Literacy Case Study Project

Literacy Case Study Project

Timothy Alexander

Literacy Case Study - Part 1

Crain's Creek Middle School is located in Moore County, NC. In the 2018-2019 school year we served 422 students but we are increasing our numbers each year until we reach capacity. Our average class size was 20 in that academic year as well but as enrollment has increased, the student teacher ratio has shifted as well. 50.9% are economically disadvantaged. We have quite a few students from military families given our proximity to Ft. Bragg. Our school is rural. We don’t have the percentages for ethnicity of students or staff; we do have the numbers for ethnicity in PowerSchool though for students. It’s around 40% African American, 15% Hispanic, 40% Caucasian 3% Asian and 2% other. I only had the staff directory to go on and I don’t know everyone, the principal didn’t know either...it was around 70% Caucasian and 30% African American. Our school website is https://ccms.ncmcs.org/ (Links to an external site.)

 

My classroom consists of students in grades 6-8 who participate in the Extended Content Standards. I have 1 male Hispanic student, 1 African American female student, 2 African American male students, 2 Caucasian male students and 1 Caucasian female student. All but one speak English as their primary language and one understands English with her hearing device but uses functional sign language as her primary mode of communication. I have one teaching assistant and one student (who is virtual this year) has a nurse from an outside agency and a district translator working with her full time. I am the only self contained teacher at my school.

Literacy Case Study - Part 1

In my class there is a student I will refer to as Anakin, who I will be choosing to work with for the purposes of the class this semester. Anakin is a 12 year old 8th grader. This student is on an A reading level using the Learning A-Z leveling system. Cognitively, he is about 3 years old and has been diagnosed with severe ASD. He is currently attending 2 days a week and we had to focus a lot on mask wearing for the two days he has attended so far. Using a first-then system, he will typically do short independent tasks or spend about 10 minutes with a teacher working. He does not mind doing sight words and I was told he could clap out syllables (that was the method his previous behavioral facility used to help him slow down his speech) but I have not been able to do that with him yet. When it comes to sentence building he can copy 2-3 word sentences without prompting but when it comes to creating his own still needs staff prompting when using our "sentence generator" (3 cubes; 1 containing nouns, 1 verbs and 1 adjectives). I chose this student because he has the highest reading level out of the students in my class; my hope is that I will be able to utilize some of the teaching methods we learn with him.

Literacy Case Study -Part 2

I watched the 5th grade independent reading video for my post. In the video, I saw students reading a variety of different books, ranging not only in topic but reading level as well. While choosing their own books, there were two students in particular I noticed who chose books at very different levels at two points in the video. The first book the students are reading independently are novels but later in the video the two students are seen reading a book together with pictures they can match up; the second book is several grade levels below the first book but they enjoyed the social time together with it.

The kidwatching activity has motivated me to find more ways to allow students independent reading time during this difficult time in education. So far I have been using Raz-Kids and focusing on the level up section (books on their assigned reading level only) but I am going to start building in reading time form the reading room section (where the student can navigate the different levels and choose from any book available on Raz-Kids). Luckily Raz-Kids will keep track of which books they are reading and I can at least use the books they read outside of their reading level to help determine interests. I also just got signed up for Bookshare through my school. I have not had time to mess around with it yet but I am hoping it will also provide an opportunity for free choice in reading since I am not able to have my classroom library set up this year. 

After reading the invented spelling article, I noticed that I was already following best practice without thinking about it; now I can intentionally use that knowledge while working with students and see what I can change to help foster writing. When working with students on writing, I don't focus on spelling as long as it looks somewhat similar phonetically. On the more advanced end of my classroom I might get something similar to the "ros r rd" from a student with significant prompting. I would never correct that spelling with the students, especially with mine since the ability to express themselves with minimal coherency is so important. 

Literacy Case Study - Part 3

Running Record: I chose the only verbal student in my classroom. This student can mostly be understood but is still only using one or two word requests; often these requests are intelligible only by staff who are familiar with him. For the running record we used Raz-Kids since that is the program he is already familiar with. He read the book I See Tall Trees, which is level D; he works on this level because for the comprehension questions this is his instructional level. Running records are difficult with this student because of how fast he speaks and his pronunciation. He will be quick to answer questions and typically gets them right but struggles with being understood. His former speech pathologist was working on having him clap out syllables as he talked to slow down his speech but that was not effective. To do running records with this student, I will typically point to each word individually to have him read; I know this is not standard but otherwise he will rush through and I might only understand a couple words. 

Retelling/Comprehension: On the 5 question quiz from Raz-Kids, this student answered 4 out of 5 questions correctly; he missed one requiring inferencing. When asking him to retell the story, he responded with just "tree," when I prompted for more he added "woods." The second prompt, he responded "don't know." When I asked, "what is in the woods?" He replied, "trees"; two more prompts from me were successful in getting the responses "seeds" and "worker." 

Literacy Case Study - Part 3

Reflection: I don't really know what I learned about his literacy knowledge and development from the running record. We were doing these last year as well before switching to remote but since I can't really administer a standardized running record all I could show was progress in the context of my own data. There has been progress in getting him to slow down but still requiring me to control the pages and point to words for him (he is pointing with me so I can eventually fade my prompt but he will often skip ahead when pointing as well). He is in between emergent and beginner writer from the work I received form him last year. He understands letters form words and can sound out spellings very well compared to his ability to form a sentence (one example from last year was "refigarater" without being shown that word before). However, looking at the examples used in the emergent writer tier, he is unable to form a sentence without it being broken down for him. While the beginning writers might not form a grammatically correct sentence, there is more detail and an idea is expressed. We use a daily picture prompt and his worksheet has a blank for who, what and where. If its a fire truck he would write truck for who, drive for what and road for where. His sentence might then be fire truck drive at road, he is unable to add anything else to it and we are still unsuccessfully working on prepositions. His knowledge is beyond what I am able to elicit from him though; one part of the worksheet gives a word and he is asked how many consonants and vowels. He answers the consonants and vowels question correctly every time but when asked to show a consonant or vowel he will randomly point to a letter in the word.

Literacy Case Study - Part 5