Abstract
The case study focuses on the case of eight-year-old Adam, studying in K-3 grade elementary school. The boy has weaknesses in memorization and a limited understanding of descriptive language and the text’s central idea. Cognitive and emotional difficulties contribute to the emergence of these problems.
An assessment of Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention showed his ability to listen to instructions, and reactions and responses described below were controlled and protected from external influences. The case study concluded that Adam needs to focus on comprehensive skills. Therefore, targeted interventions and assessments that involve text-related and reflection-based assignments should be used.
Introduction
The case study was conducted with the involvement of an eight-year-old elementary school student, Adam. The boy comes from a low socio-economic background; his parents constantly work, resulting in his detachment and lack of motivation to learn and gain knowledge. One of the boy’s problems becomes emotional, manifesting in easy distraction and cognitive, consisting of poor reading comprehension and retention skills. Considering these issues with Adam, an assessment was conducted with a specialist in a quiet room without any distractions.
Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention was used to evaluate the boy’s abilities. This approach provided outcomes that showed that Adam has weakness in text memorization and strength in word decoding. In other words, the teacher experienced difficulties understanding the text’s central idea, a limited understanding of descriptive language, and the inability to link new information with personal experience. Adam showed promising results in identifying words from the text.
Before discussing possible strategies for improving reading skills, it is necessary to consider the need to create an individualized learning program (IEP) for Adam. This implies the development of a specialized training plan that will include several strategies to improve the student’s reading skills. Regarding the evaluation of the effectiveness of the IEP, it is noted that “a student with an IEP is re-evaluated every three years to determine continued eligibility” (“What is an IEP?” 2022). In Adam’s case, he falls under Section 504, which involves accommodating students who do not require a complete specialized plan but have difficulties interfering with learning.
Reading Strategies
The case study contributed to identifying several reading strategies that can be appropriate based on the previous assessment results. Because Adam has difficulties memorizing text, using the Questioning strategy can help him. It provides questions for the student before, during, and after working with the proposed text (Birch & Fulop, 2020). Questions should be structured in such a way as to facilitate the understanding of the information read and its memorization.
Another reading strategy may be summarizing, based on retelling the main idea and the text’s main points in your own words. This will help not only with the improvement of memorization but also with the development of comprehension. However, it is worth noting that this approach may be more challenging for Adam, as it implies simultaneous memorization, comprehension, and generalization of the information read. Therefore, when applying this strategy, the constant assistance of a specialist working with a child and assistance during the intervention is necessary.
Monitoring-clarifying is an approach that can be particularly effective when working with Adam within the framework of this case study. This strategy “helps learners/readers to observe their comprehensive knowledge about the paragraph they are reading” (Tajamal et al., 2021, p. 34). It provides an opportunity to assist Adam throughout the work with text information through answers to possible questions and misunderstandings. This will contribute to limiting problems such as memorizing the main idea and understanding the descriptive language.
The visualizing approach has benefits as it helps in memorizing and comprehending text through creating images related to text and organizing the information meaningfully. In Adam’s case, this approach provides an opportunity to improve the boy’s skills significantly. In particular, it can show effectiveness since children perceive images better at this stage of development than text information. Therefore, it is possible to depict the reading scene on paper when working out reading skills.
Rationale for the Intervention Plan
The next step is to provide a rationale of how the intervention plan addresses the child’s needs in the case study and why these decisions about the program were made. First of all, when considering the proposed approaches for use, the highlighted weaknesses and strengths of the boy were taken into account. As mentioned earlier, Adam has problems keeping his attention on a specific task, which requires developing interventions that will keep him.
In addition, the student has problems with comprehension and memorization of what he has read and difficulty understanding the text’s central idea. Another difficulty for Adam is understanding descriptive language, which is used in many texts for K-3 grade elementary school students. On the other hand, the boy has good skills in identifying and understanding the words in the text. Thus, the rationale of interventions is based on these indicators.
Rationale Behind Monitoring and Clarifying
Using such strategies within the program as questioning and monitoring-clarifying provides an opportunity to correct and improve Adam’s skills in understanding and comprehension. This will happen by constructing questions that will be based on the main content of the text provided. This approach will assist in increasing awareness of information and its excellent retention (Senthilraja & Shanthi, 2019).
Another rationale for using this strategy is to provide the student with an understanding of how he can pose questions to the educator to gain a better understanding and memorization of textual information. Questioning is effective not only directly when reading the text but also when preparing to work with it. Henceforth, a specialist working with Adam can prepare several questions to approximate what will be presented. With this step, it will be easier for the student to perceive the information in the text and comprehend it in the future.
Monitoring and clarifying the reading strategy as part of the work plan will improve the perception of descriptive language. This can manifest itself when monitoring a student’s reading: if a specialist draws attention to the fact that Adam does not understand the read word or cannot read it, he must help the student. This can be done with a simple clarification or a joint search for the definition of a complex word. Therefore, it limits the possibility of additional barriers in comprehending and memorializing textual information.
Another valuable aspect of the monitoring and clarifying strategy is the assistance of students in identifying meaningful parts of the text. This is due to the joint reading and comprehension of textual information and the identification of approaches that will help to deal with them. This contributes to the development of not only reading skills but also the skill of independent work. In other words, the student will learn strategies he can use independently without anyone’s help.
One of the main tasks of any intervention is to provide ongoing support and feedback to the child. The monitoring-clarifying strategy fills this function and helps the student cope with difficulties that may arise in learning reading skills and improving them. This aspect occurs due to monitoring the child’s progress and the ability to transform the process when needed.
Rationale Behind Additional Strategies
When using summarizing, an assessment can also be made regarding the success of the intervention performed and awareness of the difficulties that the student experiences when comprehending textual information. The rationale for using summarizing can also assist in improving the skill of extracting general information from an extensive text. In other words, when using this strategy, a specialist can train Adam to highlight the text’s central idea and identify details and words that the student can rely on for comprehension and memorization.
Visualization is an additional tool in the development of the ability to summarize and understand the central message of the text, which has a positive effect on the development of the comprehension of the text. Through the use of images, the educator can gain an understanding of which aspects of the text the student remembers best. From this information, it is possible to develop approaches that will focus on the weaknesses of Adam’s work. Visualization, while improving reading skills, can be utilized together with summarizing.
So, the student may be asked to imagine the text in his head and try to retell what he represents in his own words. It is possible to supplement the questioning approach with the task of leading questions to create a more complete retelling of the read text. Another rationale for the proposed work plan with the student is to provide strategies he can use independently (Birch & Fulop, 2020). Monitoring, clarifying, summarizing, questioning, and visualizing will contribute to memorizing the steps for working with text and further improve reading skills.
Assessment
Early Reading Diagnostic Assessment
It is necessary to conduct assessments that can be used to identify the continued progress. One of these approaches is the Early Reading Diagnostic Assessment (ERDA), which is used for children studying in the third grade. This assessment method includes focusing on measuring the comprehension skill of the text, with which Adam has difficulties. In addition to measuring this aspect, this approach helps to determine the strengths or weaknesses in skills such as phonemic awareness, vocabulary, phonics, reading comprehension, and fluency. Focusing on the comprehension of the text, ERDA is based on teaching to understand the contents of the text by asking questions or asking the student to come up with them himself.
In addition, this type of assessment is also carried out using word items, sentence items with target words in context, and passage items. With the help of this kind of task, the child will understand how to distinguish the main idea and information from what he has read. It is assumed that the ERDA assessment can be carried out every three to four weeks to understand how much the child’s progress has shifted.
Gray Oral Reading Tests-4
Another approach for assessing reading skills may be Gray Oral Reading Tests-4 (GORT-4). This approach focuses on the child’s ability to reproduce the text orally, which may help in Adam’s case since the boy has difficulty with the speed of reading the text. GORT-4 is based on the measurement and evaluation of such basic skills as rate, accuracy, fluency, comprehension, and overall reading ability (Sebole et al., 2019). This method can also evaluate the student’s abilities every three weeks. The check periods can be increased or shortened when identifying positive dynamics depending on the child’s skills.
It is worth noting that further additional assessments, including formative and summative assessments, may be required for further intervention planning. This type of assessment involves working with a student weekly to determine the progress made during this period. With the assistance of this approach, the educator gets the opportunity to track the progress of the reading skill accurately and provide direct feedback on the measures used for this. Summative assessments can be implemented as a final assessment of the student’s progress, based on which the result of the intervention will be derived. It will show a complete picture of the success of working with the student and determine the absence or need for further work.
Conclusion
It is necessary to involve parents to develop the child’s reading skills. Caregivers should encourage and develop the motivation to read in the student and practice reading aloud and asking as often as possible. Parents should read with their children daily to get the most successful result. Limiting the influence of irritation factors that can distract the child from this process is necessary. The most critical aspect that parents should follow is giving attention and time to the child to limit separation issues. Reading skills need to be developed by educators in collaboration with parents to achieve the most tremendous success.
References
Birch, B. M., & Fulop, S. (2020). English L2 reading: Getting to the bottom. Routledge.
Sebole, L. L., Khoza-Shangase, K., & Mophosho, M. (2019). The reading comprehension of Grade 5 Setswana-speaking learners in rural schools in South Africa: Does home language matter?. Per Linguam: a Journal of Language Learning Per Linguam: Tydskrif vir Taalaanleer, 35(3), 59-73.
Senthilraja, S., & Shanthi, S. P. (2019). Developing Reading Skills through effective Reading Strategies on the Lower Secondary Students. Think India Journal, 22(4), 9290-9297.
Tajamal, T., Sohail, M. I., & Azim, M. U. (2021). Effectiveness of single strategy technique in teaching reading skill. Research Journal of Social Sciences and Economics Review, 2(3), 31-39. Web.
What is an IEP? Everything you need to know about IDEA, IEPs, and 504 plans. (2022). ADDitude. Web.