Kathryn Stirk

CI 475 – C4

Lavern Byfield

October 29, 2010

Individual Child Assignment

Sean is an average first grade boy interested in bugs, snakes, and spiders on top of

learning how to read. However, he is a seven year old whose reading level is below-grade-level

and only recognized nine out of 40 sight words at the preprimer, or kindergarten, level when

tested at the beginning of the school year. Therefore, as a student below-grade-level in reading,

Sean is a prime candidate to help prospective teachers understand the complex factors that make

up a student’s literacy narrative. Furthermore, it is important for prospective teachers to practice

how to use assessment in determining the next instructional steps to help improve a student’s

reading and writing. After observing the general classroom literacy environment and learning

about Sean’s personal likes, dislikes, and reading habits over an extended period of time, reading

goals have been set for this student. Also, lesson plans have been developed in an attempt to

reach these goals and in turn improve the student’s reading and writing.

Classroom Literacy Environment

In general, literacy in the classroom revolves around the Daily 5 program. This program

includes five centers for the students to rotate through during the week, including Read to Self,

Work on Writing, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, and Word Work. Although there is no

classroom library, the children are exposed to literature through other means. Throughout the

day, both in and out of the centers, the students read an assortment of literature, varying from

picture books to poetry to narratives to informational texts. For example, on Tuesdays, the
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teacher typically gives the students poetry to place in a designated poetry journal. Once that

day’s poems are pasted into the journal, the teacher first reads them to the students and then

encourages the students to read aloud with her. On occasion, there will be a poem with blanks for

students to fill in with the appropriate sight word. Not only does this help them practice their

writing, but it also helps them recognize their sight words and in context. Besides their poetry

journal, the students also have book boxes with books at their reading level. They use these book

boxes for both independent reading as well as reading to a partner. On top of the significant

exposure to literature in the classroom through the Daily 5, the students also visit the building

library once a week. From the school library, they are able to check out two books that they can

keep in their desk for the Read to Self center. In general, the students are not allowed to take

these books home with them; unfortunately, there are some children who would not return their

books to the library if they were taken home. However, it is still beneficial for the students to

check out books from the library. It provides them with a chance to read books tied to their

personal interests rather than what the teacher simply assigns.

The Daily 5 program clearly provides multiple opportunities for the students to practice

silent, independent reading. Reading is typically also done orally for the children by the teacher.

After whole group reading, the teacher usually has story pages with blanks for the students to fill

out that directly connect to the book read. For example, when the teacher read Where the Wild

Things Are, the students then drew their own “wild thing” and finished sentences describing

what their “wild thing” likes to do. The teacher then publishes these pages as class books,

making them available as another literature source to read during Read to Self. According to

Tompkins (2010), “Reading and writing should be connected because reading has a powerful

impact on writing and vice versa” (p. 390). Creating class books based on books read during
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whole group instruction is an exemplar way to integrate reading and writing together. Overall,

this classroom literacy environment strongly supports student development in both reading and

writing, as it should.

Student Interview

Not only is a student interview important to this study to help tailor instruction towards

Sean’s personal interests and motivations, but student interviews in general are beneficial to

conduct at the beginning of a school year. Student interviews provide information regarding

student personal likes and dislikes as well as their reading behaviors and habits. As previously

stated, this information can be effectively used to tailor instruction towards individual student

interests and needs. When interviewed, Sean listed numerous topics of interest, including bugs,

spiders, snakes, the ocean, and more. He explained that he likes reading new books to see if it is

a good book or not. Thus, according to Sean, there are not any books or specific topics that he

disliked. Regarding his likes, Sean was eager to share information about spiders, specifically

black widows. When asked how he knew this information, he said his Nana reads to him at

home. Therefore, even if Sean is below-grade-level in reading, he fortunately possesses a strong

interest in reading and learning as well as a support system at home. He simply struggles with

particular reading and writing concepts.

As part of the student interview, Sean completed an elementary reading attitude survey.

Majority of Sean’s answers were consistent with his interest in reading. He enjoys reading for

fun at home. He sometimes enjoys reading instead of playing. He even circled the ‘slightly

smiling Garfield’ addressing how he feels about reading different kinds of books. When asked

questions about academic reading, he clearly did not mind when the teacher asks questions about

a book read during whole group instruction, yet he does not enjoy reading workbook pages and
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worksheets. This helps explain why he struggles to accomplish his work on many occasions.

Overall, Sean’s interest in reading about particular topics, such as spiders and superheroes, needs

to be utilized as motivation to improve his reading and writing skills.

Collection & Analysis of Reading Data

At the beginning of the school year, Sean was assessed on both reading and writing skills.

Each assessment identified different strengths and areas of growth in terms of reading, writing,

listening, and speaking. Following is a summary of the primary assessment results used to

determine student reading and writing goals and can each be found in the attached appendix as

evidence. The first assessment completed assessed Sean’s letter recognition and knowledge of

the sound of a letter represented in isolation. Identifying letters and their corresponding sounds is

a foundation for learning whole words. “Children use this knowledge to decode unfamiliar words

as they read and to create spellings for words as they write” (Tompkins, 2010, p. 116). Sean was

able to successfully identify48 out of 54 letters. Overall, this is a positive score. The unidentified

letters can surely be taught in a more meaningful way, such as through a wider variety of

environmental print for Sean to observe on a regular basis. Another important assessment is the

Dolch sight words reading assessment. Sean was shown a list of the sight words learned in

kindergarten and tested on recognition. He simply knew nine out of 40. As a result, this has been

identified as a significant area of growth for Sean. It will be necessary to engage him in a variety

of literacy experiences to help improve his recognition of high-frequency words.

Although recognizing both letters and words is the foundation to reading and writing, it is

also important for students to have an understanding of three primary concepts about print,

including book-orientation concepts, directionality concepts, and letter and word concepts. These

can each be assessed with the Concepts About Print (CAP) test. Sean has a clear understanding
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of book-orientation and directionality concepts; however, he struggles with some letter and word

concepts. While he can point to any letter on a page as well as point to any word on a page, he

cannot point to a period, comma, or quotation marks and experiences difficulty in recognizing a

change in letter or word order. Even though Sean struggles with an occasional sound of a letter

and the recognition of sight words, he still orally reads quite well as evident through the Teacher

Observation Guide assessing his oral reading of The “I Like” Game. He typically determines

unfamiliar words by using pictures as a visual clue. While this is a positive skill, it is important

for Sean to develop the ability to recognize words simply by context clues or decoding them

individually. As a result, this is one of the primary goals developed for Sean by the teacher.

Lessons should present an objective of teaching Sean to use context clues rather than picture

clues to discover a word in a story.

These assessments especially highlight Sean’s reading and speaking abilities, yet there

are other assessment tools identifying students’ writing and listening skills. On September 14, an

assessment was given to Sean asking him to write as many vocabulary words that he can think

of. This assessment was completed in the hallway so that there was a minimum amount of

surrounding words for students to simply copy. It was also explained in the instructions that the

few words located in the hallway should not be copied and that this is simply to see what they

know, not a test. Sean was merely able to fill five out of the 30 blanks with vocabulary, four of

which were copied either off the walls or off the top of the sheet. Therefore, although Sean does

recognize most letters and some words, especially when in the context of a story, he cannot

reproduce vocabulary words on his own at all. This can either be attested to a listening and focus

problem or simply an inability to reproduce the written language from memory. As a result,

another primary goal developed for Sean is to help improve his transfer of vocabulary in a story
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to writing. Lesson plans produced should include objectives aimed to help Sean with this

transfer.

Summary

At the beginning of this study, Sean was simply an average first grader struggling with

specific reading and writing concepts. His inability to focus and listen to instructions was a

strong initial thought regarding Sean’s behavior and performance in class. However, the student

data has helped in considering other possibilities for why he does not complete assignments

accurately and efficiently. It is possible that Sean struggles with transferring seeing vocabulary

words presented in literature to writing these vocabulary words from memory. Also, it is

sometimes difficult for Sean to simply “stretch out” those words as a result of necessary

improvement regarding letter and sound recognition. These possibilities are supported by the

assessment results presented as evidence in the appendix. Therefore, my understanding of this

child has changed significantly. Not only are there other possible explanations as to why he does

not complete his work, but it is clear that Sean has a strong interest in reading. Hence, in my

professional opinion, it will be important to utilize this student’s personal likes and interest in

reading to motivate and support his learning.

Appendix