Case Study Report:
Intervention Category: Academic and Reading Skills Development
Level: Intermediate
Allen
11 years, 2 months
5th grade
What was the reason for referral?
Dr. Wheelock was contacted by Allen’s mother, who expressed concern that Allen was not reading at grade level.
What background information did the parents report?
Allen lives with his parents, who are both college educated. The father is a career military officer, and the mother runs a web-based antiques business. English is the only language used in the home. Allen has one sister, age 15, who excels in academic studies and awards. The family move approximately every two years due to the father’s military assignments. Allen has attended three schools in three different states.
The mother reported that Allen had a normal birth delivery, normal stages of development except for diagnosis of amblyopia (commonly known as “lazy eye”) at age three. The amblyopia was remediated with treatment and glasses. Allen currently is within normal ranges of height and weight for his age.
Allen has never been retained in school. His mother reports that his poorest grades are in reading and social studies and his best grades are in science and math. He is most interested in the outdoors and is active in Boy Scouts. The parents read frequently, and the home has books and magazine and newspaper subscriptions. The parents require that Allen set aside two hours for homework on school nights. However, Allen is showing resistance to these sessions, sometimes crying and more and more frequently giving up, saying the work is too hard.
What background information did the classroom teacher report?
Allen had recently transferred into Mrs. Moore’s fifth grade classroom in an affluent suburb of a Midwestern city. Mrs. Moore notes he complies with classroom rules, listens carefully to instructions and responds in oral discussions of subjects he is interested in. Although he willingly joined other students in group learning activities, he seems nervous that he will do his tasks correctly and wants reassurance with each step he completes. Allen brings homework assignments regularly to class, but he is listless and daydreams with individual instructional assignments. When there is free reading time, Allen prefers to draw outlines of animals on his notebook. Mrs. Moore notes that Allen has made friends through shared care of classroom animals and his scouting membership.
What were diagnostic outcomes?
Dr. Wheelock administered a series of diagnostic tests and procedures with Allen. For the purposes of this case study, Dr. Wheelock presents the following outcomes of the Classroom Reading Inventory and a synopsis of relative data from other measures.
Allen’s Case Study
Part I: Word Lists
Form A: Pretest Inventory Record
Classroom Reading Inventory, 11th edition
From the CRI word lists, Allen made the following types of word substitutions:
out – “over” (diphthong; endings)
bound – “bond” (diphthong)
read – “real” (diphthong; endings)
cannot – “couldn’t” (short vowels; endings; structural analysis)
jug – “jag” (short vowel)
letter – “lets” (vowel + r; endings)
turkeys – “truckies” (vowel + r)
policy – “police” (structural analysis; endings)
passenger – “pass” (structural analysis)
Allen had repeated problems with vowels, specifically diphthongs and words with r-controlled vowels. He decoded with elaborate sounding out only the first syllables of most of the multi-syllabic words. He was hesitant in his reading from the beginning of the lists, and Dr. Wheelock needed to pronounce a number of the words for him.
Allen’s Case Study
Part II: Graded Paragraphs
Form A: Pretest Inventory Record
Classroom Reading Inventory, 11th edition
Dr. Wheelock positioned Allen to begin reading the graded paragraphs at the Pre-Primer level in the Classroom Reading Inventory, 11th edition. He chose the Pre-Primer level because it was the lowest level at which Allen could read correctly 100 percent of the words on the word lists.
Allen had numerous word repetitions, and he read word-by-word. His word recognition errors were consistent with those kinds of errors demonstrated on the word lists. He also would leave words out as he read. Dr. Wheelock had to pronounce the words intern, Michigan, fled, sewing, boycott and illegal.
The CRI references factual, vocabulary and inferential comprehension questions. Allen had difficulty with vocabulary and inferential questions, and scored at an instructional level in comprehension at the 4th grade level. Dr. Wheelock stopped the oral reading of graded paragraphs at this 4th grade level because Allen had frustrated in word recognition skills by this level.
He continued the assessment of his listening capacity by reading the next grade levels of stories to him and asking him the comprehension questions. Allen showed a listening capacity of 6th grade. If his word recognition deficiencies can be addressed, Allen would be able to read with comprehension at the 6th grade level.
Summary of diagnostic data from other measures:
- Allen scored within the normal range of intelligence on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III©, but he showed some unevenness of functioning through the subtests associated with indicators of stress and anxiety.
- The protocols were within the range of expected performance on the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test, the Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test, and the Betts Visual Discrimination Test. The Harris Test of Lateral Dominance indicates right-side laterality.
- On the Wheelock Informal Spelling Test, Allen was able to associate spoken sounds (phonemes) with printed symbols (graphemes) that represent them. The errors that he did make tended to be phonetically consistent; e.g., wrote hurd for herd, suger for sugar. The results of the Draw-A-Person Test and post-drawing interrogation tend to indicate a youngster for whom the environment is experienced as overwhelming and the self as inadequate.
Conclusions:
Dr. Wheelock found that Allen was a youngster of normal intellectual capacity, and that he has achieved some mastery of the phonetic and structural analysis skills. However, he has not yet achieved the level of automaticity. While Allen has some reading decoding skill deficits as documented on the CRI, he is able to decode words. He does this in a slow and laborious manner, and he has to think about decoding rather than doing it automatically. This lack of automaticity is due mainly to the fact that Allen appears to have missed some stages of reading development, he does not do any voluntary independent reading and he does not care for reading. Another problem that Allen faces is that he has come to associate reading with unpleasant feelings. He becomes anxious when asked to read, and he feels insecure about reading. He has internalized that he is “not good at reading” and therefore wants to avoid it.
Recommended Interventions:
Dr. Wheelock met with Allen’s parents and discussed each diagnostic test with them and his recommendations:
- Report of testing: Dr. Wheelock helped Allen’s parents understand the specific diagnostic outcomes as well as the patterns between and among the test results. He provided them a report of testing.
- Person-centered planning: Dr. Wheelock recommended that the parents share the outcomes of the evaluation with the school principal and Allen’s teacher as well as Allen. The parents will identify where Allen is academically, what needs to be the educational goals, what he needs to achieve to reach his goals, and how they can work together to achieve a family and school plan of support for him.
- School meeting: Allen’s parents should set an appointment with Allen’s classroom teacher, the special reading teacher in the school and the principal to review the report of testing. The outcome of this meeting is to determine an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) for Allen and interventions through special reading services.
- Skills development: Depending on the range of reading services available at Allen’s school, The IEP should include time for grouping Allen with several similar students at his instructional reading level to practice word recognition skills. The utilization of web-based or DVD based skill development tools should most certainly be explored. Many of these tutoring aids are highly interesting to children and are enthusiastically used by children who otherwise are resistant to drills.
- Independent reading: The major instructional emphasis in the school and home, however, must be on the development of a regular, daily program of independent reading to increase Allen’s level of automaticity with materials of high interest to Allen, that are written at his independent reading level. Due to the sympathetic relationship between reading and writing, if Allen were to receive extra credit at school for book reports written on books he read at home, his grade and his skill level would both improve.
- Homework: The parents should eliminate the rigid mandated amount of time Allen should spend each night on homework and be more flexible in their supervision of learning to reduce stress and anxiety that their son is associating in learning. Specifically, homework should become a pleasant experience for Allen and his parents as they find ways to incorporate “breaks” in which they could shoot baskets or bake cookies together, for example, during the time set aside for homework.
- Outside interventions: Depending on the school-based interventions schedule, the parents should consider engaging a tutor outside of the family to work independently with Allen on his skills, homework and related independent reading assignments, preferably with a person who is enthusiastic about teaching and personally supportive of Allen. These sessions could be held one to three times a week. This is an important option due to the levels of frustration and negativity that both Allen and his parents had come to associate with their mandated homework schedule in the past. If an outside tutor is engaged, communication between the tutor and the classroom teacher is of paramount importance to assure that Allen is working on the correct material. He is in need of immediate encouragement and success, so all efforts should lead first to immediate and noticeable gains in classroom activities.
- Tutoring priorities: Tutoring in the school or optionally in the community should require active verbalization in the lessons, continued development of critical reading/comprehension skills and vocabulary development.
- Family learning: The family should consider experiential ways to employ reading with Allen, including finding ways to have fun as a family that incorporates regular visits to museums, outdoor centers, special exhibits and other community events in which they can research together with Allen beforehand and in follow-up activities. These learning activities truly must be driven by Allen’s genuine interests, personal curiosity and desire for mastery. They should be fun for both him and his parents and wide-ranging enough for Allen to explore many different experiences. The parents will need to resist overly structuring the learning process or mandating a timed schedule with these experiences.
- Experiential learning: The Boy Scouts have numerous badges and learning options that relate to Allen’s interest in science and math. The scouting organization could be included in Allen’s person-centered plan through contact with Allen’s scout master to explore ways he can increase vocabulary development and applications through scout initiatives and goals at Allen’s independent reading level.
Discussion with experts:
Drs. Wheelock and Campbell answer questions below about Allen’s case study. If you have a question, please Ask the CRI Experts or check the FAQ.
FAQ’s related to Allen’s case study:
- If a student with academic skill deficits is not diagnosed as learning disabled, can they still have an IEP and receive special services?
- How do you get a child to do independent reading when he hates reading and thinks it is too hard?
- What is the appropriate way for parents to structure time for homework?
- How do you find a qualified tutor if your child needs one?
- What is the best age for involving the young person in person-centered planning?