Case Study 1

Final Project - Case Study

Nathan L. Tamborello

The University of Houston

Summer 2018 – CUIN 7331

Case Study 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Clinical Report…………….…………………….…………...…………………….….3

II. Lesson Plan I.……………………….…………………………………………………6

III. Lesson Plan II…………………………………………………………………………8

IV. Reflection……………….……………………………………………………….…...10
Case Study 3

CLINICAL REPORT

In beginning our clinical report, we must first analyse the information we have on our

student. Sophia Hernandez, an 8-year-old female student in third grade, currently has a few

issues in class. She has issues with oral reading in class and sporadically turns in her homework:

these are her teacher’s main concerns. Sophia wears glasses, but has difficulty with eye muscle

imbalance and tracking whilst reading. These visual processing issues could also create difficulty

for Sophia to see differences in some letters, making it hard for her to see them in the correct

order; we will observe Sophia to see if she squints or closes one eye while reading to assess her

eye problem difficulties.

Sophia is in the low reading group in her class; because of this, we begin testing this third

grader at the primer level using the flash method. Sophia’s scores at the primer level denote a

flash word recognition at the independent level; however, her flash recognition at the first grade

level quickly falls into the instructional level, and then falls off even faster at the second grade

level to a frustration level. Her accuracy at a first grade level is in the grey area at 93%, being in-

between the instructional and frustration level, and drops to a frustration level at second grade.

Her comprehension level begins at the instructional level in first grade and drops to a frustration

level at the second grade. Her oral reading rate at the first grade level is acceptable (50-85 wpm

is the norm), yet well below acceptable at the second grade level (80-120 wpm). Her silent

reading rate is acceptable at the first grade level (50-90 wpm), yet falls far behind once at the

second grade level (norm is 100-145 wpm). Her spelling in first grade begins at the instructional

level and falls to a frustration level by the second grade. Testing was stopped at the second

grade. Sophia’s test results therefore indicate that her independent level is primer, her

instructional level is first grade, and her frustration level is second grade.
Case Study 4

In attempting to further diagnose Sophia, we conduct a 60-minute classroom observation

to see how she interacts with her classmates, how she reads aloud/silently, and overall how she

fares with her school-work. We find that Sophia is a very quiet, but well-rounded student. During

silent reading, we observe Sophia moving very slowly through a book - her silent reading rate is

surely indicative of this. In conducting read-alouds with the whole class, Sophia has trouble with

her oral reading. Her low flash recognition scores (71 at first, 35 at second) and her low spelling

(75 at first, 38 at second) indicates a severe word knowledge deficiency that certainly contributes

to her low to her low oral accuracy (grey area during first at 93%, frustration at second at 79%)

and low, frustration oral rate at the second level. In viewing the classroom library, we find that

most of the books in the library are at the higher end of the second grade list and well into the

third grade list. This may contribute to Sophia’s continued frustration at both oral and silent

reading. During her silent reading time, we notice Sophia continually squinting at her book and

re-reading the same pages over and over again. This may be indicative of her vision-related

issues: we note both issues in tracking the words across the page and Sophia getting stuck on

words. Sophia’s visual processing issues could be contributing to her having difficulty denoting

letters and differences in them.

Sophia’s parent teacher conference brought in both familial information and hereditary

information on Sophia. Through the use of a Spanish translator, we were able to figure out a few

things about Sophia and her family that may be indicative of Sophia’s issues. Neither of Sophia’s

parents speak any English - only Spanish is spoken in her home. This means that the only

English practice that Sophia gets is at school and with her siblings, contributing to her frustration

scores in moving beyond the first grade level. Sophia’s older siblings do speak English and help

her with her homework; however, because both her parents work long hours, they are not there to
Case Study 5

ensure that Sophia is able to complete all of her homework. Her parents note that if her siblings

aren’t able to help Sophia, her homework may not be completed. Sophia’s father notes that he

had reading difficulties related to vision as well. Her father also states that her latest vision report

states that she has an eye muscle imbalance, yet they haven’t had time to do any therapy for her.

Her parents are able to tell us that Sophia’s interests include animals - especially dogs and

horses. Her parents also note that Sophia’s problems first began to surface at the first grade level.

Sophia had only been speaking Spanish at home before beginning school, so she had begun

behind her classmates. Using this information, we can conclude that one of the biggest problems

for Sophia is her eye muscle imbalance. Knowing this, we could coordinate to have some

physical therapy for her during tutoring sessions to help improve her eye muscles to help her

tracking difficulties. We can also get with the school nurse about updating Sophia’s prescription

to help ensure that her near-sightedness is less of an issue. Using her parents’ information about

her interests, we can curate a book list based around that in order to ensure that she is reading

material that she is actually interested in that are on her current level of reading.

In conclusion, we note that Sophia has difficulty with her vision that we will address

through PT and through an updated glasses prescription. We will curate a book list for Sophia

that includes her interests and begins at her current independent and instructional level. We will

work with Sophia to help her tracking issues while reading, possibly giving her books with larger

print to accommodate for her decreased vision and harder time tracking across the page. We will

work with Sophia on her vocabulary, as her word knowledge is lower mostly due to her

monolingual communication with her parents in Spanish. In working with Sophia on these

issues, we can increase both her silent and oral reading rate and ensure that she moves closer to

her class level in her reading.

Case Study 6

LESSON PLAN I

1. Guided reading: Sophia and her tutor will utilise a curated list of books specifically

built for Sophia’s interests. In selecting her first book, Sophia and her tutor will

preview the first 8 pages of a first to second grade book. Since Sophia was interested

in animals, we created the following list of books for her to choose from:

- Jumanji, Chris Van Allsburg

- The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Beverly Clearly

- Cowardly Clyde, Bill Peet

- Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl

- Lon Po Po, Ed Young

After selecting a book and reading the first few pages, the tutor poses several pre-

reading questions to stimulate Sophia’s interest in the book further. Sophia chose the

book Fantastic Mr. Fox, and poses the following questions: where do foxes live?

What do foxes eat? Are foxes friends with any other animals? Etc. Sophia doesn’t

know some of the answers, but the pictures in the book and the cover have her eager

to start reading. The tutor reads the first two pages of the books, and then Sophia

reads the exact same pages. The tutor is setting the pace of the book, letting Sophia

know the rhythm of the prose. This process is successful in getting Sophia off to a

fluent start. The tutor and Sophia read the next 10 pages in partner reading: they

alternate pages and stop every now and then to discuss the text. After 12 pages,

Sophia begins reading independently with the tutor providing assistance when

necessary. Reading fluency is a concern for Sophia, however, so the tutor offers for

her to whisper-read the text instead of silently reading in order to be able to

Case Study 7

accurately gauge her fluency and comprehension. After reading, the tutor and Sophia

work to go beyond the text and within the text, asking question such as: how is Mr.

Fox like other foxes? How do the animals display animal behaviour? How do the

animals display human behaviour?

2. Word study: Since Sophia reads at mostly a first grade level, we can assume that she

has difficulty with basic one-syllable spelling patterns in the English language and

how the syllables conjoin in multi-syllable words. Therefore, we choose to start

Sophia’s tutoring with one-syllable spelling pattern exercises. We assess her

knowledge of short vowel patterns by accumulating a deck of 50 short-vowel words.

We flash this deck to Sophia - correctly identified words are placed in one pile, and

incorrectly identified words are placed in a second pile. We do this until she has

mastered 47/50 words and her responses are, for the most part, immediate. We can

then move on to long-vowel, r-controlled, and a few other patterns to help with word

identification.

3. Writing: Sophia chooses to write about a story about when her family went to Disney

World. The tutor allows Sophia to create a pre-writing story building map. The tutor

helps Sophia create the first sentence, and then allows her to freely write

independently. Once Sophia has written a paragraph, the tutor asks Sophia to read

back what she has written. The tutor then asks Sophia to plan what to write next, and

agrees to continue writing in the next lesson.

4. Read to: The tutor reads aloud Jumanji, using their finger to underline the words as

they read aloud to Sophia to help with her tracking difficulties. Sophia is attentive and

is very interested in the book as the tutor reads.

Case Study 8

LESSON PLAN II

1. Guided reading: Sophia and her tutor begin the lesson by going back throught he first

pages of Fantastic Mr. Fox and recounting what happened during the first lesson.

They then proceed to partner read the second half of the book. The tutor needs to

continually model for Sophia how to read expressively, yet paced with the author’s

prose and word usage. At the end of the book, the pre-reading questions from the first

lesson are revisited and again, answered, and the tutor gauges whether Sophia has

answered accurately and recalled information from her first lesson.

2. Words study: the tutor uses the same short-vowel pattern flash cards to assess

Sophia’s knowledge. Once Sophia has answered them all correctly with relative ease

and quickness, the tutr has Sophia sort the crads into vowel pattern categories:

a/e/i/o/u, etc. The tutor and Sophia follow up the sorting with a short memory game,

and the tutor assesses whether Sophia has good knowledge of the short vowel

patterns.

3. Fluency building: Within the second lesson, the tutor wishes to include repeated

reading of the same text for Sophia, so Jumanji is brought back out. Sophia is

supposed to read the first 200 words from the book, and the tutor measures Sophia for

accuracy, speed, and comprehension. The tutor times Sophia’s reading in 2-minute

trials, and figures out her wpm rate. Sophia completes 2 trails of this type of reading,

and her two rates are compared.

4. Writing: Sophia continues her story about Disney World. The tutor makes sure to

congratulate Sophia on her work & progress, yet also points out places where her

writing could be revised.

Case Study 9

5. Read to. The tutor chooses one of the books in Sophia’s reading queue to read to her.
Case Study 10

REFLECTION

I found the context of this assignment difficult, yet interesting. None of the

previous cases we had studied figured in an actual physical trait that hampered reading

ability. Sophia was a unique case to read and write about due to her background: her

vision problem mixed with her linguistic background proved a difficult array of

difficulties to conquer. As interesting as this case was, I’m sure it is closer to the norm of

an actual school as opposed to many of the cut-and-dry cases Morris introduced in the

book.

The case was also difficult for me as I have no real-world context of how third

grade classrooms are structured. I teach eighth grade and am certified for 7-12, so being

introduced to a child in such an early grade made me have to go back and read many of

the earlier chapters on working with and diagnosing children with disabilities who were

in the early stages of reading. Sophia was also an interesting case in that regard because

she is in a “later grade” class - third - yet she only reads at an independent level near the

primer and first grade. So finding literature that fit her specific needs was a welcome

challenge. I’m almost jealous of all of the interesting literature that exists for those

grades!

I found that using my imagination for this case, and probably other cases like it,

was difficult. There’s no real way to create a scenario perfectly with how this

hypothetical child would react. I wish I had actual data that I could point to in order to

justify the things I chose to do and the way her parents responded. It did, however, make

me think deeply about the scenario and all of the possibilities I could follow to allow

Sophia the best results possible in her studies towards grade level reading.