Tutor: Shannon Knopp

Case Report

Student: Sarah

July 19, 2010

As a graduate reading clinician in Appalachian State University’s Master’s Degree Program in Reading

Education, I tutored Sarah for 14 one-hour sessions across the summer 2010 semester. Sarah is an eleven year old rising fifth grader.

Initial Literacy Assessments

A number of literacy assessments were given to determine instructional levels and areas of needs and readiness in reading, writing, word study, and listening comprehension. These assessments were given to determine the student’s independent, instructional and frustration levels in reading and spelling. A student’s independent level in a particular area is the highest at which he or she can successfully work without instructional support. The instructional level is the optimal level for working with instructional support. One's frustration level is that at which he can not readily benefit even with instructional support. The assessments given were: Schlagal’s Spelling Assessment, word recognition in isolation, contextual reading, listening comprehension, oral and written composition, and sense of story.

Sarah is a shy but sweet young lady. She was polite and worked hard on the assessments she was given.

Spelling The Schlagal spelling assessment has eight grade-leveled lists of twelve spelling words. They start out with first grade and go all the way up to eighth grade. The spelling test is given as a part of reading assessment because spelling and word recognition are highly correlated. The spelling assessment allows a view into the child’s phonics knowledge and demonstrates areas of strength and weakness in phonics.

This assessment is used to determine the child’s instructional level in spelling and phonics and the types of errors she is making at that level.

For spelling, independent level is defined as the highest level at which the child scores ninety percent or better. Instructional level is the level that the child scores between fifty and ninety percent. Frustration level is the level at which the child scores below forty percent. There is a gray area between forty and forty-nine percent on a list. The tutor then uses other information from word recognition in isolation and contextual reading to make a judgment on spelling level.

Sarah’s spelling shows clear frustration at the fourth grade level. On the first, second, and third grade lists Sarah was in the instructional range. The types of mistakes she was making were with blends such as TROP for drop and pre-consonant nasals such as BOOP for bump. She also consistently erred in doubling of consonants when adding inflectional endings such as TRAPED for trapped and SHOPING for shopping and STEEPING for stepping. She also misspelled some vowel patterns such as NOSIE for noise and CAOT for caught . Sarah’s strengths are with short vowels, initial and ending consonants and most blends and digraphs. She mixed up TROP for drop, but this was the only time she has confused an initial blend. Although she scored eighty-three on the first grade list I will call this her independent level with the qualification that she may be a bit shaky on pre-consonant nasals, and I will need to focus on those with the other word studies she does. Her instructional range is second to third grade with a focus on doubling of consonants, less-frequent vowel patterns, and short verses long vowels as seen in STEEPING for stepping. Word Recognition in Isolation (WRI)

The WRI assessment is a series of eight grade-leveled lists of words that are flashed for one quarter of a second each to the child. The child is given more time if they can’t recognize the word with the flash presentation. This assessment gives insight into a child’s automaticity with word recognition on the flashed portion, and it demonstrates their decoding ability in the untimed section. The ability to automatically recognize words is the backbone of reading. This assessment also guides the tutor on where to start the contextual reading passages. The passages should begin at the level the student scored eighty percent or better on flashed word recognition.

One’s instructional level in word recognition in isolation is considered to be the highest at which she can recognize at least seventy percent of the words correctly on the flashed presentation. The independent level is considered to be a score between ninety and one hundred percent, and frustration level is a score below fifty percent. Fifty to sixty-nine percent is considered the gray area and the teacher must make a call based on other factors such as spelling and word recognition in context.

The spelling test predicted that Sarah would be instructional in reading in the second to third grade range. On the WRI assessment Sarah was independent at the second grade level with a flashed score of

90 and untimed score of 100, instructional at third grade with a flashed score of 85 and untimed score of

100 and frustrated at fourth grade with a flashed score of 55 and untimed score of 80. This aligned well with the spelling test except for the difference in the second grade level being independent in WRI and instructional in spelling. I would have expected her to be a little lower on WRI at the second grade level based on her spelling scores. All of the words Sarah missed at third grade flashed she quickly decoded when she was given more time. The words she missed were “accept”, “legend”, and “storyteller” which she misread as exit, leg and stroller. Based on this information, I started Sarah’s contextual reading passage assessment at the third grade level.

Contextual Reading

Students are given grade leveled passages to read aloud. Accuracy, rate, fluency and comprehension are measured as a child is reading these passages. The child is than given passages to read silently. The silent reading passages check for rate and comprehension of text read at different levels. This test allows the tutor to see where the child is struggling in the reading process. While listening to the reading it will become apparent if the child is reading too slow and halting, or if she is making frequent errors or if she lacks the skills to comprehend what she has read.

For a child to be at her independent level in reading she should achieve an accuracy of ninety-eight percent or better on a passage and a comprehension score between ninety and one hundred percent.

The instructional range is ninety-five to ninety-seven percent accuracy and comprehension score of seventy to eighty-nine percent. Anything below ninety percent accuracy and fifty percent comprehension is considered frustration level, and ninety to ninety-four percent accuarcy is considered a gray area were the teacher must make a judgment based on other information such as rate, fluency, comprehension, WRI, and spelling. The child must also have a reading rate that is appropriate for the level of the text.

Based on the information from the flashed WRI scores I started Sarah’s reading passages at third grade.

With the results of the spelling and WRI in isolation tests I predicted Sarah to be instructional in reading in the 2nd to 3rd grade range. The information gained from the contextual passages made it evident that

Sarah was at frustration level when reading the third grade text. Her rate was seventy-two words per minute which is below the eighty words expected for beginning third grade readers. She also scored a seven percent on the comprehension passages at this level and her reading was very halted. She seemed to be reading word by word and not able to see the sentences and passage as a whole piece of text. Sarah’s accuracy at this level was ninety-four percent which fall in the gray area, but her slow rate and low comprehension show clear frustration at this level. Her silent reading at this level seemed to be a little bit stronger than her oral reading. Her rate for silent reading was ninety-nine words per minute, falling just inside of the acceptable range for beginning third grade reading with is ninety-five words per minute. Her instructional level in reading is second grade. At the second grade level her accuracy was again in the gray area with ninety-three percent, but her rate was seventy-two words per minute which falls in the early second grade range and her comprehension was a little stronger with a score of fifty percent. Her independent level is 1-2. Her prosody in reading improved at this level and her rate was at the end of year first grade range with eighty-three words per minute. She also scored a seventy-five percent on comprehension at this level. Although her accuracy of ninety-six percent puts her just outside of the independent range, the other components of her reading (rate and prosody) confirm that this is her independent level.

Fluency, rate and comprehension are areas of need for Sarah at her second grade instructional level.

Her reading was again very halted and seemed to be word by word. She also fell in the early second grade rate range, so there is definite room for improvement in rate. Comprehension seems to be a problem at all levels when she is reading.

Listening Comprehension

The listening comprehension test consists of the tutor reading passages to the student and then asking comprehension questions. The passages should start at the child’s grade level or whichever level they scored sixty percent or higher on oral reading comprehension. This test assesses the student’s ability to comprehend what is being read to them. This test can indicate whether the actual act of reading is getting in the way of comprehension or if it is a language problem that prevails even when the child is read to.

I started the listening comprehension passage at fourth grade for Sarah since this is the grade she just completed. Sarah scored a hundred percent on comprehension at this level. I then moved on to the fifth grade passage where Sarah only scored a fifteen percent on comprehension. This indicates that

Sarah is instructional at fourth grade even though she scored a one hundred. Her score at fifth grade clearly indicates frustration. Her listening ability is higher than her reading ability, but it is still below her correct grade which will be fifth.

Sense of Story

The sense of story assessment is used to assess a child’s awareness of book language and story elements. Two short stories are read to the child, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and “The Poor Old

Dog”. Then the child is asked to re-tell these stories without reading them. The purpose is to determine how much of the book language a child uses in the retelling or if they re-tell it everyday oral language.

This assessment can help determine how much a child needs to be exposed to stories written in rich language to increase their understanding of book language and story elements.

When Sarah retold these stories she missed many story elements. She included two of eight story elements in her retellings. She included characters and conversation but missed the other essential story elements. Sense of story elements include: beginning, setting, character introductions, sequence, feelings, description, conversation and ending.

Sarah scored a level C on the sense of story syntax scale which is complete sentences.

E Book language grammar, usage, and vocabulary honored D Complete sentences with subordinate clauses C Complete sentences B Phrases A 1 or 2 word statements She scored a level B for story organization which is leapfrogging. Part of her story was in chronological order, but she placed some events in the wrong order which made her retellings confusing.

E Audience awareness demonstrated through complete information

D Appropriate use of introductory, connecting, and closing words and phrases

C Chronological sequence (and then, and then)

B Leap frogging

A Syncretic retelling (Disoriented)

Sarah will benefit by having rich language material at about the fourth grade level read to her. This will begin to develop her sense of story and book language.

Writing

The written composition assessment has two parts: first the child tells a story from their own life orally, then the child attempts to write the story down. The assessment helps determine the child’s composition ability with their story told orally and the degree to which spelling hinders their composition with their written version of the story.

Sarah’s oral and written compositions were very similar. Her oral story included some dialogue that was not in her written story. Her written story included a number of spelling errors, but it sounded very much the same as her oral story. Sarah randomly placed periods resulting in a number of fragments in her writing. She also used an apostrophe before every s in the story. Sarah needs development in her ideas and more of story with a setting, problem, solution and other written language conventions.

Plans, Progress and Recommendations Plans were made across the instructional areas of reading, writing, word study (spelling and phonics), and being read to in accord with the conclusions drawn from the initial assessment. Tutoring lessons included activities in these four areas and were adjusted according to Sarah’s progress and needs.

Reading

Sarah is instructional at reading at the second grade level. She should read at the second grade level with instructional support. She should at the first grade level when she is reading independently. The reading instruction Sarah received over the summer was in the form of Directed Reading Thinking

Activities (DRTA). In a DRTA Sarah read a second grade book aloud to me. I had previously read the book and marked stopping points in the story. These points were points of high anticipation that would allow Sarah to make a guess about what was going to happen in the story. At each stopping point I would ask Sarah three questions. What do you think is going to happen? Why do you think that? What have you read so far that would make you think that? The purpose of these questions was to get Sarah to think about what she had read and make logical connection and guesses based on what she had read.

The purpose was not for her to come up with a correct prediction but a logical one. At times I would prompt Sarah to go back and reread sections of the text to support her prediction. Sarah struggled with this activity at the beginning. She seemed uncomfortable making predictions and talking about the text.

She was unable to make inferences, and most of her guesses were literal recall from the story. She also seemed to memorize sections of the text and just say them back to me when I asked what she thought would happen next. As the weeks progressed Sarah became more comfortable with the activity. S he was then able to make logical and supported predictions about the text. She still often needed to reread what she had already read to make these predictions. She needed a lot of support and frequent questions to make sense of the text. Sarah read a total of five books over the four weeks I tutored her.

The books Sarah read were: Kate Shelley and the Midnight Express The Balloon Race The Little Mermaid Fox in Love Dolphins

Most of these books took Sarah two days to complete. In addition to the first reading of the book,

Sarah reread the beginnings of each book for three day to work on fluency. For this I wanted Sarah to read at an appropriate rate for second grade material (80-120 words per minute) and to read with expression and fluency. Sarah’s fluency improved noticeably during the second and third reading of a text. Her rate was in the high nineties and she was putting some expression in her voice. She still needs work on fluency. Reading with expression and prosody did not seem easy for Sarah. She would miss a word or two and revert back to her word by word halted reading. Sarah maintained a high accuracy throughout her reading. She was above between ninety-five and ninety-nine percent accuracy during the rereads. I recommend that Sarah continues to read at the second grade level with a focus on fluency and comprehension. I also recommend that Sarah spend forty percent of her Language Arts time at school reading text on the second grade level. This reading should include frequent stops where she is asked the DRTA questions so that she can make meaning of the text she is reading.

Writing

Sarah’s writing is much like her oral language. In writing she lacks details and story elements that make up a story. Sarah tells events in sequential order but gives no greater importance to any event in a sequence. Sarah’s writing focus was adding details and making sure all the ideas in her writing were connected in a logical way. Sarah’s spelling somewhat limits what she can write freely on her own, so at times she dictated to me and I wrote for her. Most of the time thought Sarah wrote her own compositions. To get Sarah to get her ideas out I would first have her tell me her ideas. I would ask questions as she was talking to get her to clarify and add details. Then, I would give Sarah paper and pencil and have her write. At first Sarah seemed to write the most basic telling of her story and did not include any of the details I had elicited form her. So, the second week of tutoring I had Sarah talk to me about her writing and then tell me what she was going to write before she wrote it down. This extra step helped Sarah write in a way that was more like the language she was reading in books and less like the language she uses to speak. Furthermore, I also read the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” to

Sarah and had her retell it in her own words. Sarah struggled with this at first and just wanted to give a summary of each page. As I worked with her, she began to think about the what she was going to write and was able to use dialogue and language like the original story used. She showed a lot of progress in her retelling. Sarah was able to write one personal narrative and retell “The Princess and the Pea” during our tutoring time. The retelling of “The Princess and the Pea” took about two weeks to complete. I would recommend that Sarah continues to work on her writing especially with using details and book language in her own writing. I recommend that Sarah spend thirty percent of her allotted

Language Arts time working on writing original compositions or retelling books that have been read to her.

Word Study

Sarah’s instructional range in spelling is 1st through 3rd grade. She made errors with many long vowel patterns and consonant doubling. Sarah did a number of word sorts during the four weeks of tutoring. I started Sarah of with short vs. long vowel sorts so that she could work automatizing these patterns. The first sort Sarah did was short a vs. ai vs. aCe. This sort also included a ? column for the words that broke the rules.

a ai aCe ?

Hand(P) Sail Same Saw

Nap Train(P) Rake (P) What

Cat Paint Cake (P) was That Nail (P) Tail have

Hat (P) Tail Paid

Had Paid wait

Jam Wait

Ran Sarah struggled with this sort at first. She wanted to place many of the words in the ? column. I then eliminated the ? column and Sarah had a lot more success with this words sort. After two day of this sort , I added the ? column back and Sarah was able to sort all the words correctly taking about three seconds to sort each word. She was also successful at spelling the words in each column when given a spelling test. The next sort Sarah did was sort with short e and long e. I expected Sarah to do better at this sort initially because it was very similar in structure to the previous sort. Sarah however still struggled a lot with this sort.

e ee ea ?

Sled Queen Dream Great

Sell Seed (P) Bean (P) Been

Nest Deer (P) Meat

Pet Jeep Meal (P)

When Need Seal (P)

Let Free Leaf

Bed (P) Feet Beach

Hen Meet Mean

Dress (P) Lead

I again had to remove the ? column to force Sarah to make a choice about where the words belonged.

After about two days she was successful and I was able to add the ? column back to the sort. She was successfully able to sort this taking about three seconds per word. When Sarah approached the next sort she seemed more confident and was able to sort all the word correctly with only a small amount of help.

i igh iCe

Fit Sight Mine

Chin Right Shine

Trip High Price

Kick Bright While

Big Night Side

Hid Might Drive

Lip (P) Light (P) Bike (P)

Swim (P) Fight (P) Dime (P)

Sarah was so successful with this sort the first day I add the ? column into the sort the next day. The ? column included find, child, wild. She was able to sort and spell these words. After these sorts I wanted to introduce Sarah to a doubling sort. In this sort she had to sort words into columns based on whether the final consonant was doubled when adding “ed” and “ing”. Sarah only got to do this sort for one day, but she seemed to really start to get it.

Shop Shopping Type Typing Swim Swimming Rope Roping Stop Stopping Bite Biting Run Running Skate Skating Pop Popping Hope Hoping Hop Hopping Time Timing As she did this sort, Sarah started to recognize the difference between the words that doubled and those that did not. I would recommend continuing with this sort or one like it to help Sarah gain a stronger understanding of the way doubling works. I would also recommend that Sarah receives more instruction on vowel patterns especially o and u patterns. I recommend that Sarah spends about twenty percent of her Reading/Language Arts time on spelling and phonics. Being Read To

I read third and fourth grade material aloud to Sarah doing a Directed Listening Thinking Activity (DLTA).

When I was reading I would stop and points of high anticipation and ask three questions. What do you think is going to happen? Why do you think that? What did I read that makes you think that? Sarah struggled with this at first. She was not able to make connection between what was going on in the story and what would happen next. As the weeks went on, Sarah became more comfortable with this activity and was able to make some connections. Sarah often missed the subtle hints in the texts, but she was able to pick up on the more obvious information. If Sarah could not support her answer, I would reread a few sections to try to give her the information she needed. She was often able to use this rereading to support her guess. I recommend that Sarah is read to for ten percent of her

Reading/Language Arts time. She should be read to at the fourth grade level and be asked DLTA questions at frequent stopping points.

It is recommended that Sarah continue to receive extra help in reading. She has worked hard this summer. I have enjoyed working wither her. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Dr.

Tom Gill, the ASU summer reading clinic director, at [email protected] or 828-406-7794.

Shannon Knopp ASU Graduate Reading Clinician Tom Gill, EdD ASU Associate Professor