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Brief BackgroundThis assignment which is composed of four individual assessments tell me about the stage for literacy the child I selected is in. I decided to choose my case study student because he sees a reading specialist every week, and over the course of my being there, I have already seen some improvement in his literary knowledge. I also know him better than some of the other students in the class due to our close relationship from working together. “I had asked my cooperating teacher on the very first day of practicum [in the first-grade] which of her students were more reserved, but also has the most potential for improvement as we head towards the end of the school year. She had recommended two of her students, a girl and a boy…” (ELED 308 Case Study). I only got to interact with the girl on the first day because he was sick and staying at home. The next week I arrived for practicum, I finally got to meet him. “He was shyer than the girl, but there was still something different about him that intrigued me. For example, unlike most of the other students who would read to me, he would pronounce words aloud until he thought he was saying them correctly. When he thought he got a word right, he would look back at me for some sort of confirmation” (ELED 308 Case Study). It was not just that which intrigued me, but he is one of the few good students in the class who elicits an aura of respectfulness. In my experience of being there and working with him, I have never heard of, nor seen him get angry, have another student tattle on him for any reason, or simply not want to do the work” (ELED 308 Case Study). All in all, he is a six-and-a-half-year-old who is very excited to turn seven on May eleventh. Phonological Awareness AssessmentPrior to assessing my case study student on each skill set, I explained the process of what I will do, along with an appropriate response before I began. Skill 1: Onset Fluency: Isolate the Initial PhonemeFor this assessment, my case study student got a ten out of ten. It did not take him any more than a couple of seconds to give me an answer, and no repetition of a word was necessary. He got a ten out of ten on this assessment because he is aware of how to pronounce, and recognize a sound each letter makes, specifically, the beginning sound in a one-syllable word. It is easier to distinguish beginning sounds from ending sounds so it is important to start instruction from here. Skill 2: Rhyme Production For this assessment, my case study student got a ten out of ten. In this section, he responded with some words that I did not even think were words because I had never heard of them before. For example, when asked what rhymes with “coat” he said “moat.” When answering the questions in this section, it did take him a little bit longer. I could see that he was trying hard to think of what would rhyme with the designated word. This means that although he answered all my questions correctly, having some more practice on what words rhyme with others would benefit him as he enters second grade. Being able to quickly think of words that would rhyme with “blue,” for instance, is an important ability to have. “As students manipulate words and sounds to create simple rhymes, they become aware of word and letter patterns that will help them develop decoding skills” (Dennis-Shaw & Massachusetts). In return, these decoding skills will help them read books with increasing difficulty, and write more than two or three sentences. Skill 3: Identifying Final Sounds in WordsFor this assessment, my case study student got a ten out of ten. He was as fast answering these questions as he was when answering the “Onset Fluency: Isolate the Initial Phoneme” questions. This shows that he understands how to pronounce, and hear for the last sound in one-syllable words. Furthermore, this shows how he is ready to blend phonemes so they make a one-syllable word. Skill 4: Blending PhonemesFor this assessment, my case study student got a seven out of ten. He struggled forming the final word with these three phonemic sounds: “h-a-z,” “s-i-t,” and “t-u-b.” Instead of saying “h-a-z” he said “haze;” furthermore, “s-i-t” was pronounced as “sit,” and “t-u-b” was pronounced as “tub.” It was good how he kept the beginning sounds the same in both the original and final word, but unfortunately, he did not understand what the final sounds for those three words would create. It did take him a couple of minutes to answer this whole section, compared to previous ones. His “grade” on this assessment shows how he needs to do more practice on blending phonemes. He understands how to decipher the beginning, medial, and final sounds of words, but needs to review what happens when he blends sounds together, not just how to take them apart. Skill 5: Segmenting Words into PhonemesFor this assessment, my case study student got a nine out of ten. Just by doing the opposite of what was done in the previous skill, he succeeded in getting all but one word correct. The word he got wrong was “cave,” segmenting the sounds into “c-e-v.” It did not take him as long to complete this section, resulting in a slight increase in how many he got right. This means that whenever he reads a book to me, he takes his time to read each word, pronouncing it to the best of his ability. Although he is quiet during the process of pronouncing the word, I still hear him try to sound out the beginning and final sounds in the word. Skill 6: Identifying Medial Sounds in WordsFor this assessment, my case study student got a ten out of ten. It did not take him too long to determine the sounds within each of the words. This shows his understanding of which letters are vowels, which one or two of those vowels had been in the word, and how to pronounce the vowels in a correct manner. Skill 7: Adding Phonemes to WordsFor this assessment, my case study student got a three out of five. Instead of getting the words “sand and bone” when I added an /s/ and /b/ to the beginning of each of those two words, he said “ends and ownb.” He completely changed the word for the first response, and then for his third response he said something that was not even a word. When asked to pronounce the other three words, he got those with ease. I do not know why he stumbled so much on these two words in particular, but this means that he needs more practice joining a letter-sound to a word. Moreover, it could mean that he cannot think of, or envision the blending of the word with the letter-sound at least without looking at the word. Skill 8: Deleting Initial Phonemes in WordsFor this assessment, my case study student got a five out of five. Contrary to the trouble he had adding phonemes to words, he did not have trouble deleting them. This means that this skill is easier for him to do since he must understand the process behind deleting the initial phoneme of the word. Skill 9: Substituting Initial Phonemes in WordsFor this assessment, my case study student got a ten out of ten. This means that he used the sounds he knew to differentiate between the letter it corresponded with, and got the correct result in the end. It did not take him long to do this part because he did have some practice when he looked for the beginning, medial, and final sounds in words. Although this is like when he needed to add a phoneme to a word, it is also different. Instead of combining two parts, like a sound and a word, he just needed to change the initial phoneme of the word. Skill 8: Deleting Initial Phonemes in WordsFor this assessment, my case study student got a three out of five. I believe these words would be more aligned with the within-word pattern stage than the letter name stage which is why he had more trouble deleting these initial phonemes. He did very poor on the within-word pattern stage spelling test that he took in the winter of 2018 so it is not surprising how deleting the initial phonemes of these words would be difficult for him to do. This means that once he develops his understanding to be one-hundred percent on the letter name stage, he can then move on to learn how to spell words in the within word pattern stage. The two words that he did not get correct were “swish” and “clock,” responding with their deletion of the initial phoneme as “ish” and “ock.” Skill 9: Substituting Vowel Sounds in WordsFor this assessment, my case study student got a ten out of ten. This corresponds to the recognition of medial sounds assessment he did earlier, except this time he had to change the vowels sounds. It took him a little bit longer to do this one because he had to closely hear for the differences produced within the sounds of the same vowels. This means that he can use his understanding of vowel sounds, and more specifically, medial sounds to respond to these vowel changes. SpellingMy cooperating teacher gives her class spelling tests every Friday. She uses the spelling test as a beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year progress report through the Developmental Spelling Analysis by Kathy Ganske. In the first few weeks of practicum, I was the one to assess groups of students on their spelling tests. In the fall of 2017, my cooperating teacher tested her class on the letter names (LN) stage which only consisted of students having to spell one-syllable words. I am unsure what month my cooperating teacher examined their knowledge of this stage in their literacy development, but I am assuming it would be during the month of mid-September to the beginning of October. The results taken from this test would have been followed through to form her reading groups. To review the grading system for both spelling tests, two points are earned when a word is spelled correctly, one point is earned when the student has included the correct feature, but the word is spelled incorrectly, and no points are earned when the student does not have the correct feature contained in the word.My case study student spelled eleven out of twenty-five words correct on form A of the letter-name stage spelling test in the fall of 2017. Words labeled with an “A” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of initial and final consonants in words. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “got, map, win, fed, and rub;” he earned credit (four two-pointers were given) for four out of these five words. Words labeled with a “B” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of initial consonant blends and diagraphs. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “ship, plan, that, slid, and grab;” he earned credit (one two-pointer was given) for one out of these five words. Words labeled with a “C” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of short vowels. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “bet, cap, hop, mud, and fit;” he earned credit (two points were given) for all five words. Words labeled with a “D” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of affricates. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “jet, drum, much, chop, and trip;” he earned credit (one two-pointer was given) for one out of these five words. Words labeled with an “E” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of final consonant blends and diagraphs. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “bump, with, fast, dish, and went;” he did not earn any credit (no two-pointer was given) for any of these five words.My case study student spelled nineteen out of twenty-five words correct on form A of the letter-name stage spelling test in the winter of 2018 (I was the one to assess him and his classmates on this test). This is the same exact test he took in the fall of 2017 with an overall amount of improvement shown in just a couple of months. He earned credit (four two-pointers were given) for four out of five words on the lines labeled with an “A.” In this feature of the letter-name stage which is a student’s understanding of initial and final consonants in words, my case study student did not improve or decline at all. He continued to spell the words “got and map” right just as he did in the fall and earned two points for the word “win” which he did not earn any points for in the fall. Oddly enough, he earned no points for the word “fed” in the winter although he earned two points in the fall. Similarly, he earned one point for the word “rub” in the winter with two points having been earned in the fall. Sometimes tiny mistakes like this can be made so there is nothing to worry about, unless this continues to be problem. For the lines that are labeled with a “B, D, or E” at the end, my case study student showed some significant improvement. He earned credit for all five words on lines labeled with a “B” in the winter, with only one word spelled correctly in the fall. He earned credit for one more word in the winter, addition to the one he had gotten a point for in the fall for the lines labeled with the letter “D.” He earned four points for the words he spelled correctly in the winter, when no points were given in the fall for the lines labeled with the letter “E”. He earned credit (four two-pointers were given) for four out of five words on the lines labeled with a “C.” In this feature of the letter-name stage which is a student’s understanding of short vowels, my case study student did not improve or decline at all. He spelled the words “bet, cap, hop and mud” correctly, both in the fall and in the winter. However, he earned no points for the word “fit” in the winter unlike in the fall. When given the within-word (WW) pattern stage spelling test on one-syllable words (form A), my case study student earned one point out of twenty-five possible points. This was given a few weeks after he was tested on the letter-name (LN) stage (in winter 2018) by me for my cooperating teacher to gauge where her students are on this stage of literary development. There was no within-word (WW) pattern stage spelling test given to the class in the fall of 2017. Words labeled with a “F” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of long vowels: vowel consonant-e (VCe). The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “cute, smoke, grape, drive, and ripe;” he did not earn any credit (no two-pointer was given) for any of these five words. Words labeled with an “G” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of r-influenced vowel patterns. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “glare, girl, short, hurt, and fear;” he did not earn any credit (no two-pointer was given) for any of these five words. Words labeled with an “H” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of other common long vowels. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “steep, might, least, coast, and paint;” he did not earn any credit (no two-pointer was given) for any of these five words. Words labeled with an “I” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of complex consonant units. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “patch, bridge, scrap, flock, and quite;” he did not earn any credit (no two-pointer was given) for any of these five words. Words labeled with an “J” at the end of each line tested for a student’s understanding of abstract vowels; diagraphs and diphthongs. The words on the spelling test listed under this category were “couch, frown, stood, yawn, and point;” he earned credit (one point was given) for one of these five words. The word he earned a point for was “couch” which he spelled as “kach.”The feature scores within each stage of literary development show what my case study student is improving on, or still needs help with. The scores he received on this spelling assessment correlate with his phonemic awareness skills, especially in relation to the letter-name stage. For example, his understanding of initial and final consonants remained at a total of four words spelled correctly out of the five in both the fall of 2017 and winter of 2018. His phonemic understanding of beginning and ending sounds received him a perfect score. My case study student will remain within the letter-name stage until he is tested on both this stage and the within-word pattern stage at the end of the year. Until then, he needs to work on improving his understanding of initial and final consonants, short vowels, affricates, and final consonant blends and diagraphs because he is almost ready to learn how to spell more difficult one-syllable words. WritingDuring the second rotation within our two-hour block of reading rotations, I pulled my case study student aside before he began working on a STEM-related activity. This happened last week in practicum, and the class was going on a field trip to the Safari Park the next day. In this rotation, if I had not asked him to work with me, he would have picked blocks, geometric shapes, or some other STEM-related option to build stuff from. Anyways, I asked him if he would come over to the small table in the corner where I work with students on art or STEM activities later in the day, on some days. Once we both sat down, I asked him if he would be able to write something for me and be able to support whatever he wrote with a picture. He agreed and began to write “My dog bit me yesterday and I can’t wait to go on the field trip.” Instead of assuming he said this, I wrote down on a separate piece of paper what he said to me. He spelled his sentence like this “My dog bit me yestr day and I cant wate too go on the filld chrip.” After I asked him what his sentence said once he was done writing, he began to draw his three dogs who are all labs, himself, the sun on the corner of the paper, and a fence but only on one side of the paper. He went on to explain that his three dogs are all under the age of two, and one of them is a relatively new puppy. He says that the puppy will chase him whenever he runs and then starts to jump and bite him. Once he said that to me, I told him that, that dog is probably growing all of his adult teeth in so he is teething like a baby which is why he likes to bite. I also told him to not run around unless he wants the dog to chase him because he probably thinks you are playing with him. I told him my dog chases us whenever we run around, but luckily, he did not bite like his dog does because of all the many scratches on his arms. Afterwards, he told me he does not like that dog very much, but he likes the oldest lab because he has a “chocolate” color in his words. I asked him why that is, and he stated, “Because I like chocolate.” At that point I laughed because that is something a six-and-a-half-year-old would say. I then transitioned our conversation into what animal he was excited to see at the Safari Park tomorrow which he happily replied with “Monkeys!” He then went on to say, “Monkeys are my favorite animal. Did you know that one time when I went to the zoo I saw two monkeys run into each other and fall on a mat on the floor? They were in a big cage, and they did not get hurt because the mat was there, but it was so funny.” He started laughing so hard at this point that I began to laugh. Soon after our laughing ended, I was going to have him color his picture when my cooperating teacher tapped the bell for the current rotation to end. He then asked if he was done because it was his turn to see my cooperating teacher, so I said “Yes,” and he politely said, “You’re welcome.” RetellingThe book my case study student chose for me to read was Green Eggs and Ham. After finishing the book, I asked him the prompts designed for the sequence section. “How does the story begin?” He said, “Hi, Sam-I-Am.” I then said, “Can you think of anything else that happened?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t think so.” “What important things happened in the story?” He said, “Supposed to eat it.” I then asked, “Who was supposed to eat it?” He answered, “The yellow guy.” I then asked him if the “yellow guy” had an actual name and he responded with “no.” After his response, I asked the final prompt for the sequence section saying, “What was the order of events?” Since this was a complicated book where the two characters travelled everywhere, I just wanted him to at least say “Sam-I-Am wanted the ‘yellow guy’ to eat green eggs and ham.” However, he did not do so well with this question at first, asking me if he could go back and look in the book. I told him to try his best to think of what happened from his memory which is when he said, “The yellow guy does not want green eggs and ham until the end, and then he really likes it.” Based on his responses to the sequence prompts, I gave him one point because when I asked him the first two questions, he barely even answered. I would think that he was too shy to give the wrong answer so no answer or barely an answer would have been better. For all three questions, I had to prompt him to say more, or expand on what he said. At least for the third question, he got the general idea of events that took place. When I asked him “Where does the story take place?” as part of the settings question, he responded with some answers, “They took a train, a boat, and a car.” Based on this response, in comparison to the many locations stated, “with a goat, in the rain, in a tree…” I would say he tried to answer by thinking about states of movement more than anything else. Overall, there is no clear setting as to where any of this debate between the two characters took place. However, I still gave him one point because he could have been more explicit on the other places or things they ran into along their way. When I asked him “Who are the main characters?” He told me, “Sam-I-Am and the ‘yellow guy.’” I did not ask him the following questions “Which was most important? Why?” because neither character had more importance than the other in this book. Based on his responses, I gave him three points because he had completely answered the question. When I asked him “What was one important problem in the story?” He said, “Did not want to try green eggs and ham.” In response to that I said, “Who did not want to try the green eggs and ham?” He then said, “The yellow guy did not want to try green eggs and ham.” I gave him two points for his response because I had to prompt him to tell me what character did not want to try the green eggs and ham. When I asked him the question, “How is the problem solved?” He said, “Sam eats the green eggs and ham.” To see if he would revise his answer, I asked him again, “How does the story end?” but he ended up keeping his answer that Sam was the one who ate the green eggs and ham. Since this answer was incorrect, I gave him no points. My level of prompting throughout the retelling assessment was high. I frequently had to prompt him to tell me more of what he said. In some cases, he got the answer right and then in other cases, he did not. He earned seven total points after finishing the retelling assessment which means that he is developing his level of comprehension and retelling of stories. However, he is on the lowest endpoint of being considered as developing these skills, meaning that he has a lot of improvement that needs to be done. Recommendations for TeachingBased on the assessments completed with the child and the data collected from the results, the child appears to be in the beginner, letter-name alphabetic stage for literacy. I know my case study student is in this stage of literary development because of the assessments I tested him on, along with the information in the Words Their Way text supporting the results I saw. “The reading by letter name-alphabetic spellers is often disfluent – that is, choppy and often word-by-word, unless they have read a passage before or are otherwise familiar with it (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2015, p. 17). I have seen this firsthand when my case study student tries to read a book to me. Unless he reads me a book that he has read many times before so that he is completely familiar with it, he will read every word individually, not as a collective sentence and sometimes in a slower pace. Regarding his writing, “…letter name-alphabetic students rely not only on what they hear in the letter names, but also on how the letters are articulated, or formed in the mouth” (Bear, et. al., 2015, p. 154). This is true of my case study student because in the sentence he wrote for his writing assessment, he had correctly gotten all the beginning consonants, except for the word “trip” which he spelled like “chrip.” Our mouth forms the same oval-like shape when we say the sounds /t/ and /ch/ which can be confusing for students to differentiate between which ones to use. Most importantly though, my case study student needs to improve his comprehension, and retelling skills, and further develop his phonemic awareness skills. I am not worried about his spelling or his reading abilities right now because he is in the same stage as most other average first-graders. His letter-name spelling abilities have improved from the fall test to the one he took in the winter; however, he is still not at the point in his phonemic awareness test or spelling test where I would prefer him to be at before he moves on to the within-word pattern stage He is close to getting that twenty-five out of twenty-five on the letter name stage, but needs to focus on improving his recognition and understanding of initial and final consonants and short vowels in order to do so. I would dedicate 25% of my time to focusing on his comprehension and retelling skills, and 25% of my time on having him become more familiar with texts at a bit of a faster pace. While he does both these things, he can be assessed through the reading records sheet as used in class every once in a while, to accurately test his growth. Once he becomes better in both of those areas of development, I would combine the two of them into one activity for him to do. After reading a text by himself (a book he has read at least two times) he can be read the comprehension questions to then answer. Aside from that, I would focus on his phonemic awareness skills that he missed two or more points on as another 25% of his literacy diet. These things may fix themselves the more he reads, but going over them will help also his reading pace and understanding of words which causes him to be a choppy reader. I would recommend doing word sorts, or other kinds of activities where he can clearly see the word being broken into two parts before focusing on recognizing it entirely by the ear (blending phonemes, rhyme, etc.). Through his reading, and continued development of phonemic awareness, his spelling of words should improve by themselves. If that does not happen, then 25% of that time that could have been divided as more of a focus on any other of the other three domains, would now focus on his spelling. Assessing his spelling through the inventory worksheet we had worked on in class would be a great way to break up his progress, and test for growth in the beginning, middle, and end of the year. However, since it is the end of the year, doing this kind of spelling inventory now may be helpful to see where he is (on top of using the original spelling test) and how that compares to his results next year if his second-grade teacher uses this spelling inventory with his or her students. Works CitedDennis-Shaw, S., Massachusetts A., (n.d.). Generating Rhymes: Developing Phonemic Awareness. Read Write Think. Retrieved from: ................
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