her words and her sight word
recognition.
Blending:
One activity that I found to help J with her blending is called the drive-thru blending. It will have
words chunked into parts (ex. Shut is written as Sh u t) and J will drive a toy car from one part

of the word to the next. As she is doing this she will say the sounds and at the end she will say
the sounds all together to blend the word. I also found a strategy to help J remember how to
remember the tricky letters and phonics sounds. There are posters that have secret stories that
go along with the sounds or letters. I remember from my time spent with J that she tends to
remember tricks that will help her with her reading. One time she referred to a reading strategy
called RAP (Read, Ask and Put). These little tricks will allow J to spend less time on sounding
out tricky letter combinations.
Sight Word Recognition:
An activity I found that will help J with her sight word recognition is to have sight words
printed on flowers. The teacher will say the sight word out loud and J has to find it and swat it
with a fly swatter once she finds it. Another activity that would be good for J to practice her sight
words with is to make the sight word out of play-dough, say it out-loud and then to write it. This
will enforce the sight words in different learning styles which J may benefit from. J enjoys
playing review games while in class so I think another good addition to the activities already
listed is a sight word bingo. This will help J become familiar with the words.
Three goals that I think would be good for J moving forward are as follows. The first goal
is that J will correctly blend unknown words that she comes across at least half of the time. This
goal can be modified as she becomes more confident in her ability to blend unknown words. The
second goal is that J will be able to identify her sight words with 70% accuracy. The third goal is
that she will be able to be able to self-correct words that she does not read correctly 70% of the
time. These goals will help Jane become a confident and accurate reader as the year moves on.
They will also help her build her fluency.
Book recommendations:
1. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? By Bill Martin, illustrated by Eric Carle
- I recommended this book for J because of the repetition that the author uses. The
repetition that is used in the book will allow J to build her fluency while reading. The
more she reads the book the smoother she will become with reading the book. This is a
great way to allow her to practice her fluency.
2. I Like Stars by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Joan Paley
- I thought that this would be a great book for J because it will hold her interest. The book
is a level B book which is right on level for J. This book is something that she can read on
her own to practice her decoding and blending.
3. Catch that Cat! By Cari Meister, illustrated by David J. Brooks.
- I picked this book because I have heard Js love for cats while working with her over the
semester. The book is a level C book but I think that it will challenge her just enough so
that she can work on her goals that are set for her.

References
Brown, Margaret Wise, and Joan Paley. I like Stars. New York: Golden, 1998. Print.
Hjemboe, Karen, and Shelly Hehenberger. Laundry Day. New York, NY: Bebop , an Imprint of
Lee & Low, 2000. Print.
Martin, Bill, and Eric Carle. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? New York: H. Holt,
1992. Print.
Meister, Cari, and David Brooks. Catch That Cat! New York: Children's, 1999. Print.

EDR 317
Fall 2016

Case Study Assignment

NAME_________________________________
Criteria
Background Information: Information
on the student is complete, giving an
accurate picture of him/her. Be detailed
and use evidence to support your
descriptions.
Assessment and Literacy
Strategies/Activities: Methods and
activities are appropriate and are
accurately completed and described. A
clear description is given on what was
done with the student and his/her
performance/results. Be specific and use
evidence/examples as support.
Evaluation: Provides an accurate
description of the childs strengths and
roadblocks based on assessment and
instruction used. Appropriate
instructional recommendations/
suggestions are given for future work
with this student. Includes 3 goals and
3-5 book recommendations. BE
SPECIFIC and explain WHY!
Supporting Materials: Contains work
samples, materials, artifacts, anecdotal
information on observations of student as
well as comments/ questions/notes about
his/her performance with assessments
and activities employed. Any pertinent
assessments or materials used with the
student are included.

TOTAL

CASE STUDY______________________

Possible
Points

Student SelfEvaluation

Earned Points

10

15

20

50

** Please be sure to check for mechanical/spelling errors. Points will be deducted for
errors that make it difficult to read/understand the paper.