Noah Treffers

Education 322
Professor Westbrook
5 May 2019

Case Study

Introduction:

 Student Name
 Rubii
 Grade
 1st grade
 Teacher
 Ms. J
 Personal Interests
 Puzzles
 Animals
 Unicorns
 Loves summer and outdoors
 Any other information gained about student’s life (appropriate)
 She has an interesting home life. She was telling me she lives with her whole
family. This include god brothers, grandparents, uncles, and parents. It sounds
like she has a lot going on within her household. She shared that she doesn’t
read much at home because of this and her family being busy.

Assessments:

 List assessments given (Reading/Writing Inventory, Running Record):

 Worksheet/Writings
 Observations Notes
 Activities
 Literacy Interview for Young Children
 Running Record
 Rasinski Fluency
 Describe the purpose of each assessment:
 The purpose of the worksheets that I used over my lessons was to make sure
that the students are meeting the objectives that I have for them. For example, if
my objective for students is for students to be able to understand how to
summarize a reading then a worksheet would help me to see if they were able to
meet that objective and know how to do that.
 The purpose of observation notes is for the teacher to note how the student is
responding and meeting the objective to the readings, writing, and activities that
 are within the lesson. This also helps the teacher to see if a student is meeting
the objectives.
 The purpose of activities as an assessment is for students to see what students
are understanding within a lesson. This is more of a formative assessment that
allows teachers to see what the student is learning from the lesson. For example
I did an activity of word bingo that allowed me to see what words my students
were learning.
 The purpose of the literacy interview for young children was to help me better
understand her interests and how she feels as a reader. This assessment allowed
me to see her feelings on reading, whether she thought she was a good reader,
what she finds difficult in reading, and what types of books she interested in.
 There are many purposes for giving the Running Records assessment. The main
reason of giving a Running Records assessment is to see the errors that students
are making and to find out what level of reading they are at. When giving this
test you are listening to the students and marking down whether the student is
reading a word accurately, making a substitution, repeating a word, self-
correcting themselves, omitting certain words from the text, inserting words to
the reading, sounding out words, or if they don’t know certain words. When we
listen for these different things while they read it allows us to see the errors that
the students are making. These errors can be meaning, visual, or structural
errors. This allows teachers to inform their instruction in a way that will help the
students fix their mistakes. The other purpose I noted about was that the
Running Records assessment helps us know what level students are at. When
students are reading, they can be at a range of levels within a classroom. This
means that when we are have them do self-selected reading they need to have
books that are at their instructional level. After you give a running records
assessment you determine the accuracy rate, error rate, and self-correction rate.
The accuracy rate is important because if it is too low then we know that it is at a
frustration level for the students, this is anything below 90%. If the accuracy rate
is too high then we know it isn’t hard enough for our students and they aren’t
challenging themselves to learn more, this is anything above a 95%. This leaves
us with that middle area which is called the instructional area. This is the level
that we want to test students at because this is the level that they are able to
learn at, this is anything between 90%-95%. This is the purposes of Running
Records assessments they are important to inform our teaching and to challenge
our students to read at their correct level.
 Lastly, we tested the students’ fluency level. Fluency is tested based off of the
abilities to read most words quickly, accurately, automatically, and with
appropriate expression. When I tested Rubii’s fluency level I was listening
specifically for her expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace. The
purpose of giving this test is to see how fluent the student is because fluency is a
key part of becoming a literate person. Fluency is a critical part of reading
comprehension because the more fluent a student is the more they are able to
focus on the meaning of the story. The assessment allows teachers to see how
 fluent the student is and the areas that they might have to work on with
students.
 Give general synopsis of assessment results:
 Within the worksheets, I found that Rubii complete her assignments. She doesn’t
always show the most evidence of completing the assignments, but she mostly
completes them. For example, in her visualizing and questioning worksheet she
showed that she could both visualize and question from a reading.
 Within observation notes I wrote things about how Rubii needs to work on her
fluency. I also wrote about how Rubii can comprehend to an extent, but that she
does not give many details.
 The activities showed me that Rubii could learn the words that I had on our word
wall. I was also able to see that she could participate and create words within
our word sliders. This helps me to see that Rubii is still a good reader, but that
she might just need some guidance in different areas.
 For the literacy interview for a young child the results that I found were good. I
found out that she enjoys reading. I also found out that she sometimes thinks
that she is a good reader. She shared that she finds big words difficult when she
is reading. Lastly, she shared that she shared that she liked books about Elephant
and Pig and Fancy Nancy.
 Next for the Running Records assessment the results I recorded showed me that
Rubii reads at an instructional level at level G. I also found that many of the
errors that she made were visual errors where she very rarely self-corrected
herself. Many times, when she was reading she would get stuck on the word and
she would have to be told the word for her to be able to move on.
 Lastly, in the with the Rasinski Fluency test it showed that Rubii is not a very
fluent reader. She received the lowest possible score in expression and volume,
phrasing, smoothness, and pacing.
 Present running record results in table form.
Strengths & Needs:
  List strengths and needs for student based on observations, interactions and results of
assessments

Strengths: Needs:
-Reading instructional level for 1st grade. -Reading expression, phrasing,
She is at a G, which is quite high smoothness, and pacing.
compared to other students at this
school. -Become automatic at reading and
spelling high-frequency words.
-Engagement to reading.
-Reading to understand, comprehension.
-Visualizing
-Working with words.
-Questioning

Instruction:

 What did you do with the student to help address some of his/her needs? Include
activities done in lesson plans and at least one student artifact.
 Readers Theatre: To address Rubii’s needs of needing to become more fluent I
did a few readers theatres. This helped her learn how to practice reading with
good reading expression, phrasing, smoothness, and pacing.
 Word Wall: To address Rubii needing to become more automatic at reading and
spelling high-frequency words I made a word wall. This allows Rubii to practice
her automaticity of these high-frequency words.
 Word Bingo: To address Rubii needing to learn to read high-frequency words on
demand I had our group play word bingo with our words that were on our word
wall. This allowed her to practice her active retrieval of these high-frequency
words so that she could learn them better.
 Word Plate Slider: To address Rubii needing to learn how to read words more
automatically I created word plate sliders. These allowed students to focus on
the phonics within different words. For example, we focused on the short I
sound and the short o sound. This helped Rubii be able to sounds out or see
words more automatically.
 Self-Selected Reading Comprehension: To address Rubii’s need of
comprehending her reading better I had the students read a self-selected
reading and tell me what it was about. They also drew a picture about the story.
This allowed Rubii to really think about what she was reading about, this helped
her to comprehend the material.
  Rolling Dice Activity: To address Rubii’s need of needing to comprehend better
again I had her complete this activity on comprehending readings. This activity
had a series of questions that asked students to synthesize or summarize
different readings. This helped Rubii think through how to comprehend while
reading.

Recommendations:

Recommendations: Based on the information you have gathered about the student, make
specific instructional recommendations (5-7) for how a teacher and/or parents could work with
this student. REMEMBER: Your recommendations must come directly from the assessment
results and your observations and interactions with the student!!

 Children Engage in Various Types of Repeated Readings – This would help increase the
student fluency, which clearly needs work from my assessments.
o Echo Reading
o Choral Reading
 Taped Reading and Listening – This would also help to increase Rubii’s fluency. From the
Rasinski Fluency chart we can see that she needs improvement in the fluency area of
reading.
 Paired Repeated Reading – This would again allow for Rubii’s fluency to increase. This is
something I know she needs from her assessments.
 Story Maps – This would allow for Rubii to continue thinking about comprehension and
finding meaning form her reading. This is something I found that she could improve in
from my notes and activities.
 KWL – This would again allow for Rubii to continue thinking about the meaning of her
readings. This is something that I saw she could improve in from my assessments.
 Making Words – This would allow for Rubii to work with words which would improve
her fluency with being able to read words more automatically.
 Word Sorting and Hunting – This would again allow for Rubii to work with words which
would improve her automaticity which would make her more of a fluent reader.
 What Looks Right? – This activity would allow Rubii to work with words and increase her
automaticity so she can be more of a fluent reader.