Case Study: Stage 2 - Problem Analysis Introduction This case study is being conducted with an eight year old first grade student referred to as Justin. Justin is a friendly, hard working child who has a history of reading difficulties. Conversely, Justin has been reported by his current and past teachers to be a well performing student in math. Because Justin attended transitional first grade, he is not currently eligible to be considered for special services in his school district.

This study is specifically focused on improving Justin’s reading accuracy. Simply, the goal is to improve the percent of words Justin reads correctly when reading pre chosen graded passages. DRA (Developmental Reading Assessments) “F” leveled texts will be used to measure this goal, as these are the same measures used by Justin’s school and classroom teacher. The initial goal was to see Justin improve from a three week accuracy baseline average of 48.2% to 61.3%. However, an additional three weeks of baseline gathering during the problem analysis portion of this case study show an average of 63.23% accuracy on the “F” leveled passages, with a 55.8% mean accuracy over the full six weeks. Trend data shows that Justin’s weekly educational routine may be causing an improvement in his reading abilities; therefore the goals for Justin are likely to be increased. It is also possible that the recent one on one attention Justin has received in reading evaluation may be causing him to put more effort into his performance. A chart showing Justin’s baseline scores and trend data is below.

Interviews and Records

Records Review

A review of Justin’s cumulative folder reveals that his reading difficulties were first noticed in kindergarten. His teacher that year reported that he had problems mostly with letter sounds and sight words. It was also noted that Justin was absent 21 full and 8 partial days of kindergarten. It was recommended that Justin attend a transitional first grade (T-1). After his kindergarten year, Justin moved to his current school for T-1 and first grade.

A note from 8/18/02 states that Justin’s kindergarten school district was “watching to see if he sees things backwards.” No further explanation was given in the records and his current school does not see a need to test Justin for dyslexia or any other similar problem. The same file also stated that Justin would leave out the words “in” and “the” in many spoken sentences. This behavior has not been observed by me or his teachers today and the school psychologist and speech therapist agree that this was most likely a result of his age, and that he has outgrown this behavior.

Reports from Justin’s T-1 year are similar in regards to his reading abilities, and by the end of T-1, he was considered to be mastering many areas of math. His teachers also consider him to have the abilities to be a hard worker, and state that they enjoy working with Justin.

His family records show that his parents are divorced, and most likely Justin, his mother, and several other family members are sharing a home with Justin’s maternal grandparents.

Parent Interview

A conversation with Justin’s mother reveals that she considers Justin to be “the spitting image of his father in many academic areas” His father was recently tested and reportedly reads at the third grade level. He was in L.D. classrooms for the entirety of his academic career. Justin’s mom stated that it always takes Justin a long time to complete work at home, but that while working, he seldom becomes frustrated. Justin’s mother also agreed that he is an auditory learner who works best in one-on-one situations. Like Justin’s teachers, his mother believes he is distracted in groups. It is possible that extra time in a one-on-one setting may be beneficial to Justin’s acquiring necessary reading skills he has either missed, or received but not mastered along the way.

Justin’s mother commented that she believed that Justin may have dyslexia. She reports that his father does have dyslexia and that Justin will “say 23, but write 32.” Discussing this with Mrs. K., the school psychologist, it was decided that it was doubtful that Justin truly has a problem with miss-ordering letters. It was further decided that as a part of hypothesis testing, a specific letter order exercise could be used to test if this is a concern which should be addressed. Justin’s mother also mentioned that when Justin was very young, he did not have a preference for either hand, but as he grew he began to prefer his left hand. Once Justin started school, he reverted to right-hand usage.

Student Interview

Justin is not able to give an explanation for his reading difficulties. His typically stated belief is that some things are just too hard. In pointing out strengths, Justin does report (and has been witnessed) using visual cues in books to assist him in identifying words he is not able to read. Interactions with Justin show that he appears to enjoy working with others, and self reports show that he attempts to do homework and reading exercises at home.

Teacher Interview

Justin’s teachers believe that he works best in a one on one situation. Both his current reading and math teacher report that Justin is easily distracted and they believe he is showing increased symptoms similar to those of ADD. They report that Justin is fidgety, hard to keep on task, and that he wanders mentally while he is supposed to be doing work. Justin’s reading teacher, Mrs. D. is uncertain as to the cause of Justin’s reading problems. Though Mrs. D believes behavior deficits are a partial cause to his difficulties, she believes that there is still some unidentified academic disability which will eventually be uncovered and need to be addressed.

Mrs. D. draws from a vast variety of instructional 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.

Behavioral Observations

Three separate B.O.S.S. (Behavioral Observation of Students in Schools) observations were conducted on Justin. The first two were conducted on 2/19/04; one in the morning for a reading and story writing class activity and another in the afternoon with Mrs. J. for math activities. The third observation was recorded on 2/25/04 during a review of reading lessons given earlier in the week. All three lessons involved class wide interactive activities.

For the first observation, Mrs. D. was interacting with the kids in the carpet area and the group was recalling events from a story read earlier in the week and writing a new story as a group in preparation for seat work where the students would work on writing a story independently. Justin was on task a total of 48.8% of the time (15.4% Active, and 33.3% passive) and off task a total of 52.3% of the time. His off task activities involved Motor (9.5%), Verbal (11.9%), and Passive (30.9%) distractions. The peer comparisons showed that the class was on task 66.6% of the time and off task 33.3% of the time. Though not included in these scores, it may be noted that as Justin returned to his seat to write his own story, he was on task for 11 out of 12 observations. This reflects less than the first four minutes of the independent work time.

For the second observation, Justin was in Mrs. J’s math class shortly before the end of the school day. The class was working on telling time and using script to keep count or score. The activities involved the teacher asking questions for which the students would write answers on a white board and hold them up for approval. Justin’s scores were higher for this activity. Justin was on task a total of 76.3% of the time (50.0% Active, and 26.0% passive) and off task a total of 23.6% of the time. His off task activities involved Motor (9.7%), Verbal (1.3%), and Passive (12.5%) distractions. The peer comparisons showed that the class was on task 88.8% of the time and off task 11.1% of the time. Both Mrs. D. and Mrs. J agree that Justin typically does better in math than reading, but is still off task more than the average student in both classes. It was also mentioned by Mrs. J. that Justin appears to be growing in restlessness and fidgetiness in class, and has been for the past several weeks. It should be noted that the times when Justin was observed to be passively off task, he had often already correctly answered the question asked of the class, and was waiting for other students to finish up.

The third observation was done in Mrs. D.’s class in the morning while working on reading skills. Again, Justin’s on task behavior scores were lower than those of his peers. Justin was on task a total of 57.7% of the time (25.0% Active, and 32.7% passive) and off task a total of 41.3% of the time. His off task activities involved Motor (13.4%), Verbal (2.8%), and Passive (25.0%) distractions. The peer comparisons showed that the class was on task 69.2% of the time and off task 30.8% of the time. Justin’s passive off task periods seemed to be because he was bored with the subject matter, rather than because he had completed a question, as in the math observation.

Looking at the three observations as a whole, it appears that Justin is on task less often than his peers. Additionally, Justin is off task a greater percentage of the time when working in Mrs. D’s class (reading and language arts) than when working in Mrs. J’s class (mathematics). In discussing the results with Justin’s teachers, it was agreed that Justin is not paying attention as often as he should. The results of the B.O.S.S. consistently show Justin as being passively off task rather than off task because of motor or verbal reasons. This would support the idea that Justin may have characteristics associated with ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. However, Justin was less often off task passively in math than in the language arts (12.5% compared to 25.0% and 30.9%), showing that Justin may pay more attention, or drift less, in subjects in which he performs better. Also, teacher reports indicate that Justin’s inattentive behaviors have been increasing over the last two months. This brings the question as to whether or not environmental or other factors are actually playing a roll in Justin’s recent off task behaviors, as the characteristics of ADD are typically constant over time.

Error Analysis

In searching for the specific reasons behind Justin’s reading difficulties, several error analysis tests were conducted. Justin read from several DRA (Developmental Reading Assessments) leveled passages, Pre-primer through first grade Dolch word lists, and single syllable nonsense syllable word lists in an attempt to identify what combinations of letters and sounds cause him the most difficulty.

Justin’s errors are many, covering many facets of words. Justin makes mistakes in some beginning consonants, vowel sounds, vowel blends, the number of syllables in words, middle consonant sounds, and consonant blends. His weakest points often involved middle consonant sounds and consonant blends, and the letter “y.” Justin also seemed to forget letter sounds unless reminded. For example, when reading the word “There” he would say “here.” In another instance, Justin sounded out “kept” but when asked to put it all together, he said “pekt.” When asked to double check, he could fix this error on his own. At other times, however, his reading seemed random, with no obvious mistake, which he could not fix when prompted to try again. For example, he read “bike” for the word “know,” “light” for the word “first,” and “worked” for the word “shoveled.”

While reading, Justin did show certain strengths. Justin is very adept at using picture clues to figure out unknown words. When reading a passage about a girl getting dressed, Justin would find the newest article of clothing in the picture to fill in the new word in the text. When questioned, he states he uses this method often when reading other materials for school. Considering Justin compared to other children in the class, Justin seems better at memorizing words for the duration of a reading passage. Originally unknown words which are given to him are remembered when they reappear. Though Justin is not perfect with this method, he was notably better than many of his higher scoring peers.

In discussing Justin’s error analysis scores with his teachers, it was decided that the error patterns, or lack of error patterns, was typical of Justin’s past performance.

Summary Justin’s academic work in reading appears to be improving without intervention. However, in order to speed up his improvement, intervention is desired to help him catch up with the other students in his reading group. The initial three weeks of baseline showed that Justin was the lowest performing student in the class. Justin’s reading difficulties may be a combination of genetic factors, his need to work one on one, practicing the skills he should already know, and his high absence rate in kindergarten.

Justin has been observed to be off task more than his fellow students. Additionally, there is a higher margin of off task behavior in reading than in math. Error analysis shows no solid pattern of mistakes, and it is currently theorized by his teachers that he would benefit greatly from one-on-one assistance. Hypothesis testing will be conducted to aid in showing what type of intervention training may be best for Justin.

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