Running head: CASE STUDY 1

Case Study Report

DJ Olenchick

EDUC 412

Mount Aloysius College

CASE STUDY 2

Case Study Report

Name ____________________________________________________________

Describe the student (grade, gender, strengths, challenges)

___/10
Assessments given, (attach actual record sheets),
Include a rationale for each (include dates/times)
____/30
Specific intervention targeted, based on assessments
____/30
Instructional plan for intervention ____/20
Narrative of each instructional session (include dates/times)
___/40
Progress results (include post-test record sheets)
___/10
Recommendation for further instruction ____/10
Parent letter requesting permission ____/10
Written parent report/narrative of conference ____/10
Narrative of insights gained from this experience
____/30

Final Score
_____/200
CASE STUDY 2

Case Study Report

Description of Student:

The student I was given the chance to work with for this case study was recommended by

the fourth grade ELA teacher. She has recently been noticing him struggling with

“Homophones”. He is a transfer student from The All Saints School and this is a different

experience for him. My Teacher has been noticing this tendency within her class for the duration

of the year, and felt this would be a very good opportunity for him to seek extra help. His name

is Logan and he is a fourth grade boy from Penn Cambria Intermediate school. I have been

familiar with Logan because he is in my homeroom and I spend time with him during Science

class by proctoring him throughout class and helping him if need be so we are very comfortable

around each other. This is a great opportunity for Logan and I both to build a stronger

relationship together and I really do want to see him succeed in the specific areas that need

strengthened. We had an awesome experience together and he has progressed tremendously from

the beginning. His background with Homophones was shaky but after some one on one

intervention he has become much stronger in this particular area.

Assessments Given with Rationale for Each:

I chose the Multi Meaning Words Assessment for this student because you can really

relate this assessment to Homophones. I felt this would give me a very good idea of where the

student is at before we begin the process of tutoring. I discussed types of assessments with my
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ELA teacher and she agreed with me that this would have been a very good area to focus in on

with Logan. I gave him a Pre/post assessment on Multi meaning words and homophones out of

20 points. I gave him the pre assessment on 11/4 and the post test was on 11/22. The main focus

was upon homophones while struggling with words that look different but sound the same. I put

together some very interesting activities to go along with my case study. I was very excited to

work with Logan due to the interest I have sparked within this topic and his want to learn. The

Multi meaning words assessment is very brief but very effective. The point of the assessment is

to look into words that have more than one meaning and know where they are used. While

looking into multi meaning, we incorporated homophones in there because these two topics can

go hand and hand with each other. We had four sessions with specific activities applied that

would be effective for the student to show growth.

Specific Intervention Targeted, Based on Assessments:

Based upon my results through the assessments, the student did not perform badly. He

did understand the meaning of the words that are on the flash cards that go along with the

assessment. I added five homophones along to the original assessment and wanted to see if he

knew and could decipher the meaning of these words. The assessment uses sentences to give the

student an opportunity to dissect the definition as well. My Pre assessment was out of 20 points

and he scored a 14/20. There were a few words he had struggled with such as “bat, play, and

rose”. He could only explain one definition to each word and this is where his struggles were

mainly based on. He also got 3/5 homophones incorrect and they were “stair/stare, peak/peek,

and flee/flea. When he was answering these words he was providing me with the same definition

twice so I knew what my ELA teacher was talking about at this point. This was a very good eye

opener for what I had to provide for him throughout the activities.
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Instructional Plan for Intervention:

The instruction plan that I had in place for this intervention was very specific. I started

off with a brief description of what a homophone is a how they work while working together

with him. I feel Logan does very well when he has one on one instruction. The intervention goes

from a rather basic level to a difficult level. This was to test Logan to his full capabilities because

he is a very motivated individual. Based upon the pre assessment, he had a brief idea of what

multi meaning words and homophones were, so we were to make each session more difficult

based upon his progress.

Narrative of Each Instructional Session:

November 6– For the first session I wanted it to be a very basic and understandable activity. I

began with a homophones word search. The word search has a pair of homophones that are

together that need to be found. I first started by defining a homophone for Logan so he could

understand the definition or it could be prior knowledge. We began talking about the definition

and examples of homophones such as “bare/bear, cell/sell, and hair/hare. All three examples

were examples that were used in the session. The way I had this activity set up was we would

talk about the words that were paired together and their definition. Once he would give me the

correct meaning or we would discuss it, we would find the word in the word search. I felt this

was a very proper activity to start because it is rather basic but he is still bringing knowledge

away from it. There were 63 sets of homophones in the word find; however, I narrowed the

words down and chose an order and we worked until he was off task. We got through 14 sets of

homophones before he began to lose interest and get off task. He was very intrigued by the

activity and surprisingly he did rather well to begin the case study. We worked on the activity

together and I had prompted him when it was needed. As we worked through the search and
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were defining the words, I felt that I needed to make the next activity more difficult due to his

success. He became more familiar with the idea of the activity as we went.

November 13 – The next session we focused on homophones again and I started the activity

with a review by asking Logan “Do you remember what a homophone is? Tell me about them.”

His eyes immediately lit up because he wanted to explain to me what he had learned with me the

session before. When he was telling me what it meant the joy in his voice was very interesting

because he explained to me what a homophone is very proudly. We got too work in the learning

support room during my sessions with him because no one was in their so it was just him and I.

This was perfect because I had access to the white board as we worked on the next activity. The

activity that I had focused upon for the session was selecting the correct word for the sentence it

is used in so I would write the sentence on the board with two choices and I would ask him to

define both words before we started the sentence. After we figured out the words definition, I

would read the sentence aloud to him and let him select his answer. He had the worksheet in

front of him as we worked and I had him circle the correct answer as well as write the word on

the board. He scored a perfect on the activity because of the way that I had broken down the

material for him. Having him define the word before we even looked into the sentence was the

best way to go about this lesson because it gave him a very good idea of what word fit best in

that particular sentence. I also felt giving him an enlarged visual on the board benefited the

activity and his success.

November 18 – As we moved to the next session, I wanted to incorporate something that he

could benefit outside of these tutoring hours. I constructed Self-correcting Pick, Flip, Check

cards. I created 10 cards for the activity and 3 clothes pins. There were 3 sentences on each card

and 3 homophones on the sides of the cards. He would have to select the correct homophone for
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the correct sentence. I first introduced him to what we would be working with and he insisted

that we would write the sentence on the board like the prior activity. I felt letting him write on

the board kept him more engaged and into the lesson. This was a rather shorter lesson because

the cards were all made up with proper examples for homophones. We started working with one

card at a time and we defined the words and then read the sentence and he would select the

proper word. For example, the first card that we had used was with “rows/rose” and I purposely

used this because they would be on the pre/post assessment. The sentence that we worked with

first was “We put the seats into ____?”. Before we jumped into the sentence I had him give me a

definition of the words rose and rows. “A rose is a type of red flower, I think that one has

prickle’s on the stem! Ms. Dillon just taught us that last week in Science”. He caught me off

guard for the word “rows” because he said “Oh that’s easy, that’s when people try to go faster in

a boat”. This had me puzzled, because I was not expecting him to use the word in that form. I

then explained to him that yes you can use row that way but in this situation it means “To put

something in line”. Then he replied with “would it be like the seats in the gym?” and I told him

“yes, it is”. After we had defined the words, he picked the correct homophone for each sentence.

I gave him the cards and the clothes pins to take home with him to practice at night because this

is something he can do on his own. I had him put the cards and clothes pins in his locker so he

did not lose them. At this point, I feel the problem in his recent struggles is not knowing what

the word means. When he has a good understanding of the words he really does not have any

problems because he is doing very well throughout the activities.

November 20 – As we moved into the 4th session, I knew Logan was getting stronger in this area

because he is engaged throughout the activities and he is understanding the concept of

homophones. We are completing the activities together; however, I am only prompting him if
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need be and he is doing a great job at this point. The final activity I put in place was a story

passage with misplaced homophones. This was a rather tough activity and didn’t expect a perfect

from him but we were going to work through it together. I would let him read and see if he could

dissect the problem himself if not I would stop him to see if he could find the problem on his

own. There were 23 misplaced homophones in the story. I let him read the story to him and circle

the incorrect homophones. Throughout this activity, he was a little bit hyper and did not want to

complete it like the other activities. I feel he was not engaged as well in this activity because it

was not hands on like the others but we got through it and he completed as I expected. He had

missed “Where, soar, their, saunter and meat”. He needed to be stopped to find 5 homophones

which was still good. This was a difficult activity, but I wanted to see how he would react with

an activity like this. This is more of a challenging activity and it performed exactly how I

planned. He read over 5 homophones out of 23, I felt this was very good for where we started in

the beginning of the study. This activity was more concrete and did not have as much explaining.

This is why I feel he wasn’t as intrigued throughout the duration. This was still a huge jump for

him from where we began. You could see the improvement throughout our sessions and I was

rather pleased with his behavior as well. This was significant because most of these words were

those that we had not gone over before in our sessions.

Progress results:

The student surprised me throughout the course of tutoring because they made

tremendous jumps even with the little time that we had together. He scored a 20/20 on the test.

He improved throughout the time together, and I feel his whole problem was rushing and not

understanding the material nor the concept. With the one on one interaction, it helped him focus

on the activities. He improved from a 14 to a 20 out of 20. Throughout the duration of these
CASE STUDY 2

sessions he showed improvement, but I don’t think his scores would’ve been as good as they

were without his motivation. He wanted to learn and complete the activities every day except the

last day. They were fun activities that got the point across and gave him a better foundation in

this particular area. He is in my homeroom and I keep an eye on him daily in case he may need

any prompting or help throughout class.

Recommendation for further instruction:

The Pre/Post test showed that he improved to a perfect score which is great. This was my

goal going into this assignment because it is the greatest feeling in the world to see a student

learn something. Watching someone soak in material is a great feeling and I want to do it in any

circumstance. I feel that he still can continue to work on homophones though because there were

many that we did not cover due to the lack of time. I gave him the practice cards to continue to

study and these can be made by the ELA teacher for more practice. I feel that he struggles with

dissecting the word. Once he knows what the word is, he can put it together rather easily and we

worked on defining words that he was not familiar with. We were not able to go in-depth with

this area so I was not expecting a drastic change and the assessment wasn’t extremely difficult.

This would also benefit Logan with comprehension and fluency with reading as he continues his

progress with multi meaning words and homophones.

Narrative of Insights Gained from This Experience:

This was an awesome experience for me to see how much a student can grow through

one on one instruction outside of the classroom. I was amazed with how Logan grew through the

process of tutoring and I am so happy that he is stronger in this area now so it can benefit him

down the road. I was surprised with how he grasped the material in only six sessions but I truly

do feel that when he gets that one on one attention he does so well. This was a great experience
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for me as well because it made me think how to break down this process to make it beneficial for

his learning experience. Helping students learn is something that makes me feel so good inside, I

love being a part of a process like this because it is a great thing. I always helped children with

sports and that’s how I got tied into the teaching field. It was very interesting to see how this

process unraveled and now I understand how a process like this is taken care of. This has also

benefited Logan and I’s relationship within the classroom setting. I am happy that I got to

experience something like this and I am glad that I made an impact. This gave me a good

overview of his background now so I can prepare myself for when I am student teaching next

semester. This was a very beneficial experience in my own opinion.