EDR 317

Case Study
I- Background Information:
M is an enthusiastic, female second grader at R Elementary School. M has an older
brother that also attended R Elementary and a supportive family that is very involved both in the
school and with their daughter. Ms mother attended the filed trip I went on with my second
grade class and also attended Community Day. She engaged in conversation with me at both
events and was very enthusiastic about wanting to be involved. Ms parents also have an open
line of communication with Ms second grade teacher and work collaboratively with her. She is
always doing what is asked of her without a complaint and is engaged in every lesson in the
classroom. M is wanting and ready to learn. Not only does she have respect for her teacher, but
she also has a great level of respect for me. She is in my small reading group and is constantly
reminding her peers to stay on task. M is friendly with everyone in her class and is definitely very
social. However, she becomes easily frustrated with her classmates when they are impeding on
her learning, such as talking when they are not supposed to or not following instructions. I have
seen this frustration in both small group and whole group instruction.
M loves to read, but is definitely on a lower reading level than the majority of her second
grade class. As of right now, the average reading level for her second grade class is being able
to read independently at a K reading level. M still needs a little extra support at a J reading level.
Her issues revolve around fluency and word recognition. Although my teacher is aware of these
issues, the only small group instruction she has is with me on Mondays and Wednesdays. When

coming across a word M does not know, she does not implement many strategies. She will try to
sound out the word, but does not use the context of the sentence or any other strategies to hep
her decode it. I have M and the rest of my small group read aloud a lot during my lessons. When
M comes across a word she doesnt know, I often give her hints but will not give her the word. I
do not have any one on one instruction with M, but I have ideas for what I would do for her if I
did. From interacting with M and seeing her twice a week, I have a pretty good idea of her
interests. She loves her dog and tends to pick a lot of books about animals. For community day
she was a Gymnastics Instructor and has wrote about Gymnastics in a lot of her stories,
therefore I know she is very passionate about the sport. Another sport M enjoys is soccer, I
know this because she has shared playing in her soccer games during her morning meetings.

II- Assessment and/or Literacy Strategies/ Activities:

1. Observation: The first time I interacted with M was simply through observing her read
independently. It was after a whole group mini lesson on asking ourselves questions in our
heads while we are reading. Throughout Ms reading, I would have her pause at certain
pages and ask her if she had any questions about what was going on in the story. She
continued to say no. I tried another approach, I started asking questions I had about the
story. She would also look for the answers to these questions in the story. She then started
creating questions on of her own towards the end of the book and we read the final two
pages to find the answers to her questions.

2. Picture Walk: This was the first small group lesson I taught on using picture walks to make
predictions about the story Franklin Fibs by looking at the pictures. This lesson is when I
decided I wanted to chose M as my case study. She had excellent predictions about what
she thought the pictures may have been telling her the book was going to be about. I think a
lot of these predictions came from the fact that M had stated before we started reading that
she had read the book before. But, I also think this is a good indication that she read and
understood the story because she could recall key details. After making our predictions, we
read the story as a group. This is when I realized M could use a little more help with her
fluency. She was eager to read to her peers in the small group, but it was evident that she
was not as fluent as her other classmates. This is also when I realized Ms lack of decoding
strategies. She came across a word she didnt know in the book, and immediately looked up
at me to give her the word. The word was astounded. It was a word I gave her, because it
was my first small group lesson, but I should have had her use a couple of strategies first.
This is because she then started expecting that I would give her words that were easily
decodable.
3. Using Expression: I did a lesson with my small reading group on using expression while we
are reading. I split Franklin Fibs into a script, and gave each of my students a character. The
characters in Franklin Fibs are animals, which gave my students a lot of room for creativity
with how they wanted to sound and what kind of expression they wanted to use while
reading to really embody their character. This is when I realized how much Ms lack of
fluency was affecting her reading. M was so excited about the script and getting to pretend to

be the character. She had such a great voice she was going to use to be the hawk and even
demonstrated it to the rest of her group before reading. However, when she started reading,
she couldnt even use the expression she wanted to because she was so focused on the
words on the page. I think if M read with a little more fluency, she would have been able to
add that expression she wanted to her reading.
4. Story Elements: M understood the elements of a story fairly well before I even began my
lesson. She shared definitions for the problem and solution in a story accurately for her
fellow students. During the lesson, I instructed my students to split into groups of 2 and 3
and flip through the book to find the story elements listed for Franklin Fibs. While one group
was talking and not working collaboratively, M was encouraging her partner to work as a
team with her. They completed the worksheet together and I could tell by Ms contributions
towards completing the worksheet that she understood the story elements of Franklin Fibs
after reading it twice and having the book as a guide. An assessment for this lesson was her
worksheet that she completed. All of her thoughts made sense and were relevant to the
story.
5. Informational Text: M had a difficult time using text features in our informational text lesson.
My lesson was a scavenger hunt that the students in my small reading group completed in
pairs. They had to use the Table of Contents, Glossary, and Index to answer the questions in
the scavenger hunt. In the beginning, M was flipping through the book instead of using her
text features to help her find the answers. However, after I explained it to her she picked up

on using the text features very quickly. After completing the worksheet, M fully understood
the text features and how we use them.
6. Reading level: My mentor teacher explained to me Ms reading level and showed me two of
her QRIs. M is supposed to be able to read independently at J reading level and be able to
read K leveled books at an instructional level. However, Ms instructional reading level is J,
and she is almost able to read J leveled books independently. Based on this data, M is
behind where she is supposed to be.
7. Writing: I was able to take pictures of some of Ms writing pieces she has been working on in
writing workshop. Her writing displays how heavily M relies on her phonics skills. M will ask
me how to spell a lot of words that are in her word book, or are sight words in her classroom.
When spelling a word, M writes down every sound she hears in the word. She has not yet
mastered her suffixes, especially her ed endings.
8. Creating Titles/ Headings in a Story: This was a lesson M really struggled with. The lesson
required the students to not only read the chapters in the book, A Healthy Earth, but be able
to comprehend what they were reading. They then had to take this comprehension a step
further and create a title for the chapters. Ms lack of decoding skills really made it difficult for
her to comprehend the text, and therefore, showed in her inability to create an effective title. I
am going to do a follow up lesson and work one on one with M. I am first going to model how
to make an effective title for a chapter and what skills you should use when doing so for my
whole small reading group. I will also break down the chapters paragraph by paragraph to
ensure M and the rest of my students have a good understanding of what they are reading.

This lesson also shows how heavily M relies on pictures in the text to help her pull
information and how little she is comprehending from the actual words.

III- Evaluation:
Strengths & Roadblocks
Based on the assessments I have conducted with M and my observations, I think M
could use the most instruction in sight word knowledge, decoding skills, and fluency.
Comprehension is also an area of need for M. If M could read more fluently and did not pause
while reading the text to decode a word, her comprehension would significantly increase.
Although she needs work on her expression while reading, I think this is a skill that can be
developed once M masters the other skills listed. M does understand her purpose for reading,
even though her comprehension lacks due to her roadblocks. I know she understands her
purpose for reading because she could easily identify the elements in the story Franklin Fibs
without having to refer back to the text very often. This shows she knows the important elements
in a story and comprehended these elements while she read the story with her peers. Ms
writing also shows she is phonetically aware, which is both a strength and a weakness. It is a
strength because with a lot of the words she is decoding, she can use her understanding of the
sounds of letters to help her sound it out. It is a weakness because M relies so heavily on her
phonetic knowledge, she doesnt attempt to use any other of her decoding skills when she
comes across a word unfamiliar to her.

Further Instruction
To provide instruction for M outside of her small group reading lesson, I would first work
on her sight word knowledge. M enjoys hands on activities, therefore I would make sight word
activities that were interactive. One idea I had is finding a game on an iPad that has sight words
on one side and a definition or a picture to represent the sight word on the other side. If M taps
the sight word, the iPad will say the word aloud for her. M will have to match the sight word with
its corresponding definition/symbol. This will correlate the sight word and its meaning, making it
easier for M to remember and identify when she sees it in text. M also enjoys group instruction, I
could make notecards with the sight words and play the game slap it with M and other students
struggling with sight words in the class. The game consists of two players. The teacher holds the
deck of cards with sight words written on each one. Once the teacher places the notecard on
the table, each students slaps the table when they identify the word in their minds. The first
student to slap the table then has one second to say the word aloud. This is a fun and
interactive way for M to work on her sight words while still enjoying the activity.
Another roadblock of Ms is her decoding skills. Although M attempts to sound out words
she doesnt know using her phonetic knowledge, I think the strategy would be way more
effective if she learned to chunk the words. I would give M words on notecards that are 2-3
syllable words. I would begin by covering the second half of the word, so M can focus on the first
half. Once M has successfully sounded out the first half, I will cover the first half so M can focus
the second half. After she has sounded out the second half, I would have M add these two
sounds together. This is a good strategy to use that is building on the decoding skills M most

often uses, but enables her to chunk the sounds of the words instead of trying to decode the
whole word at once. Another strategy to decode unfamiliar words in the text is using context
clues. This will help M decode words faster and more accurately. It will also help her with her
comprehension of the text. To teach M this decoding strategy, I would give M a story. In some of
the sentences, I would leave a specific word blank for M to fill in. This forces M to think about
what she is reading and use context clues to fill in the blank with a word that makes sense. I
would then carry this strategy into Ms reading and how to decode an unfamiliar word she comes
across in the text by using the context of the text she is reading.
Lastly, I would work with M on her fluency. I would work on this skill last with M because
once she improves her sight word knowledge and decoding skills, I predict that her
comprehension will increase substantially. I could do a one on one lesson with M, and first
demonstrate the wrong ways to read (like a robot, too slow, too fast ect.) I will ask M what she
thinks of the way Im reading. I will then read with the correct fluency and ask M what I did
differently this time. Then, I would have M read to me with fluency. I would also allow M to try
reading too slow, like a robot, and too fast so she understands how much of the text she can
actually comprehend if she reads with fluency. As far as lessons and activities to do with M, I
have realized that she is more engaged in a lesson that is hands on and is less engaged when
the lesson involves worksheets.

3 Specific Goals:
1

M will be able to identify 95% of her sight words within one second.

9. M will be able to decode 5/6 words from an unfamiliar passage at her reading level.
10. After reading a unfamiliar passage at her reading level, M will be able to retell at least 4 out
of the 6 key details from the passage.

3 Book Recommendations:
1

Bridwell, Norman. Clifford and the Grouchy Neighbors. New York: Scholastic, 1985. - I think
M would really enjoy a Clifford book because she has written two stories about her own Dog
at home. This book is at a J reading level, which is a just right reading level for M. There
should be very few words that would need to decode and a topic she is interested in.

2. Numerous, Laura. Dogs Don't Wear Sneakers. N.p.: n.p., 1993- This book is also leveled J,
and M could read this book independently. This book has a lot of goofy references about what
animals dont do. I think M would really enjoy a light, goofy book to read about animals.
3. Marzollo, Claudio, and Jacqueline Rogers. Kenny and the Little Kickers. New York:
Scholastic, 1992.- M really enjoys playing soccer and has the background knowledge on the
sport to read the book and fully understand it. I think this book falls under Ms interests and
would be an enjoyable book for M to read independently.
*** I chose these book recommendations based on Ms interests. I chose J leveled books
because I want M to be practicing the skills I am teaching her while she reads. M is close to
being able to read independently with J leveled books. I think with her new decoding strategies
she will be able to read these books.