Anne Marie Kampf Psych 639 12406

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Anne Marie KampfPsych 63912-4-06

• Reading Intervention
• Case Presentation

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Individuals Involved

• Client SG, a 9-year-old 3rd grader
• Consultee Carrie, an assistant in SGs class
• Teacher Mrs. S.
• Consultant me ?

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Problem Presentation

• Mrs. S. was very excited when approached with the
  idea for this intervention she had just the
  girl.
• According to Mrs. S., SG wasnt so far behind as
  to be unable to function in the class, but she
  wasnt able to keep up as much as either of them
  would like.

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Problem Presentation

• SG had obvious gaps in her reading skills that
  most of the rest of the class had already moved
  past.
• Mrs. S. felt bad that she was unable to help SG
  to fill in these gaps with more one-on-one time.
• Mrs. S. was also concerned about the recently
  received STAR test scores on which SG received a
  Far Below Basic score on the English and Language
  Arts section.

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Problem Presentation

• Mrs. S. stated that SG takes too long to read
  materials in class and when shes done she
  doesnt always understand the content. She
  worried about this becoming more of a problem as
  reading becomes more of an assumed skill and the
  content is more of a focus.
• SG does ok with the spelling words they study in
  class (probably because of the repeated exposure)
  but sometimes has trouble with reading the
  instructions for worksheets in other subjects.
• SG also isnt doing much reading for fun. She
  dislikes reading and most of the books she
  chooses for her assigned at-home reading are
  probably too easy for her.

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Program in place

• At SGs school there currently are no reading
  intervention specialists or programs to help with
  those children who are behind in reading skills.
• SG participates in the regular general education
  curriculum for reading, which consists mostly of
  the Houghton-Mifflin basal reader plus extension
  activities.

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Establishing Baseline

• In order to establish where SGs reading skills
  were really at, I used the oral fluency probes
  from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early
  Literacy Skills (6th Edition) program. These
  were downloaded from the University of Oregon
  website.
• These probes were also used weekly as a part of
  the curriculum based assessment used to monitor
  progress.

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Establishing Baseline

• Third graders in the beginning of the school year
  are expected to be able to read 77 words per
  minute to achieve Mastery in their reading
  skills. Reading between 53 and 77 words per
  minute would put them at the Instructional level,
  and below 53 would be at the Frustrational level.
  I used these criteria to measure SGs abilities
  with probes of various reading levels.
• Three probes at each grade level were
  administered and the median score was used to
  determine Instructional level.

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First Grade Probes

• SG was administered three First Grade probes
  (taken from the Benchmark 2 section of the DIBELS
  booklet) and was able to read the follow words
  per minute
• Probe 1 59 (Median)
• Probe 2 85
• Probe 3 50
• Because 59 falls in the Instructional range, SG
  was determined to be Instructional with 1st grade
  level reading probes.

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Second Grade Probes

• SG was also administered three Second Grade
  probes (taken from the Benchmark 1 section of the
  DIBELS booklet) and was able to read the follow
  words per minute
• Probe 1 46
• Probe 2 68
• Probe 3 62 (Median)
• Because 62 falls in the Instructional range, SG
  was also determined to be Instructional with 2nd
  grade level reading probes.

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Third Grade Probes

• SG was administered three Third Grade probes
  (taken from the Benchmark 1 section of the DIBELS
  booklet) and was able to read the follow words
  per minute
• Probe 1 38
• Probe 2 43 (Median)
• Probe 3 45
• Because 43 falls below the Instructional cutoff
  of 53, SG was determined to be Frustrational with
  3rd grade level reading probes.

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Baseline Data
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Error Analysis

• Once SGs Instructional levels were established,
  I went over the errors she had made on the probes
  to determine where I would like to target my
  intervention. I made hypotheses based on the
  errors I saw and then read with SG again to test
  them. Once the hypotheses were established I
  began the targeted intervention with SG.

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Error Analysis

• SG seems to know the pace she wants to read at
  and has some basic skills in scanning written
  words for identifiable markers in order to read
  them quickly. She gets close to correctly
  identifying a word but seems to want to move on
  before shes sure and so guesses after narrowing
  it down. Words that are repeated in the passages
  give her the practice and time needed to make an
  accurate identification after a couple attempts,
  but the longer words that only appear once are
  often read incorrectly. Most of her word
  replacements start with the same letter as the
  original word and have some other letters (ending
  or middle) in common.
• Examples
• -winter to water
• -crocus to crust
• -wont to want
• -freezer to flavors
• -twice to twitch

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Error Analysis

• Sometimes SG focuses on the ending of the word
  and doesnt seem to notice that shes changed the
  beginning of the word until shes read it and
  seems to think its too late.
• Examples
• -outside to inside (while inside was read
  correctly)
• -check-up to chicken-up, kick-up, and hick-ups
• With the latter, SG seemed to know after reading
  check-up that it was wrong and tried different
  things the next couple of times, and only got it
  right after the third incorrect reading. Another
  situation similar to this was when SG read the
  word winter twice as water. The first time
  she didnt pause but the second time she paused
  to sound it out and still continued after reading
  it as water. After she had finished the passage
  I went back and asked her if she could tell me
  what that word was and she was able to sound it
  out correctly. Im not quite sure whether it was
  the added time spent on it or the help of the
  context of the passage after having read it all.

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Error Analysis

• SG has trouble deciphering between words that
  start with th.
• Examples
• -this to the
• -there to they
• She can quickly identify the th but has
  difficulty with the endings. She can also
  decipher between th words and other words
  starting with t.
• Example
• -twice to twitch
• SG tried to sound this word out but got the tw
  right away.

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Error Analysis

• SGs scanning of the page may not be as accurate
  as it should be either. This can cause her to
  misplace a word for one on another line or to
  skip lines completely.
• Examples
• -sugar to ice (ice was directly above sugar
  she then continued on with the line as written)
• -bars to dream (after struggling with the word
  drumsticks which she read as drestick this
  was in the phrase drumsticks, ice cream bars,
  and bonbons)
• SG also skipped lines twice. In one passage she
  struggled with a word (things) finally reading
  it as thurns and then continued in the same
  place on the line below the one she had been on,
  which was the start of a new sentence. In
  another passage SG finished a sentence at the end
  of a line and then skipped the next sentence and
  moved on to the next paragraph which was the last
  sentence.

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Based on these findings I came up with the
following Hypotheses

• SG seems to learn words easily with repeated
  exposure and could benefit from repeated exposure
  to a variety of vocabulary words which are then
  used in reading activities.
• SG could use some practice with accurately
  reading different words that start with th.
• SG needs to work on the accuracy of her scanning
  while reading. Shes using scanning to her
  advantage when reading individual words since
  shes able to recognize endings quickly, but
  tends to skip lines or bounce back and forth
  between them too often. She also seems to be
  confusing letters in one word with those in words
  before and after.

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More Hypotheses

• SG could use some practice with the different
  vowels within words and how easily they can
  change the pronunciation of a word. Working on
  quickly distinguishing between words like went
  and want, came and come would be helpful.
• Although SG knows many of the simpler words like
  a, the, and and in isolation, she made need
  to work on not using them all interchangeably
  when she doesnt have an understanding of the
  context to fall back on to tell her which to use.

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Plan Implementation

• I decided to first target the hypothesis I
  thought would have the greatest impact on SGs
  reading abilities and work on the simple sight
  words she was having trouble reading accurately.
  
• I began by using the Dolch Sight Words through
  the 1st grade level (SGs Instructional level)
  because they are widely used and are based on the
  research.

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Plan Implementation

• Because sight words need to be learned with
  repeated exposure and the goal is to quickly and
  accurately identify them without using any
  working memory, I decided to use flashcards as a
  means of familiarizing SG with the words.
• So as not to waste time on those words she was
  already familiar with, we went over the entire
  group of words for the first three days, making
  note of which words she was able to quickly and
  accurately read. Those words she got every time
  were then taken out of the rotation.

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Remaining Sight Words

• Preprimer away, down, funny, help, hers, my,
  one, said, three
• Primer ate, came, must, new, no, now, on, our,
  ran, ride, saw, that, under, want, well, went,
  what, white, with
• First again, as, could, every, her, how, know,
  live, may, of, round, thank, where
• These remaining words were reviewed for four more
  days, until SG consistently got them right.

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Progress Monitoring

• Because SGs lowest Instructional level was found
  to be at the 1st grade level probes, and because
  that is where I was targeting my intervention, I
  began monitoring SGs progress with regard to her
  words read correctly per minute with 1st grade
  level probes.

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Week 1 Data

• Week 1 WRC/M 56, 62, 65

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Plan Implementation

• Once SG was comfortable with the words in
  isolation, we started going over the words in
  short phrases, also in flashcard form
• Examples
• on our street
• thank her
• what is that?
• three funny boys
• hers is round
• However, I found that having more than one of the
  target sight words in the phrases was a little
  too big of a jump for SG to make and she was
  having trouble. We switched to phrases that only
  had one target word in them.
• Examples
• go away
• down the street
• you are funny
• help me
• that is hers

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Week 2 Data

• Week 2 WRC/M 64, 71, 73

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Plan Implementation

• After three days of working on the
  one-target-word phrases she was getting them
  right quickly and consistently and was ready to
  move on to the more complex phrases we had
  previously tried.
• At this point she was also given more probes to
  monitor her progress.

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Week 3 Data

• Week 3 WRC/M 65, 80, 82

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Probe Grade Level Change

• At this point, SG had reached the Mastery level
  (77) for words read correctly per minute on the
  1st grade probes. I went ahead and gave her some
  2nd grade probes to get a more accurate picture
  of her abilities.

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Week 3 Data

• Week 3 WRC/M (Second Grade) 60, 68, 69

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Plan Implementation

• SG worked on the more complex phrases for four
  more days until she was consistently and quickly
  reading them correctly.
• At this point the words were put into short
  sentences with as few target words in them as
  possible. (It was hard to completely isolate
  such common words.) I wanted her to get more
  practice with the words in the format that she
  would normally see them.

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Short Sentences

• Examples
• I like that.
• The ball is round.
• Thank you.
• Please help me.
• We live here.
• The sentences were presented on one sheet of
  paper with another sheet placed over them so as
  to isolate each sentence for her and eliminate
  the possible confounding variable of her
  difficulties with scanning. For the same reason
  these sentences were typed double-spaced, with
  plenty of space between lines/sentences.

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Week 4 Data

• Week 4 WRC/M 61, 70, 72

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Continuation of Sight Words

• After a few days of working on the short
  sentences, I made some more complex sentences
  with a few more words in them. Most of the
  probes at SGs level contained sentences with 5-9
  words in them so my sentences contained the same
  amount.
• Examples
• Thank you for the pretty picture.
• Could you please help me with this?
• Three white rabbits came over the hill.
• We are our dinner as fast as we could.

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New Hypothesis

• At this point we were almost through with working
  on the sight words that SG was struggling with so
  I decided to start in on another hypothesis.
• The simplest transition seemed to be to working
  on the th words that SG had been using
  interchangeably with each other.
• SG had worked on some of these words in their
  role as sight words, but some of the th words
  were not included (such as thing) and I wanted
  to really target her identification of these
  words.

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th words plan implementation

• th words used
• the, three, that, there, they, this, thank, them,
  then, think, their, these, those, thing, though,
  than, thin, third, and throw
• We started by again going over these words in
  flashcard form. Since there were so few of them,
  and because I wanted SG to be able to distinguish
  all the words from each other, I opted not to put
  aside the ones she was already quite familiar
  with as I had done before with the sight words.
• We went over these words for five days, until SG
  was consistently reading them accurately and
  quickly.

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Week 5 Data

• Week 5 WRC/M 65 , 71, 78
• During this week the first trimester of school
  ended, and so I moved the Goal line from 77 WRC/M
  to 92 WRC/M. This goal line represent where the
  average 3rd grade should be reading 3rd grade
  level material by the end of the second trimester
  in order to reach Mastery.

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Last phase of Sight Word work

• Paragraphs Paragraphs were created using the
  sight words SG had been working on.
• Example
• My friend Sue lives near the park. I live
  three houses away from her. Every day I go there
  with her and run around. She goes down the new
  slide and I ride on the swings. Once we saw a
  little white puppy under a bench. Sue said, I
  want a new puppy! Her mom said she could keep
  it. Now I want one, too.

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Sight Word work

• Different paragraphs were given every day and we
  went through as many as we had time for.
• After three days of working on the paragraphs
  alone I began to combine them in a similar format
  to the DIBELS probes, making them more like short
  stories. SG responded well to the added context
  and seemed to pick up speed after shed gotten
  into the story lines.
• I decided that wed done all we could with this
  hypothesis and that we should use the skills
  shed been learning to get a head start on other
  areas of difficulty.

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th words

• After working on the th words in isolation, I
  wanted to work on SGs ability to more quickly
  differentiate between similar words in more of a
  reading context (with the words going left to
  right). I used Laurens idea of word strips to
  introduce this kind of context.
• I didnt want to trick SG too much too early,
  so I started with strips containing words that
  were fairly different (the, thank, third, throw)
  and moved on after 3 days to words that were more
  similar (the, they, then, them).

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Week 6 Data

• Week 6 WRC/M 68 , 75, 79

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Hypothesis 2

• This last week weve continued to concentrate on
  the th words.
• Carrie tells me that SG is having some trouble
  with the similar word strips because they are
  too much like a tongue twister when SG tries to
  go too fast. She is repeatedly saying one word
  and then No, waitits another word. We are
  trying to get SG to maintain a steady beat by
  having Carrie tap lightly on the desk as SG goes
  through the series of words. This seems to be
  working in helping SG regulate her timing with
  regard to reading.

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Week 7 Data

• Week 7 WRC/M 73 , 77, 80

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Progress so far

• SG has made great progress so far in improving
  her reading skills, including speed and accuracy
  of the words she reads.
• When we first started she was reading at a median
  speed of 59 words correct per minute at the first
  grade level. In three weeks, by practicing the
  common sight words she was weak in, she improved
  to 80 WRC/M.
• At that point we moved on to the 2nd grade level
  probes, where she started at 68 WRC/M and has
  been able to move up to 77 WRC/M so far.

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Extrapolation of Progress

• If SG keeps up the same pace as she has been so
  far with working at the 2nd grade level probes,
  she should be able to reach the level of Mastery
  in the next 6 weeks.
• Carrie, Mrs. S. and I will continue the
  consultation process and work through each of the
  existing hypotheses, one or two at a time, until
  SG has made satisfactory progress on them.
• If we have worked through all existing hypotheses
  and SG has still not made it to the adequate
  Instructional level for her grade, then I will do
  more analysis of SGs errors to determine further
  areas to target.