Background
My case study was conducted on Jose. I observed him in his 10th grade math
class, which is the first class of the day. Jose is in tenth grade. He is cheerful, smart,
caring. He lives with his mother and is an only child. His mother goes to work before he
has to leave for school and gets home well after the school day has ended. Jose
emigrated from Guatemala to this country three years ago using someone else’s papers.
He lives in a heavily Latino area, especially people of Central American ancestry. His
favorite thing to do is play soccer and he plays at a local park often with older people and
loves to show off on the field. He says that he, at on time, had some involvement with a
gang. However, because his fellow members let him get beat up he no longer is
interested in gang affiliation. Jose said he feels he has to get a job and that he often
thinks about dropping out. He has many friends and seems to converse with other
students easily. He is easy-going and sociable. I was asked to work with Jose by his
teacher because he was behind in class. To determine what were Jose’s strengths and
weaknesses I used a series of assessments. I conducted the assessments outside of the
classroom at a separate table. Other students would often walk by, and they easily
distracted him.
Assessments
It was difficult to start the assessment process because Jose was so far behind in
class. I was working with him one on one on his math work, but because he had
previously missed two weeks straight of school he required a lot of attention. I am also
only in a class with him for one period. I asked him why he had missed two weeks of
class and he responded, that he just didn’t feel like coming. He told me that he felt lost in
class and that he wasn’t getting any help so he stopped coming to class. Jose said the
only reason he started coming again was that his mom told him to. Attendance
throughout the semester has been a problem.
Reading Assessments
My first assessment was the Metacognitive Interview-Reading-Writing strategy.
The survey is to gain insight into the perspectives of my student and his ideas of reading
and writing. The survey discusses Jose’s thoughts on being a successful reader and
writer, along with his ideas about his own reading and writing. Jose understood what it
took to be a good reader. He said a good reader must practice and read books that were
pleasurable. However, he did not consider himself a good reader. He said reading was
hard and that he didn’t like to do it, that is was hard to understand English. He responded
that the hardest part of reading was understanding words and that science was especially
difficult. He knew how to choose a book, by looking at the front and back cover. He
however said he never chooses books because he doesn’t like to read. The best book he
ever read was The Cat in The Hat. This brought back a memory of when he as a 6th
grader was suppose to read to a 3rd grader, but the younger child usually read to him.
Jose knew that to be a good writer one has to spell well and read a lot. The easiest part of
writing for him is creating a story. Jose has a vivid imagination. He likes to make up
stories with himself as the main character playing soccer and accomplishing incredible
feats on the field. Jose said he much preferred to writ in Spanish. Jose said the hardest
part of writing for him was spelling and grammar, especially quotes and commas. His
ideas for writing come from his own interests, which are soccer and freestyle BMX
(doing bicycle tricks). Jose knew that good writing was interesting, people would want to
read it, it was understandable, likeable, and grabbed your attention from the beginning.
He could not think of his best piece of writing. For help with writing he uses a
Spanish/English dictionary. He said he wouldn’t seek out help because he gets made fun
of. Jose believes it is important to write well as a form of self-expression, because it will
help his career choices, and so he can write nice letters to a girlfriend. Writings that he
has done well on, Jose will keep. All other he throws away. This survey shows that
Jose’s concepts of reading and writing are good, but both are still a struggle.
My second assessments were Informal Reading Inventories. The IRI is used to
test a student’s ability to decode written text and determine their comprehension ability. I
started with level four, slightly apprehensive because I was unsure what his reading level
was. He had a small amount of background knowledge of who an illustrator was. On the
oral reading part Jose had eight errors, which was 97.7% accurate. He had three
omissions, of which two were suffixes and the third was the word an. Twice he added
suffixes. Seven times he self-corrected. On the retelling portion Jose remembered
twelve ideas or 17.65%. On the questions portion he answered all four explicit questions
correct and two out of four implicit questions. Next I gave him the level five. This one,
which was about Martin Luther King, he had much more background knowledge. On the
reading part Jose had 6 errors for 98% accuracy. Five of his errors were replacements
and one was an omitted suffix. Also during this he appealed for help. On the retell
portion Jose recalled 13 ideas or 24.5%. He got a three out of four on both the explicit
and implicit questions. I gave home the level six because he was still reading at a high
level and able to answer most of the questions. Also the level six is about Pele a soccer
star, which I knew he would be interested in. When I told him the subject of the next
reading was Pele he got excited and truly seemed interested. He scored very well on the
beginning concept questions. On the reading portion he had 12 miscues, which was
96.6% accuracy. On the retell portion he remembered 16 ideas, or 24%. On the
questions he answered one explicit and two implicit questions correctly.
I attempted to do a cloze reading with Jose, but the passage I chose was too
difficult. It was a sports related poem that I thought he could relate to. The cloze reading
is to see if a student can predict words using contextual clues. The vocabulary within the
poem was hard especially for a non-English speaker. Jose verbally expresses that he
thought the word were hard to understand and struggled to guess missing words. Due to
time constraints I was unable to administer another cloze reading.
For the final assessment, a think-aloud, I chose an LA Times article on LA
Unified students struggles with algebra and how that was the main reason students were
not graduating. Think-alouds show students how when reading to pause and examine
relationships between the reading and there previous knowledge. This creates
meaningful context and helps the student remember and understand the text. I thought
that article would be relevant since Jose was currently struggling with his math class and
I hoped it would provide motivation for him. I had given him the article weeks before
and was pleasantly surprised he had already read it. I pick some selections from it and
had him reread them. I asked him to stop whenever an idea popped into his head. At
first he just read the passage without saying anything. After he was finished I asked if
anything from the reading struck him. He answered and I told him to do the same thing,
but to immediately say what he thought during the reading. I had him read another
passage and he was able to interject with a few ideas, but after words when I asked him
about the reading he had more to say. He somewhat grasped the concept, but more
practice is needed.
Writing Assessments
I was unable to procure writing samples from Jose. He said he didn’t have any to
give me. Based on his earlier answers to the first survey I think it is because he doesn’t
value his writing, often because he gets poor grades. I wish I could have seen some
samples based on his imaginative ability. I think he could be a good writer, but needs
more expose and help with the rules of English.
Assessment Analysis
Jose’s reading and writing skills are better than he thinks they are. According to
his IRI, Jose understands all the concepts of print and can easily decode. He knows when
he sees a difficult word to take his time and sound it out. Jose’s errors on the IRI’s were
usually on short word where he was reading so quickly he made mistakes. When he
came upon a word he struggled with he sounded it out or asked for help. He also selfcorrected when words or phrases sounded wrong. Based on the four-cueing systems,
Jose has good grasp of the phonological and pragmatic systems. He has some grasp of
the Syntactic system and semantic system. One of Jose’s problems when reading is
reading too fast. During the IRI’s he raced through the material trying to finish as
quickly as possible. I didn’t time him although I wish I had because he might have set a
speed record. This was a main cause of his mispronunciations. Also, because he was
reading so quickly I don’t think his brain had time to absorb the information which is
why he struggled to answer the concept questions about what he had just read. Based on
decoding level he is probably at high school level, but his comprehension has not caught
up yet. This may be due to his lack of experience with English since he has only been in
the country a relatively short time and doesn’t use English outside the classroom. Within
the classroom many student speak to each other in Spanish solely or code-switch between
languages while talking. Also I think his ideas about schoolwork need to be amended.
Even when doing math worksheets he tries to get them done as quickly as possible not
worrying about if he understands the material. Jose also needs help with reading with
inflection, which he did not do. When reading at the speed he was it would be difficult
for anyone to read with expression.
According to the survey Jose has a very low self-efficacy about his reading and
writing skills. He stated there were areas he needed help with, grammar and spelling, but
was unwilling to seek such help from a teacher. As the IRI’s showed Jose has the ability
to read well, but according to the survey he doesn’t like to. Possibly because the texts he
is assigned are above his comprehension level and he therefore gets frustrated with
understanding the story. As far as writing is concerned he seems to enjoy writing stories,
but dislikes classroom writing and feels he struggles with it. Classroom writings are
usually rigid in structure and content, often based on assigned readings. If he is already
struggling with the readings, writing about them is only going to compound that
frustration. He has not yet acquired the English skills, due to lack of exposure, to write at
a high school level.
The think-aloud showed that, when reading Jose can have interesting thoughts on
the topics he is reading. He, however, is hesitant to share these ideas with others. This
may be because, due to his poor grades, he feels as if he is not good enough to share or
will wrong, and therefore castigated. He doesn’t see the connection between his absence
of exposure and trouble producing. He doesn’t see that his poor grades are not based on
intelligence, but because he has only been in the country a few years.
I thought all the assessments were valuable. The survey provided his ideas and
motivating factors. The IRI provided information on his reading ability. The think-aloud
was useful in obtaining his thought process on something he had read. I would have
liked to assess his writing ability and to compare his thoughts on the sample with my
own, to see what he thought he did well on. I was surprised at how well he could read
especially because of how much he said he disliked doing it.
Instructional Plan
To help improve Jose’s reading I think teacher modeling would be helpful.
Modeled reading would allow Jose to observe reading with pauses for punctuation and
inflection, improving his syntactic system. Using a text with heavy dialogue could be
especially useful. The teacher would read a text that was somewhat simple to understand,
paying special attention to oral reading style. The teacher should also expressly verbalize
the ideas of when to use inflection and what punctuation means when reading, such as
pausing at periods and commas. Also having Jose read out loud to the class could be a
way to force him to slow down and concentrate on what he is reading. To aide in
comprehension the teacher should set a purpose before starting. Give Jose clues as to
what fact or inferences he should obtain from the text. Prereading techniques would also
be helpful to give Jose an idea of the stories context and possible information to be on the
lookout for.
To improve Jose’s ability to think about and predict text he should have a reading
journal. The journal would allow him the ability to write his thoughts about a text with
worry of ridicule when sharing them in front of others. Also it would give him a chance
to write where he practice writing skills. I think the journal should be used with a text he
has chosen. An easy way to do this would be to provide him a few minutes after iRead,
Silent free reading, to jot down ideas and thoughts. Inadvertently this would expose him
to more literature improving his semantic system. The teacher just needs to give him
time to journal and at the end of the week could read it and write a few comments trying
to praise whenever possible. The teacher shouldn’t worry about grammatical mistakes
and could make vocabulary suggestions if a word is used incorrectly.
To improve Jose’s writing he should be given the chance to write in a genre he
feels comfortable. He enjoys writing first person narratives about himself. Let him do
some free writes about whatever he feels like. If the writing needs to be based on the text
ask Jose to put himself in a character’s shoes. What decisions would he make and why?
This would allow him to write in a style he like, but forces him to use information from
the readings to build an answer. The teacher should review his samples and give him as
much positive feedback as possible, making suggestions as to possible grammatical and
vocabulary adjustments.
Mini-lessons would be the easiest way to help Jose with his grammar. Pick out
one thing, such as when to use a comma, and provide a short lesson for him with some
guided practice. Also he is probably not the only student in the class who could use some
help, the lessons could be done with small groups or to the whole class as a “review”.
This would allow Jose the exposure to the grammar rule without putting him on the spot,
especially where everyone can see he is the kid who needs help. The school has special
periods where students who could use extra help receive more subject matter instruction
rather than taking an elective. The classes are usually only 8-12 students and this would
be a great environment for mini-lessons. Working with him solely or in small group
would be more beneficial than whole class because he seems uncomfortable within a
large group. It would allow him to feel safer, among others who need help just as he
does, in a place free from ridicule. After providing a mini-lesson it would be helpful to
give a couple of examples for guided practice.
The biggest thing to me is just to get him actively reading and writing since he
feels so negatively towards both disciplines. Giving Jose magazine articles or sports
stories could be a way to get him reading. He has responded positively to these types of
texts. This could be a way of improving his own views of his reading ability. Since he
seems unwilling to seek out texts the teacher could provide them for use during the iRead
time. Along the same line Jose needs to be able to write about things he is comfortable
with. He needs to be given a chance to write stories that come from his life and
imagination. This would improve his self-efficacy as a writer. Unless he starts to see
himself as capable of reading and writing he will not put effort into trying. This could be
done as a basic journal of recounting interesting things that happened over the weekend
or by using quick writes where Jose would be given freedom of what to write about.
Quick writes would also be good because proper grammar and punctuation are not as
stressed rather than just writing.
If Jose sees himself as able to read and write it will increase his motivation in the
classroom. Motivation has been a key struggle. As stated earlier he missed two weeks of
class because he didn’t feel like coming. On Monday the 7th I was suppose to administer
my diagnostic teaching lesson with him, but he didn’t come to school. The Wednesday
before I has asked he to come on Monday because I was going to a special lesson with
him on material they were going to be quizzed on. He seemed excited and said that he
was glad I was going to do the lesson because was having trouble understanding the
concepts. On Tuesday he came to school and one of the teachers told him to please come
Wednesday so I could do the lesson. On Wednesday he arrived during second period, too
late for me to do the lesson, and after the other students had taken the quiz. He was also
the only student not to show up for the CAHSEE math portion, which the math class
spent two weeks specifically preparing for. He therefore must retake the exam next year.
When he does come to school he is often late. I think this has to do with his feelings of
hopelessness because he has gotten so far behind. He expressed that he was worried
about being behind and may now feel he can’t dig himself out of this hole. To aid this he
needs to finds reasons to want to come to school Jose needs some type of activity that he
could do at school that he is interested in, possibly music, sports, or working with
computers.
Reflection
The assessment process was fun, but frustrating. The main reason the process
was frustrating was the lack of time to work with the student. He was often absent, and
because of that behind, which made me apprehensive to take time giving assessments
instead of subject matter instruction. When I got the opportunities to work with Jose I
enjoyed the process and the conversations we had. It was interesting to talk to him about
his life since we have had such different upbringings. I think the biggest thing I learned
were techniques to diagnose my own student’s strengths and needs. When I get in a
classroom I need to be able to figure out why a student seems to be able to read the
material, but then cannot use the material to answer questions. I also learned it can be
hard to administer assessments because of time constraints. I am also concerned that
even with assessment data that shows what a student need help with, that assignments
can’t always be amended to meet a student’s needs. With standardized testing there are
certain aspects of reading and writing that a student is expected to learn during the year
and will be tested on. I was somewhat surprised with how open Jose was with me in
discussing his personal life. He seemed to want the personal help and attention, but that
still wasn’t enough to get him to come to school. I am worried that because he is so far
behind that he will give up and become another statistic as a dropout. He said he’s
thought about dropping out, but also understands how much tougher life is without a high
school diploma. The good thing is that his mom is pushing Jose to stay in school and he
is somewhat responsive to that. However, because of his mom’s long work hours she is
not around enough to make sure he is getting his work done. I don’t know of any
assessments that could have been better. I want to see if some of these recommendations
could be put into practice and if they could be successful for Jose. I just hope Jose finds a
way to make it.