Student Case Study BY SASHA HOWARD Student Background
Student Case Study BY SASHA HOWARD
Student Background • Disclaimer: For the purposes of student confidentiality, the student in this reflection will be referred to as Jose, even though this is not his actual name. • Age: 9 years old, fourth grade • Likes/dislikes: likes recess time, prizes for good behavior, dislikes silent reading and writing time. • Family situation: low-economic status, abusive home-life • Language spoken at home: Spanish • F and P level: Q
Selected Goal • Progress monitoring goal will be focused on that the student will be able to increase levels of prosody • Why will this be beneficial? • “Scaffolding students’ learning by dividing instructional activities into small, manageable units. 132 This way, students will have limited information to process and will be able to do so quickly, with a high degree of accuracy. ” (Baker, Scott)
Baseline/intervention results • Texts used: • A Special Birthday for Rosa (level 3 narrative) • Cats: Lions and Tigers in your House (level 3 expository) • 2 nd, 3 rd, and 4 th grade word lists • Word list results: • 2 nd grade – 18/20 words accurate independent • 3 rd grade – 16/20 words accurate instructional • Began making small mistakes such as saying “interested” instead of “introduced” • 4 th grade – 11/20 words accurate, 2/20 self-correct identified frustration
Baseline/intervention results • “A Special Birthday for Rosa” • Read entire passage in 4 minutes and 21 seconds (261 seconds), 16 miscues, and 112 WPM • Prosody was low: low monotone voice with absence of fluctuation in voice • Comprehension questions (out of 8) Got 3 explicit questions correct, 1 implicit question correct Frustration level • Combination of word accuracy and the passage, frustration level. • “Cats: Lions and Tigers in Your House” • Read entire passage in 2 minutes and 38 seconds (158 seconds total), 99 WPM • Focused on completion instead of comprehending the text, read very fast • 4 of 8 comprehension questions correct (2 explicit, 2 implicit) • Noticed a pattern of picking up on repetitious language and could determine similarities and differences between lions, tigers, and house cats. • “they drink milk, start out small, and have claws. ”
Takeaways and Goal • Instruction will taught for a few days by me in a one-on-one framework. We will sit at the small group round table in the back of the class while the rest of the class is doing silent reading. • What is my goal for Jose? • By the end of this progress monitoring assignment, I intend for this student to increase levels of prosody measure by: • Reads in larger, meaningful phrase groups • Rhythm • Intonation Reading in Larger, Meaningful phrases • What I noticed before: Jose was reading in larger chunks without pausing for periods or commas, or reading in smaller chunks having to start over and repeat the same sentence two or three times Rhythm • What I noticed before: Jose’s rhythm was absent as he read the piece. He was reading to get it done not for the actual text material. Intonation • What I noticed before: This was Jose’s biggest weakness as he read the material was a severe lack of interest with a monotone voice that had zero inflects of voice volume and emphasis.
Progress Monitoring Results 2 nd read through “A Special Birthday for Rosa” • I told Jose that his goal was to work on how loud and how much emphasis he used in reading out loud to me. This time around, he did a lot better reading louder, but still lacked any intonation skills. • Time it took to read: 5: 02 (302 seconds) • 96 WPM • 13 miscues • Instructional level 3 rd read through “A Special Birthday for Rosa” • The next day I commended him for his accomplishment yesterday about reading louder and gave him a goal to work on fluctuation of voice and read the first sentence as an example: • “Today was the day Rosa had EAGERLY been waiting for, her BIRTHDAY!” • Time it took to read: 4: 23 (263 seconds) • 111 WPM • 9 miscues • Independent level
Results and Connections • Even just from reading the same passage three separate times, I saw huge improvements on Jose’s prosody. • First read-through vs. third read-through • Jose kept about the same WPM rate • Jose read the material louder and with more emphasis on words that effected Rosa’s emotions or events that happened that seemed significant to the story. • There were more pauses being made in between sentences and commas. Suggestions for continuation: have the student continue reading out loud with these goals in mind a couple times a week for a month to provide consistent feedback and continuation of progress monitoring goals. “Because the Common Core standards focus more on academic literacy skills than do prior state standards, teachers will certainly need to bolster ELs’ efforts to understand more challenging content in English language arts and all academic subjects…” (Goldenberg, Calude)
References Baker, Scott. “Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School”. Educators Practice Guide. What Works Clearninghouse, Pdf. Web Goldenberg, Claude. "Unlocking the Research on English Learners. " American Educator, n. d. Web.
- Slides: 9