Rebecca Lopez

LRC 312c

May 5, 2013

Benchmark Assignment: Child and Family Language and Literacy Development

Case Study Final Documentation

Section A: General Summary and Description

Hero is 4 years old. He turned 4 in February. As a baby, he used a lot of ASL to

communicate with his mom. He has some troubles with his speech, so as a baby it was easiest

for him to communicate with his hands or body. Now that he is older and is going to speech

therapy, he has weaned away from ASL; although I know he does still retain knowledge of many

ASL words. Hero lives with his mom and younger brother Legend. Legend is 2 years old and

goes to Satori with Hero. Joy, Hero’s mother, recently started working at Satori as an aid.

Hero’s dad, Frances, works with construction, so he is away a lot. Joy has a high school

diploma and Frances has a Bachelor’s degree. Hero seems to have a close relationship with

both parents. The family is an American family. They speak only English and are not familiar

with any other language besides ASL. Joy (Hero’s mom) is 35. She is from New Mexico in a

town called Truth or Consequences. Joy used to be a realtor until she had her two boys. She is

now a stay at home mom. She has lived in Tucson since 1998. She moved here from New

Mexico for “a boy and school”. Both of Joy’s parents were raised in New Mexico. Joy’s mom is a

“lifelong learner”. She has her master’s degree and teaches special education and

kindergarten. Her mother lives in Las Vegas, NV and she has no relationship with her father. As

far as siblings go, Joy has 4 younger siblings. She has one younger sister, who is a stay at home

mom and three brothers. One is unemployed; one is in a mental institution and the other

works with landscaping in a resort. Joy talked about how she loved to travel, but hasn’t gone

on any road trips since she had her boys.

Frances, Hero’s dad, has lived in Tucson since 1994. He moved from Massachusetts to

Tucson to play football for the University of Arizona. Frances travels a lot, which is why he

doesn’t live with Joy and the boys. He works with construction. Frances’ parents were born

and raised in Massachusetts. His dad has a high school diploma and his mom has a master’s in

education. She went from working as a physical education teacher to being a classroom

teacher for 5th and 6th graders to being a principal to being an athletic director. His parents still

live in Massachusetts and the family travels to see them once or twice a year. Frances is the

third of 4 siblings. His sister is a teacher. One of his brothers works with auto body repair and

his younger brother repairs copy machines.

I decided to give Hero’s mom a voice recorder so that she could record conversations

with Hero whenever she felt comfortable. She sent me back the voice recorder with 4 different

recordings. The one that I decided to analyze was a car ride. Hero was riding in the car with his

mom Joy, his dad Frances and his little brother Legend. They were driving on the freeway on I-

10 from Ruthrauff (the main street they live by) to East Valencia. They were driving Hero’s dad

to work. On their way, they passed the Pima Air and Space Museum.

I decided to focus on Hero’s phonetic knowledge and development. Hero is a

chatterbox. He loves to tell long, elaborate stories and he has an awesomely massive

imagination. Listening to the audio of him talking with his family had me smiling from ear to

ear the entire time! The reason why I decided to focus on his phonemic awareness is because it

seems to be the category where Hero has the most difficulties. He is way passed the

telegraphic speech stage, which is clear to see based on his responses and ideas that he shares.

His semantic knowledge is great – which I know based on interactions with him within the

classroom setting. For example, one time we had a discussion about getting sick, and how

many classmates were missing class. He commented with an elaborate speech about how it’s

important to wash hands because there are many “germ bugs”, and the soap helps take the

germ bugs away. He kept talking about how germ bugs spread when you touch doors and food

and toys. His syntactic and morphemic knowledge seems point on as well. Of course his skills

are not perfect in these areas, but I wanted to concentrate on phonemes.

How I went about analyzing his phonemic awareness was a fairly tedious process. First I

recorded a script of Hero and his family’s conversation in the car. After writing everything that

was said, I went through the narrative, page by page, and wrote down what word Hero said and

what word Hero meant to say. There were 39 different words that Hero said during his 10-

minute conversation with his family where he swapped a letter/letters out from the word he

meant to say and replaced that letter with a different letter. Within those 39 words, there were

some letters that he struggled with multiple times (figure a). He had the hardest time with the

pronunciation of his letter L. He also struggled with pronouncing the letter R and the TH sound.

Figure A:

What Hero said: What Hero Meant: Occurance (how many different times)

d th 6a er 1f sp 1s th 1w l 13

cala tele 1w r 7t th 1w n 1v th 1y -ght 1s t 1d j 1p th 1

The next thing I did was compare my findings with Figure 6.1 in chapter 6 of Language

Development in Early Childhood 3rd edition. I found out lots of interesting information. For

example, he replaced the sound ‘l’ with the sound ‘w’ for 13 different words. Upon reading

chapter 6, I found that 50% of 3 year olds can pronounce the ‘l’ sound. This was attention

grabbing because he is 4 and it is such a common phonemic mistake that he makes. This also

shows that he follows his own pace in developing language competences. The next sound that

Hero mixes up is the ‘r’ sound. He also replaces that sound with a ‘w’. The textbook said that

50% of 4 year olds can produce the ‘r’ sound. Since he just turned 4 in February, this wasn’t

alarming for me. He still has time to produce this sound more efficiently. If you look closely at

Figure 1, you will see that there are a few sounds that Hero produced instead of producing the

‘th’ sound. Research shows that the ‘th’ sound usually isn’t mastered until age 5. This makes

sense, because he didn’t produce the ‘th’ sound at all during his conversation in the car. I

attached below a copy of Hero’s conversation with his family, and I have highlighted all of the

phonemic production in his speech.

Hero: One two in my shoe, one two in my shoe, one two, one two, one two, one two, one two, one two, one two, one two, one two, one two.Joy: Okay I spy…Hero: Wif my wittle eye…mountains.

Joy: Where?Hero: Ova there!! Hey how’d dey get ova der? Hey das funny!Joy: That is funny.Hero: Is that funny haha?Joy: (laughs) It’s kind of funny haha. Your turn Hero.Hero: I fy wis my wittle eye a calaphoneJoy: A tele…hey! It’s in your hand! What color is that?Hero: Bwue, a bwue one.Joy: A blue one. I spy with my little eye airplanes.Hero: Whooo das one broken old airplanes.Legend: I see an airplane!Joy: You see? Legend sees them!Hero: One are brokens. One a dem are bwokens, one a dem were bwoken right?Joy: Those are all broken outside the window. Look out Legend’s window. What is this place right here?Hero: A fix-or pwaceJoy: What is it?Hero: A fix.Joy: A fixer place?Hero: A fix. Dey fix…da airpwanes are fixed. Joy: Oh yeah. All the airplanes are fixed. Look out your window Legend. What is this place?Legend: Pwane! Huhcopters again.Joy: Yeah.Hero: Wook out my window I just saw a camofwage one. Wook at the camofwage one. Wook at the camofwage one!Joy: Look at all those…oh my gosh can you guys count them?Legend: YeahHero: One two tree four five six seven eight…Legend screamsHero: Hey dis a wover (another) one! Joy: Ooh! Look at the shiny one guys!Hero: (gasp) I wanned the silver one so much!Joy: You just want the silver one?Hero: Yeah! He’s shininer.Joy: Yes, shinier than all the others.Hero: Yeah.Legend: Shine shiny! I wanna call her Shiny Shinerson (giggles).Hero: I wish I wude planier I would drive I would shoot at da at da airpwanes.Joy: OhHero: I be, I be, uh whus…what are da shooters called? What are the jesew called?Joy: Fighter jets.Hero: Fiyer jets.Joy: Okay Legend’s gonna call the shiny one Shiny Shinerson.Hero: And my, in my, in my, in my, in my, in my jould I call it fighter I’ll call my jet fighter.

Joy: You’re gonna call it spider or fighter?Hero: Fighter.Joy: With an F?Hero: Yep. Itsunabe, itsunabe fighting. Cause mine is my airpwane is tough . Tougher en enyone!Joy: Ooooh…okay.Legend: My airpwane is not tough because…Joy: It’s really big and (inaudible)Hero: I’m fighter let pwane and you’re fawing down.Joy: No he’s not a fighter, he’s just a flyer.Hero: And I’ll just cause I’m mya n I’m a fighter n I’ll a shoose his airpwane down whoa and it’ll fall.Joy: Yeah but they don’t shoot their brothers…Hero: No.Legend: I’m gonna have a firefighter airplane.Hero: An I’ll dus have a powice man airpwane.Joy: What color is Hero’s airplane?Hero: Gween.Joy: And what color is Legend’s?Hero: BWUE!Legend: RED!Hero: Mine is not my favorite color, mine is a powice airpwane an it’s the same color like…a powice car.Joy: What color is a police car?Hero: Back n white.Joy: Black and white?Hero: Das du same cowor! Is camofwaged to it.Joy: Ooh okay.Hero: And so no one can see it in da way. Okay mama?Joy: Sounds cool.Hero: So no one knows it’s a airpwane. Dey think its just a…giant car or sumping. Legend: My airpwane is a camofage airpwane.Joy: Your airplane is a camouflage airplane? Legend’s is a camouflage airplane.Hero: Camofauge wike a firetwuck? Legend? Camofawge like a firetwuck?Joy: Look what Hero and I saw earlier.Hero: TODAY?Joy: Today. Look out Hero’s window. What is that right there?Hero: Gway gway, der da same cower. GWAY GWAY GWAY.Joy: Do you see all those coaches? They’re all the same.Hero: In now der in now der all der camofwaged.Joy: Yeah. What are they parked next to? What is that?Hero: Ewectwicity factory. Is it…but sometimes we caw it ewectwicity pwant.Joy: Uh huh, that’s right.Frances: A power plant.

Hero: A power pwant or a ewectwicity pwant – wuhever is.Joy: (laughs) whatever it is! That’s where we get our power right?Hero: Mmhmm some factowies have a diffwent names. Like a gween machine or a blue-a-dean. Hee hee, (sings) bwue a dean, bwue a dean, bwue a dean, deed a has a sheen a doonPAUSEJoy: What do we have here?Hero: Hmmm…Legend: Bridges!Joy: Bridges. Hero: What da have here?Joy: What do you see Hero?Hero: A big…hey! Theshwee (yesterday) we went to there!Joy: Right! What happens there? Do you know?Hero: Yeah!Joy: What?...............That’s where the gem show is, right?Hero: Yeah! But, but der, but is over!Joy: It is over, yep. They packed it up. Hey look at that yard!Hero: Tha’s a junk yard. Hey! Thas a finny lookin’ yard.Joy: There’s a lotta junk there.Hero: Heeeeeey what kind of a yard is dat?Joy: Hmmm…Hero: Der’s a truck right der.Joy: Hero tell daddy what we realized about this coming…look at these people out here, what are they playing?Hero: Baseball.Joy: And tell daddy what you told me about baseball.PAUSEHero: What?Joy: That we’ve never been to a baseball game.Frances: Oh yeah.Hero: Did we?Frances: No.Hero: So dad I want you to bring me der tomorrow! Hey guys, what kinda airpwane is der I see two of dem!Frances: I will take you to a night baseball game.Hero: Why?Frances: Yeah we’ll go see…the U of A play or something. We’ll go to a game, I promise. Joy: I see those airplanes Hero, they’re flying right next to each other. Aren’t they?Hero: Yeah der twins like us, but one a dem are right der.Joy: I see them.Hero: Der tryn catch up. Wait for me!Joy: Wait for me!Hero: WAIT FOR ME!!!!! Hey you’re faster den me! But I will catch up to you!

This conversation shows a lot about his phonemic awareness, but it also shows that he is in the

metalinguistic knowledge level of development. He has a conscious awareness of specific

features of language. His semantics are greatly represented in the conversation. He is able to

associate words with concepts (ex: associating planes that look alike as twins).

Hero’s home language and literacy environment is very strong. His mom Joy loves

books and loves reading to her children. Hero’s bedroom has a huge bookshelf with probably

350 children’s books on it. During previous home visits my partner and I have been on, Hero

has shown a huge interest in books. He loves sitting and listening to books being read to him

and he also loves manipulating books on his own. I have noticed in class that when I pull out a

book to read to the class, he is always very attentive to the story. I think a crucial part of why

Hero enjoys books so much is because his mom makes sure they are a strong part of his

environment. She mentioned in the past that she doesn’t put the television on very much for

him and his brother. They listen to a lot of music and are encouraged to play and read as much

as possible. Because Hero struggled with his speech as an infant and toddler, Joy spent a great

deal of time teaching Hero ASL. Joy has a tablet with literacy apps on it that I have seen Hero

use, as well as his younger brother. She also takes the boys to the public library fairly often.

Their home is filled with library books, books borrowed from Satori, as well as books that the

family owns. It is clear that Hero is in a very positive and supportive language and literacy

environment.

Because books are so prominent in his life, I decided to interview Hero about his

concepts of reading during our final family interaction. We agreed with Joy to head over to

their house right after school. Hero was excited to play with trains and cars with his brother

Legend when we arrived. Jacqueline works with Legend for her case study, and she mentioned

that Legend had a rough day at school, and that his teacher had done many assessments on

him that day. She said that explained why he was not in the mood to sit and answer questions.

Hero seemed to pick up on Legend’s energy and was unexcited about answering questions too

(can’t say that I blame him!).

I asked Hero if he knew how to read and he responded with a yes. He said he learned

how to read at Satori and that no one taught him how to read, he learned by himself. Of course

he may not realize that his ability to learn is very much influenced by the adults in his life. I

noticed his mom made a sad face when she heard him respond to me with that answer. I think

she wanted him to recognize that she has helped him a lot – which she has. He said he likes to

read, and that it is his favorite thing to do. When I asked him what he likes to read, he said “the

ducky one” and he said, “come on!” and walked me to his bedroom to look for the ducky book.

I tried to get him to describe the book better, but he didn’t really elaborate. He picked up a

board book and said, “it’s like this!” Joy came in the room and asked Hero which book he was

talking about. He didn’t respond. She found “Ollie” by Oliver Dunrea. He picked it up and ran

back to the living room. I asked him if he wanted me to read it to him, and he said yes. We sat

and read the book.

After I was done reading the story, I asked him what he was looking at while I read to

him. He said “the pictures, sometimes the words”. I asked him if learning to read was easy or

hard. He said, “it’s hard cause I don’t know how. Sometimes I do”. Next I asked him “who in

your family knows how to read?” and he said “mom and Jacob. Mom reads better than me”.

Jacob is a boy in his class who is a really great reader. He is really advanced in his reading and

writing in comparison to everyone else in the class. I asked him what kinds of books his mom

reads. He said, “Little Einstein’s, Magic School Bus, books that she brings me”. I asked Hero

where does his mom read and he said “on Wildlife Drive” (the street they live on!). We all

laughed, and Joy said, “yes, but where in the house do I read to you?” Hero said “outside, at

night in bed”. He said he likes to be read to because “it’s my favorite thing”.

Interestingly, when I asked him, “What would you do if I said I was going to read you a

story?” he said, “look at the pages”. When I asked him, “What would you do if I said I was going

to tell you a story?”, he said “I’d play”. When I asked him, “Are reading a story and telling a

story the same thing?” he said “No cause that’s too silly!”. Joy said that they were different

things, and then she asked him if he knew why. He asked me why they were different. I told

him that a story being read would be from a book and a story being told would be without

reading words in a book. He said, “ooh okay”. Hero’s responses were very fascinating. He

admitted that reading was a hard thing to do, but it is also his favorite thing to do. Like most

humans who have not had as many wonderful literacy classes as I have, Hero did not recognize

that reading a story and telling a story are similar. To him, they are completely different. Even

when Joy and I tried to explain the similarities, he didn’t seem to understand.

He agreed that he did have a TV in his house, but there was nothing to read on it. He

said that he has a Kindle and there is reading on the Kindle. When I asked if he went to the

store, he said yes and that he can read chips, paper and balloons. When I asked him why

people read, he said, “because they’re silly”. He said that people read about “tires and fire

trucks and eyeballs cause it’s amazing”. He was feeding off of his own interests with his

response to this question, showing that he is still very egocentric, but it was a nice response

none-the-less.

From the interview, I learned that Hero is in an extremely caring and supportive

environment. His mom Joy has done so much to aid Hero in his language and literacy

development. It is inspirational, to be honest, to have observed such a loving family work so

hard to do the best they can for each other. I can only hope that there are many, many more

parents out there that have the same compassion and desire to foster the best learning for

their children that this family does.

As an educator, I can use Hero’s strengths and weaknesses in language and knowledge

of reading to create a classroom activity that will both interest him and hopefully stimulate new

growth in these areas. I know that he has a huge imagination. He is very descriptive, and also

very curious. He struggles with phonemes, but I feel like he is on his own path of development

in that area. I can try to create a center that would help with his phonemic awareness, which is

also exciting for him so he can use his semantic knowledge while describing and elaborating on

his experience. It should be something very interactive, so that he can communicate with his

peers.

Section B: Using Data to Inform Instruction

When brainstorming ideas on what type of center create, I first thought of creating a

center around his interest in trains and building tracks. I really wanted to use trains because in

all three of my observations of play that I have done for TTE 309, I noticed that Hero would

bring up trains or choo-choo tracks. Also on all home visits I have been on with Hero, he has

pulled out his train track set and played with his trains. In the Fall semester, I brought him a

book from the WOW library about trains, and he was heartbroken that I had to take it back to

the WOW. At Satori, the students play with trains, they build tracks, and they play with little

plastic people in their neighborhood where they built the tracks. They even take child-sized

plastic tables and chairs and pretend they are trains, and then take turns being the conductor

for the trains. Trains are a huge play area for the students in my class. I thought to myself, how

easy would it be to create a center around trains? The whole class enjoys playing with them.

But then I thought to myself, maybe it would be neat to feed off of Hero’s passion, as well as

the class’ passion, and move them to another mode of transportation. Space travel came to

mind. I have observed Hero many times talking about riding on rocket ships at school with his

classmates, and he loves talking to me about black holes. I thought of the resources of

materials that I have – and since I just bought a house, I have plenty of large cardboard boxes. I

came up with the idea of creating a rocket ship for the class out of a cardboard box. There

could be paper in the ships for students to draw maps of where the rocket ships will take them,

or draw pictures of what they saw while they were traveling through space. I thought this idea

was fitting for Hero for a couple of reasons. First, he would enjoy using the rocket ship because

he has a huge interest in space and black holes. Second, he would be improving his oral

language development by communicating with his classmates. Since he is already very

passionate about space, he would use his semantic knowledge to express in depth to his

classmates about what is to be done as an astronaut, or what kinds of things can be found in

space. Communicating is also just a natural way of improving phonemic awareness, because he

will be speaking and listening to his peers…picking up on the way others pronounce things and

practicing pronouncing words differently himself. Third, I have many artifacts of Hero drawing

pictures and describing what he drew. He enjoys drawing and expressing what he drew, so

doing this after exploring the rocket ship would be a good transition for him.

If the rocket ship was large enough (i.e. refrigerator box) multiple children could fit

inside at one time, and explore the ship. It would also be cool to have the rocket ship in an area

with parts of space in them. If I could hang stars or planets from the ceiling, and have asteroids

and comets placed around the ship, students would be able to look out from the ship and

physically see elements from space. This would be helpful for the younger students in my class

who don’t have as active of an imagination as Hero does. I could label the stars, comets,

constellations, etc – which would also benefit the students in class who are attempting reading.

In my opinion, the best way to introduce this center to the class would be to just tell

them my honest ideas. I could tell them that I have noticed their fascination with trains, and

that I enjoy watching and helping them play with trains every day. I could then have a

discussion about other ways of traveling, and then lead into my idea about creating a center

with a rocket ship in it. We could read stories about astronauts and space and rocket ships

before they actually use the center, and we could also read stories while they are using it –

scaffolding their experiences by introducing more knowledge as time goes on.

Section C: Family and Community Literacy Event

I was lucky enough to have Hero attend the Sports Spectacular event at Emily’s Place on

March 21st. His whole family showed up – which was him, his mom, dad, and younger brother.

When I invited them, his mom was so excited! She kept asking for specific details on how to find

the place, and the time, and what would be going on. It was nice seeing her so interested in a

literacy event.

My contribution to the creation of the event wasn’t very large. I intended on being on

the planning committee with Rebecca Zapien, but the times clashed with my work schedule. I

helped paint street signs that were turned into puzzles, and I helped set up the room a little

before the event. The event was from 5pm-7pm. Hero and his family showed up around 5:30.

I hung out with Joy for most of the event. We walked Hero and his brother Legend around,

showing them all of the rooms and the activities they could participate in if they wanted to. At

first Hero was intrigued by the tricycles that were on the playground. He stayed on them for

maybe 20 minutes. Then he moved to the play area. He climbed the rock wall that was set up,

and then ran to the rocking horse. At about 6:30, we asked Hero if he wanted to go inside the

room that the WeCats had created. He excitedly complied. We all went into the room, and

Hero did the Book Walk activity. He did it until 7:00, when the event was over, because he

really wanted to win a book. Luckily, right at 7, he won a round! He picked out some markers

and a book. Literacy Through Play by Gretchen Owocki says that “play is a useful medium for

gathering information about children’s literacy knowledge because it frees children to show

their real-world abilities” (Owocki, 96). Knowing this was reassuring for me, because I wasn’t

stressed and trying to leer Hero to areas of the event where he wasn’t comfortable. The event

was more natural, and I knew that merely communicating with the people at the event, and

communicating with me was influencing his literacy. I was very thrilled when he did the Book

Walk, and was reading the street signs, because he was excited about it!

As an educator, I can look at this event and see how simple creating a literacy event can

be. There doesn’t have to be elaborate jumping castles and clowns, or professional dancers.

There just has to be a group of caring individuals who understand literacy and understand the

importance of play, who want to help children’s literacy grow. I personally am a caring

individual who understands literacy, as well as the importance of play. Without a doubt I want

to encourage and strengthen children’s literacy. And I now feel confident that I have the skills

to do just that!

Works Cited

Otto, Beverly. "Chapter 6." Language Development in Early Childhood. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2002. N. pag. Print.

Owocki, Gretchen, and Lois Bridges. Bird. "Chapter 5." Literacy through Play. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann, 1999. N. pag. Print.

Owocki, Gretchen, and Yetta M. Goodman. Kidwatching: Documenting Children's Literacy

Development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002. Pr