The Intermediate Case Study was administered to Stephen Smith, age nine, in
the fourth grade at Matoaka Elementary school. I have worked extensively with
Stephen throughout the semester. My cooperating teacher consistently asks me to
work individually with Stephen, as he often falls behind the class on assignments,
takes a long time to complete assignments, and often does not turn in his
homework. In addition, his fine motor skills are extremely underdeveloped for his
age, so it takes him a longer time to write down sentences. In fact, something I
noticed about Stephen is that he often constructs well-articulated sentences when
explaining what he wants to write down. However, he will simplify the sentences so
that he does not have to take the time to write a longer sentence. Stephen constantly
discusses his love of laptops, and has a passion for computers. He is a child that I
think could benefit from writing paragraphs and doing other language arts
assignments on a laptop, because often his ideas do not translate into his writing
because of his fine motor impediment.
Learning about Stephen’s life and interacting with his family members, I
learned that he does not live in a home environment conducive to learning. Stephen
lives in a trailer and shares a room with his younger brother. His father passed away
when he was five years old, but Stephen lives with his mom, (who had Stephen
when she was sixteen), her fiancé, and two brothers, one of whom is a six month old
baby.
Stephen has many chores around the house, being the oldest child. When
asked about his job, he responded “I do, but don’t do them.” He elaborated saying
that he only does his chores on the weekends. His chores include vacuuming the
house, cleaning the bathroom, making all of the beds, and dusting the television. He
receives seven dollars every time his chores are done the right way.
Stephen does have a television in his room and states that he does watch
television every day before bed, but tries to monitor himself. He says that his
mother does not limit his television watching, but that he monitors himself, saying
that he stops watching when his “eyes start hurting.” His favorite shows are Cartoon
Network and Adult Swim. Stephen says that his technical bedtime is nine pm, but
that he usually does not fall asleep until midnight.
Stephen’s favorite activities include playing video games and playing “Club
Penguin” on the computer. From a combination of observing Stephen’s social
interactions with others and from what he has told me, he is a solitary person,
slightly antisocial, and prefers to be only. When asked if he joined a school club,
Stephen answered no, but added that he created his own club called “The Monkey
Club,” which entailed him dressing up in different monkey costumes. Stephen also
plays “superheroes” alone, making up his own costume and gadgets. He enjoys
playing alone, but is very creative and elaborate about his costume and plot ideas in
his play.
When asked if he enjoyed school, Stephen responded “no.” He stated that his
least favorite class was math and his favorite was silent reading and language arts.
He said that his designated place to study at home was a desk in his mom’s room,
and that he normally completed math and reading homework in about one hour per
night. He said that his step-dad usually helps him with his homework, and that his
mother occasionally does, but gets annoyed if Stephen delays and does not finish in
a certain period of time. Stephen stated that she is “usually busy with the baby.”
When asked if Stephen considered himself a good reader, he responded that
he believed that he was, and that he enjoyed reading. He believed that his old
reading teacher helped him become a good reader, and that “not going to reading
class” would make hinder him as a reader.
Stephen loves heroes and mysteries, and if he could select a book on any
topic, he said that he would choose to read about “spies.”
When asked if he liked to write, Stephen answered “no!” very vehemently. He
said that the only type of writing he liked to do was writing letters to his uncle. He
stated that he hates writing assignments, but that he does enjoy drawing.
If he went to a new school and could tell the teachers one thing about himself
as a student, he would answer: “Stephen dislikes homework and math.” He also
added that he would like them to know that he loves using the internet.
If he was in charge of helping someone learn to read, Stephen would “read
them books and ask them to read the books back to me.” He said that he would stop
and “help if they got stuck” while they were reading. I thought it was very
interesting that Stephen decided that he would use a fluency strategy. When asked
how knowing how to read will help him in the future, Stephen responded that it
“helps to read the newspaper,” and “to see if I won the lottery.”
I feel like my suspicion about Stephen’s reading and oral capabilities being
much higher than what his written work reflected proved correct when I
administered the word recognition task. Stephen received 100% on the third grade
list, and an eighteen out of twenty on the fourth grade list. The two words that
Stephen missed in the fourth grade section involved two mistakes that he kept
making throughout the various assessments. The first was his tendency to read a
word and confuse it for another word that he recognized that had the beginning first
letters and vowels, and either looked or sounded similar. For example, for the word
“ridge,” Stephen recognized and pronounced it as “ride.” Stephen continued to
recognize and pronounce the wrong words throughout the assessment, especially
when he was given the assessment where he was supposed to pronounce nonsense
words. The second word that Stephen pronounced incorrectly was “voyage,”
pronouncing a long /a/ sound. I will need to work with him on differentiating
between short and long vowel patterns. He has a special tendency to pronounce
words that he is uncomfortable with using a long /a/ sound. For the fifth grade
word recognition list, Stephen still performed well and received a seventeen out of
twenty. He again used the tactic of stating a word that he knew that looked similar
to the word on the page. Instead of stating the word “convention,” Stephen
recognized the word as “conversation.” Similarly, for the word “appropriate,”
Stephen recognized and stated the word “appreciate.” Also, instead of stating
“refuge,” Stephen thought that he recognized the part of the word “-fuge” as “fudge,”
so he stated the word “re-fudge.” Similarly, instead of stating “determination,”
Stephen thought that he recognized the word “dent,” and pronounced “denttermination.” Stephan also pronounced the word “scholar” as “schooler,” giving it a
/oo/ vowel digraph. Overall, he needs to work on vowel patterns and differentiation
between long and short vowels. For “immigrant,” Stephen used a short ‘e’ vowel
sound.
Stephen’s DRA assessment received a score in at the Instructional level in
every section. For reading engagement, he received a four out of eight, when the
independent range should be a six or a seven. For Oral Reading fluency, he received
a nine out of sixteen, when the Independent range should have been an eleven to
fourteen. Finally, his reading comprehension received a twelve out of twenty-four,
when the Independent range for a student his age should be a seventeen through
twenty-two. In his record of Oral Reading, Stephen used the same tendency he has of
inserting different words than appear on the page. For the word “had,” he stated
“has,” and for the word “beneath,” he pronounced “below.” Other than that, his oral
reading went well and he made minimal mistakes.
As I predicted, Stephen scored highest in Oral Reading Fluency with a score
of nine. While this score still appears at the Instructional level, the score is higher, as
the lowest in the Instructional range is seven and the highest is ten.” The rest of
Stephen’s scores were low in this Instructional Range. I see student as a very
articulate student, and his ability to read fluently and express his opinions has
always been at a might higher level than what he translates to his writing. Stephen
achieved a 96% on his reading fluency accuracy and was good at using appropriate
pauses and meaningful phrases.
For Reading Comprehension, Stephen achieved poor results, receiving a
twelve, which is the lowest ranking in the Instructional range. His answers include
very terse sentences and sometimes only phrases. Stephens writing looks as though
it is rushed and he uses as few words as possible, especially in his writing summary.
I believe that this terse writing is due to Stephen’s frustration with his fine motor
skills and not his actual reading comprehension, thought process, and abilities as a
writer.
For the Single-Syllable Decoding Score Sheet, Stephen achieved high scores,
receiving a score of ten on Short Vowel words, and only got one answer wrong on
the nonsense words, using a reversal and pronouncing “nid” as “nib.” For Consonant
Blends and Digraphs, Stephen reverted to the long /a/ vowel again, pronouncing
clam wrong. He performed a perfect ten on r-Controlled Vowel Patterns, and only
pronounced one of the nonsense words wrong, recognizing “kurn” as “come” and
“tarste” as “taste.” Similarly, he pronounced “submit” as “summit.” Stephen’s
tendency to recognize words that he know that were similar to the word on the page
kept appearing. For the word “stampede,” Stephen pronounced “stamped,” for
“varnish,” he pronounced “vanish,” and for “perstat,” he pronounced “pre-start.”
Stephen had a general tendency to try to make sense of and recognize the nonsense
words instead of decoding and really attempting to sound them out.
Stephen performed well on the rest of the Informal Decoding Inventory
receiving scores of tens and nines on the Vowel-Consonant-e , Vowel Teams, and
Compound Words sections. He began having trouble with the Closed Syllables
section, but only on the nonsense word section, showing that he is good at
recognizing words, but not actually decoding them. One mistake that Stephen kept
making was pronouncing words that ended in ‘ct’ as ‘ck.” For example, instead of
“sindict” and “bunpect,” Stephen pronounced “sindick,” and “bumpeck.” For Vowel-
Consonant-e Syllables, Stephen reverted to his habit of using the long /a/ vowel
sound. He substituted a long /a/ sound for the words “confine,” “conclude,” and
“concrete.”
For the Words Their Way Elementary Spelling Inventory Feature Guide,
Stephen scored in the Early Syllables and Affixes section. He showed that he was
comfortable with consonants, short vowels, digraphs, and blends. He began making
errors in the long vowels section, but got almost full credit on other vowels,
inflected endings, and syllable junctures. Where he had a great deal of difficulty was
attempting to spell unaccented final syllables, harder suffixes, and basses and roots.
Compiling these three sections he only scored a two out of fifteen.
Overall, the five different assessments administered to Stephen solidified my
certainty that he has untapped potential, and that his abilities in reading and
language arts are hindered by his fine motor skills. Stephen’s fluency and oral
reading skills are his greatest strength, while his writing skills need serious
improvements. I believe that Stephen should work on his handwriting and trace
letters constantly until his fine motor skills improve. However, for reading and
language arts writing assignments, I think that Stephen should be able to type his
responses so that he can properly articulate them without being delayed or
frustrated by his fine motor skills. He has a passion for the computer, so I believe he
will attempt to put more effort into his reading responses if he has the opportunity
to use the computer and not be impeded by the frustration with his handwriting. I
In addition, Stephen needs to work on differentiating vowel sounds from one
another, especially vowel digraphs. He also needs to work on decoding words, using
phoneme segmentation, sounding out the words before making a guess at a word
familiar to him that is wrong. I plan on using finger-pointing with Stephen and help
him isolate the phonemes and emphases in multi-syllabic words. I hope to use
Concept of Word activities with him as will as giving him handwriting practice to
work on his fine motor skills. My concept of word activities will involve the theme of
superheroes and spies, because those are his favorite type of fictional characters
and will peak his interest.
This assessment was extremely valuable because it included various
components of Stephen’s reading and writing strengths and weaknesses. The
assessments not only provided information about Stephen’s scores and results as a
student, but also gave information about how he learns, what his interests are, and
what his study preferences are. They also consolidated Stephen’s strengths and
weaknesses across the board. Stephen’s fluency and word recognition was at almost
an Independent level range, while his writing skills and responses to reading
comprehension questions were low. I know that I need to work on unaccented final
syllables, harder suffixes, and basses or roots with Stephen. While Stephen is
definitely at a low level in certain Language Arts skills, I believe that he has the
ability to be a high-achiever. Language Arts is his favorite subject, and he considers
himself a “good reader,” and I believe if his self concept of himself is that he is good
at Language Arts, there is truth in that statement, or can be in the future.