Lauren Lopez

Case Study: Alanna

Alannas assessments indicate that she has both weaknesses and strengths. One weakness
is her ability to isolate middle sounds in words. Another weakness is that she confuses lowercase
letters b and d when reading and writing. Alannas strength is her ability to identify beginning
sounds in words and the letters that represent them.
Alannas first weakness with middle isolation is seen in the Yopp-Singer Test when she
omits the sound /o/ in dog, /e/ in red, and /a/ in sat. It is seen again in her writing sample when
she omits the letter u in the word run. To address this weakness, I will provide strategic and
explicit instruction. I will use high-interest texts and multisensory strategies that include Elkonin
Boxes and a picture game that has Alanna write the letter that represents the middle sound of
pictured words. Elkonin Boxes would be effective because they allow Alanna to hear, see, and
touch the sounds in words and also demonstrate an understanding of letter-sound
correspondence. Because Alanna enjoys games, the picture game would be interesting and
provide a unique writing opportunity that will transfer to other writing experiences. Explicit
instruction is effective because it gives Alanna several opportunities to directly practice middle
sound isolation.
Alannas second weakness is differentiating between letters b and d. In her writing
sample, she wrote the letter b instead of the letter d in the word friends. This issue is also seen in
her running record when she read the word big as dig. To address this weakness, I will provide
explicit instructional strategies in this area. I will have her sort picture cards into b and d letter
columns and have her create a word wall of b and d words. She will also read several high
interest texts to mask b and d letters. Sorting gives Alanna repetitive practice with letter
identification needed to read b and d words while the word wall will give her opportunities to

write using the letters. Incorporating high interest text allows her to practice this issue in a
context that she enjoys.
Alannas strength is her ability to identify beginning sounds in words. This strength is
seen in her results from the phonemic awareness assessment and in her writing samples when she
uses letter sound correspondence. To challenge her in this area she will create her own dictionary
using words from her favorite books. I will also introduce initial consonant digraphs to her
instruction. The dictionary would be effective because it would reinforce her strength in
beginning sounds and improve her skills using alphabetic order. Introducing digraphs will
advance her progress in this area to help her read more sophisticated texts.
As Alanna improves her phonemic awareness and phonics skills, she will become a
stronger speller and more accurate reader. Her enjoyment of recreational reading and her strength
in beginning sound identification will continue to encourage her as a reader and writer. She will
gain confidence as she learns digraphs which will increase her reading development and help her
become a more successful student.