Danielle Procaccini ELD 308 Case Study I conducted this case study on an eight year old girl in a 3rd

grade classroom. The school district is set in a suburban area where they prepare students to be lifelong learners, critical thinkers, effective communicators, and wise decision makers through the use of the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards and currently making the switch to the Common Core State Standards. The class has a structure that includes blocks of Reading and Writing Workshop, Guided Reading, Science, Social Studies and Math. Emily* is generally a quiet student who is always listening attentively and doing the work assigned. Although seemingly quiet, she participates regularly and is comfortable speaking in front of the class. In my assessments, I conducted a running record, informal reading and writing interviews, a word study evaluation and I collected samples of her writing. Through discussing with her teacher, I discovered that Emily* is reading at Level N, which is typical for a 3rd grader. When I began the running record, I introduced the text to her, which was Herbie Jones by Suzie Kline. Although I introduced the text giving her the name of the main character, she still mispronounced the name Herbie several times, pronouncing it as Harbie. According to the Fountas and Pinnell text, perfect accuracy is not necessary, it is fluency that is a better indicator of assessing the students performance. Fountas and Pinnell state that even if a child is at a high reading accuracy, if theyre halting and reading slow, it is not an indicator of good reading. Of course, readers who have trouble making sense of the words they are reading will not read as fluently so accuracy and fluency go hand in hand (492). Emilys* mispronunciation of Herbie did not effect the meaning of the text nor did it effect her understanding of the text. Emily* demonstrated self corrections a lot. Self corrections show that the student is really thinking about

what they are reading because they are able to think to themselves and know that the word they originally thought was correct, didnt make sense in the context of the sentence. Her overall fluency was smooth. She read at a just right speed and read with inflection in her voice when necessary and made pauses when deemed necessary. After the running record, I administered comprehension questions to assess her understanding of the reading passage. Her teacher had told me that Emily* has trouble with comprehension and that she goes for special help to work on her reading comprehension skills. When asked about the main events, her first reaction was to try to sneak a peak back to the reading passage, I had to remind her to try her best to remember what happened in the story without looking back at the reading passage. She was able to recall some events and she recalled them in order. This shows her sequencing skills. However, when she was thinking of why the students were buying the teacher a gift, her first guess was that it was for the teachers birthday, then she thought more deeply about it and remembered that the class was trying to think of a gift for the teacher for the last day of school. It was interesting to see her go through the thought process because when she first said that the gift was for the teachers birthday she was completely confident in her answer, but then after a few seconds had passed, she changed it. She was able to recall several main characters from the text, but was unable to recall the teachers full name. She was able to use inferencing to think of the main idea of the story. She also used inferencing to think of the problem of the story. Since she was able to think of supporting details regarding the main idea, you can tell that she was reading closely enough to recall those. Overall, Id say that her comprehension could use a little more work. She answered my comprehension questions but they seemed to be answered with the bare minimum. To work on her comprehension, I would give her activities that could be included within the test taking genre. Giving a reading passage and answering questions about the reading. However, it might be difficult because I feel that if Emily* were

given the option to be able to look back at the reading passage, she would be able to answer the comprehension questions. I could also ask her questions about her independent reading books informally, just to see if her comprehension is improving. In the informal reading and writing interview, I selected the interview from the Fountas and Pinnell text. I selected a few questions from those interviews to ask Emily*. From the reading interview, I can gather that Emily* enjoys reading fantasy and biography books. If she had to choose her favorite she would choose biography. When asked why she likes to read biography the best, she said that she enjoys reading about other people and learning about how their life was. Her favorite book that she has read so far this year was a book called Clementine by Sara Pennypacker and Marla Frazee. Emily* said that she enjoyed this book so much because of all the crazy things that the main character does. When asked what she knows how to do well as a reader she said that she is able to not talk and concentrate on what she is reading, and that she pays attention to the book. When asked what she could work on she said that she would like to pay attention even more and work on understanding what she is reading even more. She also has a goal of reading a 100 page chapter book! She is proud that when she picks a book she sticks with it and encourages herself to read it even if she may not like it at first. After conducting this informal interview, I learned that Emily* really loves to read. I observed that every time the class has quiet time, she reads a book rather than color or draw like some of the other children. She is very self aware of how she reads since she realizes that she could work on understanding what she is reading more. The writing interview was similar to what I had expected, since reading and writing go hand in hand, I predicted that Emily* would love writing just as much as she loved reading. My prediction came true because Emily* loves to write! When asked why people write, she said that people write so that they could write different things because if they all wrote the same thing, it would be boring. I was

a little confused when she was explaining this and I think Emily* could tell judging from my facial expression so she thought about what she meant and re-worded it by saying that people write for different audiences, as in children and adults, and that people write to make you laugh. When I asked her why she writes, she said that she writes not only because her teacher tells her to but because she likes it and that she likes to make people laugh. When asked how often she writes she said that she writes in school and at least once a week outside of school. She gets her ideas from books she reads, her house, her friends and her cat. She feels confident about her writing because she said she improved a lot on her report card. She was most proud of her essay that she wrote that was five paragraphs long about cats. She was proud because since she owns a couple cats, she knows a lot about them. She likes to write about cats a lot, she likes to do book reports and she likes to write about Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. Her favorite type of writing is mystery because she likes to solve problems and theyre lots of fun. Shed like to improve by using more detail and evolving her characters more by including more character traits. I also conducted a word study evaluation. I used an Intermediate Spelling Inventory. In the twenty five words I gave Emily* she got eight of them correct. The other words were close, and spelled using a very literal, sound-out-the-word spelling. In assessing the spelling of the words, I came to the conclusion that she has a good grasp on short vowels and consonant digraphs and blends. She seems to always get the beginning of the word correct but gets lost in the middle to end of the word. To further look into Emilys* Word Study, I looked at her Word Study notebook and looked to see how she sorted words. Although she missed 2/3 of the long vowel sounds on the Intermediate Spelling Inventory, through looking at her word sorts I can see that she recognizes which words are alike because of their long vowel sounds versus their short vowel sounds and sorts them accordingly. To further investigate this, I would perhaps choose different words, with

specific long vowel sounds to see if she recognized them when I orally gave her each word, or whether her recognizing the long vowels was solely just on her Word Study homework. If this were the case, I would be interested to know how much her parents helped with her homework. I also gathered a writing sample of Emilys*. The class is working on realistic fiction stories. I have been a part of the whole writing process of these realistic stories. I gathered samples of her story map, character development chart, a picture of her character, her attempts in the story, her problem and solution chart, and her first draft of her story. She was able to think of physical traits for her character, and think of hobbies for her character. She was able to create a problem with three attempts at solving the problem and in the end, a solution to solve the problem. She was able to use her story map as a way to organize her thoughts and plan out when each event would happen to the story. She was able to visualize her character and how they would look. Emilys* first draft of her story was very well thought out and organized for a first draft. Since she carefully worked on each step in the writing process, it was easier for her to construct the story piece by piece. Each day during the Writing block when we would learn a new writing technique, she was able to implement it into her story. We worked on figurative language and there is evidence of figurative language in her story. We worked on character development and character traits and her character is very well thought out and in the beginning of the story when the character is introduced, the reader has a clear picture of what the character looks like from her descriptions. Overall, I think that Emily* has a good grasp on the writing process. She is guided through the process just as the rest of the class is, and with practice I believe that the writing process will become a natural process when she writes.

To further Emilys literacy development I would work with her specifically on improving her comprehension skills, recognizing long vowel sounds, and continuing her writing process with her realistic fiction story. To improve her comprehension skills, the teacher has given her a phonics book to help recognize which pictures go with words, letter patterns, etc. I think this is a good idea. In having her practice her phonics, recognizing words as shes reading aloud will come easier to her, thus building her fluency. In building her fluency, comprehension will come naturally. I would also have her read aloud more often. Reading aloud forces her to read slower and think about what she is reading rather than reading quickly when reading independently and not understanding what is being read. She would not only be seeing the words, but hearing them as well. Partner reading is also something that I would encourage her to partake in. This not only allows her to practice oral reading and understanding but it forces her to listen to another reader and understand what they are reading as well. Lastly, I would make sure that she was choosing books that are just right for her. A book thats too hard may be at a frustrating level for her, and if she is just skipping over words that she doesnt know, it is not building her fluency or understanding. To help her with recognizing long vowel sounds, I would give her Word Study words specifically with long vowel sounds to ensure that she is recognizing them and putting them in the correct categories. I would also work with her during Word Study time so that I can see firsthand how she sorts the words. In making her say each word aloud and having her recognize the sounds orally, it may help her to hear the difference between long vowels and short vowels. As far as helping Emilys* writing, I would just have her continue doing what shes doing. The next step in her writing process would be revising and editing. I would teach a class lesson on revising and editing and see how she goes about revising and editing her own writing. After this I

would have individual meetings with her (as well as the rest of the class) and revise and edit together. Partner edits would also be helpful so that she could practice revising and editing on a classmates work and explain why she would make the changes that she did. In taking these steps, Emily* would be on her way to improving her literacy development.

* Names have been changed