RED 6546 Fall 2009 Ercilia Delancer Professor Lunetta Williams University of North Florida

Qualitative Reading Inventory 4 Case Study

Background: Tierra is a seventeen year old female student of African American extraction who is currently enrolled at the Pathways Academy, a charter school administered by Florida State College at Jacksonville at their Downtown Campus. Tierra is a senior slated to graduate this December. Tierras English teacher, Maggie Winter, volunteered her name when I asked her to allow me to work with one of her students who was having problems with reading in general. Her teacher did not volunteer any information as to what level she was currently reading at.

When asked how she chose this particular school, Tierra indicated she was originally enrolled at Wolfson High School; however, there were numerous fights on a daily basis and the students mother decided to pull her out and home school her instead. For one entire year, a tutor came to her home and helped her with her assignments. Subsequently, her mother found out about the academy and enrolled her there. She likes it there because there is more discipline and the classes are smaller. Tierra is from South Carolina and one of four siblings. Her mother is a registered nurse and a minister for a local church. Her father works at a motorcycle dealership. Her parents divorced and her father remarried. She now has eight other siblings in South Carolina. When asked about the origins of her last name, which seemed Hispanic or Latino to me, she indicated her father came from somewhere in South America and spoke Spanish, but she could not say from which country. She is close to him and visits whenever possible. At the present, she lives with her mother and grandmother. As an icebreaker, and to get to know her better, I had Tierra complete a reading survey which questioned her reading habits and reading materials she would most likely read. The results of the survey are included in this report.

Summary of Findings: Tierra read a total of six selections, four narrative and two expository over a four weeks period. How accurate is the student in identifying words? Tierra was given the chance to read the fifth, sixth, upper middle school and high school lists of words. She reached frustration at the upper elementary school list with a score of 55%. I had Tierra first read a fifth grade passage on Margaret Mead as she indicated not to have any previous knowledge about Mead, Pele or Biddy Mason. She scored at the frustration level for this passage. How automatic is the student in identifying words? Tierras rate on the passages ranged from 76 to 105 word per minute but her corrected word per minute went down to 68 to 90 indicating a speed appropriate for a fifth grader. What strategies for word identification are used by the student? Tierras mispronunciation and substitution miscues made on the word lists and the reading of the passages indicate that 74% of her miscues were made in the initial position, 37% had similar ending letter patterns, 42% had similar vowel patterns, 47% retained acceptable grammar while only 3% retained meaning. She self-corrected only 16% of the times. Which types of text can the student handle most successfully? Tierra was asked to read three narrative passages: Margaret Mead, Pele and Biddy Mason. She scored at the frustration level for all three passages with an average of 60% for each one. When reading the expository passages Early Railroads and Farming in the Plains, she also scored at the frustration level since her comprehension scores came in as 25% and 12.5% respectively. Which modes of reading represents a strength for the student? Although we were not required to ask the student to read silently, I wanted to give Tierra a chance to do so just to compare her ability to recall when reading orally and silently. She read the Martin Luther King, Jr. passage and scored 62% in comprehension, or a frustration level just as she had done when reading orally. How does the student perform in familiar and unfamiliar text? Tierra acknowledged having no prior knowledge of any of the subjects I asked her to read about. When given a choice between reading about railroads or plants, for example, she chose railroads indicating she knew nothing about plants. When asked if she had ever ridden in a train, she indicated she had not.

The student still reads using her finger or a pencil to follow the line. She needs to go back and repeat many words, which slows her down and distract from her concentration. When encountering an unknown word, she would try to sound it out first, and when unable to do so, she would skip it entirely. When encountering multi-syllabic words such as locomotive, she would pronounce each syllable individually, thus lo/co/mo/tive took her a while to read. Tierra does not pause when she encounters punctuation marks such as a comma or a period. As a result, her reading sounds monotonous and rushed. Although she has no trouble identifying words, Tierra is not an interactive reader. As a result, once she is done reading, she has no recollection of what she has read. Even when given a chance to look back for a particular answer, she just looked briefly and provided the wrong answer. It appears as if she has not developed any strategies to aid in her recollection of the material read. I have to point out that when I met Tierra at her school, we only had a 20-25 minute period between classes during which to try and read one complete passage. It was difficult to get to ask the concept questions, get her to read the passage and then ask the comprehension questions all the while watching the clock carefully so she would not be late for her next class. I realize now that I never got around asking her any prediction questions about any of the passages. The results of this survey might have been slightly different if the student had been available for a more relaxed session.

Given the fact that Tierra is expected to graduate this December, I cannot make any recommendations as to what interventions could be implemented between now and then to bring her to read at her school level. It is obvious from the slowness of her reading and her inability to answer questions at the end of the passage that Tierra reads superficially and without any real interest in the topics presented to her. Her lack of prior knowledge on any of the topics offered as choices for her to read would indicate that she does little if any leisure reading. The concept questions provided no chance to activate prior knowledge as in most instances she knew nothing or little about any of the topics.