RDNG 504

RDNG 504:
Case Study Review

Erin Scafone
Eastern Michigan University

escafone@emich.edu
248-721-1355

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RDNG 504: Case Study Review
Abstract
This paper reviews the process of using the Bader Reading and Language Inventory (2013) in a
case study. It reviews and reflects the choices I made, the strategies I chose and the changes I
would make over the course of nine sessions with a student referred to as M.

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RDNG 504: Case Study Review
Student M
M is a student in my Test Prep 10 class. In one of our very first few days together, we
were doing the True Colors personality quiz in class and M was not following directions or
participating in the activity. I asked him, admittedly frustrated, why he wasnt participating. He
answered, looking me square in the eyes, that it was because he didnt read well and didnt know
what the words meant on the page and he was embarrassed. He explained sometimes he acted
out to cover up that he wasnt a good reader. In my six years of teaching, I havent had any
student told it to me quite like that.
There were several students I wanted to ask to participate in the case study. There were
several students who visibly had trouble reading who I thought would benefit from my focused
time and attention. In fact, my trouble in picking the student was one of the reasons it took me so
long to get started on the case study. I really struggle with this what I feel is a major ethical
dilemma: you have this tool that can help everyone in your class, but the catch is that you can
only use the tool on one person at a time. In addition, the tool requires hours, if not days of
analysis and attention from the teacher in order for the student to reap the reward. So, the amount
of time it takes for the tool to become a reward is not enough time to use it on all of the members
of your class. So who do you pick to use the tool when everyone is in desperate need of it? The
teacher has that responsibility of making that decision, and no matter who I pick I feel guilty.
Ultimately, I picked M because that honest and direct answer stuck with me, and I
couldnt get it out of my head. Also over the course of the class I had felt M was a hard worker
with a desire to improve in his reading skills meanwhile, M was pleasant and very kind as a
human being. M was curious, asked a lot of questions and enjoyed conversations about many

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topics. I felt that in addition to needing remediation in reading, M would be a pleasant student to
work with, as well as be understanding of my novice skills with the assessments.
Assessments
To begin the assessments, I followed the flowchart according to the Bader Reading and
Language Inventory. I began with the Graded Word Lists. I did 7 of these beginning with the
D(2.0) and ending with K(H.S). It was my perception that Matt did well completing these
assessments, although his Frustration (7.0), Instruction (6.0) and Independent (5.0) Levels are far
below his grade level. M knew to sound out words he was having trouble with, but didnt always
read these syllable parts correctly.
As I moved through the flowchart (Bader and Pearce, 2013) I went on to the Graded
Reading Passages. I split these up over three sessions so that once I administered them I could
evaluate the data and decide where to go from there. The first session I administered oral,
unprepared Graded Reading Passages 4EB, 5EB, and 6EA. By Ms original statement to me, I
knew Ms reading skills, or perceived lack of them made him self-conscious so I wanted to start
him with a reading passage that would build his self confidence so I started with a passage below
his Independent reading level that I gathered from the Graded Word Lists. ...a student may be
given some easy materials to read for a time in order to build fluency, rate, or confidence.
(Bader and Pearce, 2013) M comprehended the passages successfully during that first session,
but what I noticed while he was reading was that he blew past punctuation and it disrupted his
phrasing while he was reading. So much so that at times he would read word by word instead of
fluent sentences. I made a note of this in my Data Log and knew right away it was going to be
something I addressed in my lessons.

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Also in the first session, M made it clear that he had quite a bit of background
knowledge. While all of his knowledge was at the comprehension level of Blooms Taxonomy, it
was clear he knew a lot about many topics and he took serious interest in the passages he had
read. He asked a lot of questions as was able to make many text to self connections. The next
round of assessments was silent, unprepared Graded Reading Passages 6EB, 6SA. M had
difficulty comprehending the texts during this session. M was frustrated and distraught. These
assessments were followed by prepared, oral Graded Reading Passages 6SA and 7EB. M had
significantly more oral miscues although he felt better about the passage as a whole. He did
answer the comprehension questions successfully.
When M read orally he didnt always read every word part. So I decided to give him the
Structural Analysis assessments. I do not believe he successfully passed the Inflectional suffixes
assessment. While he had errors in the Derivational suffixes, he got these mostly correct. He was
successful on the Prefix assessment. He was also successful on the compound words assessment.
Changes for next time
If I had a chance to do the assessments over again, I would have practiced documenting
and recording errors. I read the chapters and flowcharts in the Bader Reading and Language
Inventory on how to execute the assessments, and felt then as I do now that I was extremely
overwhelmed by the information. I was very nervous to administer the assessments. I would have
liked a practice run before doing the real thing for the first time.
Another change that I would make would be to spend more time preparing correctly.
What I mean by that is I spent more time worrying about the assessments than actually reading
the information that would have helped me or two completing my sessions more spaced out. I
had to rush through some things and didnt give myself as much study time as I had planned. In

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addition, I watched the segments on the DVD that came with the Bader Reading and Language
Inventory. I am a visual and auditory learner so I thought the segments would help, and they did,
but in pouring over those, I missed a lot of information that was else where in the inventory.
I did not feel very confident in analyzing the data, and I second guessed myself with
every decision. Ladd (1961) and Milsap (1962) generally suggested that teachers are
inaccurate and incapable of adequately administering and interpreting the results of informal
reading inventories. Ladd, for example, found that even after thirty hours of training, teachers
still failed to record 33 to 37 percent of the errors. (Pikulski, 1974) I felt like I did the
assessments and was informed by the habits of my reader, but there was so much data that I
didnt know how to analyze. I felt, again, if I had a chance to see what each issue looked like and
sounded like then perhaps I would have felt a little more confident. I struggle teaching material
that I am not confident with.
Lessons
As I went forward with the lessons, I decided that I was going to focus on comprehension
as M requested so. I thought if I taught him some comprehension strategies that he could use on
his Instructional and Frustration (Bader and Pearce, 2013) levels he could begin to see growth in
his reading level. I also wanted to work on the way he blew past the punctuation in his first oral
reading. I wanted these strategies to be broad so they could fit any class, and any text.
My first strategy was a bit of an odd one: Readers Theater. The origin of the idea to use
Readers Theater is because I have this text from a 1950s mystery magazine called
Conversation Piece by Ned Guymon. (1950) The reason I use it is to teach inferences because
there are no stage directions and each line is only one or two words long so in order to

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understand the story you need to make inferences about what is going on. I let two kids read the
story out loud in a readers theater and every time I give the directions I always say to them, let
the punctuation tell you how to read it. So, I decided to use this, what was just an aside as my
reading strategy for M to see how punctuation contributes to phrasing and how phrasing
contributes to meaning. "A great deal of fluency research reiterates the need for repeated
reading," reported [Susan] Finney. "Without fluency, there is little comprehension; the value of
Reader's Theater is increased tenfold when used as a strategy for increasing understanding of
what is being read." (qtd in Education World, 2016)
Characteristics of readers theater from Education World (2016)

Students do not memorize their parts; they always read from their scripts.
A stage is unnecessary; student simply stand or sit in a semicircle.
Scripts ideally are introduced in small groups.
The script is treated like a new story, in that instructional support may be needed

for new vocabulary and understanding of characters.

For struggling readers who are building fluency, scripts are manageable -- at the

students' independent reading level and/or at their instructional reading level.

Opportunities for practice are provided.

I decided to focus on my second lesson on vocabulary. Teachers can model and teach
word learning strategies explicitly to show students how to determine the meanings of unknown
words. Three important word learning strategies for vocabulary growth are (1) using context
clues to comprehend word meanings; (2) using word parts (morphemic analysis) to decipher
word meanings; and (3) using the dictionary. (Gipe, 2014) Since I wanted to focus on strategies
that M could apply to all texts, we worked on learning vocabulary through context clues. We read
a science article and pulled out 5 words, 3 of which he had to define by their context. I had M

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complete the Inferring Word Meanings from Context chart on page 250 in Gipes Multiple Paths
to Literacy: Assessment and Differentiated Instruction for Diverse Learners K-12. (2014) For
two of the vocabulary words, he used a dictionary and his own background knowledge to fill out
the Clarifying Table demonstrated on page 235 of the Gipe text (2014). Even though the focus
may be on teaching a new word, associating the new word to words already know will facilitate
learning. Thus, the easiest vocabulary exercises employ simple associations. Students use
knowledge already in their schemata to work with synonyms, antonyms, homophones and
associative words that often occur together (Gipe, 2014)
For our third and final session, I wanted to make sure I gave M a during reading strategy.
I also wanted to make sure that I approached some close reading strategies. So, in last session we
covered reading for a purpose and purposeful annotations. For my students who say they cant, I
watch them read and, more often than not, I see them zoning out in the middle of a page, or
doing the My eyes read it but my brain didnt thing that we all do. Annotation, Ive found, can
help my students focus on a text, especially when that annotation is purposeful rather than fill in
the margins as much as you can. (Stuart Jr, 2016) M struggles reading silently, and close
reading, or making annotations give him a task to focus himself while he reads.
Changes for Next Time
I approached the tutoring sessions much like a normal class period. Looking back on it, I
felt like the work was a bit on the heavy handed for a tutoring session. I used language like
homework and quiz instead of making these sessions focused on assistance and remediation.
Because of that M, got a bit overwhelmed by the end, and so did I. I would like to approach
tutoring with a much different tone next time. I suppose I have never actually tutored before but

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after these sessions I do see a difference between teacher and tutor. Tutors can help by
making connections between classroom learning and real-life situations and planning a mode of
attack for accomplishing larger, seemingly overwhelming assignments. (CITE) Had I been a
little more confident in what I was doing in the lessons, I would have let M pick the content and I
would have adapted the strategy to the content. So, I would have made the lessons a little more
student centered.
Recommendations for Parent
At the end our sessions, my parent letter outlined that M needed to read a variety of
different genres and more often. He also needed to take every opportunity he could to read these
texts out loud. I encouraged her to encourage M to continue using the strategies we used in the
lessons in other classes, especially in science where he articulated having trouble with genre
specific vocabulary. Also in my letter to the parent, was a laundry list of Ms strengths which
included Ms ability to make strong text to self connections and his ability to build upon a wealth
of background knowledge.

References

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Bader, L. A., & Pearce, D. L. (2013). Bader reading and language inventory (7th ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Gipe, J. P. (2014). Multiple paths to literacy: Assessment and differentiated instruction for
diverse learners, K-12 (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Guymon, N. (1950). Conversation piece. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Retrieved April 18,
2016.
Reader's Theater: A Reason to Read Aloud. (2016, April 18). Retrieved April 18, 2016, from
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev/profdev082.shtml
Stuart, D., Jr. (2014, October 11). Purposeful annotation: A "close reading" strategy that makes
sense to my students - Dave Stuart Jr. Retrieved April 18, 2016, from
http://www.davestuartjr.com/purposeful-annotation-close-reading/
True colors personality quiz. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.phigam.org/document.doc?
id=5286