Kristin Foster

EDSE 442
Case Study

Thomas is a first grader with Autism. He is a 7-year-old boy with a crazy
imagination that can whisk him away. He is strong willed and is doing a great job
learning to be flexible when he cannot have a preferred activity. If he is not
complying, wait time and gestural prompts are the best way to engage him. He
understands academic material best if it is concrete, well defined and explained step
by step.

Thomas is currently an instructional independent on DRA level 3. He is gaining in
phonological awareness, and control in phonics. When it comes to fluency he is
independent, having very few mistakes for he succeeds in decoding. However, he
struggles with comprehension, with the largest deficit in retelling and making
connections. The DRA test provided no assessment on vocabulary. His deficit in
comprehension is halting his advancement to DRA level 4.

On Thomass IEP he has reading goals for decoding and blending, sight words, and
answering who and what questions. These goals were created at his recent IEP in
January. He is to learn how to decode and blend four sound CCVC and CVCC words
correctly 7/8 times. For comprehension he will answer who and what questions
correctly 4/5 times from an ability level text. He has goals to identify pre-primer,
and primer words. Currently he is identifying 65% of pre-primer words and 38% of
primer words. Thomas has a writing goal to be able to write 4-5 word, on topic
sentences when presented a picture.

When I observed Thomas he was very animated and seamed happy to be working.
He did need redirections in order to stay on task, especially when completing new
tasks. I took this opportunity to observe his oral language. On average his oral
language consisted of 3-5 word sentences. Most of his sentences were complete
simple sentences. He responded on topic to the stories he read, but had a hard time
answering specific questions about the text.

Currently Thomass writing and literacy work contain fill in the blank sentences in
which he can fill in with preprinted pictures or words. He also works a lot on
sequencing pictures. Thomas has poor motor skills, as an accommodation most of
his work the fill in the blank work. Currently he is working on typing his work. The
computer is also a large motivator. His expectation is to independently type the
words I Like, like being one of his sight words. He does trace his name and practice
writing sight words.

His teacher teaches students kindergarten through second grade with Autism. Mrs.
Miller sat down with me to go over the assessments that she uses for her students.
She explained to me that most of her students are great at decoding because once
they learn rules they are very good at following them. She explained that most of
them have good phonological awareness. However, they dont always score well on
phonological assessments because of the complex directions. Generally their score
on comprehension is also low because the idea is so abstract. When asking what the
story reminded them of they typically reference the title or pictures in the book.
Therefore, retelling is often easier with pictures to refer to. Without pictures the
children require frequent prompts in order to be able to retell a story. When the
kids are confused their answers are echolike. With most of her students she works
on decoding, but for students with poor verbal skills she does a mix of sight words
and decoding.


PART TWO
1. The student is an instructional independent on the DRA level 3 assessment.
The reason he wasnt moving up to a level 4 was because he lacked comprehension;
retelling and making connections. He was gaining in phonological awareness and
control in phonics, both are average or above. He is gaining in phonological
awareness mainly because of the complexity of directions. His fluency is
independent. His lowest score is in comprehension, with a score of instructional
developing. I will focus on his comprehension, so that he can move to the next DRA
level. The goal is to increase his ability to retell and make connections. Therefore I
will conduct an intervention for comprehension.

2. While focusing on comprehension I will still continue to teach the 5
components of reading. Thomas is a 1
st
grader who still needs to receive systematic,
direct, explicit instruction in phonology, phonics, vocabulary and fluency along with
extra instruction on comprehension. In phonics we will work on Phoneme Deletion
Test, Phonological Segmentation Test and all 250 spellings of the 44 sounds. Sight
words will still be worked on. Fluency will also be worked on. By the end of 1
st
grade
Thomas should be reading at least 53 words correct per minute.
In terms of vocabulary, I was not able to do an assessment to find out if he
understands the meanings of 90% or more of the words. Either way I will teach 2
vocabulary words a day (or around 8 a week) so that way he can learn 800 new
vocabulary words over a year. I will teach him common affixes and tier 1 and tier 2
academic words. Vocabulary will be very important to Thomas, for children with a
larger vocabulary also have an increase in comprehension. I dream of Thomas
having the 80,000 word vocabulary he needs in order to succeed when he goes to
college. I will have to use the word more than 14 times over the week in order for
him to grasp the new word.
Continuing to work on all 5 components of reading and specific
comprehension work will help Thomas become closer to reaching DRA level 14 by
the end of 1
st
grade.

3. At the end of the quarter the final assessment will include reading a DRA
level 3 text and correctly sequencing 6/6 events with less than 6 prompts. There
will be benchmarks along the way for recalling 3/3 events, 4/4 events and 5/5 from
3 sentences all the way to a short grade level book.





4. I will be focusing on comprehension because the purpose of reading is to
gain information. In two years he will be in 3
rd
grade and he will have to read to gain
information. Instruction will no longer be focused on teaching how to read. At every
grade students should understand what they read or else there is no point in
reading. Talking about what students read should be happening every time students
read.
He reads at least 95% of the words accurately at a DRA level 3, therefore he
should be able to comprehend what he reads. However he is still struggling with
retelling his comprehension. I want to make sure that he truly understands what he
is reading. The best way to boost comprehension is by visualizing the text. Thomas
needs to be able to remember stories and information. According to Teaching
Reading Source Book research has proven the creating mental pictures increases
students comprehension, because they are connecting verbal and non-verbal
memory making the information easier to recall. Also, the completion of the
cognitive cycle of seeing, hearing and finally visualizing is what really solidifies
knowledge. Thomas has Autism. Therefore he has trouble recalling and using
expressive language. It will be helpful for him create mental images and mentally
place them on colored sequenced squares. Because Thomas lacks motor writing
skills we will not be using a worksheet. I feel as if the worksheet would become the
task instead of comprehending the story. Visualization is also a skill that doesnt
have to be drawn or written down. So we will be working on creating mental images
and recalling them. In addition it is beneficial to improve expressive and receptive
oral language in 1
st
grade. In 1
st
grade vocabulary is learned orally. The visual
images he creates will help him comprehend and connect to the text. Connecting his
visualizations with sequential colors will help him be able to sequence and retell the
information in the text.

PART THREE

Teacher Candidate: Kristin Foster
Title of Lesson: Visualizing text
Grade Level: 1
st
grade
Subject Area: Reading
Location of the Lesson: Autism Center Classroom
Grouping. 1:1

Lesson Topic
The big idea is to create mental images from the text to increase comprehension and
the ability to retell information. Through out the students school career it is
important that he understands what he reads.

Learning Targets
The primary target of this lesson is to be able to retell 3/3 events after listening to a
grade level text determined by a special education teacher using informal
assessments.
The supporting target is to be able to create and verbalize mental images when
reading a grade level text determined by the special education teacher with informal
assessments.

Content Standards/ 21
st
Century skills
Standard 1 Oral Expression and Listening
Multiple strategies develop and expand oral vocabulary.
b. Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions when appropriate to clarify
ideas, thoughts, and feelings. (CCSS: SL.1.)
The student will be working on making meaning from the grade level text.
The student is also working on making connections and understanding language.
Making connections and understanding verbal language is a key 21
st
century skill.

IEP Goal
Thomas will be able to answer who and what questions correctly 4/5 times from an
ability level text determined by the special education teacher.

Specific Strategy
I will model the strategy of creating mental images. I will have the student
read a sentence from an ability level text as I close my eyes and create a mental
picture. I will open my eye and use topics/questions (size, color, emotion,
background, where, who, what) to guide my description. I will explain that I put the
first picture in the green box so I can remember it. I will continue to do this with two
more sentences, placing them each in the next color box. I will explain that when
creating mental pictures I have to use the text. So if the text says dog, I can only
imagine one dog not multiple. Then I will talk about using my imagination to
imagine the rest. After visualizing all three sentences, I will retell the passage. Next
its his turn. I will read him a sentence and have him close his eyes. While his eyes
are closed I will ask him to visualize what and who questions as well as size, color,
emotion questions. I will have him open his eyes and I will ask him the questions
again having him verbalize the answers. Then we will put the image in the first
green box so that we can recall it later. The visualization will help with
comprehension. We place the images in the sequential colored boxes so that he can
recall the images to help with the retell.
I will repeat the information that is important and create a picture checklist
for the students use. First, I read the sentence. Then I close my eyes before I
visualize. I open my eyes to verbalize what I visualized. After I have visualized I put
my visualization in the box. The visualization for the first sentence is placed in the
green box, the second mental image is placed in the yellow box, and third in the
orange box. I have to use what the text tells me but then after I used the text
information I can add on.


Prior Knowledge
The student will need the need the cognitive skills of paying attention for 15-
minute increments. He will also need to understand that size and color words have
real life meanings. Cognitively he will need to understand the symbolism behind the
words and develop a concept about what the words mean. Therefore in the
anticipatory set he will be matching words to pictures (ie, green, big, sunny, happy,
boy, dog). This activity will help him begin to comprehend the meaning behind text.

Behavior Management
In the beginning we will go over the expectations by using the Whole Body
Listening song. I will write out a visual schedule of the lesson plan in student
friendly language, including brain breaks through out the lesson and a preferred
item at the end of the lesson. I will use the prompt hierarchy (direction, gestural,
verbal, physical) including a 10 second wait time and appropriate reinforcements
for compliance.

Materials
Flashcards (color, noun, size emotions) with matching pictures
Comprehension Color Train
Flashcards of retelling words
Simple Visualizing stories

PART FOUR
After the lesson the student will be assessed on their ability to use the
visualization strategy. The student will be orally read a 3-sentence narration. They
are to create and describe a mental image for each sentence using the information
from the text. They are to orally recall the information at the end of the passage. I
have created an informal assessment for the end of my lesson.

Student can (measurable academic behaviors)
Close their eyes when visualizing
Answer 4 retelling words for each sentence (after sentence is read)
o Sentence 1
o Sentence 2
o Sentence 3
Point to the correct sequence box when retelling visualizations for the
sentence
Retell all 3 sentences
o In sequence
o With information from the text

At the end of the quarter I will again give him the DRA 3 assessment. After practicing
the visualizing and retelling strategy he should be able to increase the number of
sequences he can correctly from 3/3 to 6/6, and be able to move up to a DRA level 4.
We will have also been working on phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and
fluency, which will also assist with comprehension and moving up a DRA level.
There is not a 1
st
grade maze assessment in Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures.