Case Study: Task Analysis

David Profitt
Case Study at JW Elementary: Introduction and Task Analysis.

This case study will be conducted with Mrs. D., teacher; and Mrs. K., school psychologist at JW K-1 Elementary in Southwestern, OH. For this case study, it is the teacher’s goal for her first grade lower level reading group to be able to read passages from the "F" or "10" level of the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) with a minimum 94% accuracy rate. Mrs. D. hopes to achieve this goal by the first week in April.

Mrs. D. states that many of her students entered first grade with little word or reading knowledge, and that some were not able to recognize several letters and did not know many individual letter sounds. Typical students are expected to read at the DRA "16" level by the end of the first grade (Beaver, 2001). However, typical students are much further along when entering first grade, not only knowing all letters and many sounds, but are fluent in the more basic of reading skills. Books for typical students for the second month of first grade level (DRA levels 3-6) contain 46 to 75 words. Students are expected to read these materials with 94% accuracy. Clearly, Mrs. D.’s students did not start at that level. Mrs. D. will also have approximately two months after this case study ends to continue progression towards end of year ambitions, but she does believe she is being optimistic to expect most of her students to be slightly below the standard first grade DRA expectations at the end of their first grade year.

DRA level "F" or "10" reading includes stories about children and problems children will be familiar with (Beaver, 2001). The passages include repetition of text (ex. "Monkey see. Monkey do. Monkey me. Monkey you."). An entire story from levels "8" to "14" contains between 87 and 207 words. The DRA system incorporates the concept of most children’s books of integrating text and pictures, but passages taken from DRA graded texts to be used for assessment in this case study will be individually typed and will not include illustrations.

Mrs. D. uses the DRA as part of JW's reading assessment policies and to help in choosing appropriate reading materials. JW also uses DIBELS three times per year in a school wide assessment. As for instruction, Mrs. D. draws from a vast variety of methods. She uses both DRA rated texts and Scholastic published Literacy Place basal readers as sources for reading materials. In the classroom, she teaches reading concepts through songs, clapping, writing on the chalkboard, worksheets, games, and other methods. She has no single stepped or graded curriculum which she follows, but rather draws from several sources in creating her own stepped curriculum.

Reutzel and Cooter (2003) recommend the following sequence in building reading skills through first grade. In kindergarten, children should develop the ability to recognize the sound structure of spoken words, learn to recognize letters and the production of letters, understand basic print concepts, develop an understanding of the general purposes and mechanisms of writing and reading, begin to develop phonemic awareness, recognition of letters of the alphabet, and vocabulary development of high frequency words. First graders will continue this progression with in depth instruction of phonemic awareness not mastered in kindergarten. Additionally, children at this age will begin learning letter-sound correspondences and common spelling rules.

Specific steps first grade students should progress through according to Reutzel and Cooter (2003):

1. Students should recognize consonants in beginning, middle and ending positions in words as a part of their decoding strategies.
2. Students should recognize that the letters D,F,L,N,R,V, and Z are pronounced the same regardless of the situation.
3. Students should recognize the short vowel sounds
4. Students should develop familiarity with the consonant-vowel-consonant pattern of simple words, such as "ran,"and "fan."
5. Students will utilize the vowel-consonant-"e" pattern, found in such simple words as "ripe," and "bike."
6. Students will learn long vowel diagraphs, such as ai, ay, ea, ee, oa, and ow.
7. Students will recognize and utilize consonant blends such as tr, br, bl, cl, st, etc.
8. Students will begin to develop familiarity with early structural analysis such as suffixes.

Additionally, first grade students will identify frequent sight words, be able to use context clues, and should be able to read both out loud and independently with frustration level appropriate texts.

The Ohio Department of Education (2004) has listed the following standards relevant to reading accuracy, divided into pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade:

Pre-Kindergarten Skills:

1. Identify matching sounds and rhymes in familiar story or poem passages and songs.
2. Identify sounds in words by isolating their syllables using snapping, clapping or rhythmic movement (e.g., cat, cher-ry).
3. Be able to distinguish sounds that are different (e.g., environmental sounds, animal sounds, phonemes).
4. Recognize words which share phonemes and repeat the common phoneme (e.g., /b/ as in Bob, ball, baby; /t/ as in Matt, kite, boat).
5. Identify and list some upper and lower case letters in addition to those in the child’s first name.
6. Understand that words are made up of letters

Kindergarten Skills:

1. Identify and complete rhyming words and patterns.
2. Count the number of syllables in words by using clapping, snapping or counting.
3. Recognize and name all upper- and lower-case letters.
4. Recognize, say and write the common sounds of letters.
5. Recognize that words are separated by spaces; individual letters are not.
6. Hear and repeat the separate phonemes in words; identify the initial consonant sound in a word and blend phonemes to say words.

Grade 1 Skills:

1. Identify and differentiate among letters, words and sentences.
2. Identify and repeat the beginning and ending sounds in words.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of letter-sound correspondence by saying the sounds from all letters and from a variety of letter patterns, such as consonant blends and long-and short-vowel patterns, and by matching sounds with their corresponding letters.
4. Decode using letter-sound matches.
5. Use knowledge of common word families (e.g., -ite or -ate) to sound out new words.
6. Blend up to four phonemes into words.
7. Add, delete or replace sounds in a word to create new or rhyming words.

The preceding hierarchies of skills are those which would be needed to meet the goal of Mrs. D.’s class: reading passages from the "F" or "10" level of the DRA with a minimum 94% accuracy.

References Beaver, J. (2001) Developmental reading assessment: K-3 Teacher resource guide (Rev. ed.).Parsippany, NJ: Celebration Press.

Ohio Department of Education (January 27, 2004). Academic Content Standards. Retrieved January 27, 2003, from http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ODE/IMS/ACS/Default.asp.

Ruetzel, D. R. & Cooter, R. B. (2003). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction: Helping every child succeed (2nd. Ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Filed under: EDC 514-515 Academic Assessment for Intervention
Copyright: January, 2004 - David Profitt