Allen Govea CI 475 Cohort 4 Individual Child Project

Context: Meyers Elementary school is located in Champaign, Illinois. The school serves K-5th graders in and around the community. There is a wide variety of cultures represented in this school. The cultural make up of the school is 47.6% Black, 25.8% White, 17.6% Asian, 8.2% Hispanic, 0.5% Native American, and 0.3% Multi-culture. Mrs. Crayola, the classroom teacher, has been teaching for over 20 years. Mrs. Crayola is a Caucasian teacher and has been teaching at Meyers Elementary school for 8 years. She decided to become a teacher because of the love for students and she wanted to make a difference in childrens lives. She loves teaching reading because she loves the feeling she gets when her kids figure out what is going on in the story and when they make personal connections with the story: she loves the look on their faces. In Mrs. Crayolas class there are 23 students. There are 3 whites, 13 Blacks, 6 Hispanics, and 1 Asian. All of the students in this class qualify for free and reduced lunch except for three students. In this class, students are seated in 3 sections. One section has 9 students, the other section has 10 students and the last section has 4 students. There is a classroom library that has a wide range of books from different genres. The books are labeled into different categories such as fiction, nonfiction, animals, etc. Each day when students come into class, they are to sit in their seat and read silently to themselves. When students finish work early, they can take out a book and read to themselves. There is a lot of reading done in this classroom and it changes from time to time. At times, students can read with a partner, read to themselves, read aloud, listen to tape recordings of books, and other times reading with the teacher in a smaller group.

After discussing with Mrs. Crayola, I decided I was going to do this case study on Kenny (not the real name). Kenny is a Mexican student who is ESL. He arrived in Champaign last year halfway through the school year and was a student in Mrs. Crayolas second grade class. Mrs. Crayola and Kennys family decided that it would be in his best interest if he repeated 2nd grade so that is why he is in the same classroom again. I decided that I would work with Kenny because after talking with Mrs. Crayola I thought that this would benefit him in his struggle with comprehension in literacy. What I learned about my student: After interviewing Mrs. Crayola, I found out a lot of background information about Kenny. Since she knows Kenny for 2 quarters from last year, she was able to give me details about his reading, writing, listening, and speaking in literacy. His areas of growth in reading are quite shocking to me. In the Diagnostic Reading Assessment that Mrs. Crayola did on Kenny, he is at level 12. The Diagnostic Reading Assessment tests fluency and expanding vocabulary. The biggest issue that Kenny has is with comprehension. Kenny only remembers bits and pieces of stories he reads. If it wasnt for comprehension, he would be at level 18 in the DRA but because comprehension is a big problem for Kenny he is placed at a Level 12. Kenny struggles with writing. In Mrs. Crayolas opinion, she says that he cant transfer ideas. He starts writing but then he goes off task and writes about different things. He has really good ideas but he gets off track and when that happens, his writing shifts. Kenny listens well in the classroom but he his trouble at times. He knows what is right and what is wrong and yet he still acts based on the scenario that is happening. Kenny gets over excited about transitions and that is when the problems occur. Kennys speaking skills are great. He talks about his ideas and he can really elaborate and gets excited when its about a topic he is interested in. He likes talking in groups

and likes interacting with all students. He gets excited when there is an activity that he remembers from previous years in school and is eager to help out his classmates when he can. Mrs. Crayola has one major goal for Kenny. She wants him to be able to comprehend details from stories throughout the semester so that he is able to increase his DRA level. She knows that he can do it he just needs to get focused when reading and pay attention to what is actually happening. She wanted me to redirect him whenever he gets off task. She also asked me to observe how he interacts with his table. When I did the student interview (survey) on Kenny I learned a lot about him as a person. His favorite kinds of books to read are magazines and he prefers fiction books compared to nonfiction books. He said he liked horror fiction. His favorite show is Pair of Kings, which is surprisingly not a cartoon. For fun, he likes to play outside of his house with his friends pretending they are superheroes. He loves learning about bees in science time. He also told me that his favorite books hes ever read and listened to are Xmen and Spiderman books. He mentioned that his brother reads Harry Potter to him. An important aspect that I learned from Kenny through my two observations that I did were that he is definitely more focused in the mornings. The first observation that I did on Kenny was in the morning and he was a lot more focused and intrigued into the activity. Mrs. Crayola did not have to ask him to redirect himself. The second observation that I did was in the afternoon after recess/lunch time and it was completely different. He was off task, loud, and was lacking some motivation. Mrs. Crayola asked him to focus on the activity that was going on and asked Kenny to redirect himself. That was an interesting observation that I made, but other than that his use of language was consistent. He uses English when talking to other English speakers but when talking to other ESL students he switches languages (English and Spanish) back and forth which I thought was interesting and I could personally connect with that as a bilingual speaker myself.

Reading Conferences: I conducted two reading conferences with Kenny. Before conducting the reading conferences I told Kenny to bring me a book that he can read pretty well. With both conferences, I asked the same questions. One of the questions was Why did you chose this book? His responses were its funny and Because I like the pictures. I then asked him to start reading and at a certain point I would stop him and ask what the story was about so far. I asked him this question and both times he would stop for a second, look at the pictures and then he would tell me what was going on. Overall, I learned that my student is fluent. There is no doubt in my mind that he is fluent: he can read anything we give him. However, I noticed that he is big on looking at pictures in order to comprehend what is going on. He does remember the overall idea of the book but he doesnt remember details which is what my question was asking. I would stop him at times when it was at a point in the story that required for him to tell me about details. Running Record: I conducted a running record with the child on The Billy Goats Gruff. Overall, Kenny did a great job with this new story that was at level 16, compared to the level that he is in now at 12 (because of the comprehension). Kenny overall did not have many mistakes with this running record. His fluency was really shown in this test. Syntax was present when in the story it read, Who goes trip-trap, trip-trap over my bridge? Instead of saying who Kenny said He which allowed for Syntax (structure) because even though that was not the right word, he might have read another book that could have had that word and it still makes sense. That sentence with He still makes sense even though for purposes of the running record it is an error. A smaller miscue that occurred was when he said Goat instead of Goats which falls

under meaning because it still is the same thing besides it being singular vs. plural. There were no gestures when he did make those errors except when he had self corrected himself on one of the words. He did not sound out any of the words and he did not have to ask for any help. The accuracy rate was a 98.3% which makes this book an Independent Reading Level for Kenny. The error rate was 1:60. The self-correction rate was 1:6. After the running record, I asked Kenny a few questions of comprehension. I asked who the story was about and he said that it was about 3 goats trying to cross a bridge. He mentions the troll trying to eat them. I asked them why the goats were trying to go over the bridge and he did not understand that they were trying to find food. That is a detail in the very beginning of the story that he overlooked which ties into the whole not being able to describe details of the story.
Data Analysis, Reflection, and Recommendations:

There are definitely some focuses of instruction and teaching strategies that would help Kenny move forward with his comprehension. His speaking skills are great for a 2nd grader who is an ESL student. After looking at all the data I collected, I tried to find a connection between different sets of data to see how we (Mrs. Crayola and I) can move forward with helping his reading comprehension. Like mentioned earlier in this project, Kenny can read. Kenny can definitely read and that is not the problem. His problem is comprehension. By looking at his interview (survey), the way he interacted in the classroom during my observations, and based on just what I have noticed about him through informal observations is that he needs something that will catch his attention. I see a connection in between the reading conferences I made and with the comprehension questions that I asked Kenny at the end of the Running Record. His main issue is remembering specific detail in the books. He can remember an overall explanation of the book but does not remember details. This leads me to believe that the language might be the

barrier. One factor that led me to believe that the language barrier might be a factor in his comprehension was when I did my observation. In my observations, I note that he speaks to other ESL students in Spanish. This might not seem like a big deal to some, but for me it is a big deal. This means that his comfort levels could be different with different people. By him speaking in Spanish to other ESL students might mean something in the long run of the level as to where his English is at. Kenny remembers the overall gist of stories and what theyre about but maybe his focus on the language prohibits him from focusing on specific details, is what I am concluding. This is something that I took into consideration when I made my recommendations and talked about them with Mrs. Crayola. I have learned so much from Kenny by doing this Individual Project on him. Hes just a kid trying to have fun when hes out of school and he truly does try his best in school even when there might be some distractions. I really connected with him and I am glad that I got the opportunity to do this project. As a reader, its amazing to see him be fluent and know almost all the words to different stories. If one were to hear him read, one would think that there arent any issues with any sorts of comprehension but its important that we note that knowing our students is essential for their success in the future. My goals that I have set for Kenny are that I want him to read some books in Spanish. Kenny is an ESL student so by him having to learn English might be a factor that is playing into his lack of comprehension. From personal experience, I remember learning both languages when I was a young child and the trouble I had because it was hard. Trying to learn 2 languages at the same time and going though that at a young age is crazy. Speaking to my parents in Spanish and speaking to my siblings and people at school in English is a tough job for someone that young. Transitioning is hard and that might be one of the factors that is affecting Kennys comprehension. I want him to read books in Spanish and have the ESL

worker work closely with him to find out if his comprehension by reading books in Spanish increases. We can even start off by having books that he might have a lot of interest in such as Spiderman or X-men and have him read those in Spanish to see if he can tell us specific details of what happened in the books. Then, we can start having other books that might spark a small interest for him in Spanish and see if the comprehension is still there or not. From there we can discuss further actions on what to take because maybe the issue is a deeper one that we cannot conclude at the moment. When I met with Mrs. Crayola and talked to her about my recommendations she was thrilled. She thought that my recommendations were in line with what she was thinking about also. She definitely thought that the language might be the barrier but that it can also be a deeper issue. The only parts from my recommendations that were adjusted were the types of Spanish books to start this transition with Kenny. Mrs. Crayola believed that having books that only sparked a small interest in Kenny would be a better idea to show him first because this way we can get a faster answer. By having the X-men and Spiderman book sets come after, it would allow for a better judgment on how Kenny would perform when asked about reading comprehension. I was glad to see that Mrs. Crayola and I were both thinking a long the same lines because I feel that I have actually impacted his future because of his route that they will be taking now. By doing this project, I have learned a great amount of things that will benefit me in my near future as an educator. I have learned the importance of assessing ones students in order to figure out issues that need to be addressed at a young age. Its important that we know where our students are coming from and what their interests are because that can spark different results. If I were to undergo this experience again, I feel that it would be completely different. All kids learn and interact with people in different ways so there is no way of telling how my experience

will be with another student. That is the important thing that I am taking away from this. Its important to realize how different students learn and how different they are but still remember that one must adapt and differentiate instruction in order to meet all student needs. I feel that if I were to do this project again, collecting date would seem simpler but one cannot generalize the process either. Its important to note that assessing students through multiple measures of assessment during literacy instruction is important because that way one can make connections between the different assessments and make a more valid conclusion based on evidence and data that one collects.