Group+6-5772

= = Choose one case study to evaluate from these two examples: Home/school connections are important at all times but especially critical during the early years of schools. In both of these cases, the parents have already been active in the development of literacy. Now both sets of parents want more. What can you do to help them on the road to literacy.
 * =__ CASE STUDY #1 __=

** CASE STUDY #1: Susie **
Susie is a happy middle-class first grade student. Since birth, her parents talked with her as if she were an adult and spent much time reading with her. Suzie developed a love of reading early and her parents continued supporting her love by purchasing books and giving them as gifts. She loves her personal library of well over 100 books. When Susie entered first grade she had highly developed skills, listened well and understood a great deal. She was confident and secure and anxious to learn. However, after just one week of school Suzie finishes early and does nothing after completion of school tasks. She states that she is bored.

What are the strengths?

What are the needs?

What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the parents to do at home? Why?

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?

== Additional thoughts: ==

** CASE STUDY #1: Sam **
Sam is a first grader who will turn six this November. He comes from a middle-class English-speaking family, with two parents who read to him on a regular basis. His parents are very interested in the progress and activities he does in class.

He actively participates in class discussions, even though there are times when he will make an error in syntax with word forms, like talk-ed, for talked.

At independent time, he regularly chooses picture books and studies the pictures. He does not spend any time looking at the words. If he chooses a book with more words, the topics will be sharks or dinosaurs. He does know the basic letters but confuses b and d, I and j, x and z, p and ,i and l. He knows basically his concepts about print. He can figure out his initial and ending consonants but is slow and choppy. His writing can only be deciphered if Sam reads the text to the teacher.

What are the strengths?

What are the needs?

What strategies/things could be recommended to parents and what is your rationale?

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?

Additional thoughts:
|| = = Choose from one of these case studies to elaborate on the topic of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the foundation for phonics and must be acquired and used with ease before you start the reading and phonics processes. ||
 * =__Case Study #2 Phonemic Awareness__=



**__ CASE STUDY #2: __**
Mitch, a first grade student, was retained in kindergarten is now eight years old. After assessing him on concepts about print, word tests, phonemic awareness and phonics tests, and spelling inventories, he showed lack of process in most areas. In concepts about print, he stumbled on specific instructions on word and letter order and the name and use of punctuation He had difficulty in hearing words in speech, hearing syllables, beginning and final sounds and sound matching for phonemic awareness. He could correctly identify upper and lower case letters and sounds but could not note the digraphs, blends, short and long vowel patters and "vce" and vowel teams. In spelling he usually spelled the first and last consonant correctly and the short a and I but the other short vowels or other vowel patterns were guesses. His sight word vocabulary was low.


 * What are the strengths?**


 * What are the needs?**


 * What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the parents to do at home? Why?**

**What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?**

** CASE STUDY #2 **
Angel, a kindergartner, is behind most of her classmates in reading readiness. When she came to the school, she had no awareness of letters, letter sounds and names. She has learned to sing the ABC song but cannot place the letters in order without the song. She knows some concepts about print: the left-right order and the return sweep and the front/back/author of book. She can show the first part of the story, the first part of a word but cannot show the beginning of a sentence. She does not know her punctuation marks. She does not know the 1 to 1 correspondence of words and cannot follow along with the teacher reading the story. All in all she tries to learn and participates eagerly in class. She like the rote method and loves to do things kinesthetically.

What are the strengths?

What are the needs?

What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the parents to do at home? Why?

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom? = =

Additional thoughts:

 * =__Case Study #3 Phonics__=

** CASE STUDY #3 **
The third grade class has a high percentage of Title I students with the vast majority as English speakers. Most of their parents work very hard at their jobs and do not have the time to read to their children or focus on skills which will improve literacy in the classroom. When the teacher reads to them, they enjoy their story time and respond readily within the discussions. They seem to enjoy independent reading of looking at books or reading to themselves. Four students in this class are especially in need; they are in the emergent level and they know some sight words. They read word by word and consider reading a laborious chore. From testing, the children shows that they know most initial consonant sounds and use them randomly to guess at word but they ignore the final consonants and medial sounds. The writing and spelling are on a lower developmental level of about beginning first grade.

.
 * What are the strengths?**


 * What are the needs?**


 * What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the parents to do at home? Why?**


 * What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?**

Additional thoughts:
||
 * =__Case Study #4: Vocabulary__=

My Two Favorite Books on Vocabulary state the following: The authors of Beck, McKeown, and Kucan’s Bringing Words to Life suggest that ?a robust approach to vocabulary involves directly explaining the meanings of words along with thought-provoking, playful, and interactive follow-up? (2). They add that ?vocabulary work in middle school and high school should allow deeper explorations of language?how language gives meaning and how words mean what they mean? (85). In their vision of best practices, vocabulary is ?more rooted to a text and dealt with in a way that both teaches the words and brings enriched understanding to the text? (85).

Marzano agrees”direct instruction in vocabulary works”(68), and even mentions the work of Beck and McKeown in explaining that “effective vocabulary instruction does not rely on definitions” (70). Marzano’s approach for effectively teaching vocabulary consists of six steps that are very similar to the approach described in Bringing Words to Life. He encourages nonlinguistic representations to build vocabulary, and clarifies that he means ?not just mental pictures,? but also "associated sounds, smells, and sensations of touch or movement? (21). Marzano encourages the shaping of word meaning through multiple exposures including the process of creating metaphors. He states that, ?Research indicates that metaphor activities can help students better understand the abstract features of information. . . . In terms of vocabulary instruction, a teacher might present students with metaphors or ask them to create their own metaphors? (73).

However, Marzano writes that “Beck, McKeown, and Kucan’s focus on tier-two words as the appropriate target of vocabulary instruction” is a mistake (88). He stresses that “subject-specific terms are the best target for direct vocabulary instruction” and provides a list of 7,923 subject-specific terms in the appendix of his book.

The Opening Articles and the podcasts can help with the development of the vocabulary plan.

** CASE STUDY #4 **
Amy is a 11th grade student from a upper-middle class area in an affluent high school. She has twenty hours of community service hours that she has to complete and has decided to help tutor students at a near-by after school elementary program. She wants to come one hour every day for a month. The teacher in the program wants her to work on vocabulary development and make it fun. She has come to you for advice about how to help students with word conscientious. What are you going to tell her? (Oh, by the way, Jenks Middle School has set up a program like this on Saturday mornings to help with vocabulary development).

What can be the strengths and weaknesses of this plan?

What strategies/programs would help with the students? What is your rationale?

What would the program look like?

== Additional thoughts: ==

** CASE STUDY #4 **
Your Title I school has low vocabulary scores on both Oklahoma assessments and national assessments. Your principal has challenged you and your colleagues to help students have more word conscientious and be able to use vocabulary more effectively. The population of your students is basically ½ Caucasian, ¼ Native American and ¼ ELL students.


 * What strategies/ideas can be given specifically for teachers?**


 * What strategies/ideas can you set up for students?**


 * What can you share with your parents?**

== Additional thoughts: == ||
 * =__Case Study #5: Fluency__=

CASE STUDY #5
Anne is a sixth grader who has fair word attack skills but lacks fluency because she reads without expression and ignores punctuation. This issue interferes with her comprehension; she does not monitor what she reads. She is unable to retell a passage or answer questions on the various levels of understanding. Anne's word attack skills are around the fourth grade and her comprehension level to be near third grade level. On the other hand, her recognition and use of good vocabulary words is apparent in her speech.

Anne has stated that her love is to watch educational television and learn as much science and history that she can. In her textbook she says that she uses her picture cues, graphs, and charts as well as her knowledge about the topic to get her through the reading. She adds to the class discussion but her topics are not necessarily found in the textbooks. She loves her social studies and science classes and usually gets good grades in them.

Anne looks at the pictures and other visuals during her reading time and states that reading is not enjoyable.


 * What are the strengths?**


 * What are the needs?**


 * What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the parents to do at home? Why?**

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?

** CASE STUDY #5 **
Charlie, a kind, helpful and positive young man, is not reading with fluency. His comprehension retelling was concise and included all the pertinent information. His writing and spelling are poor; some of his spelling are trane (train), closit (closet), case (chase) and beches (beaches) which Words Their Way says is Using but Abusing. He scored perfectly on alphabet names, consonant sounds, consonant digraphs, and consonant blends. He missed several short vowel words. In long vowel sections, vowel pairs, and silent e, he read all words correctly.

His performance in the classroom is inconsistent. When reading text, he appears to use context and other strategies to back up his phonics decoding skills. Sometimes he seems to be guessing vowel sounds almost randomly as he tries each one out. He ends up with the right word, but the process is laborious. He self corrects about 1 out of every 3 miscues. His pace is slow and choppy.

What are the strengths?

What are the needs?

What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the parents to do at home? Why?

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?

Additional thoughts:
||
 * =__Case Study #6 Comprehension__=

CASE STUDY #6
Sydney, a 7th grade student at Lance Middle High School, is not at all confident about her reading. Daily, she seems to be on the verge of tears, when discussions and extensions take place. She confesses to you that she has faked her way through elementary school and now she knows she won?t be able to do the same thing at the middle school level. She asks you for help.

What are the strengths?

What are the needs?

What strategies/things could the student do when they read? Why?

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?

== Additional thoughts: ==

** CASE STUDY #6 **
In a sixth grade class of twenty-eight students, composed mostly of English speakers at various levels of ability and skills, the teacher needs to devise strategies which deal with comprehension. Most students do not have a lot of difficulty with word attack, but their reading comprehension scores on a standardize test range from the 22nd percentile to the 65th percentage. In the Oklahoma PASS objective tests, you note that they read the passages but they seemed to miss key points in comprehension. You also know that the students like to discuss the topic but don?t always understand the text and have a hard time supporting their answers from the text.


 * What are the strengths?**


 * What are the needs?**


 * What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?**


 * What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the students to do?**

Additional thoughts:
||
 * =__Case Study #8: Metacognition__=
 * =__Case Study #8: Metacognition__=

Metacognition is having the students think while they read. They are to think about if the text is making sense and what they can do to help the text make sense. They are to think about how their minds are processing the information into long term memory. They are to think about the television reading that should be taking place. Thus, these two case studies are typical about the lack of metacognition. Select one and make a plan.

Robert is an eighth grade student at Jenks Middle School and has been referred to you, the resource teacher, for evaluation because of his poor comprehension in content subjects. Both his teachers and parents are concerned and stated that although Robert doesn’t seem to have difficulty reading the words, he does not have the ability to understand and repeat what he has read. He seems to have the most trouble in science class.


 * What are the strengths?**


 * What are the needs?**


 * What strategies/things could the student do when they read? Why?**


 * What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?**

== Additional thoughts: ==

** CASE STUDY #8 **
At Open House, a group of parents voiced their concerns that their children could read the words in their textbooks, yet they didn’t understand what they were reading. The parents said they can figure out the words (word attack skills) and can read fluently, but they don’t know the main ideas, analyzing text, or taking notes. They said that the kids had a hard time with homework that involved answering questions from their textbooks or looking up information from other sources. Further, they said that their kids don’t do their homework without lots of prodding; the parents say it’s a battle every night. The kids say that homework is boring.

What are the strengths?

What are the needs?

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?

What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the students to do?

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