Lydia Blank Case Study

Danielle Roach

Saint Mary of the Woods College

ED 327

Dr. Weena Gaulin

12/11/2016
Case Study Student: Lydia

Lydia Blank is a six-year-old kindergartener at Hand-in-Hand Elementary School and

attends Peanuts Kiddie Kollege for afterschool care. She is in the general education classroom.

She receives the common core education curriculum in the classroom. Lydia is the youngest of

six children. They do not all live at home with her. Lydia was adopted by her aunt, but still has

court-ordered visitation with her birth mother. She has been identified as at-risk for both learning

disabilities and behavioral problems because of her early home life. Currently, Lydia sees a

counselor bi-weekly for assistance in dealing with her underlying issues.

Preassessment Data

Letter ID:

At the beginning of our lessons, Lydia was able to identify forty-six out of fifty-four

letters. She was able to identify all of the capital letters except the I, which she identified as the

capital letter L. Lydia did not correctly identify the lowercase letters of q,d,g, and l. She

identified the letter q as p, b as d, b as g, and lowercase i as the letter l. All four of the letters she

missed are visually similar.

Word Recognition:

I used the Frys First 100 Words to assess Lydia Blank. I split the words into two days

assessing fifty words on both November 11th and 12th, 2016. I created flash cards with the words

and split the word load into sets of ten with a break between each set. Lydia was able to identify

fifty-nine of the one hundred words. The words she read correctly were: the, of, and, a, to, in, is,

you, that, it, he, for, on, are, as, with, they, I, at, be, this, have, from, or, had, by, words, but, what,

all, were, we, when, your, can, an, she, do, their, if, will, up, so, some, her, like, him, into, time,
look, two, go, see, no, my, am, day, did, get. The words she couldnt identify or identified

incorrectly were: was, his, one, not, said, there, use, each, which, how, other, about, out, many,

then, them, these, would, make, has, more, write, number, way, could, people, than, first, water,

been, called, who, its, now, find, long, down, come, made, may, part. Lydia was able to identify

sight words she has been learning at home and school. She struggled with words that were more

than one syllable and included blended sounds.

Tutoring:

Tutoring began on November 8, 2016. Lydia is a beginning reader, so we began with a

level AA passage for her to read. She read the passage with eighty percent accuracy. She had four

errors and one self-correction in the passage that contained twenty words. Lydia struggled with

the words grass, mud, goat, and summer. None of these words were her previous sight words.

She pronounced mud as mad and just did not recognize the other three. Lydia used phonics to

attempt to sound out the words. She looked to me for positive reinforcement after the reading of

each word in the passage. This caused her fluency to be disjointed, choppy, and demonstrated her

lack of self-confidence. Lydia used several strategies during her reading such as comprehension,

which was shown through her making predictions. She knew the story was about animals, so she

used this knowledge to look at a word and think of animals with familiar letters and sounds.

After she finished reading the passage, we used flash cards with letters on them to practice what

sounds each letter makes. We also worked on the blending of sounds into words. For example:

the word CAT, focusing on the vowel sound of (a) that she seemed to struggle with in the reading

of the passage. Lydia sounded out each letter and then blended the sounds together.

Since Lydia only had an eighty percent accuracy level, we continued on level AA with the

passage, The Little House. She completed this passage with a ninety-six percent accuracy level
with only one error in the twenty-four word story. Lydia was more familiar with the words in this

story than she was in the previous passage. Her self-confidence improved because of her prior

knowledge of these words, which was shown through her not requiring as much positive

reinforcement. From the CAF reading menu standpoint, her accuracy seemed to improve. This

was demonstrated through the flow of her reading, careful attention to letters and words, and

even guessed a word correctly based on the context of the story. This also confirmed her

comprehension was improving. Lydias reading was still disjointed, but was better. We integrated

technology in this lesson because of the students continued excitement regarding the new tablet

she had at home. We were able to download the application Reading Eggs, which is known to

help students with their phonics. She was able to choose one of five games that progresses the

child through twenty levels based on their knowledge. Lydia was motivated, excited, and

learning.

Lydia scored a ninety-six percent on The Little House, so she was advanced to an A level

passage. With this passage, Here is a One, she scored an eighty-nine percent. She made one error

for every nine words. This story was frustrating for Lydia at first until she realized there was a

pattern. She used this context clue to guess some of the words in the next few sentences. Lydia

realized the pattern of Seven, six, five, four and quickly could recite the sentences based on

memorization and not on actual knowledge of the words. I wanted to add this vocabulary to hers,

so I created flash cards with different numbers on them. Then we practiced putting the cards in

order based on their numerical order. I did not give any clues (such as seven dots on the number

seven card). This took a few tries, but eventually she was able to learn the words. We added these

flash cards to the other ones she studies every night. However, since Lydia was able to recognize

the pattern, her confidence grew. I would not say her confidence was based on her reading skill
during this passage, but on the fact that she caught on to the pattern. As for the CAF reading

menu, the new words on her notecards will help expand her vocabulary.

The next passage was the level A story, Three Birds. Lydia scored a one hundred on this

passage, but only because all of the words were previous sight words. She did not have to use

phonics to sound out any unknown words in the passage. Since all of the words were familiar to

her, we decided to do another week on level A. Her self-confidence shined and she was able to

read with ease. Her sentences were not as disjointed as the past three lessons; however, it still

was not fluent. She still stopped between each word but with much shorter pauses.

He Has Two is the final passage we read at level A. She scored a ninety-seven percent

which combined with the one hundred percent of the previous story demonstrated Lydia is ready

to move to the next level. This lesson we worked on short and long vowels, teaching her the

difference between the two. We utilized a computer game, Long and Short Vowel Sort, on the

website www.education.com. The game provided Lydia with blue and pink shopping carts. She

was instructed to sort the short As in one cart and the long As in the other. She struggled at first,

but after listening carefully to the sounds, she began to catch on. We also played the game with

short and long Es. This game helped with the accuracy portion of the CAF reading strategies

chart. Lydia worked on carefully listening to the sounds of the long and short A and E. Her

confidence lacked at first, but grew as she continued to play.

The next passage Lydia read was Big and Little, which is a level B passage. She read the

story but struggled with a few words (ex: slide, plant). She would then look up for guidance

instead of trying to sound it out. Since we focused on long and short vowel sounds of A and E

last passage, we concentrated on the short and long sounds of I, O, and U, since she had a

difficult time with the word slide. For this lesson, we watched a short video that has been
weve used in the classroom before. On the BrainPop education website, there is a video that

takes place on a farm. It helps explain the distinguishing sound difference between the short and

long vowels. The video goes into detail about how letter patterns can help you read. The student

worked on the accuracy and comprehension section of the CAF menu. Lydia paid attention to

the letters and words to identify the blended sounds. She additionally was able to summarize the

passage to me; including the main idea of the story.

We continued on level B with the passage, Ted Sees a Pond. This passage was not as easy

to predict as the others. She knew most of the words though and was able to remember all of the

items that Ted saw when he went on a walk. This demonstrated her comprehension of the story.

Since she did so well, it proved her vocabulary was increasing which is one of the goals of the

CAF reading menu. However, Lydia got ahead of herself and decided to guess the word turtle

using context clues instead of stopping and looking at the word. She did not pay attention to the

letters and try to use phonics to sound out the word, but instead said bird. This was an example

of a no graphic similarity miscue because bird has no similar letters or sounds as the printed

word of turtle. Lydia was asked to try the sentence again and pay close attention to the letters and

words. She was able to realize her error and use blending to piece together the word. After

reading this passage, we worKed on rhyming words. Rhyming is principally blending a new

onset to an old rime. Even though some of her rhyming words did not make sense, this activity

will help with blending a single onset to a variety of words. Once we discussed rhyming words,

Lydia clapped out the syllables to the words.

The final passage was It Is a Birthday Party, which is a level C. Lydia had an accuracy

rate of eighty-eight percent. The student was more engaged in this story. After she read the

passage, she related a story about her birthday and the party she had the previous year. Lydia had
self-confidence in some points of this story, although in others she lacked it. As for the CAF

reading strategies menu, she was struggling in the accuracy section. Lydia made a guess at a

word that made sense, but she did not even look at the letters. She did look at the beginning of

the word car, but she moved onto the next word in the passage before taking the time to realize

the end of the word had an E. She did not realize her mistake until attempting to re-read the

sentence. Despite her accuracy lacking at some points, she was comprehending the passage

material and could recall the items at the birthday party.

Post Assessments

Lydia Blank improved greatly with her letter identification. She only had one letter she named

incorrectly. She said the lowercase letter d was letter b. Her speed has definitely increased since

the preassessment alphabet test.

The student was able to read seventy-eight of Frys First 100 words. This was an increase of

nineteen words. This was accomplished in her increase of sight word recognition, combination

sounds, and a better understanding of short and long vowel sounds.

Her running record score placed her at the C level, which was a drastic improvement. Although

she stayed at the A level for four lessons, she still ended at the C level during the anticipated time

period.

Outcome Analysis
Lydia has improved tremendously throughout her eight one-on-one tutoring sessions. She shows

vast development in her accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Her knowledge of phonics,

phonemic awareness, blending, and long/short vowel sounds has increased and assisted in

improving her syntax, comprehension, and confidence. The utilization of technology benefited

the student because of her interest and excitement in this area. After discussion with her mother,

Theresa, and review of her progress, Theresa has decided to continue with the usage of flash

cards, apps, BrainPop videos, and online games. She is pleased with Lydias progress and is

excited about continuing her reading improvement.