Mouridy

Christina Mouridy

Professor Gordillo

Case Study

October 30, 2016

Child Name: Alyssa

Age: 5

Child’s Demographics:

Alyssa is a bright, shy 5-year-old girl standing at 3 feet 7 inches, 42 inches in

total, and weighing thirty-nine pounds. Her straight, brown hair reaches down to

the middle of her back being paired with tan skin and wonder-filled brown eyes. At

Parkview Elementary School in Milltown, she attends kindergarten where English is

the primary language spoken. Only two minutes away from her school, she lives

with her Dominican mother and Irish father, Raiza and Tom Dunlap, and her 4-year-

old sister, Gabby. Although her ethnicity is spilt right down the middle, the only

language spoken in the house is English. Her parents are happily married who are

incredibly supportive of both daughters as they provide the best childhood in their

power. Alyssa has a positive outlook on life while becoming timid when faced with a

challenging task where she is not completely confident in her abilities. She has

different responses when being around adults and children her own age. Around

adults, she is slower to break out of her shy exterior and willing to listen to orders

from older individuals. On the other hand, she is a leader around her peers and

more willing to direct the play while being reluctant to other’s ideas that do not

appeal to her. Her ability to socialize and make friends easily grants her the tools to

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have others follow her suggestions during playtime. When told there was two

stations set up: one includes dolls and one includes trucks with only an hour to play

where would she spend her time? Her excited response of the dolls only confirms

she gravities more towards feminine items than masculine ones. As her mother

stated, “she is into anything girlie: bows, glitter, dolls you name it.” Looking around

the middle class house, one could see there were more girls than boys living in the

abode.

Reading Readiness:

Child’s Results on the Test

When testing for Alyssa’s Reading Readiness, I asked her mother to assist

answering the social and emotional development section as a result of the session

limited duration. Although Alyssa is sharing by nature, she wants the sharing to be a

two-way street causing the answer to be in between “always” and “sometimes” as

seen on the checklist. As mom stated, “ Eight times out of ten she will share.” Since

her sister is still learning to share, she is less likely to share with Alyssa causing the

road of sharing to be closed completely. Although Alyssa will follow an adult’s

orders, her leadership skills cause her to less likely cooperate blindly with her

peers’ idea. “If her peers are doing something, she is not interested in she will saying

‘I’m going over here guys’ tries to get a little crowd going her way” said by her

mother in an audio recording of the case study at 12:29. Although she is still has a go

with the flow type of attitude, her confidence is brought out when she is around her

peers. Unfortunately when facing new challenges where she is unsure of her

success, her self-confidence begins to deplete as fear step in unlike a task where her

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success is a hundred percent guaranteed. Even if it is an old ability like riding a bike,

she will give up once the wheels get stuck and reluctant to make a mistake in front

of others. This also leads to answer being “sometimes” regarding her ability to finish

task. Although her skills are not the issue in incompletion of tasks, it is the lack of

self-confidence and her willingness to give up easily in order to prevent looking

foolish. As stated by her mother, “It is not that she can’t do it, it is that she gives up

easily” (21:30). With a reminder of her strength to inflate her self-confidence and a

spurt of whine to relieve her fears, Alyssa will accomplish a task to the best of her

abilities. Her self-control is phenomenal in the way she will stop immediately when

an adult says to, which I have experienced first hand while babysitting. Similar to

her self-control, her ability to regulate herself is superb because in virtually every

situation she knows the difference between right and wrong even if she does not

perform it. If she does going down the wrong road, she will conceal the evidence out

of view of the adults as well as hide herself away from sight. Although she fulfills her

responsibilities in terms of school, she becomes easily distracted when told to do an

undesirable task such as clean up the play area.

During the Physical Development section, Alyssa was ready to play and test

her skills because she understood the case study was about her. She was easily able

to run and said, “watch how fast I can run around this table!” As I dictated new large

motor skills to do such as hopping, skipping, galloping, jumping, she continued to

change to the new motor skill announced while going around the dining room table.

After modeling the difference between trotting and galloping, she was able to

understand the difference and perform them both equally. Although she was

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successful when asked to her walk in a straight line, her feet were not exactly in

front of each other, as a sobriety test would desire. Having Alyssa throw a ball at my

head, chest, and feet tested her throwing capability and another example of

successful hand-eye coordination. She was able to throw and hit each target when

asked. As seen by her physique and ability to perform the motor tasks with ease by

listening and watching where her movements would land her. One could see she

was a generally healthy and vigorous bright, little girl. Fortunately, Alyssa does not

have any auditory or visual defeats. Before testing her fine motor skills, she began to

place the scissors in her left hand, which surprised me due to the popularity of right-

hand dominance. Her mom exclaimed “oh yeah she is a little lefty!” I had her cut

along a previously drawn straight and zigzag line on a narrow piece of construction

paper. At first she used child scissors that were traded for adult scissors with a

warning to be careful due to the child’s dull blade being unable to cut through the

thick paper. Her handling of both sizes of scissors was superb. She was able to cut

the straight line almost completely straight veering off to left towards the end. On

the other hand, the more difficult line being the zigzag seemed was still done with

ease. When she worked her way up to the top of the paper, she cut the last zigzag

with the scissors coming from the top instead of the bottom of the paper because it

allowed her to ensure her fingers safety. After performing both task, she stated that

cutting the zigzag was harder than the straight line. Then I had her color in the lines

of three shapes that I drew on the one of the sides of the zigzag paper. After drawing

a triangle, square, and circle, I have her color in the lines. While coloring she holds

the marker with her index and middle fingers over the top of the marker with her

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thumb and the rest of her hand resting below the marker. She is able to color in the

lines fairly well and without difficulty. After looking at the paper one could assume

she had the greatest trouble with the circle when looking at the paper, but when

asked she said the triangle was the hardest to color. While she is transitioning to

properly holding the pencil with one finger, Alyssa writing improves after viewing

an adult write the word as seen when she writes her name in comparison to writing

her kindergarten sight words after I wrote them. When writing her name, she did

not pause due to forgetting the next letter instead it was remember the shape of the

letter. She remembered to capitalize the beginning letter, A, with the beginning

stroke starting form the top towards the left then a second going from the top to the

right finalized by the final line directly between them. Following closely next to her

first letter, she wrote a correct “l” starting from the top to the bottom in one quick

stroke of the red marker. Although the next letter was correct, her “y” was

backwards beginning with a straight line angled to the right finished with a final

stroke being introduced aside the first stroke finishing slightly past the middle of

the first line. It was also higher than the first two letters written in her name. Her

fourth and fifth letters in her name started identically below the “y” written

properly in one swift “s” motion of the marker. Her final letter was written away

from the other letters primarily due to remember how to write a proper lowercase

“a.” She began with a line straight down the paper starting from the top to the

bottom followed by a curved line starting from the start of her first mark finishing

past the middle of the line similar to how a lowercase “c” would finish. In order to

have copy letters, I wrote two simple sight words that would appear around

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Halloween in order to help keep her engaged: cat and black. Her lowercase “c” was

identical to mine by starting in one swift curved movement. Followed by her

lowercase “a” that vastly improved from her first one in her name, she replicated my

model of lowercase “a” by writing the letter in one motion as opposed to two. Alyssa

began with the curved stroke of the lowercase “a” starting slightly below the first

letter finishing with a line up to meet her starting point then finishing back down to

make the tail of the “little a” as she referred to it. Although her “t” was correct, it

represented an uppercase “t” instead of a lowercase one because it started with one

line down the middle past the beginning letters of the word. She finished the letter

with a straight-line beginning from right to left passing through the top of the first

mark instead of the middle. The lowercase “b” began beautifully with a straight line

starting from top to bottom finishing with a curved line at the middle and finishing

at the bottom of the straight stroke. Her lowercase “l” had minuscule curve to the

right as she was descending down from the beginning of the letter. Although the

straight line of her “a” was ideal, her lowercase “a” in the word “black” was similar

to the “a” in her name due to the abruptly shallow curve of the letter. Her ideal “c”

was identical to the “c” in her written cat. Her final letter began with a swift motion

straight down the paper with a second mark starting next to the first mark and

finishing at the middle of it. She finished with a straight-line beginning where the

first two lines met angled towards the right to form an excellent lowercase “k”. Her

final eye-hand coordination “game” was drawing a stick figure starting with a circle

starting from the bottom. She drew the person’s body with a straight line down the

middle of the circle resembling a lollipop. Then she made a horizontal line starting

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from the left to right going through the center of the straight line to represent his

arms. Her stick person was completed by two strokes starting from the end of the

straight line. One was angled to the left while the other was to the right to depict

legs.

In order to keep Alyssa’s interest while measuring her cognitive

development, I referred to the task to demonstrate visual and auditory

discrimination as “games.” When testing her ability to visual discrimination, I

paired some of the tasks with Assessing Knowledge of Word Study and A

Phonological Awareness Test in order to decrease the repetition and duration of

Alyssa’s time to focus on task where she knew were not games instead tests of her

ability. Her mother’s thoughts about Alyssa’s self-consciousness proved to be true as

seen in the task that seemed to come easy for her in opposition to task that were

viewed as more challenging for anyone her age and even above. For identifying

geometric shapes, I drew a circle, oval, heart, square, rectangle, and triangle on giant

chalkboard door that leads to the garage. Without even tell her, she knew I wanted

her to point to or name the shape as I call it out or pointed to it. She was able to

identify and label every shape including the more challenging ones that cause others

her age to become confused such as a circle and an oval. In order to identify colors,

we looked at a Shapes book while I asked without pointing to the various colored

objects on the page such as a balloon, dress, or hair. She was able to name all her

primary, secondary, and even most of tertiary colors known as little or dark of the

color being shown. In order to test her visual memory, I used flashcards with

different pictures on them from the fast food restaurant Wendy’s. I would test Alyssa

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by showing her a card for five seconds then take it away and have her tell me what

was on the card. She was able to remember ever card showed from helicopter to a

mermaid. In order to test for auditory discrimination, I had her say the animal

sounds as well as listening to a video her mother had to help her girls get

familiarized with familiar sounds such as a bell or toilet. With a smile on her face the

whole time, she was able to identify each sound as it appeared and made the sound

of the animal with ease. Although I tested her ability to rhyme with Assessing

Knowledge of Word Study Skills, I asked her ten sets of words pairs: five rhyming

and five non-rhyming. After being told the rules of the game and how some pairs

would rhyme where others did not, she was able to correctly identify the pairs that

rhyme as oppose to non-rhyming pairs.

Language Development Assessment:

Child’s Results on the Test

While performing the Checklist for Assessing Learning Development, Alyssa

did superb by excelling at most of the tasks even ones challenging for her age group.

Along with being able to speak in one- and two-word sentences, she is also able to

read both types of sentences. She can hold her own in a conversation by presenting

her own ideas and unique points. Through the many active conversation during the

numerous babysitting sessions as well as in the case study, Alyssa depict the ability

to speak in full sentences while freely talking to anyone present in the interaction,

which she is also able to read as seen later. As well as the ability to understand the

language spoken to her without the lengthy pauses a younger recipient may require

in order to process the meaning of the words being spoken to him. A conversation

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should have a flow between the participants to prevent the conversation

transforming into a monologue. Unlike some children her age, Alyssa is able to be

fully understood by others due to her ability to use fully formed sentence equip with

appropriate vocabulary for her age group even ahead in some situations spoken

perfect pronunciation. Also discovered during babysitting, she is always able to

understand verbal direction regardless if she follows the orders or not. Although she

does not understand the word “phoneme,” she is able to make every short or long

sounds of each letter while learning about the relationship of the silent “e” and

vowels. In order to test her ability of differentiating similar sounds and identifying

familiar sounds, the mom had a video that gave the sounds of the present day world

as mentioned previously. Also in case this was able testing her ability to

differentiate and identify phonemes, I selected random phonemes from the alphabet

while she deciphered the correct letter. She did fantastic on both task whiling being

more enthusiastic to identify the video sounds than the phonemes. Since she is still

learning about the various ways to form the syntactic structure of a sentence, her

spoken sentences are of various lengths, but she does not include preposition as

expected at her age. Most of her sentences have fully formed ideas spoken with a

point.

Test of Concepts About Books:

Child’s Achievement on Test

Since I used children books from around the house to give Alyssa an aspect of

familiarity, Alyssa identified the title of the books on three separate occasions while

holding books of various sizes. The first two books she selected were missing a

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cover page or had a drop letter that confused Alyssa’s schema of books. The final

book used for a majority of the test was Elmo Visits a Farm, a pop-up book written

with influence from the children’s television show, Sesame Street. First, I asked

Alyssa to show me the front and back of the book. With a confused look as if to say,

“how could anyone not know this,” she pointed to the front of the book then flipped

it to show the back. I said, “I know it is silly, but some kids have trouble with books.”

Then I redirected her to the activity by challenging her to display the title on the

cover and the title page. She simply underlined the title with her finger then flipped

to the inside of the book to reveal the cover page. Lastly, I inquired if she knew

where to start reading. She flipped past the cover page to reveal the first page then

went a step further by pointing to the first sentence.

When testing her conventions of print, she successful answered the

questions with scaffolding only with foreign terminology. By asking her questions

about the aspects of reading instead of simply letting her read, Alyssa was confused

on how the was testing anything because she thought it was common knowledge.

Instead of posing one question, I paired questions that had associated aspects of

literacy. First I asked her to identify where the book is telling the story as well as

where we begin to read. She began by circling the text on the page then pointed to

the first word on the page on the left. By acknowledging reading starts on the left,

she is depicting her understanding of reading occurring from left to right leading

into the next question. While her finger was still under the first word, I asked her

which way we read the words. She continued to move her finger from the starting

word on the left to the last word right as she moved along the page. Once she

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reached the end of the sentence, I asked where she would start to read next. She

moved her finger to the left of the page again while landing on the first word on the

left of the next sentence. Then I turned to the next page that had a long length of the

story to answer my last question: which way do the words go from? At first she did

not know what I meant, then I reworded the question to make the main focus how

the story is read. She goes “oh” then moves her finger from the top line to the

bottom of the page in a straight line.

While testing her concepts about words and letters, she accomplished each

task easily once she fully understood the objective. First I had her underline the

words with her finger as I read them aloud. For the following questions, her mother

offered using a dry erase marker on the book to assist in communication. As I asked

her to circle a word on the page, the dumbfounded look appear on her face again as

she took the green marker and circled one of the words. Then I challenged her to

identify the first and last word on the page. She swiftly circled each with boredom in

her eyes paired with a subtle smile. Finally, I asked her to locate a letter of both

letter cases. At first I used the words “uppercase and lowercase,” which she looked

at her mom with a puzzling look while her mom responded “big letters and little

ones.” The light bulb illuminated above her head as she circled three letters each

referencing the solution to one of the challenges.

The final section concerning concepts of punctuation was found to be the

most difficult for Alyssa simply due to her lack of exposure to this advanced aspect

of literacy. At first I tried to have her identify a period, which she shyly showed at

the end of one of the sentences. When questioned about is purpose, she fell quiet as

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the confidence began to leave her. I tried to ask her about other punctuation marks,

but she said, “I don’t know.” I turned to her mother to ask if she had been exposed to

punctuation marks. Raize explained the children are introduced to punctuation later

in the year. In order to keep Alyssa involved, I simply moved on from this session

leaving it as non-applicable.

Instruction Suggestions

Since Alyssa has a strong concept about books, there are only two

suggestions to further her growth. She should be introduced to beginning chapter

books such as the Toad and Frog Series. By introducing advanced books at a young

age, she will have exposure before many of her peers allowing her to continue to

grow her reading capability. Also my transitioning her to books that still incorporate

pictures, she will be more confident in her ability due to the familiarity of the new

challenge. Not only with this assist in language, this may promote self-confidence

regarding literacy due to her strong foundation and advanced knowledge about

reading. Leveled books would be a fantastic way of introducing Alyssa to advanced

books. These books correlate with various grade levels by slowly increasing the

difficulty of the literacy. As Morrow stated, “it is encouraged that children not worry

about a book’s level during this time. These are times when we want children to

choose literature that is of interest to them regardless of difficulty” (Morrow, 329).

These books will allow Alyssa to become more confident and comfortable with

longer books including chapters. Also this will allow her to plan the level of difficulty

for that particular moment and permit her to flow from one level to the next without

a set level.

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Although Alyssa will come in contact with punctuation, it is never too early to

introduce this system. Since she could not identify any punctuation marks and

meaning except periods, it may be helpful to begin building her foundation enabling

her to form schemas about for these marks. When her teacher introduces

punctuation as part of the curriculum to “support children’s growing understanding

of punctuation, capitalization and spelling through modeling and scaffolding

activities and ‘teachable moments’ during child-initiated and independent writing

experiences” (CCSS 2015). These topics are difficulty for children to grasp because they

are often ignored or glanced over in order to focus on comprehension of words and story.

When Alyssa comes in contact with punctuation while reading, it would be beneficial to

point out that every sentence has a mark at the end. During meaningful reading, this is the

prime time to introduce the meaning and use of punctuation. By encourage Alyssa to

point out punctuation, she will become more aware of the uses for punctuation and draw

interest of why certain marks are used in various sentences. When she points out

punctuation directly or indirectly, she should be give positive reinforcement that focuses

on praising her effort instead of intellectual ability.

Letter Identification:

Child’s Performance on the TestWhen asked for a small selection of the alphabet from the book during the

Concepts About Book Assessment, she completed identifying letters without

breaking a sweat. For the Letter Identification Test, I wanted to make it difficult by

incorporating uppercase and lowercase letters from the entire alphabet. Instead of

giving her the alphabet either from a book or hand-written to test Letter

Identification, I used a simply phrase with uppercase and lowercase incorporated

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that contains all the letters in the alphabet as depicted: ThE qUicK BrOwn FoX juMPs

oVer alL tHe lAzY DoGs. Underneath each letter was a line where she had to identify

if it was an uppercase or lowercase letter. All the uppercase and lowercase letters

aligned with each other creating a prominent distinction in height. Before the going

through each letter, I taught her another name for big letter and little letters being

uppercase and lowercase respectfully. Then I instructed her to write an “l” on the

line under the letter if the letter was lowercase. On the other hand, she should put a

“u” if the letter is uppercase. After testing her connection of uppercase with big

letter and lowercase with little letters, I begin asking her to find all letters of each

letter in the alphabet located in the sentence. Then reminded her to categorize it by

writing a “u” or “l” on the line. Similar to her results on the Concepts About Books,

she breezed through selecting the letters upon their names being called. She was

able to correctly identify each letter perfectly, but her difficulties arose during

categorizing the letters as uppercase and lowercase. Although I am going to discount

her incorrect categorization of the “u”s as a result of my writing style, I am going to

credit a point to her for identifying two “u”s in the sentence. Out of the 52 letters

displayed, Alyssa correctly selected all 52 letters meaning her test score is 52/52.

Although her categorization of letter was not a perfect score, her score was not far

behind the previous perfect test. While selecting the appropriate letter case, she did

not display much difficulty while being confident in her answer without being able

to be swayed to her consider when questioned. Also she was adamant on finding all

the letters of the announced letter before categorizing them as uppercase or

lowercase. Out of the 39 letters present in the sentence, she categorizes only four of

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them incorrectly. Since I am going to discount both “u”s present in the sentence due

to my incorrect representation of the uppercase U, Alyssa will still receive a point

for selecting both “u”s out of the sentence. The way I drew the uppercase “U” in

“qUicK” had a tail identical to the lowercase version because my handwriting is a

combination of print and cursive. In the cursive rendition, the uppercase and

lowercase U has a tail whereas only the lowercase U has a tail when writing print. At

first she marked the first “u” encountered in “quick”, which was uppercase including

a tail, as lowercase. After a second glance, she changed it to uppercase because she

could clearly see the letter around it were lowercase. The second “u” was marked as

uppercase despite being lowercase as indicated by the uppercase “m” while being

proportional to the lowercase “j” beginning the word “jump.” Another mistake

occurred in the same word where she made her first mistake. Instead of

categorizing the lowercase “c” in quick as lowercase, Alyssa clearly wrote a “U”

underneath the “c” to depict the letter as uppercase. Although I consider her mistake

to be due to my writing style, the adults who I had identify the “c” with its letter case

all responded with lowercase. The final inaccuracy made on the test was the “s”

marked as uppercase despite being clearly written as lowercase because it was

significantly smaller than the uppercase “G” beside it in the word, “dogs.” When

testing the adults, they collectively categorized the “s” as lowercase. Since I counted

the two “u”s as one, her final score on the categorization of the letter case is 36/38,

which makes 94.7%.

Instructional SuggestionWhen I first arrived at the house, Raiza prepared a lovely dinner that she

insisted I consume before testing Alyssa. While I was eating, Alyssa energetically

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hopped over to me asking if it was time for testing. In order to keep her enthusiasm

for the test, I set up the “game” while finishing my meal because it is important to

give the child opportunities to be the leader. As stated in The Intentional Teacher a

large portion of a child’s life is planned by parents, children should be given the

opportunity to plan “that is, the chooser begins with a specific goal or purpose in

mind that results in the choice and treat children’s plans with respect” (Epstein, 35).

If Alyssa wants to do work now, she should be given an assignment to do because

she decided to voice her request for duty. By looking over this vocal desire, it may

diminish her drive to perform task that result in responsibility rather than fun.

During testing, Alyssa was quick to identify the letters by scanning each word in the

sentence before categorizing the letter case. Upon hearing my instruction to

categorize the present letter before finding the remaining letters of the announced

letter, she would not be sway to adapting a new strategy even if it was time efficient.

After a few failed attempts of introducing my timesaving strategy, I simply let her

finish the test using her own formulated strategy. Since she would finish the test

successful using either strategy, I remembered to provide children opportunities to

discover their own style of learning. “While the adult’s solution may be more

efficient or effective, simply telling the child what he should do would deprive him

of an opportunity to learn and develop confidence in his independent problem-

solving abilities” (Epstein, 38). Allowing Alyssa to discover her own solution is

incredibly important especially at this age where growth in all area is occurring. She

should be given opportunities throughout her day to plan by making intentional

choices. Regarding letter identification particularly, she should continue to create

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meaningful connections between letters and words as she had mastered simply

letter identification. Simply letter identification activities such as letter puzzles that

would assist her younger sister in letter identification will no longer promote

growth for Alyssa because her knowledge of letters has transformed from this

meaningful game to simply repetition. Although her letter identification is superb,

letter case still requires meaningful practice before reaching mastery. As depicted in

Literacy Development on page 142, there are many ways of promoting meaningful

connection. For Alyssa, I have selected: magnetic upper-and lowercase with a board,

tactile letters, clay for shaping letters, and letter stencils. As well as letters in various

fonts, she should begin to be introduced to cursive handwriting. Another task would

be to ensure that Alyssa can write everyone in her nuclear family including their last

name, Dunlap.

Phonological Awareness Assessment

Child’s Performance on the TestWhen testing her Phonological Awareness, I wrote the words out for certain

task on child-ruled paper enabling her to be familiar with on aspect of the new

challenging task. At this point, she understood these were tests of her literacy ability

causing her to becoming less confident in her skills to perform the new tasks. In

order to help get her prepared and keep her spirits high, I had her get make an

“angry face” to show she was ready for the challenge ahead! After making her angry

face, her confidence returned to her eyes depicting her confidence and competence

working together to allow her to succeed to the best of her ability. Before testing her

ability to distinguish spoken words, I wrote all the sentences out on the child ruled

paper. Then I introduced the game by modeling the sentence “I like apples” by

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underlining each word as I said them. After acknowledging she understood the

game, I instructed that I was going to say the words first and then she is going to

repeat them while underlining each word again. I spoke at a steady rate slower than

normal conversation while she underlined each word distinctly. At first she simply

repeated after me without underlining a second time. After reminding her to

underline while she spoke as well, she spoke slower as she focused on two tasks at

one of underline and speaking. She was able to underline each word creating clear

separation between each word as I read. To test her rhyming ability, I simply had

verbally interaction with her stating the objective of the game. Although I told her

she would have to categorize the pair of words as rhyming or non-rhyming, she

began to say every pair rhymes after being introduced to the game by a rhyming

pair. When I reminded her not all the pairs rhymed, she listened closer to hear if the

words actually rhymed or not. She categorized each pair properly including the pair,

food and yellow, which she categorized as rhyming at the beginning of the game

when she was under the false notion all the pairs rhymed. Although her ability to

understand and distinguish rhyming versus non-rhyming pairs was expected, her

result in the next task of formulating a word that rhymes with a prompt was

astounding. The speed of her response when prompted with a word to rhyme was

incredibly quick regardless of the difficulty. She was asked to create a word that

rhymes with the following list: dog, light, sad, jump, and eat. Each word was

presented one at a time. Her responses are as followed: frog, bright, mad, bump, and

meat. Her responses were more complex than I anticipated especially towards the

more challenging words as the game progressed. All the words on her list were real

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words said with proper pronunciation. Also I was taken back when she responded

with a word that I did not think about such as jump. Her rhyming ability is superb

especially by her ability to provide real word instead of formulated language. Since

she is only at age five, syllables seemed to be the most challenging aspect of

phonological awareness. I presented the words slowly while placing emphasis on

the syllables. In order to assist in understanding the objective, I modeled the word

“good-bye” due to the familiarity of the word. The easiest words were compound

words or easily heard such as kitten, cellphone, or paperclip. She was able to hear

the words as the syllables were deconstructed. On the other hand, words that

heavily related on each syllable to be understood caused difficulty such as table or

happy. She needed to remember the beginning syllable in order for the final syllable

to make sense. Deconstructing into syllables went smooth due to the assistance I

gave her. Since she did not have a firm understanding of syllables, I taught her the

tool of putting her hand under your chin to feel for syllables. After instructing her

that chin dropping is an indication of a syllable, she was able to understand how

many syllables would be in a word. Once hearing a word, she would repeat it then

say the number of times her chin dropped positively correlating with the amount of

syllables present. Although on the paper, she did not grasp the idea that letters at

the end are also syllables. I think she used the line as a divider of the syllables

instead of a representation of the syllables. Since she is young, I gave her the full

point for identifying how many syllables are in a word as long as they are close to

the proper placing. When testing for initial sound, she was able to provide the

correct sound including compound sounds such as /ch/ for chocolate and /sh/ for

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shy. When testing for phonological awareness, phonemes also posed problems due

to her lack of exposure. As I paused between each sound, she did not understand at

first that by saying the sounds at a quicker pace the word would be revealed. After

initially saying the sounds, I would increase the speed slowly until she was able to

understand without simply telling her the word. The only word she was not able to

figure out was “actor,” which she thought was excitedly responded “cror.” Not only

may Alyssa not often come in contact with this word, it also starts with a vowel

causing the first phoneme to be softer than the others in the activity. Again due to

her lack of foundation regarding phonemes and my inability to fully convey their

meaning and purpose, she did not perform well on counting phonemes and was

unable to understand the concept. I will not be counting this section because it was

simply too advanced without proper scaffolding, which I do not feel like I provided.

She did not understand the marks could go in between the letters and not every

letter receives a mark. As seen in her results on the paper, she placed a mark where

she thought the phoneme was usually one in between every letter while leaving the

end without a mark similar to deconstructing syllables. She had more success with

switching phonemes than counting them. In order to assist her, I wrote all the words

on paper to depict only one phoneme was changing to create a new word. The

model word was rat transforming into hat. I showed by removing the “r” and

replacing it with an “h” a new word would form: hat. From then on I wrote the word

down with the phoneme she was replacing the initial sound with. By writing fan

then an “r,” I may have confused her to believe she was suppose to replace the

ending of the word instead of the beginning. This caused her to respond with the

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word “far” than “roar,” which I am discounting because she did not fully

comprehend the objective of the task. She was able to successful transform the list:

sit, trip, sew, and break to pit, grip, bow, and make. Once she fully understood the

task, she was able to accomplish each task with little assistance. After discounting

the task and words that posed difficulty due to their advanced aspects, her final

score is 38/38, which is 100%.

Instructional Suggestion

Although the majority of Alyssa’s difficulty is due to the advanced literacy

objectives without a proper foundation for success, it is important to take this

opportunity to begin to introduced these advanced topics while building a

foundation to ensure the next occurrence can be used to promote meaningful

learning. Before providing activities for meaningful learning, Alyssa needs to be

introduced to phonemes and syllables before attempting to use them. “Those letter

sounds and combinations of letter sounds are referred to as phonemes” (Morrow

160.) She should also have a strong understand of phonics simply meaning an

understanding that is a connection between sounds and letters. Since there are at

least 44 sounds for 26 letters, it is difficult for children to have a strict

understanding of phonics due to the irregularities and exceptions. The analytic

approach to phonics may be an entrance into this advanced literacy. In this

approach, “each letter is not isolated but taught within the context of an entire word

so as not to distort its sound. Words are also looked at to find patterns or chunk so

that children can sound out one sound and then a group of letters together to

decode a word” (Morrow, 167). Another helpful way to build phonics is by having a

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strong understand of vowels and consonants. The easiest way to encourage

meaningful learning is by having Alyssa formulate and write books and poems. This

will allow her to use phonological awareness and creativity independently to convey

unique storylines. Poetry will allow Alyssa to further her knowledge of rhyming and

syllables by creating various types of poetry. Another useful method to promote

creativity while combating reluctance is wordless books that have an explicit story

line using pictures instead of words. “These books are good for children who are age

5 and older. The child creates a story by reading the pictures” (Morrow, 329). These

books will give Alyssa a topic to start with while still allowing freedom to use her

imagination to formulate the text.

Language Development Test

Prompt: Tell me all about your Halloween.

(The Italic text is Alyssa while the standard font is me.)

I’m going to trick or treat a lot. Well of course I am going to trick or treat a lot. Of

course I’m gonna go to trunk or treat. What’s trunk or treat? Like you trick or treat

with trunks. You know like you go around a parking lot like somewhere a big parking

lot like by my school’s parking lot and then you like there’s like everyone’s some

people’s trunks are like parked and then you’re like trick or treating in there in that

parking lot and you are wearing your costume. What’s your costume? Butterfly! It has

a little butterfly belt so it’s like a black belt like this color black and it wraps around

and like there is a little butterfly on the side right here. And it has like a blue top. It

looks like wings on the bottom of the skirt and like the skirt in the middle of the skirt it

is like this color black. It is like kind of color black without this like pink strip. It doesn’t

look like this because this is um a bat this is like a bat girl. And it comes with wings too.

I love the wings I mean the wings looks so sparkly. the wings look amazing like sparkly

I just love the wings. Gabby has the same costume.

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I’m going to trick or treat a lot.

1. Well of course I am going to trick or treat a lot. (12)2. Of course I’m gonna go to trunk or treat. (9)

What’s trunk or treat? 3. Like you trick or treat with trunks. (7)4. You know like you go around a parking lot. (9)5. Like somewhere a big parking lot. (6)6. Like by my school’s parking lot. (6)7. And then you like there’s lik4e everyone’s some people’s trunks are like parked.

(13) 8. And then you’re like trick or treating in there in that parking lot. (13)9. And you are wearing your costume. (6)

What’s your costume? 10. Butterfly!(1)11. It has a little butterfly belt so it’s like a black belt like this color black (16)12. And it wraps around (4)13. And like there is a little butterfly on the side right here. (12)14. And it has like a blue top. (7) 15. It looks like wings on the bottom of the skirt (10) 16. And like the skirt in the middle of the skirt it is like this color black. (16) 17. It is like kind of color black without this like pink strip.(12)18. It doesn’t look like this because this is um a bat this is like a bat girl. (17)19. And it comes with wings too. (6)20. I love the wings I mean the wings looks so sparkly. (11)21. The wings look amazing like sparkly I just love the wings. (11)22. Gabby has the same costume. (5)

Results

Average length per t-unit: 9.5 words

Total number of words spoken: 209

Number of different words: 87

Number of different adjectives: 13

Number of different adverbs: 6

Child’s Performance and Improvement Suggestions

Despite having distractions from her sister, being recorded, and seeing a

dictation, Alyssa told an enthusiastic story about her Halloween with convey specific

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information that weaved into her next topic. However the longer she spoke without

my response, she became less comfortable with the conversation as it transformed

into a monologue. In order to assist the story, I asked questions when she seemed to

come to the end of that section. For example, after telling me about having to wear

one’s costume to trunk or treat, I asked her about her costume for the spooky event

that she went on to describe in full detail. She used various adjective, adverbs,

conjunctions, and even prepositions to covey the detail about trunk or treat and her

costume. Although her sentences had well formulated detail, they were long and

often spoken without punctuation. With many children this age, Alyssa has adapted

prepositions and conjunctions such as “like” or “and” entwine new topics together in

order to assist with being understood. She is able to remember events in great detail

especially ones that bring enjoyment even if they are new experiences such as new

costumes. A T-Unit is “an independent clause with all its dependent clauses attached

that is helpful in measuring a child’s language complexity” (Morrow, 509). Her

average t unit length was nine and a half words.

In order to continue the growth of language complexity, children need to

hear the language being modeled from various sources at school and home. One of

the easiest ways to increase language complexity is by using complex and proper

language around Alyssa as often as possible. Language modeling may even

incorporate difficulty words found in child or adult literature. Although her

language with growth and become complex with age and effort, it is important that

she has opportunities to use this language especially if it is new. By providing

meaningful activities and moments to use this language, Alyssa will have a greater

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chance of remember this new, challenging content. Two simply ways of promoting

complexity are by writing one’s work and asking about specific events with detail.

When Alyssa writes or creates a writing work regardless of its complexity, she

should read it aloud to practice phonics and promote language development.

Another way is by asking about specific events that are meaningful to her life such

as interests, shows, school, and questions about the life. She should feel comfortable

to talk about anything without fear of looking foolish for mistakes especially since

this is a true fear for her. Overall, her language is probably better than average, and

her language is developing wonderfully due to her parent’s support.

Parent Survey

Since Alyssa and Gabby are still learning to read, small print usually found in

magazines and written messages are not the main focus of reading. Instead the

parents supply a plethora of materials for their daughters to practice meaningful

literacy. As seen by the check in A Parent-Involvement Framework, there is a space

at home for books and magazines located in the basement. Mostly filled with

children books of all varieties including picture, chapter, pop-up, rhythmic, folklore,

fairytales, and concepts. The only book type I have not personally seen at their

house is Issue Books. As mentioned in Types of Children’s Books, “A new trend in

children’s books is the introduction of controversial issues facing society today.

Examples of topics include divorce, abuse, sexuality and war. Debate surrounds

whether or not children should be exposed to these at a young age.” These types of

books allow children to have an understanding that life is not a fairytale. In life there

are events that cause grief and suffering, children are often shielded from knowing

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about until self-discovery from usually a written source. By introducing these events

early in life while reading, children are given a safe environment to show emotion

and ask questions with whom they trust most, their parents. At the moment, they do

not subscribe to a child’s magazine and most of the reading material is located in the

two towering bookcases within the basement. In between the bookcases, the

parents build four selves packed with fluffy stuffed animals to be used. There is a

dollhouse on the floor along with many dolls to choose from including Barbies,

Bratz, Disney, and many more that I failed to identify. Although they don’t have tape

recording that I know of, both girls have tablets filled with educational shows and

lessons. Unlike the reading material, writing supplies is located in the kitchen as

well as the table in the basement. The girls especially Alyssa know the location of all

the materials necessary for literacy.

The parents provide meaningful activities for literacy involving independent

and social aspects depending on the task or game. They read and direct daughter’s

attention to important information for the reading material such as books,

magazines, and newspapers both online and in print. Not only do they take turns

reading, they also pause to discuss the story while looking at the pictures if they are

present. While babysitting, Alyssa has told me about visiting the library to select

books to bring home. Although their mother has discussed books the girls are

interested in, they have personally told me stories about family and things they are

going to do such as gymnastics. Raize discusses any written material she comes

across with her children in simply or complex ways depending on various elements.

Mail is one of the most important written resources to introduce because it builds

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the child’s foundations of the postal system. Although the parents left number five

blank, any type of reading and writing can be a model for your child because it

depicts how important theses skills are for life. Raize points out print found in the

environment such as when she ask where they got the burgers from while pointing

to the “Wendy’s” bag. While writing they do not talk about how they are writing

their daughter’s names, their daughters especially Alyssa have a strong sense of the

formulation of their names. It may be beneficial to correct Alyssa from making the

“y” backwards even though it will be self corrected in time. As well as pointing

environmental print outside of the home, familiar prints in brand names and

instructions of various kinds are important. Since she is fairly familiar with

environmental print of all kinds, she should be moved on to reading instruction of

all types in order to get in the habit of reading the instructions before action and

increase independence. It is always a helpful way to cement meaningful moments in

ordinary events. When the girls are old enough to write small print, the parents will

start to make lists as suggested in the checklist.

In order to foster positive attitudes toward reading and writing, it is

important to reward your child’s attempts at reading and writing despite the level of

perfection. While supporting Alyssa’s success and attempts at literacy, Raize and

Tom answer any questions posed about reading and writing. Although it is difficult

to continuously make literacy a pleasurable activity, it is important a child learns

that reading opens new doors to knowledge that would remain closed otherwise. As

important as literacy being meaningful and enjoyable, the parents understand their

daughters’ accomplishments of completed work should be present around the home

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to promote a sense of encouragement and accomplishment. By visiting school,

volunteering, and attending programs, Raize and Tom displays to their daughters

how important their education is while depicting support for any issue that may

arise. When visiting school and speaking to their daughters’ teachers, Raize and Tom

ask if they can volunteer in any way while posing concerns about Alyssa’s literacy

skills. Although they do not visit their children during school hours, they always

want to know more about what their daughters are learning at school and ways to

promote growth in these areas at home. Since English is the language spoken at

home, Alyssa does not have any difficulty communicating with the school similar

their ability to write and read in English. Luckily, she has not depicted any difficulty

with hearing, visual, or other issues.

Summary

Throughout the assessment, Alyssa’s behavior could be described as excited,

focused, enthusiastic, and confident. When being faced with an easy task, she

confidently answered the questions without being swayed by my attempts to

confuse her. On the other hand when faced with a more difficult challenge, she

would be more reluctant to perform the task eagerly especially after an extended

period of time. As her mother stated, Alyssa only needed me to engage in some

humor of “putting an anger face on” in order to succeed at the task. This simple

action expelled the fear while allowing her confidence and competence to work

together. Alyssa is grasps new concepts easily especially when conveyed to her in a

meaningful way that unloads unknown knowledge. When deconstructing syllables,

she adopted the tools of putting one’s hand under the chin to feel for the syllables.

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This led her to accomplishing the task while beginning to understand about

syllables. For example she felt two drops when saying “today” allow her to know

there are two syllables in the word. Also she is incredible bright as seen by her

ability to see through my game quickly. Although I introduced all my tests as

“games,” she saw through the façade. Although I was taken back by her ability to see

through my cipher, this instance was a refreshing reminder that children of all levels

have an understanding of how the world works. Instead of trying to hide tasks,

Alyssa can conquer the task better when motivated and has a full comprehension of

the objectives. When encountering new challenges, it is important to promote

intrinsic motivation, “which is the desire to engage in behaviors for enjoyment,

challenge, pleasure, or interest” (Morrow, 320). This will promote Alyssa to take

initiative to face challenges of all types.

I thoroughly enjoyed this experience because it gave me an understanding of

my weaknesses and strengthens as an educator. Although I am excellent at keeping

a child’s attention, I do not know how to assist them in accomplishing a task when

they are incredibly reluctant. When I first attempted the Language Development

Test, Alyssa did not want to do it especially when I was attempting to have her

create a story from a picture instead of simply convey a personal story to me. Also I

fully understand how important having a complete comprehension of the teaching

objectives and how to instruct a child while incorporating their strengths and

weaknesses.

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References

Epstein, Ann S. The Intentional Teacher: Choosing the Best Strategies for Young Children's Learning. Washington: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2007. Print.

Morrow, Lesley Mandel. (2015). Literacy Development in the Early Years. New

York, New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

"Types of Children’s Books." Types of Children’s Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.

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