Evidence of Standard 2, 3, and 5

Below, I have my case study of an instructional level reader. This literacy profile was performed over a period of 16 weeks. The profile explains the background, instructional needs, and the learning process that the student went through during the tutoring sessions. The literacy profile has lesson plans, assessment data, and instructional planning to meet the requirements of standards 2, 3, and 5.

Culminating Project

Literacy Profile

Amanda Schumaker

Spring 2015

READ670

Contextual Framework

Jordyn is a second grade student living in a rural area of Southside Virginia. She attends

one of four elementary schools in Mecklenburg County where she lives. South Hill Elementary is

a Title 1 school that services Early Childhood through 5th grade students. The total school

enrollment is approximately 851 students. About 49% of students are African-American, 44 %

are Caucasian, 2.9% are Hispanic, 1.1% are Asian and 2.2% are other. Free or reduced lunch is

served to 64% of students at South Hill Elementary School.

Jordyn lives at home with her mother and grandmother. There is support at home, and

there is a sufficient amount of communication between parent and teacher. Jordyn is an

independent child who can also works well with other children her age. She cares about her

academics and social aspects of school. She tries her best; she seems to get disappointed in

herself when she does not do well on assignments given to her.

At age 7, Jordyn meets educational standards for the second grade. She does not have

any special needs, and she is reading in the second to highest top group in her class. She is a

part of a general, self-contained second grade class with 20 students. She is a very smart child

with lots of confidence, but she does not always use higher-level thinking skills needed to

succeed as an instructional reader. These skills could really push her above and beyond her

current reading level.

Assessments

My situation with the selection of a student to tutor is a little different than most. I

selected a student in my class who was identified by computerized diagnostic testing as a

struggling second grader. I assessed her using the QRI and realized that she was actually on a

first grade reading level. I had to pick a new student to tutor to meet the needs of this class. I

picked a different child from my second grade class. She is reading on a high third grade level.

She is not struggling in comparison to most of the students in my class, but she has the

potential to struggle in the future if she does not work hard to learn certain comprehension and

writing skills.

My student is successful because she tries her best. School does not always come

naturally to her. She is able to do well when she applies herself to her work. She is sometimes

silly, and I have to redirect her back on task. She likes animals, sports, and participating in social

activities. Her assessment results were a little lower than what I expected, but I was happy with

the results overall.

I used the QRI to assess my student before beginning tutoring. The QRI addresses many

aspects of literacy development. First, it tests fluency orally and silently. Next, it assesses the

student’s word knowledge and decoding skills in a timed and untimed format. Last, it assesses

oral reading accuracy and comprehension of fiction and nonfiction texts based on grade levels.

This assessment gives all of the information needed to start delivering an individual balanced

literacy lesson to a struggling reader.

Summary of Data Analysis and Reading Levels

Jordyn is a very smart little girl. She is a social butterfly in the classroom, but when she is

asked specific questions she sometimes does not know how to express herself even though she

is outspoken and very verbal. She reads with ease, but she has trouble comprehending

nonfiction texts. Her fluency is good; she is reading above grade level. Jordyn is not always able

to find key details in a passage to support the main idea. She also struggles with using capital

letters and punctuation in the correct places when writing. She is aware that it is needed, but

she sometimes does not write them in the correct places. She is artistic and opinionated. She is

comfortable in the classroom and reading out loud.

After assessing, I found that Jordyn is working instructionally on a third grade level. She

was inconsistent with word recall when she was timed (i.e., 95% 2nd grade, 60% 3rd grade, 80%

4th grade, 55% 5th grade), but her untimed word recall was more consistent. She had a 90%

accuracy rate with 5th grade words and did not fall into the frustration zone until she

encountered the 6th grade words; she received a 65% accuracy rate on the 6th grade word list.

She can read a 4th grade passage with ease, but she is unable to comprehend enough of the

material to gain full understanding of what she is reading (75% narrative and 38% expository).

After calculating comprehension accuracy, I found that she is most comfortable at a third grade

reading level (i.e., 88% narrative and 75% expository).

Jordyn’s struggle with comprehending nonfiction material will make it more difficult to

pass an SOL in the future. She struggles with vocabulary, so I think this leads to the lack of

comprehension. I believe the vocabulary is the biggest difference in fiction and nonfiction text –

which is why we see such a gap between her narrative and expository comprehension skills.

Luckily for Jordyn, she is in second grade, so she is not struggling with most nonfiction material

she is being given at this time. She is not so far ahead that she does not have to worry about

comprehension in the future. She needs to broaden her vocabulary knowledge so she can

become more familiar with different nonfiction topics in order to comprehend the material

more accurately.

Artifacts:

Section 4.1 – Student Interest Inventory:

Jordyn loves to read, but she has trouble with “big words” – which connects to her

trouble with comprehension because of vocabulary. Her lexicon is not small, but she

lacks the knowledge of many situational words that could help her better understand

nonfiction texts.

Section 4.2 – Individual Reading Inventory:

As stated above, Jordyn was a little inconsistent with the timed word recall assessment.

She went from a 95% with 2nd grade words, down to 60% with 3rd grade words, and back

up to 80% with 4th grade words. She was able to take time to decode the third grade

words and receive a 90% accuracy rate on the untimed portion of the assessment. I

started her reading assessment at a third grade level. She was able to read a fourth

grade passage with ease, but she had trouble comprehension the expository text.

I received a lot of information from the oral reading assessment. Jordyn read the third

grade passages with good fluency and 97-98% accuracy. She had good comprehension

on these passages (i.e., 88% narrative and 75% expository). She was able to read the

fourth grade passages with 96% accuracy, but her comprehension was not as good. She

had a 75% accuracy rate on the narrative comprehension questions and 38% accuracy

on the expository passage. She struggles with nonfiction text. She does not have a large

enough lexicon for the level text that she is able decode. She also struggles with

identifying the main idea of the passage.

Jordyn did really well on her silent reading passage. I had her read a third grade

narrative passage. She read 135 words per minute when reading silently. Her

comprehension was at 88%. All of these findings were expected. I did not perform the

listening comprehension assessment because Jordyn is already reading independently

above grade level.

Section 4.3 – Qualitative Spelling Assessment:

I was very pleased with Jordyn’s spelling assessment results. The results showed that

she was in the late within word pattern. She was using but confusing diphthongs. I

started working with her on the –oi / -oy spelling pattern. This spelling level is consistent

with her reading and word knowledge results. Jordyn quickly picked up on the spelling

pattern. She was able to sort and spell the words with east once we talked about the

rules and the placement of the pattern within different words.

Section 4.4 – Written Language:

Jordyn’s writing sample gave me the first clue that she has trouble with function words.

She also struggles with grammar. The biggest problem with her writing that I want her

to work on is with organization and conventions. She uses but confused capital letters

and hardly uses punctuation at all. Her thoughts are clear on the page, and she uses

good word choice. Her story is very interesting, but she needs to work on the basics to

make it clear for the reader to understand.

Section 4.5 – Student Interests and Affective Measures:

Jordyn has a pretty positive and healthy outlook on reading. She loves to take

Accelerated Reader tests and participates in reading groups during class. She said that

she does not usually want to read during her free time or at home, but she doesn’t mind

reading in school. I think that she views reading as something that is done for learning in

a classroom. I do not think she has discovered reading as a hobby yet. I believe this will

come with some maturity as Jordyn grows as a learner.

Instructional Goals

Jordyn has great fluency; she is currently reading above grade level. I did not set any

fluency goals for her, but I made sure she maintained her strong fluency skills while reading

nonfiction text. I had her work on her word knowledge of diphthongs (oi/oy) by using a

sorting activity. Vocabulary is something that Jordyn needs to strengthen in order to better

comprehend nonfiction texts. I wanted her to work on content specific vocabulary. We

reviewed words specific to the nonfiction story used in our lessons, and we would revisit

each word during all of the lessons.

Jordyn needed to work on identifying main idea and supporting details of a nonfiction

text. I had her use graphic organizers to create a visual of her thoughts. She also used sticky

notes to identify the main idea using one word, and eventually using one sentence, for each

page of the nonfiction passage being read during the lesson. Jordyn did not have a good

understanding of sentence conventions before we started our tutoring sessions. Once we

practiced using capital letters and punctuation, we discussed the importance of using them.

She has been self-monitoring and making corrections to her writing independently. I have

been very pleased with the growth within her writing.

Evidence of Research Base

I am a firm believer in using word study for spelling instruction. When students struggle

to spell, they struggle to read. According to Joseph (2002), reading problems generate from

letter-sound association difficulties. All aspects of literacy should be taught with balanced

instruction because they are equally connected in the reading process. Jordyn is familiar with

word sorts from class, so she was able to work well with sorting and using words with

diphthongs during our lesson.

Jordyn struggles with comprehending nonfiction text. I believe this struggle is due to her

lack of vocabulary knowledge of content specific words. I had her make predictions and go on

word hunts of specific vocabulary words within the nonfiction text that we were reading. She

then had to use the words in her own writing once we had an in-depth discussion about the

meaning and use of the words within the passage. Morrow and Gambrell (2011) write, “As in all

vocabulary activities, discussion is the key” (p. 236). So much information can be gained from

the initial discussion about words in the text. It sets up a foundation for the reader, and it

allows the teachers to gain an insight about the reader’s prior knowledge of the topic.

The struggle with content based vocabulary that Jordyn possesses was directly related

to her comprehension struggles. She had difficulty determining details and the main idea of the

passage. According to Gunning (2014), “Caught up in looking at individual words and details,

readers may fail to grasp main ideas” (p. 375). Jordyn would focus so much energy into trying to

figure out the meaning of words she did not know, she would then miss the meaning of the text

she was reading. This problem was addressed by having discussions of unknown words before

reading, and creating a visual after reading by using a graphic organizer to identify key details

and the main idea of each page of the passage.

Writing is where I have seen the most independence and growth from Jordyn. She

struggled with using conventions in her writing; she would leave out capital letters and

punctuation in almost all of her sentences. When she did use capital letters and punctuation,

she would use them incorrectly. I did not want her to focus on fixing too many things at once

because that would be overwhelming. Frank (1979) states, “You’ll find that your students can

become good fixers of their own material … if you work on one skill at a time” (p. 129). Jordyn

was able to become independent and monitor her use of capital letters and punctuation when I

told her to do everything the same with her writing except correct those few mistakes.

Instructional Plan

FLUENCY WORD KNOWLEDGE COMPREHENSION WRITING

- Wide Reading

- Model fluent reading

- Word sorts – blind, speed, writing, etc.

- Long Vowels (Diphthongs)

- Use of graphic organizers & sticky notes

- Locating and identifying main idea and supporting key details.

- Graphic organizers (4-Square)

- Conventions

- Organization

Tutoring Log

Lesson Tutoring Date Time

Pre-Assessments 1/27/15 1 Hour

Pre-Assessments 2/3/15 1 Hour

Pre-Assessments 2/10/15 1 Hour

1 2/17/15 1 Hour

2 2/24/15 1 Hour

3 3/10/15 1 Hour

4 3/17/15 1 Hour

5 3/24/15 1 Hour

6 3/31/15 1 Hour

Post-Assessments 4/15/15 1 Hour

*The week of March 3rd had winter weather. We did not meet for tutoring this week.

*The week of April 8th was spring break. We did not have school or tutoring.

Literacy Lessons and Reflections

I met with Jordyn a total of ten times between January and April. After giving her a

series of pre-assessments using the QRI-5, I made a set of lessons focusing on her specific

literacy needs to work with during the semester. The following section contains my six lessons,

reflections, and student artifacts.

Progress Monitoring and Post-Assessments

I monitored Jordyn’s progress with comprehension skills by using ongoing informal

assessments. I had her write the main idea of each page that we read in the nonfiction text on a

sticky note. She did this during each lesson that we met. She was not able to tell me what “main

idea” meant when we first started working together. She now knows that the main idea is what

the passage is mostly about, and she is able to correctly identify the main idea of what she is

reading – fiction and nonfiction. I had her focus on writing the main idea in complete sentences

on her sticky note because she needed to work on using capital letters and punctuation in her

writing. The habit of using conventions correctly on the sticky notes carried over to her actual

writing pieces during tutoring and in the classroom.

I had Jordyn complete a running record for the post assessment. I was slightly

disappointed in the reading level because she is still reading on a third grade level. She can

fluently read a fourth grade passage, but she is unable to comprehend what she read. I noticed

that she did much better at answering the questions when I simply asked her what the main

idea of the passage was about. She was able to recall details and state the main idea with ease.

She had a harder time answering direct questions about the passage that were not as open-

ended.

I noticed that Jordyn gets nervous when she works one-on-one with someone. She is

much more open and serious about her work in a whole or small group setting. She acted a

little silly when the camera was on her. That was something that we were never really able to

move past. Jordyn and I discussed her great improvement with using capital letters and

punctuation in her writing. She carried over what she learned into the regular classroom. In my

opinion, that is a huge success because she is able to monitor her writing and use correct

conventions independently now. She has also learned a lot about main idea during our lessons.

She has absolutely no trouble now locating supporting details and the main idea of a passage

that she reads.

Review of the Research – Revisited

After concluding our tutoring sessions, I had a few intervention ideas in mind for Jordyn.

Jordyn is a smart little girl who is able to work independently well. I do not think she needs, but

could certainly benefit from, one-on-one tutoring. I believe she would work best in a small

group setting. She feeds off of the thoughts and energy of other children around her. Jordyn

can sometimes act silly when she is working one-on-one. I think this is due to nerves because

all of the focus is on her. I believe she could grow much more academically if she could learn to

work without being silly or getting off task. As Weiss states, “Although

building reading proficiency is the main focus of the intervention, students’ learning-related

behaviors should also be addressed to improve their engagement and participation.” I truly

believe that Jordyn will be able to address and fix this issue as she matures as a student.

I would have Jordyn work with nonfiction text much more. I would create her student

account on Scholastic Core Clicks and have her read and listen to nonfiction material each day.

She could take home nonfiction stories on her independent reading level for homework

reading. I would have her use graphic organizers to map out her thoughts about the nonfiction

material to guide her comprehension as she reads. Altogether, I think Jordyn just needs more

guided practice and exposure to nonfiction material. She is practically a pro at reading and

working with fictional text. She needs to have more real-life experiences and conversations

based on information that she has read in a nonfiction book. I see Jordyn progressing as a

reader at a healthy rate. She is fully capable of doing everything that is asked of her. She just

needs to be challenged to push herself farther because she can do a lot more than she thinks

she can. The right motivation would drive Jordyn in the right direction in order to be a

successful reader for a lifetime.

Report Writing

Name: Jordyn MaclinGrade: 2ndTutor’s Name: Amanda SchumakerDates of Tutoring: January 27, 2015 – April 15, 2015

Jordyn attended all ten out of ten tutoring sessions. Jordyn worked on various activities to help build her comprehension, writing, and word knowledge skills. She completed oral reading activities to strengthen her fluency, which is average for her age. She read silently to help foster comprehension of text. Jordyn naturally works well with fictional text, so we focused the majority of our time on nonfiction reading material.

Informal reading assessments conducted at the beginning of the semester showed that Jordyn is reading on a late third grade reading level. This is almost one whole year ahead of her second grade peers. She was able to read, but could not comprehend, fourth grade material. She struggled most with nonfiction text. She was successfully able to read up to a fourth grade word list when she was timed. Untimed, she read past the fourth grade list and into the fifth grade list with 90% accuracy. An analysis of her oral reading miscues showed that she sometimes confuses simple function words (e.g., the, where, in, for). Jordyn’s word knowledge is above grade level. She worked with less common long vowels and diphthong word patterns.

Assessments administered at the end of the semester showed that Jordyn is still reading on a third grade level, but her comprehension skills have improved. She was able to identify the main idea of the passage with ease. Jordyn made great improvements with her writing. Unlike the beginning of the semester, she is able to use capital letters and punctuation in all of the correct places independently. She self-monitors her reading and writing to correct mistakes without me having to give her prompts. I believe Jordyn will continue to make progress if she reads and works with nonfiction materials. Attached is a list of books she can read over the summer to continue the growth that she has made over the semester. It has been a pleasure working with Jordyn over the past few months. I appreciate all that you to support her education.

Report Presented by:Amanda Schumaker

Graduate Student Longwood University

Book List

Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies

Rainforests by Andrew Langley

Where Do Polar Bears Live? By Sarah L. Thompson

Wild Tracks! A Guide to Nature’s Footprints by Jim Arnosky

Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs by Kathleen V. Kudlinski

The Buzz on Bees by Shelly Rotner

The Cod’s Tale by Mark Kurlansky

Bugs and Bugsicles: Insects in the Winter by Amy S. Hansen

Bubble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bayrock

Can an Old Dog learn New Tricks? By Buffy Silverman

Ready, Set … Wait! by Patti R. Zelch

Talented Animals by Mary Packard

References

Frank, M. (1979). If you're trying to teach kids how to write... (p. 129). Nashville, Tennessee:

Incentive Publications.

Gunning, T. (2014). Assessing & correcting reading and writing difficulties (5th ed., p. 375). New

York, New York: Pearson.

Joseph, L. M. (2002). Facilitating word recognition and spelling using word boxes and word sort

phonic procedures. School Psychology Review, 31(1), 122.

Morrow, L., & Gambrell, L. (Eds.). (2011). Best practices in literacy instruction (4th ed., p. 236).

New York, New York: The Guilford Press

Weiss, S. L. (2013). Learning-related behaviors: small group reading instruction in the general

education classroom.intervention in school & clinic, 48(5), 294-302.

doi:10.1177/1053451212472231