Amber Hosmi

Professor Manion
EDR 317 - Case Study
21 Nov 2016
I. Background Information
Shannon is a second grade female student at Media Elementary. Her family
background includes a Mother, Father, and older Sister. This is her first year in this
school district. She is very social amongst her friends, and is often seen playing with her
friends and socializing in between instructional time. However, Shannon is quickly able
to transition into a well-behaved ready to learn student when necessary. She actively
participates in a one on one setting with the teacher, but is very timid and quiet in the
whole classroom setting. One of her main interests is cheetahs. She loves playing pretend
animals with her peers and discussing cheetahs and learning about their characteristics
whenever she has a chance to do so. For Community Day, students had to choose a career
job for themselves and Shannon chose a Fashion Designer. I was able to observe an
interaction between Shannon and her parents. During Parent Visitation Day, Shannons
parents had the opportunity to work with her on a math activity after Mr. Brown taught a
lesson. Shannon became very frustrated with either the pressure from her parents while
completing the activity, or her incapability to understand and comprehend the material
from the lesson. She became very upset and began to cry and had to excuse herself from
the room. Unfortunately, she was the only student where a situation like this occurred in
the entire classroom.
Whenever Mr. Brown is instructing in front of the class, he often checks in with
Shannon and uses mechanisms to ensure that she is following along and understands the
lesson and information. When asking questions to the class, Mr. Brown frequently allows

enough wait time for every student to show that he or she has an answer. Shannon is often
one of the last to raise her hand, indicating she has an answer to any question, and this is
only after Mr. Brown has asked the question in multiple ways to lead struggling students
to the answer. When Shannon knows that Mr. Brown is waiting for her to have an answer,
she is not afraid to share the answer even if it may be wrong. She shows many
characteristics of a student who is eager to learn and prove herself to the teacher. After
whole class discussions or lessons, Shannon is typically one of the first students Mr.
Brown checks in with to ensure she is on the same page as the rest of the class. The
details provided are typical for every day-to-day instruction time. She always comes into
the classroom with a smile on her face, eager to learn. Her challenge to participating in
class during whole class lessons is that her academic level is well behind everyone else in
the class. Shannon is reading at a level of E, but an average reading level in second grade
is J-K. There is a lot of material Mr. Brown assumes that students in second grade know,
but this is not the case for Shannon. She does not have any diagnosis for any disabilities
this far, however Mr. Brown has begun the process with the school and her parents in
order for an evaluation to begin.
II. Assessment and or/ Literacy Strategies/ Activities
During Reading Workshop, I have gotten a few opportunities to read with
Shannon. Some scenarios have been very informal, where I just quickly check in with her
with whatever time we have remaining. Other scenarios, we have been able to close in on
a skill and really work together where she can verbally practice the skill with me. We
have worked on word recognition, stamina, fluency, comprehension, and retelling. We
worked on these skills mainly because these were areas she lacked skill in. The way

Reading Workshop is set up in this classroom is that students can choose areas they feel
they need the most practice with, and Shannon has chosen most of these areas when I
would converse with her during Reading Workshop. One of my observations from
reading with Shannon during Reading Workshop is that she struggles with word
recognition. When she comes across a word that she does not know, she often jumps to a
different word that she does know beginning with the same letter. She also would just
stop reading altogether occasionally and look at me as though she was expecting me to
give her the correct word. From my observations when I am not directly working with
her- when she does not know a word, and there is no one next to her to help or guide her
reading, she tends to just stop reading altogether and get distracted by something else.
When I encouraged Shannon to sound out words she does not know by breaking them
apart, she was able to sound out each letter to the best of her capability while pointing to
them. She focused extremely hard on sounding out letters to words she does not know
when prompted to do so, and when I helped by pointing to the letters. When I felt that she
did not have any comprehension of the words she was reading, I would stop and ask her a
few questions to make her think about the text. One example we really worked on was
with an informational book about Cheetahs and Leopards. While cheetahs are her favorite
animals and one of her favorite things to even talk about, she really had little knowledge
about the difference between cheetahs and leopards. While she was reading this book to
me, she really seemed interested and eager to understand and comprehend the
information she was reading. After we were finished reading this book, she was able to
retell me all of the facts that she had just learned.

One activity I completed with Shannon was for practice of vocabulary. Mr. Brown
had a vocabulary assessment with Shannon and there were many sight words she did not
know. These words were typical sight words that a student on an average second grade
reading level would know at this point in the school year. I practiced going through these
words with Shannon, using flashcards a few times each day for several days until she
knew all of them. When she did not know certain words, she broke the words apart by
each letter.
Another activity I completed with Shannon was practice of distinguishing
between the letter b and d. Mr. Brown had noticed she was really struggling with
understanding the difference between these letters. I first had her use her hands to make
the different letters using her left pointer finger and her right pointer finger and thumb to
make a b and the opposite fingers to make a d. Once she was able to identify each
letter 10 times in a row with my fingers, we moved onto the flashcards. Mr. Brown had
prepared flash cards of many challenging words with the letter b and d in them.
Shannon really struggled with identifying each letter in the words, but once we practiced
a few times she began to recognize them and distinguish between these letters more
easily. We practiced these flash cards for 3 weeks until she could say each word in the
entire pile without any errors, multiple times through.
One other assessment I was able to observe, but did not administer myself was a
running record assessment. This assessment was for a level E passage. Shannon had
many miscues, including self-correction. She struggled with word recognition and from
her tone in reading and from my observations of her fluency, I could understand that she
really did not comprehend what she was reading in the passage. It appeared to me that

she was unable to use any skills to try and decode any of the words she did not know or
understand. Mr. Brown was able to tell as soon as she completed reading the passage that
she was not ready to move up to the next reading level.
A very interesting assessment I was able to observe was a Mindset activity. While
this activity does not deal directly with reading or language arts, I found it really
interesting and useful in understanding Shannon and her own feelings about her mindset
and herself as a learner. There were 10 questions given including examples like: There
are just some things Ill never be good at and When I make a mistake, I try to learn
from it. The students had to circle agree or disagree about each of the questions. For the
most part, Shannon did not think highly of herself as a student and learner from the way
she answered most of these questions.
III. Evaluation
Childs Strengths:
One of Shannons strengths when reading is that with the proper guidance she is
eager and ready to try her best to read. With the support from a teacher or adult figure,
Shannon is really able to use all of the strategies she is taught in the classroom in order to
identify unfamiliar words, and comprehend texts that she is reading. When she is unsure
of a word, she is able to sound out each letter and attempts to figure out what the word is
and what the sentences are trying to say. When Shannon is asked questions throughout
reading a story, she is able to answer confidently. Also, when she is asked questions
throughout the story, she is able to retell events from the entire story on her own at the
end of reading. During whole class instruction time, when Shannon is absolutely sure of
an answer, she is more than willing to raise her hand and share it with the class. Another

strength Shannon has is that she is able and willing to ask for help when she needs it. This
is something many students struggle with because they are afraid or feel that they are
failing because they need help. Shannon really wants to learn and knows that she will be
able to succeed better if she asks for help when she needs it.
Childs Roadblocks:
One of Shannons main roadblocks is that she is unable to test her own ability and
properly participate in independent reading where students are suppose to practice the
skills from the Mini Lesson that Mr. Brown teaches before independent Reading
Workshop time. She needs the extra support from a teacher or adult figure in the room in
order to keep her on track during independent reading. Without the extra support or
guidance, it is hard for her to use the strategies she is taught in class, to apply to her
reading silently. Another roadblock is that she often does not understand the content and
comprehend what she is reading. She needs guidance while she is reading in order to
comprehend the material. For instance, she needs to be asked questions to really make her
think about what she is reading. One overall roadblock that Shannon struggles with is that
her level of reading is far behind the rest of her classmates. While she is reading at level
E, most of the other students in the room are at least reading at level J. This puts her at a
disadvantage whenever there are opportunities to silently and independently read
anything. When directions are written on the board or in a textbook, she often needs help
to read them, in order to complete whatever task or assignment is requested of the
students.

Instructional recommendations/ Suggestions for Future Instruction:

With the guidance and support Shannon needs, I feel that she will be able to
succeed and continue moving up to higher levels in reading. Some areas she mainly
needs to work on still are word recognition, fluency, asking questions while reading, and
overall comprehension. Some activities that would be beneficial for Shannon are having
guided questions for her to use while she is reading independently, to better comprehend
her books. Activities could include engaging and interactive ways for her to complete
independently, without any adult figure while reading. Materials that use manipulatives
or hands on ways for her to assess her reading such as dice with different questions on
them, or bingo mats with different questions would be useful in keeping Shannons
attention. Some of her main interests include cheetahs, friends, animals, and fashion. Any
activities including these subjects would be beneficial for her. Shannon would also really
benefit from reading aloud to any type of adult/ proficient reader when possible (the way
she has done with me as the field student in the room).
Goals:
1 - Shannon will be able to independently ask herself at least 5 questions while reading in
order to self check that she is comprehending the material.
2 - Shannon will be able to answer 95% of the questions formed by the teacher in a
worksheet or game form, in order to self check her comprehension.
3 Shannon will be able to identify 90% of the sight words she sees in a text.
Book recommendations based on childs ability/needs/interests
Carle, E. (1984). The Very Busy Spider. New York, NY: Scholastic, Inc.

This book will really help Shannon with her focus on her self-checking
comprehension skills. The pattern that the story follows, will help Shannon be
able to come up with questions she can easily ask and answer herself.
Giles, J. (1997). Sally and The Sparrows. Barrington, IL: Reed Elsevier, Inc.
This book uses one of Shannons main interests (animals). She will be engaged in
this story while she will be able to work on word recognition with unfamiliar
words.
Rohman, C. (1998). Glitter Trouble. Columbus, OH: Zaner-Bloser, Inc.
Shannon has mentioned she enjoys crafting and fashion designing, which is why I
chose this book for her. She will be able to ask herself questions while stopping
and thinking throughout this book, since it is a familiar topic for her.
Rohman, C. (1998). The Pets. Columbis, OH: Zaner-Bloser, Inc.
I also chose this story based off of Shannons interests. She will enjoy reading this
book, while learning about different pets included in the story.
Rylant, C. (2005). Puppy Mudge Wants To Play. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
This book is based off of a series of books that follow a typical pattern. Shannon
has read books from this series already, which will help her in comprehending the
story because she has already been introduced to the characters. She will see a
new story when reading, but will be familiar with the events of the story.

IV. Supporting Materials Hand written notes from observations