Case Study of Al Rivera 1

Initial Report of Student Assessment

Jaime M. Nassar

RLL 6802

Instructor: Dr. Matthew Blount

26 February 2014

Student Being Assessed: Al Rivera

Case Study of Al Rivera 2

Initial Report of Student Assessment: Al Rivera

Introduction

Al is an 18 year-old male student in the 12th grade at Western International High School

in Southwest Detroit. Al comes from a two parent home, where both parents have careers and

have instilled a large value on education. While in middle school Al was given an opportunity to

be double promoted from 8th to 10th grade, however, his parents decided that it would be best for

him to continue on into 9th grade. Although he was academically mature, he lacked the necessary

social skills to enter 10th grade. His parents thought that he would not mature socially enough to

make the huge jump from 8th grade to that of 10th grade. Al is the eldest of three children he has a

younger brother, Michael in the 5th grade and Rosa a sister in the 3rd grade at Harms Elementary

in Detroit. In addition to his two younger siblings, Al has a pet, a shih-tzu named Bella. Al was

born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico and comes from a bilingual home. Al is a talented Saxophone

player who has gone so far as to acquire his own instrument, which is very rare in Detroit Public

Schools. Al has been on the honors track at both high schools that he has attended, Western

International and Southwestern High School. Al previously attended Southwestern High School,

also in Southwest Detroit, until Detroit Public Schools decided that Southwestern High School

would close at the conclusion of the 2011-2012 school year. Subsequently, Al was transferred

with about half of the student population to Western International High School. The remaining

students that did not end up at Western International High School were transferred to

Northwestern High School. Al has also been placed in the advanced and accelerated program at
Case Study of Al Rivera 3

Western International High School due to his academic excellence. Al has shared that he intends

to pursue a career in medicine. At the present, he is unsure what specialty he will choose when

he enters medical school; he is between orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery. In addition to his

academic excellence, he has also been an accomplished athlete in Detroit Public Schools, where

he has lettered in Football, Golf, Swimming, and Track and Field.

Reason for Selection

I decided to select Al because he and I have had a good rapport and I have been able to

learn a lot about him over the last two school years that he has been my student. I also decided to

select him as the student that I would use for my case study because he is such a high achieving

student academically that I wanted to push the envelope as to what his actual reading ability is.

Furthermore, I chose to do this to help him understand where his reading level is at because of

his chosen career path will require him to do a lot of technical reading.

Student Interest Survey Results

As Al indicated in his interest survey (Appendix A) his hobbies and extra-curricular

activities include sports such as Football, Golf, Swimming, and Track and Field. Additionally he

has a strong interest in music; he continually is trying to learn new pieces of music for his own

personal pleasure, in addition to any music he is learning in his band class. He enjoys spending

his time with his friends, Al is the type of student who does not have many friends, however, the

few he has are very close and special to him. He does not have a favorite television show, as he

does not watch a lot of TV, not because he does not have access to one, but because it does not

interest him. He does not, however, fill that time that he would spend watching TV on reading.
Case Study of Al Rivera 4

Al has expressed that he does not read for enjoyment, he will read small articles or short stories

on a topic that might interest him; however, he does not like to spend days at a time trying to

comprehend and follow the development of multiple characters like that in a novel or play. His

lack of desire to read is not due to the fact that he struggles, like many, it is due to the fact that it

does not interest him.

Assessment Results

Vocabulary Pre-Test

After giving Al the student interest survey, I proceeded to give him the vocabulary pre-

test (Appendix B), in this pre-test Al was able to define approximately half of the words,

however he was able to verbally explain about half of the ones he had not been able to answer on

paper. In some instances Al was able to make a connection with the vocabulary word, and

although his answer was incorrect, it was in the right realm.

Content Informal Reading Inventory

As I conducted the Content Informal Reading Inventory assessment (Appendix C), Al

was able to read the 100 word passage with only four mistakes, meaning that he was able to read

at a 96% success rate, placing him into the independent reading level for word recognition. He

was also able to answer three of the four questions (75%) that were asked in relation tothe

section that he read which would place Al at the Frustration Level of Comprehension. Although

Al would be categorized at the Frustration Level of Comprehension, I believe that he would have

done better had he been able to use the reading passage as a reference while answering the

corresponding comprehension questions. Therefore, I believe that he is truly at a Borderline

Independent Reading Level.

Case Study of Al Rivera 5

Metacomprehension Skills Inventory

While conducting the Metacomprehension Skills Inventory assessment (Appendix D) I

came to see that although Al had struggled in other evaluations that required memorization, he

does use very good techniques when it comes to comprehending the information that he has in

front of him. Although he scored in the “high” category for all of the strategies, he scored the

highest in the Problem-Solving Strategies subscale, at 4.75. The strategy that he utilizes the least

is the Support Reading Strategy subscale, where he scored 3.7, although it is his lowest subscale,

it is still considered to be in the “high” category. In the Global Reading Strategies subscale he

scored a 4.5, which again, placed him into the high classification. His overall mean placed him at

4.3, which placed him at an overall high classification. This demonstrates to me that Al knows

how to get the most out of his reading and knows what strategies he has at his disposal and also

knows how to use them.

Content Cloze

Upon administering the Content Cloze assessment (Appendix E) I came to the conclusion

that Al struggled with the fluidity of the text that he was reading, which was intentionally at a

high level. Both times that he took the Content Cloze assessment he scored in the Frustration

level, which is defined by any score lower than 44%. On his first Content Cloze assessment

(Appendix E) he scored 30%, however, he was close in many cases to getting the correct word.

For example, he wrote the word “the” instead of “these”, making me think that although he did

not recall the exact word he did comprehend what was being communicated to him in the

passage. When he took the second Content Cloze (Appendix E) he scored 14%. In this instance

he generally struggled with understanding what the passage was trying to convey to him.

However, the second Content Cloze was taken at the end of the day, while the first Content
Case Study of Al Rivera 6

Cloze was taken first thing in the morning. Therefore, I believe that there was also some fatigue

involved with Al’s ability to comprehend everything during the second Content Cloze

assessment.

Calculating Readability with Fry’s Formula

After conducting the five studies: Interest Inventory, Vocabulary Pre-Test, Content

Informal Reading Inventory, Metacomprehension Skills Inventory, and Content Close; I took the

passage that was to be read and analyzed it using Fry’s Formula (Appendix F). Upon doing the

calculations, the passages that I had provided for Al to comprehend and assess had an average of

164.3 syllables and 3.6 sentences per 100 words. According to Fry’s Formula, that would place it

at the 13th grade level (+ or – 1).

Interpretations

Based on my interpretation of the results of the assessments that I performed on Al, I

believe that in general he is successful at reading and knows what strategies to use to get the

most out of the material, so long as he has access to the material so that he can reference it and

review his notes. Due to this observation, I believe that Al, in general, is a successful reader and

is able to generally comprehend the information that is placed in front him at or slightly above

his current grade level.

Summary of Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths Weaknesses
Good General Vocabulary Limited Musical Vocabulary

Utilizes many strategies to comprehend Lack Memorization Skills for information

information
Case Study of Al Rivera 7

Can read above grade level Struggles predicting the next word of a
sentence
Lacks pleasure of reading

Recommendations

I believe that I will need to work with Al on ability to not only comprehend the information, but

also to remember it without the use of notes or the text, like what will be expected of him on

examinations in classes now, and in the future when he attends a university.

Case Study of Al Rivera 8

References

Hindemith, P. (1974). Preface. Elementary training for musicians (2nd ed., pp. vii-viii). Mainz:

B. Schott's Söhne ;.

Robertson, J. S. (n.d.). Creating an Informal Reading Inventory for Your Content Class.

University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from

http://people.uncw.edu/robertsonj/SEC300/Creating%20Informal%20Reading

%20Inventory.pdf

Unrau, N. (2008). Content area reading and writing: fostering literacies in middle and high

school cultures (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.