Erin Percacciolo

EDUG 787

November 26, 2014

Final Paper

The student I used in administering my WIAT exam was a thirteen-year-old boy

in 8th grade at a suburban school. He attends the Haldane Central School District located
in Cold Spring, New York. The district is small containing approximately seventy to
eighty kids per grade. He is a general education student who often achieves honor roll
recognition every grading period. He is heavily involved in hockey. He plays for an elite
travel team that holds practice late at night. His team is located out of New Jersey. He
spends majority of his weeknights traveling to and from Jersey with my aunt. I asked him
how and where he gets his homework done and his response was, In study hall.
This student is what many of his peers would consider the class clown or wise
guy. He is a very likeable student and his peers enjoy his jokes in class. I wouldnt
consider him a behavioral problem, but he does get out of hand on occasion in an attempt
to impress his classmates. When he was younger he had a really hard time pronouncing
certain letters, especially the letter r. Words that began with the letter r or had the letter r
within them, he would pronounce the sound as a w. For example, he used to call my
brother Robert, Wobert. His speech impediment really bothered him. It made him selfconscious. He was timid in school, and never wanted to answer questions out loud. My
aunt hired a speech professional to work with him twice a week. Although she had a hard
time getting him to go, his speech has significantly improve and you can barely notice it
when he talks.
My student excels in math. He expressed to me that it was his favorite subject. He
also elaborated on how much he hated reading and deemed it pointless. Coming from
someone who minored in English, I assured him it wasnt! I think his dislike for language

arts made those sections of the test harder for him to complete. He was more focused on
the mathematics sections than on the literacy. Only eight parts of the assessment were
used during this administration of the WIAT exam. Those eight parts included: Math
problem solving, numerical operations, spelling, math fluency addition, math fluency
subtraction, math fluency multiplication, word reading, and pseudo word decoding.
The students scored a 112 in the math problem solving section. His descriptive
classification is average. I began assessing him at his appropriate grade level, which
started at question number thirty-four. The student did extremely well, answering all
questions in his designated grade level and the nine, ten grade level correctly. He began
to struggle as he approached question fifty. He was already ten or so questions into the
eleven, twelve grade level. He expressed some frustration as he approached the harder
questions. This isnt fair, I havent even learned this stuff yet. I think that was part of
his problem, the fact that he had not yet learned to solve these types of problems. He
expressed how he excelled in math. Its his best subject. Therefore, I concluded that the
frustration he expressed was due to his inability to solve the more difficult equations.
In numerical operations the student scored a 105. His descriptive classification is
average. He answered the first twenty-nine questions correctly but began struggling once
he reached questions number thirty. He didnt know the correct answer to either question
thirty or thirty-one, two pretty straightforward mathematical problems. One thing I
noticed about the student when he was completing this section was that he was rushing.
Then I began to realize that all the questions involving algebra were giving him
difficulty. This led me to conclude that he struggles with algebraic equations.

The students spelling score was a 110, again classifying him as average. In this
section I hypothesized that the student would struggle due to his past speech impediment.
As I watched him sound/spell out the words I did notice that some of his phonemic
awareness was still questionable. Some of his letters to sound correlations were still off.
He spelled several basic words wrong because he was unable to correctly pair a sound
with its letter. I knew this section wouldnt be as strong as the math sections biggest due
to his struggles in literacy and speech.
In pseudo word decoding the student scored a 96 again classifying under the
category of average. He struggled most in this section along with word reading where
although he scored a 105, it is again an average classification. I noticed his struggle in
speech during the pseudo word decoding. He also made it a point to remind me that he
was, bad at speaking when he was little and sucks at reading. I attempted to encourage
him by telling him he was doing well. I felt like he gave up towards the end in both
sections. As I mentioned previously, the student tends to give up when he feels
discouraged by challenging academic instruction.
Thomas did well in all math fluency areas. He scored a 96 in math fluency
addition, a 106 in math fluency subtraction, and a 106 in math fluency multiplication.
These scores classified him as average. I began with the math fluency addition section.
Thomas rushed through that section and hurried onto the next. What happened when he
went on to the next section was that he continued to add rather than switch to subtraction.
He realized he was still adding about five problems in, so he had to go back and fix those
problems. Again, he got frustrated because this section was timed and felt he was being
cheated. Perhaps here, the student lacked the skills of following the directions!

Subject Area

Raw Score

Standard Score

Math Problem
Solving
Numerical
Operations
Spelling

59

112

Descriptive
Classification
Average

40

105

Average

44

110

Average

Math Fluency
Addition
Math Fluency
Subtaction
Math Fluecy
Multiplication
Word Reading

34

95

Average

36

106

Average

33

106

Average

60

105

Average

Pseudo Word
Decoding

32

95

Average

The running record I conducted with my student was on his appropriate grade
level. It was a book he chose and was reading, The House of Hades by author Rick
Riordan. A few things I noticed while conducting the running record was that my student
read with absolutely no expression. It was a very monotone reading. He had trouble
pronouncing the names of the Greek Gods and Goddesses mentioned in the section.
When he had trouble pronouncing the words he tried and then said, whatever that name
is and continued forward. He did self correct himself on dizziness and incapacitated.
He skipped over the word praetor. When I asked him questions about what he had just
read, he was able to tell provide me with an appropriate summary that elaborated on the
events that had occurred I this section.
Unlike the comments I have heard in class, my student did extremely well on his
writing samples. He is in eighth grade, so Im sure his grade level had a lot to do with it. I
asked him to respond to the prompt given in the booklet and then allowed for him to

choose whichever subject area he wanted to write about for the free-write section. Oddly
enough, both sections he wrote about were about hockey. Below I provided a chart on
how I graded my student. For the free write the student wrote an entire page recapping a
hockey game he had once. He used expression and appropriate detail. For the given
prompt, the student also chose to write about hockey. He provided approximately a half a
page of writing.
Prompted Writing Sample:
Criteria:
Ideas
Organization
Word Choice
Sentence
Fluency

Voice
Conventions

Free Writing Sample:

Criteria:

Ideas

Organization
Word Choice

Sentence
Fluency
Voice
Conventions

I think this student needs to work on his literacy skills and strategies for both
reading and writing. As you can see, I gave him a score of four for ideas for both writing
samples. The student really does have great ideas and does a fabulous job expressing
them in his writing. As long as the student has great ideas the other conventions of
writing will fall into place.
Seeing as though the student is preparing to enter high school, I dont think there
are many things that he will be willing to do to enhance his performance in reading and
writing. However, I think speech flash cards would benefit him greatly. He used to do
them in the past, and it really enhanced his speech and reading skills. Members of my
family took notice to how well he began to annunciate and pronounce the sounds in his
words. I also think if this student would just slow down and take the time to read slowly
and carefully, it would be much easier for him. When he rushes he gets ahead of himself
and that is where he gets things wrong. He should set a pace for himself. If he can pace
his reading, it will give him time to properly pronounce certain words and phrases. Its
not that he doesnt know how to pronounce them, he is just aware of his past speech
impediment and feels that if he moves quickly through things, people wont notice as
much.
I read about strategy known as Keyword substitution. This strategy aids
children in developing an understanding of the role that phonemes play in the meaning of
words. When a phoneme is changed in a word, more often than not, the meaning changes.
Keyword substitution activities use familiar songs as a basis for playing with words.
Adults can take the lyrics of a familiar song and create new lyrics that substitute words
with small phonemic variations. For instance, the chorus of Pop Goes the Weasel could

be changed to Hop Goes the Weasel. After singing the song with the new lyrics adults
should discuss how changing a phoneme shifted the meaning of the song. Obviously this
strategy is a little out of date for this student, but I do feel something similar to this in a
modified version perhaps would assist him.
Thomas might benefit from working on his phonics skills too. If he works on
different sounds and blending them, it will help him with his speech. Again, attempting to
get an eighth grade student to do activities generally associated with lower grades will be
like pulling teeth. His speech isnt terrible, but I feel that he struggles in areas of literacy
and reading to do his incapability to properly sound out and hear different sounds in
certain words.