Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Nathan L. Tamborello
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Clinical Report…………….…………………….…………...…………………….….3
IV. Reflection……………….……………………………………………………….…...10
Case Study 3
CLINICAL REPORT
In beginning our clinical report, we must first analyse the information we have on our
student. Sophia Hernandez, an 8-year-old female student in third grade, currently has a few
issues in class. She has issues with oral reading in class and sporadically turns in her homework:
these are her teacher’s main concerns. Sophia wears glasses, but has difficulty with eye muscle
imbalance and tracking whilst reading. These visual processing issues could also create difficulty
for Sophia to see differences in some letters, making it hard for her to see them in the correct
order; we will observe Sophia to see if she squints or closes one eye while reading to assess her
Sophia is in the low reading group in her class; because of this, we begin testing this third
grader at the primer level using the flash method. Sophia’s scores at the primer level denote a
flash word recognition at the independent level; however, her flash recognition at the first grade
level quickly falls into the instructional level, and then falls off even faster at the second grade
level to a frustration level. Her accuracy at a first grade level is in the grey area at 93%, being in-
between the instructional and frustration level, and drops to a frustration level at second grade.
Her comprehension level begins at the instructional level in first grade and drops to a frustration
level at the second grade. Her oral reading rate at the first grade level is acceptable (50-85 wpm
is the norm), yet well below acceptable at the second grade level (80-120 wpm). Her silent
reading rate is acceptable at the first grade level (50-90 wpm), yet falls far behind once at the
second grade level (norm is 100-145 wpm). Her spelling in first grade begins at the instructional
level and falls to a frustration level by the second grade. Testing was stopped at the second
grade. Sophia’s test results therefore indicate that her independent level is primer, her
instructional level is first grade, and her frustration level is second grade.
Case Study 4
to see how she interacts with her classmates, how she reads aloud/silently, and overall how she
fares with her school-work. We find that Sophia is a very quiet, but well-rounded student. During
silent reading, we observe Sophia moving very slowly through a book - her silent reading rate is
surely indicative of this. In conducting read-alouds with the whole class, Sophia has trouble with
her oral reading. Her low flash recognition scores (71 at first, 35 at second) and her low spelling
(75 at first, 38 at second) indicates a severe word knowledge deficiency that certainly contributes
to her low to her low oral accuracy (grey area during first at 93%, frustration at second at 79%)
and low, frustration oral rate at the second level. In viewing the classroom library, we find that
most of the books in the library are at the higher end of the second grade list and well into the
third grade list. This may contribute to Sophia’s continued frustration at both oral and silent
reading. During her silent reading time, we notice Sophia continually squinting at her book and
re-reading the same pages over and over again. This may be indicative of her vision-related
issues: we note both issues in tracking the words across the page and Sophia getting stuck on
words. Sophia’s visual processing issues could be contributing to her having difficulty denoting
Sophia’s parent teacher conference brought in both familial information and hereditary
information on Sophia. Through the use of a Spanish translator, we were able to figure out a few
things about Sophia and her family that may be indicative of Sophia’s issues. Neither of Sophia’s
parents speak any English - only Spanish is spoken in her home. This means that the only
English practice that Sophia gets is at school and with her siblings, contributing to her frustration
scores in moving beyond the first grade level. Sophia’s older siblings do speak English and help
her with her homework; however, because both her parents work long hours, they are not there to
Case Study 5
ensure that Sophia is able to complete all of her homework. Her parents note that if her siblings
aren’t able to help Sophia, her homework may not be completed. Sophia’s father notes that he
had reading difficulties related to vision as well. Her father also states that her latest vision report
states that she has an eye muscle imbalance, yet they haven’t had time to do any therapy for her.
Her parents are able to tell us that Sophia’s interests include animals - especially dogs and
horses. Her parents also note that Sophia’s problems first began to surface at the first grade level.
Sophia had only been speaking Spanish at home before beginning school, so she had begun
behind her classmates. Using this information, we can conclude that one of the biggest problems
for Sophia is her eye muscle imbalance. Knowing this, we could coordinate to have some
physical therapy for her during tutoring sessions to help improve her eye muscles to help her
tracking difficulties. We can also get with the school nurse about updating Sophia’s prescription
to help ensure that her near-sightedness is less of an issue. Using her parents’ information about
her interests, we can curate a book list based around that in order to ensure that she is reading
material that she is actually interested in that are on her current level of reading.
In conclusion, we note that Sophia has difficulty with her vision that we will address
through PT and through an updated glasses prescription. We will curate a book list for Sophia
that includes her interests and begins at her current independent and instructional level. We will
work with Sophia to help her tracking issues while reading, possibly giving her books with larger
print to accommodate for her decreased vision and harder time tracking across the page. We will
work with Sophia on her vocabulary, as her word knowledge is lower mostly due to her
monolingual communication with her parents in Spanish. In working with Sophia on these
issues, we can increase both her silent and oral reading rate and ensure that she moves closer to
LESSON PLAN I
1. Guided reading: Sophia and her tutor will utilise a curated list of books specifically
built for Sophia’s interests. In selecting her first book, Sophia and her tutor will
preview the first 8 pages of a first to second grade book. Since Sophia was interested
in animals, we created the following list of books for her to choose from:
After selecting a book and reading the first few pages, the tutor poses several pre-
reading questions to stimulate Sophia’s interest in the book further. Sophia chose the
book Fantastic Mr. Fox, and poses the following questions: where do foxes live?
What do foxes eat? Are foxes friends with any other animals? Etc. Sophia doesn’t
know some of the answers, but the pictures in the book and the cover have her eager
to start reading. The tutor reads the first two pages of the books, and then Sophia
reads the exact same pages. The tutor is setting the pace of the book, letting Sophia
know the rhythm of the prose. This process is successful in getting Sophia off to a
fluent start. The tutor and Sophia read the next 10 pages in partner reading: they
alternate pages and stop every now and then to discuss the text. After 12 pages,
Sophia begins reading independently with the tutor providing assistance when
necessary. Reading fluency is a concern for Sophia, however, so the tutor offers for
accurately gauge her fluency and comprehension. After reading, the tutor and Sophia
work to go beyond the text and within the text, asking question such as: how is Mr.
Fox like other foxes? How do the animals display animal behaviour? How do the
2. Word study: Since Sophia reads at mostly a first grade level, we can assume that she
has difficulty with basic one-syllable spelling patterns in the English language and
We flash this deck to Sophia - correctly identified words are placed in one pile, and
incorrectly identified words are placed in a second pile. We do this until she has
mastered 47/50 words and her responses are, for the most part, immediate. We can
then move on to long-vowel, r-controlled, and a few other patterns to help with word
identification.
3. Writing: Sophia chooses to write about a story about when her family went to Disney
World. The tutor allows Sophia to create a pre-writing story building map. The tutor
helps Sophia create the first sentence, and then allows her to freely write
independently. Once Sophia has written a paragraph, the tutor asks Sophia to read
back what she has written. The tutor then asks Sophia to plan what to write next, and
4. Read to: The tutor reads aloud Jumanji, using their finger to underline the words as
they read aloud to Sophia to help with her tracking difficulties. Sophia is attentive and
LESSON PLAN II
1. Guided reading: Sophia and her tutor begin the lesson by going back throught he first
pages of Fantastic Mr. Fox and recounting what happened during the first lesson.
They then proceed to partner read the second half of the book. The tutor needs to
continually model for Sophia how to read expressively, yet paced with the author’s
prose and word usage. At the end of the book, the pre-reading questions from the first
lesson are revisited and again, answered, and the tutor gauges whether Sophia has
2. Words study: the tutor uses the same short-vowel pattern flash cards to assess
Sophia’s knowledge. Once Sophia has answered them all correctly with relative ease
and quickness, the tutr has Sophia sort the crads into vowel pattern categories:
a/e/i/o/u, etc. The tutor and Sophia follow up the sorting with a short memory game,
and the tutor assesses whether Sophia has good knowledge of the short vowel
patterns.
3. Fluency building: Within the second lesson, the tutor wishes to include repeated
reading of the same text for Sophia, so Jumanji is brought back out. Sophia is
supposed to read the first 200 words from the book, and the tutor measures Sophia for
accuracy, speed, and comprehension. The tutor times Sophia’s reading in 2-minute
trials, and figures out her wpm rate. Sophia completes 2 trails of this type of reading,
4. Writing: Sophia continues her story about Disney World. The tutor makes sure to
congratulate Sophia on her work & progress, yet also points out places where her
5. Read to. The tutor chooses one of the books in Sophia’s reading queue to read to her.
Case Study 10
REFLECTION
I found the context of this assignment difficult, yet interesting. None of the
previous cases we had studied figured in an actual physical trait that hampered reading
ability. Sophia was a unique case to read and write about due to her background: her
vision problem mixed with her linguistic background proved a difficult array of
difficulties to conquer. As interesting as this case was, I’m sure it is closer to the norm of
an actual school as opposed to many of the cut-and-dry cases Morris introduced in the
book.
The case was also difficult for me as I have no real-world context of how third
grade classrooms are structured. I teach eighth grade and am certified for 7-12, so being
introduced to a child in such an early grade made me have to go back and read many of
the earlier chapters on working with and diagnosing children with disabilities who were
in the early stages of reading. Sophia was also an interesting case in that regard because
she is in a “later grade” class - third - yet she only reads at an independent level near the
primer and first grade. So finding literature that fit her specific needs was a welcome
challenge. I’m almost jealous of all of the interesting literature that exists for those
grades!
I found that using my imagination for this case, and probably other cases like it,
was difficult. There’s no real way to create a scenario perfectly with how this
hypothetical child would react. I wish I had actual data that I could point to in order to
justify the things I chose to do and the way her parents responded. It did, however, make
me think deeply about the scenario and all of the possibilities I could follow to allow
Sophia the best results possible in her studies towards grade level reading.