Michael Sykes Case Study

Part 1 The student that Im observing is an 11 year old 6th grader. He is a fun loving student that relishes playing Mind Craft on the computer and also enjoys playing with Blade Blades. He has a strong since of justice and often sticks up for students that are being bullied. He has several friends and enjoys hanging out with them and talking about the two games I mentioned above. He also loves food and enjoys eating. He either wants to be a professional basketball player or a singer because they make a lot money. He also has shown interest in computer programing, he wants to learn how to write code. He has a sense of humor, and often laughs and plays practical jokes on people: especially teachers. The student is exceptional at math; he can do most math problems in his head and loves the order of the numbers and formulas. The student currently is on a Mild Moderate case load and his services are mainly met with full inclusion and some scheduled pullouts. During his fourth grade year this student was diagnosed with Autism. Autism has impacted the student in written and oral language. Sociology: This is the function of language. The student often miss interprets or misread social cues and doesnt away underline meaning of some conversation. The student often uses telegraphic speak, that often doesnt allow him to accurately communicate. Linguistics: Structures of language. The student also has deficits in reading comprehension and in fluency. The comprehension issue is mainly because he has a hard time picking out the main idea because he focuses on random facts, and because he has a difficult time making inferences. His struggles in comprehension are also do to his fluency. His fluency struggles are because of his decoding, vocabulary, and morphemes. Cognitive Psychology: Processes contributing to language. The student often has a hard time paying attention, some because of sensory issues, other times because lack of motivation or interest. He also struggles with executive functioning, he has a difficult time articulating and organizing his thoughts and transferring them to oral or written language, because of this most of his sentences are simple sentences. These three models of written and oral language deficits are also revealed in math. Even though math is a strong subject for him, he does struggle with word problems. The way word problems ask for answer confuses him, and he has a hard time deciphering what the question is asking. The written linguistics in word problems challenge is vocabulary and comprehension. If you dont know what words mean, how do you get the understanding of the sentence? Cognitively if you do understand what is going on your more likely to pay attention to other things, also being able to transfer information from thought to paper or be able to orally express information can interfere with answering word problems.. The executive functioning plays a big part in this and lead to the telegraphic speak that I mention earlier. Socially if you not able to affective communicate and effective listen (sounds of words) it leads to social de-construction (low selfesteem). This can profoundly impact him in written and oral language.

Gray Oral Reading (Gort-4) Rate Accuracy Fluency Comprehension

Percentile 2 <1 <1 16

Standard Score (Mean=10) 4 2 1 7

Age Equiv. 7-3 <6-0 6-9 8-6

Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Towre) Sight Word Efficiency Phonemic Decoding Efficiency Total Word Reading Efficiency

Percentile 27 25 23

Standard Score (Mean=100) 91 90 89

Age Equiv. 9-9 9-0

Diagnostic Achievement Battery-3 (DAB-3) Reading Comprehension

Percentile 25

Standard Score 8

Age Equiv. 9-9

The teacher mentioned that the student is one of her favorite. She also mentioned that he is sometimes hard to motivate and he sometimes goes into La La Land. The teacher also said that he has become more confident in her classroom and will now answer questions and participate in the lesson. This is something that the teacher was aware of and constantly target him to answer questions that she know he has the answer too. Writing is something that the student struggles with, because of his spelling phonemic decoding, and some motor skill deficiencies. The main reason the student struggles is because he doesnt hear all the sounds in word, so if you cant hear the sounds you will not be able to accurately decode (spell) the words. The student also has a difficult time staying on topic and developing a story, this can be because of attention or comprehension or both. The weird thing is the student has received PP and P in reading over the last two years in TCAP, even though on all interim testing was unsatisfactory.

Part 2 After carefully looking at some of the student scores and applying what I learned in this class and my prior knowledge of the student. I know this student was taught using a balanced literacy, also known as whole language approach and another teacher allowed the students to play and didnt focus on any kind of linguistics at all. I know that this student learned how to read off of memorization. His reading efficiency is at the 9.6 age which is equivalent to a third grade reading level. I know that at 3rd there is a curriculum shift from learning to read, to reading to learn. I also know the text changes and those high

frequency words that you get from k-3rd become less frequent. So if you dont have the fundamentals or structures of written language (phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency) than you will see deficits in the basic reading, which mean you will struggle to read *** think about the complexity of text like multisyllabic words and rich vocabulary that causes problems with comprehension***. The good news is that he is reading at a 9.6 age level, and he has many of the tools that you need to be an effective reader. We have to address some of his lack of instructions by providing explicit and systematic intervention and instruction. There are a couple of interventions I would use to help with this student discrepancy. The first thing I would address is phonological awareness. I would work on getting him to slow down so he could recognize and internalize the different sounds letter make. He often makes mistakes on words he knows or mispronounces words because he is trying to read to fast or isnt paying attention. He would benefit from knowing the different sounds that make up words; I believe that he see words as being one sound, not different sounds blended to make a word. I would start by working on his SYLLABLE blending, segmentation and deletion. Then I would work on his ONSET-RIME recognize rhyme, generate rhyme, categorization, blending and segmentation. Finally I would work on his PHONEME isolation, identity categorization, blending, segmentation, deletion, addition, and substitution. I would start with these phonological awareness interventions because I recognize that speech sounds can be segmented and blended, and is essential in building relationships between speech and print. The next deficit I would address is his phonics. Making sure he mastered the 44 sounds letters make would improve his vocabulary, which in turn would have a positive effect on his fluency. I would start by introducing sounds/spelling and explicitly teach them in isolation. Then I would teach blend words, this would include explicit instruction and practice in sounding out and reading words. Next I build automatic word recognition, by having activities to develop automaticity focus on the rapid and effortless decoding and reading of words in isolation. Then I would apply to decodable text, which would provide opportunities to practice reading and rereading decodable texts and also develop automaticity. Finally I would do some word work for decoding and encoding, with a range of activities that leads the student to practice sounds/spelling patterns by building, manipulating, and sorting words. I know that phonics instruction should be systematic and explicit in order to be effective. Many programs have scope and sequence, but this doesnt mean that they are systematic, without systematic phonics instruction there is no logical instructional sequence. After phonics is addressed I believe this would be a great time retest the student. If phonics is mastered it would address the vocabulary, multisyllabic word reading, and fluency. When addressing phonics and phonemic awareness with students that need an intensive approach they learn having high repetitions between 14-400 for mastery. I know that I will have to target his shortterm storage by engaging (attention) him and I will have to target his long-term storage by repetition (rehearsal). Part 3 Teacher Candidate: Michael Sykes

Title of Lesson: Grade Level: Subject Area: Literacy

Snap Rap 6th

Location of the lesson: Mild Moderate classroom Grouping: Small group or 1:1

1. Lesson Topic: Rhyming 2. What are your learning targets for the lesson: ability to identify words that rhyme ability to produce rhyming words 3. What Content Standards or EEOs will the lesson address: Content Area: Reading, Writing, and Communicating Standard: 2. Reading for All Purposes Prepared Graduates: Interpret how the structure of written English contributes to the pronunciation and meaning of complex vocabulary Grade Level Expectation: Sixth Grade Concepts and skills students master: Word meanings are determined by how they are designed and how they are used in context Students can: a. Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 6 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. (CCSS: L.6.4) i. Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence or paragraph; a words position or function in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase. (CCSS: L.6.4a)

4. Goals: By 02/05/2014 Student will increase his reading fluency from 100 words per minute at the 4th grade level to 130 words per minute at the 5th grade level given/during/ in special education setting as measured by a special educator using an oral fluency curriculum based measure. 5. Describe Specific Strategies to be taught/modeled during the lesson: Students will watch a video of a rap song with the lyrics display. Students will be taught to recognize and differentiate sounds by rhyming and see how the sounds are hooked on letters. They will also begin to understand that language sounds, are separate from its meaning. They will also begin to understand word families. (Cat and bat are two totally different things, even though they rhyme and have similar spelling)

6. What background (prior) knowledge do the students need to have to be successful? Student must be able to hear sounds, and see letters. 7. How will you address classroom and behavior management/grouping issues during the lesson? Redirection, Priming, Ignoring rules, Routine, Interrupting, Rewards, Praise, Prompting, Speak and Spin, Hurdle Help, active engaging activities, addressing the different learning modalities, activating prior knowledge, help students make connection to real world applications 8. Materials and Resources (What do you need? How/where will you get it?) Projector, music, internet connection, speaker, computer, handout, pencils,

Part 4 To assess the phonemic awareness I will use the CORE Phoneme Deletion Test and CORE Phonological Segmentation Test to make sure he if has master letter sound recognition and to see if he now able to hear and identify the different sounds that make up word. Auditory deficits is more likely than visual deficits in reading, so assessing his sound recognition after I have provided systematic and explicit instruction will paint a clear picture of the student needs. I could than provide and plan instruction base upon the assessment. The next assessment I would give in the CORE Phonics Survey, is to assess the student growth in Phonics. The Core Phonics Survey assesses phonemic awareness, sound/spelling, blends, and word recognition. Seeing the student grow in letter/sound correspondences and the ability to decode CVC words, non-sense words, multi-syllabic words will give me great insight in the student ability to read text. Phonics is the foundation for reading and understanding the association between letter/sounds. Phonics also significantly improves students ability to comprehend what is read and is vital in the push in helping students who are having a hard time learning to read. The relationship with letters and sounds is vital in reading, and phonics address visual and is able to hook the sound on the letter, which when done in sequence make up words. Both of these assessments are great for progress monitoring. This information will help determine if instruction is working and if we are getting through to the student. I know there are many deficits that need to be addressed. I decided to target linguistics based upon the fact that linguistics can have the more substantial impact on helping a student to read. You can teach 97 percent of students how to read by teaching linguistics and if I strengthen his foundation with explicit, direct, and systematics instruction with research based material that cover the five components of reading the statistics say I will be successful.