Case Study of Sarah, a Second Grade Student
by Donna Van Allen
April 3, 1999
Teacher comments:
Sarah is a second grader that was given an initial assessment in Marie Clay’s Alphabet Recognition, Writing Vocabulary, Hearing and Recording Sounds, and Word Test. The Diagnostic Reading Assessment, a form of running record, was used to assess her reading level. The results were as follows:
Sarah knew 22/26 upper case letters. U for W, X for Z, B for D and L for I were the errors made. In the lower case, 26/28 letters were correctly identified. Again, u for w, but also p for q.Sarah was also able to give sound for the upper case letters. of these, again 22/26 were identified. Errors given were U for Y, Q was unknown, K for X and short I for I. Sarah was able to correctly write from memory 30 words in seven minutes with prompting from me. She scored well (stanine 6) on hearing and recording sounds with 33/37.
On the Word Test, Sarah was able to identify by sight only ten out of twenty words.
The DRA identified level 6 as her instructional reading level.
Sarah also wrote interactively with me in a journal after the DRA assessment and showed that she can hear and correctly identify initial and ending sounds of words. I noticed she had some difficulty hearing and identifying medial sounds and the/th/sound. It was written and read as an (f) or a (v). With this information, follow up lessons were planned.
Sarah needs to improve her sight word vocabulary. I will use the words from her writing vocabulary assessment as the start of a personal word wall, which we will add to weekly.
We will explore sound in words and to scaffold Sarah’s phonics through listening for and identifying sounds in words. El Konin boxes and individual interactive writing will be used for this. Trough the use of guided reading, we will work on self corrections and reading for correct meaning and correct grammar. We will work on making sense and whether or not reading passage sounds right. She will also be asked to re-read and look for things that may trick her, or things that she had not self corrected. She will be given the guided opportunity for self correction, in order to slow down and do so.
Word, sentence or text activity may include one or more of the following: