Kate McCallum

TE 846

Spring 2016

Term Project: Literacy Case Study

The student I worked with for this particular case study is in 3rd grade and is 8 years old.

His reading level is mid-range according to his mother. He for example, has recently read the

Diary of a Wimpy Kid series books for fun. He also enjoys the I Survived series. This student is a

native English speaking, white male. He is not enrolled in any support programs, and he would

be considered mainstream.

This student attends a high achieving school with ample resources in a midwest suburban

town. He has individual/independent time each day for reading with computer access. This has

been promoting his reading (hence his interest in the series listed above). According to his mom,

they have had to present to the class, work on group projects and also write paragraphs twice a

week. He essentially has both independent time and collaborative work with reading and writing,

and is increasingly being asked to take risks (like presenting). Promotion of independent reading

has had an impact on him- he is willing to read and now wants to pick out books on his own. The

annual book fairs are particularly effective with this student as he is very excited to purchase new

books to read.

Some challenges this student faces is traveling between homes (a divorced family,

50/50) where he spends half the school week with his dad, and half the school week with his

mom. For this student, it is very difficult to remember things and it is also challenging in the fact

that there are two different environments that he works with at each home. According to mom,
his last report card was below grade level in all the writing and also in behavior areas. Currently

a plan is implemented where the teacher documents his organizer on how the daily progress is

going. Due to repercussions after not finishing his work in past months, each day , the student

must fill in his hourly tasks and homework on a planner and the teacher also initials the entries

each day. Finally, the parents initial at night after they check it.

Initially after talking with his mother, she wanted to assess his reading ability versus his

writing ability, and wanted help in understanding how the disconnect is happening (very poor

scores), especially in non-fiction contexts. I wondered if he was truly comprehending his reading

(as in the book series he likes), and if that mattered. After all, he was motivated to keep reading.

I wondered why his writing was so low if he was so motivated to read. Based on these results, I

planned two lessons.

IMPLEMENTING THE LESSONS

For my first lesson, I chose to work specifically with non-fiction as this was requested by

the learners mother as the weakest area that he needed help with. I asked ahead for a copy of

some of his school work, and she also provided me with a few of his school progress reports1.

From this I was able to build a context in which to begin more exploration. From these

documents, the student scored high in reading, but scored very low on his overall writing grade.

From the initial samples provided, he did not transfer the nonfiction work well at all in writing

contexts.

1
See Student Report
 This led me to one main question: what is happening between the reading process for this

child and in turn, why is he not able to show this reading comprehension through writing?

I was particularly interested in this child because I see this same problem often in my

students--even through varying grade levels. I was very curious to examine a student in a much

earlier stage in literacy development in hopes that I could eventually compare some of my new

insights with research and within the framework of secondary ed. I very rarely get this

opportunity.

I set out my first lesson to be able to narrow my answer. Thus, I administered and

observed the student using a few different accommodations. I used in each sample, a short

non-fiction reading sample and asked the learner to answer questions in writing (sentence form).

The accommodations I provided were technology related. This is my area of study for grad

school and I felt most comfortable in this analysis and using it as a tool to assess.

The first accommodation was simply allowing the student to complete the reading on the

computer and for him to type the answers on the computer (instead of a paper copy)2. For the

second accommodation, I played the reading selection as an audio clip (text to speech) and

allowed him to type the answers3. Finally, I allowed him to answer me orally instead of writing

or typing. I then took note of his tendencies and process in thought as he answered. I chose these

accommodations so I could look at the following things:

2
See Student Example
3
See Student Example
 Does he have a physical issue (motor skills) that is interrupting the transfer of

knowledge (his handwriting is often below grade level)? If so, his answers on the

computer may be different. But, maybe worse if motor skills are very bad.

What type of learner is he? I wanted to grasp whether allowing audio helped this

student in any way. Whether he could answer more thoroughly if given the

opportunity to hear the passage rather than read it on paper. Likewise, allowing

the student to type instead of write his answers. This would help me gain

insight as to why the transfer from thought to paper was so difficult, if it were

proven easier in another mode.

I allowed the student to talk his answers out loud. I wanted to see if this differed

from what he put on paper. Again, this allowed to provide another transfer

method.

Finally, I used two different stories. One was generic and something he may or

may not have spent time learning about before (the human muscles). From

preliminary interviews and talks with his mother I was given some insight into

what he likes/ hobbies he has. He is only mildly athletic. However, I gave him

another passage on dog sled racing. I knew from his mother that he was

particularly interested in this as he recently went on a trip and visited the dogs,

etc. His mom said it was one of his favorite things and one that he talked about for

weeks. My purpose in doing this was to measure the writing transfer in something

he had more previous knowledge with versus a subject he didnt. I was

 particularly interested in his process in the knowledge transfer and if I would be

able to witness and document any differences in the two.

I chose these accommodations to start with because they tend to reveal many things in my own

classes. I find that one of the above usually has an affect on the students work. From there, I can

narrow further as to why that particular accommodation had an affect on the work, using

data/research.

My goal was to assess the students primary need for further development and success

with nonfiction reading and transfer to writing. This goal was selected due to the parents request

as to why this seemingly intelligent learner is scoring so poorly in his classes in this area. This is

particularly important to both curriculum and the students future due to the fact that this type of

skill and knowledge set is particularly addressed across content areas and competency is not only

expected, but necessary to move on to more complex learning/inquiry.

From this, my goal was to assess the outcomes in hopes to provide another lesson using

some recommended strategies based on the learners needs and provide the parent some tools to

use at home in guiding her son.

To support the students success during the lesson I did the following:

1. I provided alternative settings/accommodations for 2 traditional non-fiction reading and

response prompts. I observed his tendencies while he worked and wrote them down. I did

not critique his work or praise it.

2. I guided the student using cues and prompts in finishing his traditional reading prompt he

got from school. This included direct instruction of strategies like identifying question
 stems, and tools like underlining the key phrases in the text. All was in a one-on-one

setting.

3. I provided a safe environment using dialogue (asked him to tell me the answer aloud first,

then to write what he told me). I provided praise.

Mainly I wanted to know where the student was in his method of transfer from reading to

writing. Working within a this students elementary framework, I believed that this analysis

resembled closely that of the question-answer-response (QAR) models and research (Raphael,

T.E., & Au, K.H. (2005). I found that this model provided a means in which to measure the

actual process in which the student was approaching his responses in each assessment. The

student was noticeably able to write more on his written assignment, after the QAR instruction

from me.

In applying the lessons, I encountered a few variables with the piece with the audio. At

one point the text-to-speech froze, so I might have tried another means to distribute this. I might

have also narrowed it to one accommodation, or tried two different accommodation with the

same piece. Initially, I was worried he could answer the questions better if read them over and

over, so I chose the different pieces. There was some distraction in the room as well so I am not

sure how much that played a role in his final answers in the assessments.

Overall I was able to observe that this learner is one that struggles with transfer from

nonfiction reading to writing. He seemed to be able to read fluently for his grade level, but was

struggling mostly with the whole process that was being asked of him for the writing tasks. He

seemed to know what he was supposed to do, but lacked focus and passion for writing in general.

He was more interested in finishing the assignments quickly rather than thoroughly.
 One-on-one work helped tremendously. However, when left to his own devices, the

learner seemed to revert to old habits. I did see a small amount of retention from one lesson to

the next, and would anticipate more if I worked with him daily for example. I am not sure at this

point how much his teacher has released learning for this student but I feel it is quite a bit. For

this student, in writing, it might be too much. He did get better at finding the answers in the text

after the first lesson. His last progress with lesson 2 was harder to determine because his teacher

did not return his paragraph we wrote. However, he was able to write on his own after the

lesson.

I observed also that he distracts easily and also has a fear of failure. So much that he

often wants to avoid the assignment all together and homework time. His parents have recorded

hours of homework time for some of his writing assignments. In my observations, he often hit

walls where he said I dont know. He really seemed to lack any set of strategies in a case

where he couldnt remember a fact from a story. He was used to reading once and simply jotting

down answers he remembered from the story. He did not go back to the text at all, or very

minimally. I made this my focus for the second lesson in learning the QAR strategies.

Using both digital samples and paper samples to compare, I wanted to check for multiple

learning styles and look for any underlying factors in his transfer from reading to writing.

Overall, the best work came when I was working with the student one-on-one. He was able to

thoroughly write and seemed not to be stressed and was happy to finish his homework in a

reasonable time. I ultimately found a lack of skill set in the context of non-fiction

reading/writing processes/strategies. He did not have a process to follow or work with to find
answers in the text, etc. It seemed like this was the first time he had ever worked with QAR

strategies.

AS A RESULT

This learner has a divorced environment where he is only at one parents house for a few days

and the other a few days. It is a pretty difficult situation for any consistency. I can see the student

being confused by how he is supposed to do things. Also, he currently was in trouble. Hes

grounded for such poor report card grades. My preliminary observations showed a transfer

problem, but his parents viewed it as a lack of effort. In my opinion this was a misunderstanding.

I believed I have some evidence that motivation is indeed a factor in this case, but actually fear

of failure was also playing a huge role.

Most significantly, my results from the mere few lessons that I was able to conduct with

him, the student had very little knowledge of or any reference to strategies for reading

comprehension, and struggled with the different question stems. As Gambrel and Morrow

(2015) state, In order for students to gain discipline-specific literacies necessary for content

learning, [students] must be able to transform texts and information in their minds and on

paper. (153) . I think that this process is extremely difficult for some children and great

teachers are those who can foster it. Yet, it is much easier said than done. Also, I started to

realize through work with such a young learner, that this process of transforming text in their

minds begins much earlier than we might realize. It set a foundation for transfer in all the later

grades. However, Gambrel and Morrow also reiterated another problem, You cant learn much

from books you cant read (Allington, 2002) (153). For my learner in this case, I was able to
identify that in the short passages, he could could in fact read fluently, but he often skipped over

the true comprehension factors of the passages. In a non-fiction setting, this led to a mistransfer

of certain key information pieces. Some suggestions of these authors for immediate improvement

were to employ these strategies: close reading, annotation, discussion, and writing with

evidence. I am happy that all of these are on my agenda each year with my own students. I am

not so sure though, that improvement has always been measureable with these strategies. For me,

students often still lack the entire of the learning process, and I truly feel that learning and

literacy are closely tied to this innate, maybe human element. As Gambrel and Morrow

presented in their own case study, a teacher stated: I cant always be the one doing the thinking

for them. (155) I feel like I agree with this teacher. Often times were faced with a situation

where in our teaching, we end up doing most of the thinking work ourselves. As I began to work

with the student in his errors on his homework and comprehension questions, he immediately

began to lose some interest and seemed unmotivated. While he complied with my requests and

did fix his work, he was less satisfied in the new writing he was putting down. I believe he felt

that the thinking was a bit foreign to him and that it was less his own, even though his original

answers were inadequate and often incorrect.

I couldnt help but wonder if this was counterintuitive. Even though the learner was now

gaining the correct information through the new QAR work I just taught, was his lack of

enjoyment just as bad? Morrow and Gambrell seem to agree, The goal of a best-practices

writing program ought to be to develop writers who enjoy and learn from writing as they write

clearly and coherently in a range of forms for a variety of purposes and audiences. (311) I feel

that some sort of compromise must be reached in order for both transfer and enjoyment to take
place. I do not feel that we often take note of this in our teaching, especially as students get to

secondary levels.

I think that the work of Samuels and Farstrup (2011) originally laid out the groundwork

for this suggested blend of good reading comprehension teaching (51-93). In other words, the

authors attempted to conglomerate a we know good readers do this list, which was based on a

plethora of research. One chapter initiated a best practice approach right away with 10

straightforward tricks for teachers:

1. Build disciplinary and world knowledge.

2. Provide exposure to a volume and range of texts.
3. Provide motivating texts and contexts for reading.
4. Teach strategies for comprehending.
5. Teach text structures.
6. Engage students in discussion.
7. Build vocabulary and language knowledge.
8. Integrate reading and writing.
9. Observe and assess.
10. Differentiate instruction.

As S&F state, Comprehension is a consuming, continuous, and complex activity, but one that,

for good readers, is both satisfying and productive. (56) Thus the authors make the connection

that both motivation and productivity with reading/transfer of information is necessary.

In conclusion, I have learned that their is much to be said for teaching the process of

thinking and working with the transfer from reading to writing. It is difficult, but must be done

explicitly. I have also learned that for young learners, it is also important to consider that overall

this learning is a long process that must be done over time. Often they will not master these skills

until well into their secondary years. Therefore, it can be damaging in terms of motivation, to be

too critical if they have not yet gotten deliberate instruction in the process. Parents in turn , use
these poor grades in a much different context - which in turn leads to students no longer

wanting to even go through the literacy process and in turn lose their love for literacy. I can take

away from this a better understanding of how young this all starts, and be more diligent in my

own assessments early on in the learning process with struggling students in hopes of helping

them.

Morrow, L. M. & Gambrell, L. (Eds.) (2014). Best practices in literacy instruction. New York:
Guilford Press. (*Fifth edition. Kindle edition available).

Raphael, T.E., & Au, K.H. (2005). QAR: Enhancing comprehension and test taking across
grades and content areas. The Reading Teacher, 59, 206-221.

Samuels, S. J. & Farstrup, A. E. (Eds.) (2011). What research has to say about reading
instruction (4th edition). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Electronic access
through MSU Library.