deborah geer case study: jim university of new england edu...

Case Study: Jim 1 Deborah Geer

Deborah Geer

Case Study: Jim

University of New England

EDU 741 Literacy Assessments as Teaching Tools

10-21-11


Background Information

Jim is a beginning kindergartener who will be six years old in December. He has

completed two years of preschool at Staffordville School and has been introduced to letters

along with phonological awareness concepts. Both his mother and pre-k teacher have

expressed concerns about his reading readiness skills. Jim was eligible in the state of

Connecticut for kindergarten in the 2010-2011 school year. His parents reported that they

decided to not send him to kindergarten last year due to his late birthday, immaturity, and lack

of interest in academics.

During the testing, Jim came to each testing situation with a smile on his face and was

cooperative. It was noted that during the Phonemic Awareness Survey that he was distracted

by the letter chart on the wall and at this point the assessment was stopped and completed the

next day. The testing took place mostly at a desk outside the classroom; however, the first part

on the phonemic awareness section was completed in the classroom.

Jim was chosen for this case study because he has had two years of pre-k at Staffordville

School, has been exposed to some of the concepts that he was tested on, and had difficulty at

the end of pre-k with letter identification and phonological awareness tasks such as rhyming. I

Name: Jim Date of Report: October 21, 2011

Grade: Kindergarten Dates of Testing: September 12, 2011 to October 6, 2011

School: Staffordville School Date of Birth: December 21, 2005

Age at Testing: 5.10 Examiner: Deborah Geer


had worked with Jim in the past, so I knew that he would be comfortable with me, which would

help with the accuracy of the assessments. This is important because many students in the first

month of kindergarten can be uncomfortable in an assessment situation, especially if they are

new to school. This can affect an assessment’s accuracy.

Tests Administered

DIBELs (Fall):

DIBELs tests are administered three times a year. They give teachers an indication of a

student’s literacy risk. Each assessment is administered individually and the assessments are

timed. A student has a minute to complete each section. There are two sections given in the

beginning of kindergarten. These include the First Sound Fluency (FSF) which measures how

accurately and quickly a student can identify the sounds at the beginning of words. The other is

Letter Naming Fluency(LNF) which gives information on how quickly and accurately students

can recognize letters. Both of these tests, have progress monitoring components which allows

student’s progress to be track between DIBEL’s benchmarks. In addition to these tests,

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) are added to the

middle and end of the year benchmarks. These benchmarks were given because it is important

to get an indication of Jim’s beginning sound and letter fluency. These are important concepts

for the beginning of kindergarten. The following are Jim’s fall benchmark scores:

First Sound Fluency (FSF) baseline: 2/Goal 10 At Risk Letter Naming Fluency (LNF): 10/Goal 10 Goal


District Created Kindergarten Benchmarks:

This set of benchmarks is composed of three sections and is an important assessment

because it gives information about a student’s connection to letters, sounds, and words. The

first section includes the Letter Naming Benchmark which measures the letters of the alphabet

that a student can identify and in conjunction with the DIBELs helps to understand a student’s

alphabet recognition skills. The Letter Sound Benchmark measures a student’s letter-sound

connection, which is the ability to produce a letter’s sound by looking at a letter. The last

benchmark is Sight Word Recognition which measures a student’s ability to identify the sight

words taught in kindergarten. (These are a mixture of pre-primer, color, and number words.)

All of these benchmarks were administered individually. This assessment was administered to

evaluate and get a baseline of Jim’s connection to letters, sounds, and words. The following are

his fall benchmark scores:

Letter Naming: Uppercase Letters: 13/26 Lowercase Letters: 7/26 Letter sounds: Uppercase 6/26

Lowercase letters 0/26 Sight Word Recognition 0/48 Phonemic Awareness Survey:

Phonemic Awareness is a beginning level skill that is an important foundation for

reading and writing. Students that have developed these skills are able to manipulate sounds in

words, which assists in blending, decoding, and writing. A lack of development of these skills


can affect a student’s literacy progress in later grades. In the first few weeks of class, Jim had

difficulty producing rhymes during classroom activities, even though it was a skill worked on in

pre-k. So, it was important to gain an understanding of Jim’s phonemic awareness skills. This

was accomplished through the Phonemic Awareness Survey which looked at rhyming,

beginning and ending sounds, phoneme blending, and phoneme counting. This assessment was

given orally in an individual setting. The following were his survey results:

Identifying a Rhyme 8/10 Generating a Rhyme 1/5

Identifying first sounds in words: 1 /11 Identifying same first sounds in words: 0/6 Identifying same end sound in words: 1/6 Phoneme Blending: 0/6 Phoneme Counting 0/8

Retell Rubric:

It was important to gain a sense of Jim comprehension skills and story knowledge. Since

Jim does not read yet, this was accomplished through oral readings of a book that was followed

by him retelling the story in his own words. A retelling rubric was used to grade this

assessment. The items that were scored on this rubric include character, setting, story

sequence, character feelings, and teacher prompts. Each area received a score from one to four

retell based on the rubric’s criteria. A one was considered poor and a four was considered

excellent. The total maximum points that a student could receive was a twenty. The following

was Jim’s score:

Retell score: 16/20


Book Handling Knowledge Guidelines

The assessment given was from the book Assessment for Reading Instruction (McKenna

M.C. et Stahl, K.A. 2008, pp.91-93). This was given to measure Jim’s concept of print. This

included directionality, that print is used to convene meaning, the beginning and end of a book,

punctuation, capital letters, and the difference between a letter and word. All of these are

important concepts for a beginning reader’s ability to understand text in a book. This

assessment did not produce an overall score, but was more of a checklist of important concepts

of print skills.

Classroom Observations

Classroom Observations are included in this case study because in kindergarten, a

student’s free time activity choices can often assist in planning literacy differentiation. Knowing

that a student responds to music or is very tactile, can assist a teacher in planning activities that

will encourage, engage, motivate, and play into a student’s strengthens to make the instruction

more meaningful to the student.

Observations during Testing

DIBELS

The DIBELs test is administered three times a year to assess student progress. These

include the beginning, middle, and end of the year. In kindergarten, the First Sound Fluency

(FSF) and Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) are administered in the fall. Phonemic Segmentation

Fluency (PSF) and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) are administered later in the year. These tests

measure a student’s literacy risk. The following are Jim’s fall benchmark scores:


First Sound Fluency (FSF) baseline: 2/Goal 10 At Risk Letter Naming Fluency (LNF): 10/Goal 10 Goal

On the fall assessment, he scored in the at risk category for First Sound Fluency. In the

minute that he had to take the test, he answered eleven questions, but only one answer was

correct for a score of two. Goal for this benchmark was ten. On the Letter Naming Fluency

benchmark, he reached the goal of ten letters in a minute. A closer review of the results

revealed that he only correctly identified ten of the twenty-one letters that he read on the test

for forty-seven percent accuracy. Out of those he answered correctly, two of the letters were

O’s and two were F’s. Out of the fourteen students tested in his class, Jim was one of four

students not to make goal in both areas on the DIBELS benchmark. The other three students

did not have a preschool experience.

The fall DIBELs benchmark gives us two important pieces of information on Jim’s pre-

reading skills. The first is that he does not understand or hear the beginning sound in an orally

spoken word which can affect his understanding of letter sounds. The second is that even

though he just made goal for the DIBELs test in Letter Naming Fluency, further analysis of the

assessment indicated that he does not accurately recognize letter names.

Kindergarten Benchmarks

There are three sections to this benchmark. These include letter recognition, sound

recognition, and kindergarten sight word recognition. These were administered to each student

individually and measured the student’s connections to letters, sounds, and words. Each

section was administered on separate days. The following are Jim’s benchmark scores:


Letter Naming: Uppercase Letters: 13/26 Lowercase Letters: 7/26 Letter sounds: Uppercase 6/26

Lowercase letters 0/26 High Frequency Word Recognition 0/48

Jim recognized thirteen uppercase letters and seven lowercase letters. He called the

letter M a W and S a C on both sections and was unable the name the lowercase letters in his

name. For a number of the lowercase letters, he often had no answer and for the incorrect

ones he did answer, they were close in formation to another letter such as n for an h and i for a

j. Jim was able to produce letter sounds for six uppercase letters, but was unable to produce

any for the lowercase letters. Instead, he made up sounds. Jim was unable to name any words

on the sight word cards including the words a and I. He was able to name both during the letter

recognition portion of this benchmark. When he came to the read them, he said, “I don’t know

any words.” During the test, he guessed at many of the words such as the word see, which he

read as dog. In comparison to other students, nine students in the class knew more upper and

lowercase letters than him and he was one of five students that could not make any lowercase

letter-sound connection. In sight word recognition, no one was able to identify any words

beyond a and I, which is appropriate for this time of year because students have not yet been

introduced to many sight words in class.

Jim does much better recognizing uppercase letters and sounds, than lowercase ones.

In both cases, he confuses letters that look similar to one another. Jim also demonstrated that

he understands that a letter and sound are different. Even though he did not correctly identify


letters, when he did guess he used letter names and he made up sounds when asked for the

letters sounds. Jim does not know any words even the words I and a, which he could recognize

in the alphabet chart. However, no students in his class could recognize any word beyond I and

a. He did realize during the sight word assessment that he was not supposed to give just a

letter and gave words. The words were incorrect and did not begin with the same sound as the

word he was reading. This gives the indication that Jim orally recognizes the difference between

a letter and a sound.

Phonemic Awareness Survey

The Phonemic Awareness Survey measures student’s knowledge of the sounds within

words. This assessment focuses on identifying and producing rhymes, beginning sound

identification, beginning sound matching, ending sound matching, phoneme blending, along

with counting phonemes in words. These are important reading readiness skills that assist

students in blending, decoding, and writing words. This assessment was administered over two

days. The following were his survey results:

Identifying a Rhyme 8/10 Generating a Rhyme 1/5

Identifying first sounds in words: 1 /11 Identifying same first sounds in words: 0/6 Identifying same end sound in words: 1/6 Phoneme Blending: 0/6 Phoneme Counting 0/8

On the first day, the rhyming and beginning sounds sections were administered. On the

rhyming sections of this assessment, Jim was able identify whether a set of words was a rhyme

or not eight out of ten times. The two incorrect answers involve sets of words that are related

by concept (in/out) and by beginning sound (sun/sleep). When asked to give a rhyme for a


word, he was only able to generate a rhyme for the word cat. He gave the word hat. For the

other words, he gave answers that related to the word. For example, when given the word red,

Jim gave the color word yellow. For the word hop, he gave the word kangaroo. When

comparing Jim to his classmates, all but two students could recognize if two words rhymed with

at least 70% accuracy. When generating a rhyme Jim was one of the four students that

completed the task with one or less correct. He was the only one that could not do the task

that had a pre-k experience.

For the beginning sounds portions of the assessment, Jim was first asked what sound his

name begins with. He stated /i/. Then he was asked to tell me some words that began like his

name. He said that “I don’t know any words that begin like my name.” Next, he was asked the

first sound in a group of words and correctly answered one. He was able to identify the /f/ in

flower, but gave the last sound for tooth /th/, the /s/ in goose, and the /z/ in pizza. Then when

asked if two words sounded the same, he was unable to correctly answer yes or no for any

example. During this section, Jim kept turning around and asking questions about the alphabet

pictures on the wall. At this point, the assessment was stopped for the day. Beginning sounds

was a skill that students had been exposed to during pre-k, but on this assessment all but four

students struggled with both generating a beginning sound in a word and matching beginning

sounds in words.

The next day, Jim was given the rest of the assessment. When asked if two words had

the same ending sound, Jim was only able to identify the two that rhymed, which were bed and

said. During the phoneme blending section of the assessment, he was given the sounds in a


word and needed to blend them together to create a word. When given the sounds /h/ /a/ /t/,

Jim gave the word horse. He continued giving words that began with the first sound for the

rest of the test. The last section of this assessment was phoneme blending. He was given a

word and asked to tell how many sounds he heard. Instead of numbers, Jim gave a sound for

each word. Sometimes they came from the beginning of the word like in the /s/ in sun and

sometimes the end like the /k/ in desk. The phonemic skills in these last tests were not areas

that students were exposed to in pre-k, like Jim all of the students struggled with this

assessment. No one received more than one or two correct in these sections.

This assessment showed Jim’s lack of phonemic awareness ability. He is beginning to be

able to recognize rhyming words, but struggles to generate a rhyme. He shows an inability to

identify, match, blend, and separate sounds in words. However, these are areas where many of

his classmates will need instruction and will be concentrated on this year in kindergarten. These

prereading skills are important to Jim ability to decode and write words in later grades.

Book-handling Knowledge Guidelines

Book-handling Knowledge Guidelines gives data about a student’s basic print knowledge

such as book orientation, directionality, that words carry meaning, punctuation, and the

concepts of letter, word and capital letters. During this assessment, Jim quickly found the cover

of the book, could turn the pages correctly, pointed out which page you begin reading, and was

able to point to words from left to right with a return sweep as I read the book. When asked to

find the first part of the book, he shrugged. After I reworded the question, he just looked at me

and shook his head. Then I asked him to find the last part of the book, he turned to the middle


of the book. Different punctuation was pointed to in the book for him to name and he

shrugged, except for the exclamation mark, which he called the letter i. He was unable to show

an uppercase letter in the book, but after he was prompted could match the uppercase and

lowercase i. When asked to show a word in the book, he pointed to two words. Then, he was

asked to show the first letter in a word and he pointed to the word me. He was able to find the

last letter in the word rain.

Jim has a good grasp on book orientation and directionality and understands that print

conveys meaning. However, he lacks the ability to differentiate between a written letter and a

word, does not recognize punctuation marks, and does not understand the concept of

beginning, middle, and end. His results are similar to his classmates. All but one student was

able to correctly turn pages, locate the text in the story, and knew where to begin reading. Jim

and another student were the only ones unable to locate the first and last parts of a book. Only

two students could differentiate between a word and letter, identify punctuation, and knew

how to track words in text.

Story Retell

A story retell is an assessment that can be used to evaluate a student’s comprehension

and story knowledge. In a pre-reader, it is administered after a student’s exposure to an oral

reading. Students are asked to retell the story in their words and are assessed on a rubric for

inclusion of areas such as character, setting, sequence, feelings, and teacher prompts. The story

Widget by Lyn McFarland (2006) was read orally on three separate days. On the third day, Jim

was asked to retell the story from the beginning. He did so in sequence with many details from


the story. He gave specific details for the setting of the story such as it was raining and the

house had a small door that he peeked in. Jim used the characters names Widget, Mrs. Diggs,

and “The Girls” during the retell. Jim only needed prompting during the retell with relating to

the character’s feelings. He answered that the dog was alone, but did not connect it to a

feeling. Jim had the highest retell score in his class at sixteen out of twenty. The majority of

the students’ scores fell between twelve and fourteen. This information shows that he has an

understanding about story structure in a book, the idea of sequencing, and story detail, but

needs to continue to connect to a character’s feelings.

Classroom Observations

Classroom observations are important pieces of assessment and can be used to help

pinpoint a student's strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This information can be useful for

differentiating student instruction. When Jim enters classroom each afternoon, he has a smile

on his face and asks the questions: “Are we going to use the Smartboard?” or” Are we going to

computers today?” While using the Smartboard during a whole group lesson Jim’s eyes are on

the Smartboard, he has his hand raised to answer questions, and volunteers to go up to the

Smartboard. During computer lab, Jim‘s eyes are on the screen and quietly works on the

computer.

During free choice time, Jim has the opportunity to choose activities that interest him.

He is often observed participating in activities that require fine motor skills such as putting

together small blocks such as Legos, creating designs on geoboards, or using manipulatives. He

also can be seen taking part in sand play and using playdough. He is frequently found drawing


at the art table and will ask an adult to write a sentence about his picture. For example, he

drew a picture of the earth and asked if I could write that “we need to take care if the earth”,

because he had seen a show that talked about how the earth was being polluted. When

drawing, it was noted that he had an accurate grip on his marker and when he wrote his name

on his paper, he did so with accurate formation.

Summary and Recommendations

Jim is a beginning of the year kindergartener that is almost six years old. Despite having

participated in two years of pre-k and being exposed to beginning reading concepts, Jim has

limited phonemic awareness abilities along with limited letter, sound, and word recognition. He

was quick to inform that he doesn’t know any words, during his Kindergarten Sight Word

Benchmark. The DIBEL Letter Naming Fluency Benchmark and Kindergarten Letter Naming

Benchmark revealed that Jim struggles with accurately identifying letters, especially those with

similar formation. The Kindergarten Letter Sound Benchmark showed that he has trouble

making letter-sound connections. In addition, the Phonemic Awareness Survey and First Sound

Fluency Benchmark uncovered that he has difficulty with producing the beginning sound of a

spoken word. The Phonemic Awareness Survey also revealed that he has trouble with tasks

such as generating rhymes, identifying final sounds, matching sounds, blending phonemes to

create words, and counting phonemes in words.

After administering the Story Retell and Book Handling Guidelines, Jim appears to have

an understanding of story structure, even though he is not sure of some terms like beginning,

middle, and end. He can retell a story with accuracy, sequence, and detail. He also


demonstrated some concepts of print, showed how to turn pages, pointed out print in a book,

and knew the direction that you read. During the Letter Naming and Sound Benchmarks, Jim

demonstrated that he understood the difference between a letter and sound, because even

though he did not correctly identify letters, when he did guess he used letter names and he

made up sounds when asked for the letters sounds. During classroom observations, he

exhibited that he can use a pencil and crayon with control to draw, color, and correctly form

the letters when writing his name. He has shown interest in the written word by asking to have

words written on his picture. Jim has expressed interest in class with using technology, fine

motor activities such as using manipulatives, drawing, and tactile experiences such as sand and

playdough. It is important to use these interests and modalities to help plan activities that will

motivate him to learn.

The following goals and recommendations would help to improve Jim’s prereading skills:

1. Develop letter and sound recognition-

It is important for Jim to be able to recognize letters and their sounds, so that he will be

able to decode and write words. He will need explicit teaching in letter and sound recognition,

along with activities that will motivate him. A good place to begin would be the identifying the

lowercase letters in his name. This could be accomplished by having him place letter tiles on a

card that has his name printed on it. He could practice repeating the letters in his name as he

places them on the card. Since Jim has difficulty with letters that have similar formation, he

could benefit from letter formation instruction, especially comparing letters such as n and h.


Jim would benefit from using an alphabet chart with letter-sound pictures. He can

practice chanting the letter, picture, and sound to assist in making letter-sound connections.

Using manipulatives would help him to recognize letters and sounds; these could include ABC

arcs, letter sorts, and magnetic alphabet boards. He can be asked to find certain letters by

name or sound and match them to the alphabet board or practice letter sounds by having him

sort picture cards into columns marked by letters he is learning. In addition, giving him

experiences that allow him to use his sense of touch will assist him. These could include using

sand, shaving cream, and playdough to make letters. Since Jim has shown an interest in

computers and technology, he could gain extra practice through literacy computer programs

and activities created on the Smartboard.

2. Increase phonemic awareness skills-

Jim needs to work on developing his rhyming and phonemic awareness skills. In the

beginning of the school year, it will be important for him to focus in on rhyming and beginning

sounds. These two skills will assist him in being able to identify letter sounds and begin to build

word family words. Rhyming would be a good skill to start with because he has begun to make

connections in this area. Jim could play games that match rhyming pictures, before moving to

activities where he could generate a rhyming word. Rhyming books would be a good way to

accomplish this task. While reading the book, the reader can stop at the rhyming word and

have the student give the rhyming word. Once Jim can rhyme, then he could concentrate on

identifying the beginning sounds in a word. First, this should be an oral activity that will need to

be modeled, start by having him identify the beginning sounds in words that may be meaningful


to him such as his name, mom, dad, etc. He can then practice matching picture cards with

words that begin with the same beginning sounds such as dog and doughnut. Eventually, he

will need to move to matching a letter of the alphabet such as S to the words that begin with

that sound. This could be done by using manipulatives such as letter tubs and sorting their

objects by letter sound. Since Jim is interested in drawing, he could be given a journal to create

illustrations and have him dictate the words for the teacher to write. To begin, the teacher

could have him orally give the first sound that he hears for each word in the sentence that he

dictates, eventually moving him to fill in the beginning letter for the words in the journal.

When these skills are mastered, then Jim needs to move on to identifying the ending

sounds and segmenting words. A strategy for this would be to use Elkonian boxes with tokens

already in the boxes and have him move one out for each sound that he hears or for the ending

sound. Jim would also benefit from tapping, which is using his thumb to tap a finger for each

sound heard in a word. This will help with segmenting a word and counting phonemes. In order

to learn to blend phonemes together, he could begin with onset and rime. This is done by

having him blend together the first part of the word (the onset) with the rest of the word (the

rime). Eventually, he could move on to blending whole words together. A good tool for this skill

is Elkonian boxes where he pushes tokens into a boxes and runs his finger under the tokens

blending the sounds together or using pictures cut into the number of phonemes in the word,

so he can place a card on the table for every sound he hears to build a picture of the word and

then run his fingers across the cards to say the word. Both will give Jim a visual model for

blending sounds together.


3. Develop a sight word vocabulary-

As Jim improves his letter recognition, then it will be important for him to develop a

sight word vocabulary. These words should be words such as the, is, like, etc. that will be seen

often when reading. Using the list from the reading program or a Dolch list would be a good

place to begin. Because Jim enjoys fine motor activities and sensory experiences, the following

would be helpful. Jim could use magnets and letter tiles to build sight words by matching letters

to words on cards. He could also practice using sight words in activities where he could read a

repetitive book with words such as I like my… and then use word cards to recreate the

sentences. Giving him tactile experiences such as practicing writing words in salt, shaving

cream, and sand would help him. An activity like Read the Room, can make him relate to the

sight words in the world around him. This could be done by giving him a clipboard and sight

word card and having him write the word each time that he finds it in the classroom. This will

assist him in recognizing and writing sight words.

Reflection

Assessment for reading instruction by McKenna and Stahl (2008) assisted me in

planning which assessments were important to use in the case study. I found the Emergent

Literacy Chapter most helpful for assessing students in my grade level. McKenna and Stahl

(2009, p. 75) discussed “the ways of assessing three major components of emergent literacy:

concepts of print, alphabetic recognition, and phonemic awareness.” These components are

important for students in laying the ground work for reading. In addition, I added information

on comprehension, letter sounds, and sight words because these are other areas that are


important in early literacy. From the process of writing a case study, I noticed a few things

about assessment and planning interventions for a student. It is important to look at the

different components of a student’s literacy. So much of literacy is interwoven and a deficiency

in one area may affect other areas, such as an inability to hear the beginning sound in a word

can affect how a student is able to attach a beginning letter to a word. The data for an

assessment is more than correct or incorrect answers. It also involves any behaviors that the

student demonstrates during the assessment process. For example, it is helpful to know that a

student doesn’t know their letters, but if the student is calling some of the letters by number

names, then you also get the information that the student does not understand the difference

between a number and letter. The observations that you make can help understand and

differentiate that child’s learning to meet their needs. It is important to know student’s

strengths as well as their weakness. Often, if a student has strength in an area, it can help to

build on areas where there may be a deficit.

References

DIBEL. https://dibels.uoregon.edu/ .

Phonemic Awareness Survey. Retrieved from: http://www.readingresource.net/rhyming.html.

McFarland, L.R. (2006). Widget. New York, NY: Sunburst Paperbacks.

McKenna, M.C. et Stahl K.A.D. (2009). Assessment for Reading Instruction (2nd edition). New

York, NY: The Guildford Press.

https://dibels.uoregon.edu/

http://www.readingresource.net/rhyming.html

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