Tutoring and Assessment Case Study for Educ.

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Candidate: Sara Tulley Subject: Letter/Numbers/Colors 331 Instructor: Brenda Wilson Date: November 30, 2012 # of Students: 1 Assessing: Letter Recognition Grade Level: Kindergarten School: Madison Elementary School Cooperating Teacher: Lindsay Dolan Date of Pretest: 10-18-2012 Average Pretest Score: 7% (8/110) Date of Posttest: 11-9-2012 Average Posttest Score: 15% (17/110)

Decision about Who, What & How to Tutor and How to Assess: Ms. Dolan and I decided I would be tutoring a Kindergarten student who has mild mental impairments. We decided this because she was pulled out individually and needed extra help in order to move on to the first grade in a few months. After observing this student for several hours before actually beginning my tutoring, I realized that her curriculum should be switched up a bit and new techniques were needed; she was getting bored very easily. Together, Ms. Dolan and I decided that I would work on her typical routine of letter recognition, number recognition, writing her name, counting and color recognition. Ms. Dolan allowed me to use whatever technique I wanted, so I decided I would use flash cards, puzzles and finger paint (for writing her name and color recognition). I decided that I wanted to test her 3 times: the pre-test, post-test and a test in between to see how she was doing and if I needed to change anything about my instruction. After long discussion and deliberation about how I would be testing the student, we decided that I should use the DIBELS letter recognition assessment that is used for all Kindergarten students. There were three sample tests in the DIBELS handbook, which worked out perfectly. Tutoring Lesson/Unit and Assessment Description I assessed the student with three DIBELS letter recognition assessments (attached). All assessments were different, but contained the same content. Each test enclosed all 26 letters of the alphabet in upper and lower case in assorted order. I gave the pretest on October 18, a midtest to track progress on October 25 and the posttest on November 9. I taught the student numbers to 10, all letters of the alphabet and all basic colors using a variety of activities and techniques. One activity that I used was puzzles. The student was proficient in puzzles and really enjoyed them, which gave her a reason to want to do well. Each day, I pulled the puzzle pieces out of a bag and laid them face up on the table. I would select a few at a time, ask the girl if she knew the letter and she would answer. If she could not answer correctly, I told her the letter, she would repeat it. Then, I said the sound and she repeated that as well.

After we went through all of the letters of the puzzle, we would place the pieces into the puzzle together, using the pictures that were in the background of the puzzle to figure out what letter fit best. For example, if I would pick up the A and say Where does A go? Does it go with apple or with cat? She would most likely reply A apple. After we had completed the puzzle, we moved on to flash cards. We would go through each individual card, say the letter, the sound of the letter and the picture that the letter was associated with because of its sound. The student was beginning to recognize the pictures with the letter sounds. For example, any time she saw a picture of an apple, she would say apple A!! Once the flash cards were complete, we would move on to numbers. I also had a puzzle for this. There were pictures in the background with the number of objects that was representing the number itself. For example, for number 6, there were six frogs. She would count each of the images and then decide which number (symbol) was the correct choice. The puzzle was helpful, because it allowed her to do most of it on her own as she was able to determine which shape was to go where. This helped her gain confidence in her learning, I believe. After we worked on numbers, we would move on to colors and name writing. To practice colors, we went through several flash cards that contained the color. Then we used finger paint to emphasize that color. She would right her name several times in the finger paint. The student also had a difficult time distinguishing between her first, middle and last name. For instance, say her name was Mary Ann Franklin. If I would ask, Mary, what is your first name? she would say Mary Ann Franklin, not simply just Mary. I asked her several times to tell me her first name, middle name and last name to try to help her understand they were three separate names. Link to Standards Objectives CSOs RLA.O.K.1.5 name all lower/upper case letters in random order. M.O.K.1.1 count forward to 20 and backward from 10 with and without manipulatives. Student will recognize all letters and letter sounds. Student will be able to count to 10 with/without manipulatives. Student will recognize all colors and say their names correctly.

ACEI 3.2 Adaptation to diverse studentsCandidates understand how elementary students differ in their development and approachesto learning, and createinstructional opportunitiesthat are adapted to diverse students;

Results of Assessments The content that I assessed and tutored was letter recognition. It is very important for a kindergarten student to be able to recognize letters in order to move on to the 1st grade successfully.
20% 18% 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0% Pre-Test Mid-test Post-Test Score Target

Test Pre-Test Mid-Test Post-Test

Score (Fraction) 8/110 17/110 17/110

Score (Percentage) 7% 15% 15%

I was very pleased with the results of this data. The student exceeded the target I set for them. I was hoping that by the end of tutoring, the student would improve their letter comprehension by 100%. There were 110 letters displayed on each assessment. On the pretest, the student got 8 of the 110, or 7%, correct, all being Xx and Kk. On the mid-test, I was shocked and ecstatic that the student got 17 out of 110 correct, 15%. This had already reached my goal of 100% improvement. It seemed evident that my method of tutoring was actually helping the student learn. Therefore, I decided to keep my tutoring techniques the same as they were before. I decided to make my target goal 150% improvement from the pre-test, making the target goal

17.5%. Unfortunately, she did not progress from the mid-test. Her score was exactly the same, as you can see above. Reflection and Data-Based Decision-Making I was thrilled to see any kind of progress with my student. An aspect of the tutoring that I found to be effective was the puzzles. While it ran across my mind that puzzles may not be the best method, she really loved them and I feel that they really encouraged her to learn. Based on the assessment results, I was right for the most part. I wish I would have used several different methods, however, after seeing that she made no progress on the posttest. If I were to conduct this tutoring/case study again, I would definitely use a wide variety of techniques that would keep her engaged and help with progression. I would put more effort into researching various techniques, if not to help her progress, then to just mix things up and make her learning for interesting and fun. I believe my tutoring was effective because I really tried to understand the person that my student is. She is an underprivileged student so I assumed she had little to no toys that she could play with, without having to share them with her younger siblings. Therefore, I thought that a toy-like concept would be a fun and new way for her to learn, so I chose the puzzle. Previously in observations, before I began tutoring, I noticed that she really enjoyed manipulating objects, which also gave me the puzzle idea. My next step in teaching this content area would be to find a different method of teaching letter recognition. I would use sorting upper and lower case activities, writing them repeatedly or maybe even a physical method, such as creating the letters using play dough. The mid-test and post-test showed me that the student was sporadic in recognizing the same letters. However, she knew every Xx and Kk on all tests. I worked a lot with her on recognizing the letters of her own name. Her name begins with an N, which she only recognized once in all three tests. Her brothers name begins with a Kk, which Ms. Dolan and I believe is the reason she is able to recognize the letter. This was one of the most interesting points that I found in my tutoring project. There seems to be no explanation for this occurrence, but it is certainly something to think about in the future. I really enjoyed my time tutoring this student. She was a sweet little girl who I could tell tried so hard every day to do well and to make Ms. Dolan and myself proud of her. I was sure to constantly give her positive reinforcement because I was afraid she may want to give up when she couldnt understand the content. Sometimes I found that she was very distracted and didnt want to be in the classroom (she consistently asked Are we going outside? because her recess was directly after her pull-out). I tried to talk to her about things that she was interested in to help with her speaking skills (she also has a speech delay) and keep her mind working throughout the tutoring session. I learned so much about helping students individually, including the time and care that they need in order to be confident and learn effectively.