Literacy Learner Case Study 1

Literacy Learner Case Study

Phonemic Awareness in Kindergarten
EDCS 647 Fall 2016
Kailey Davis
Literacy Learner Case Study 2

Brief Background and Reason for Project Focus

I chose to focus on kindergarten because they came to me not knowing many, if any, of

their letter sounds. Realizing my interest in and the importance of the early reading stages, this

grade level will allow me to get more practice with students who have difficulty in the most

fundamental component of reading, phonemic awareness. One of the best predictors of early

reading success is phonemic awareness, the understanding that spoken words are composed of

individual sounds, or phonemes, (Beck & Beck, 2013).

Over the course of this project and my time with my kindergarteners, we will be working

on phonemic awareness activities that will help them develop their sound fluency, ultimately

preparing them to correlate print with sound to read. We will complete lessons on segmenting

and blending phonemes, along with phonological activities like rhyming. Although phonemic

instruction is tedious and time-consuming, the benefits certainly outweigh the stress of planning

and executing phonemic awareness lessons to a group of kindergarten students. There is

evidence that phonemic awareness can be taught to young children and that such teaching can

have positive effects on early reading acquisition, (Beck & Beck, 2013).

The student helping with this project will go under the code name, Babe Ruth, as he likes

baseball. Babe Ruths homeroom teacher shared with me on the first day of small groups that he

was very sweet and well-behaved. Knowing that my time with small groups is limited, I wanted

to make sure that most of time would be focused on academic material and not behavioral issues.

Babe Ruth is 5 years old and just entered Kindergarten for this school year, 2016-2017.

He is a happy, social, and hard-working child who exudes a positive attitude about school and

learning. He speaks English both at home and school so there is no barrier with school

instruction and follow-up at home. Babe Ruth has never been tested for any disabilities as he
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does not show many developmental or intellectual delays. He does not receive Special

Education services following an Individualized Education Plan, but he did qualify for Title 1

services at this point in time. His eligibility for this supplemental service was decided by a test

administered by his teacher during the first week of school. On this test, he was expected to

identify letters, relate letter sounds to print, write his name, and perform a few math related tasks.

Babe Ruth did not earn the expected points on this test and since he fell below the expectation,

him and thirty other kindergartens were put into small groups of five for Title 1 services.

Home and Family

Although I have not yet met his parents, they appear to be supportive of his education.

They returned the consent form for Title 1 services the following day and write notes on his

homework like, Knew 13/13 names, had trouble on g. Babe Ruth has shared that his parents

do read to him at home and that they think reading is important. He has two older sisters, but

when asked if they read to him, he said they do not. His sister also attends our school for third

grade. When last assessed on her reading level using Fountas and Pinnell, she was reading a few

levels above grade-level expectations. Babe Ruth shared that at his house you would find a lot of

books. My position as a Title 1 teacher does not allow for much parent-interaction, especially

since I work with him in the middle of the day so I do not get to see him get dropped off or

picked up.

The community Babe Ruth lives and learns in is predominately caucasian with a growing

population of African American. Our school allows Geographical Exceptions (GE) from the

surrounding communities that are lower in socio-economic status. Our school is also the only

school in our district that has an English Language Learner (ELL) Program. Majority of the
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students in that program are from the Middle East and receive a GE to attend our school. In

Babe Ruths class, there are a handful of classmates who are eligible for ELL.

Emotional Climate

To get a feel for Babe Ruths attitude toward reading, I conducted an informal yes or no

activity for my small group. Although he thinks reading is important, he expressed that he

does not like to read at school or at home, he would rather do other activities. When given a

choice between reading by himself or having someone read to him, he prefers to read by himself

or use the iPad or computer for an audio book. He likes to read both non-fiction and fiction

stories, however he showed more excitement over made up stories.

Through my observations, he enjoys working on letter names and sounds and always

wants to be challenged with more sounds. Over the past few days we have done sound cover

activities where the students use a colored chip to cover a picture if it starts with the sound (like

covering the alligator picture for the /a/ sound). For this activity, Babe Ruth has shared that he

wanted to work alone instead of with a partner. Babe Ruth shows no sign of irritation when he

has to work one-on-one with me and he does not grumble when his peers are doing something

else while he helps me. He works well with his peers when they do partner activities; depending

on his partner, he can be more playful than productive or vice versa.

Literacy History

Babe Ruth attended preschool prior to entering elementary school. At our elementary

school, Babe Ruth is in a kindergarten class of about 20 students with a mix of native English
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speakers and ELL students. These students learn through teacher-created lessons in a variety of

teaching models: whole class, small group, and independent work.

Working as a Title 1 teacher, I conduct small group lessons with students are below

beginning of the year grade level expectations. I work with students in Kindergarten, second

grade, and fourth grade. Title 1 groups are scheduled for thirty minutes every day, allowing 150

minutes per week for small group instruction in a Tier 2 setting.

It is important to note that Babe Ruth does not miss any core instruction time when he is

pulled for Title 1 groups, he simply gets extra and more focused time on his foundational reading

skills. Title 1 Reading uses the Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) program for students

Kindergarten through fourth grade. This program is closely aligned to the Fountas and Pinnell

program, also created by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Through LLI, students do repeated

readings to focus on various skills and they switch off reading books on their instructional and

independent levels. Along with reading, we practice word patterns and write for a variety of

purposes. Unfortunately, beginning kindergarteners are not quite ready for this program until

January, their second semester. Until then, Title 1 teachers are responsible for giving teacher-

made instruction on the area with which students struggle. My group of students know their

letter names, but not all of their letter sounds, which serves as my focal point for whole-group

instruction. Having a small group of five students allows more time to switch between direct

instruction and opportunities to check with students individually.

Tests Given and Summary of Test Results

Babe Ruth was administered the DIBELS Kindergarten benchmark to assess his letter

fluency and phoneme segmentation fluency, focusing on initial sounds. This is the lowest level
Literacy Learner Case Study 6

of a DIBELS assessment available and given Babe Ruths initial screening test from the school,

it was the most appropriate for his current academic performance. This test will give me an

indicator of what he can do and what needs help with. Once an intervention was in place, Babe

Ruth was administered the DIBELS Kindergarten Initial Sound Fluency Progress Monitoring

regularly over the course of the semester to determine his progress with sound fluency. Each

Progress Monitoring for DIBELS contains sixteen questions, twelve of those questions required

him to point to the picture that matched the initial sound and four of those questions asked him to

say the initial sound for the specified picture. At the end of the intervention, Babe Ruth took his

post-assessment, DIBELS Kindergarten (Winter Benchmark), to see the progress he made. This

benchmark tested Babe Ruths letter fluency and initial sound fluency.

On his first benchmark assessment, DIBELS Kindergarten (Fall Benchmark), he scored 8

out of 16 for his initial sound fluency and 104 out of 110 on letter fluency. Although his letter

fluency score was not perfect, his errors were not of major concern. For example, g was

printed in an unfamiliar font so he did not recognize it, but in all other drills he is able to identify

this letter. Other errors were common and age-appropriate, like letter reversals; I am confident

that this student can resolve this through whole class instruction and routine drills in small group.

When shown letters, Babe Ruth was able to identify almost all letter sounds, with the exception

of the soft and hard /g/ that many students do not know. His knowledge of letter sounds is

appropriate for this time of the school year. His score for the initial sound fluency portion could

be due to a few other factors. Maybe hes not familiar with this yet so hes nervous. Is his

vocabulary a little lower so he doesnt recognize these objects? Regardless of the reason,

developing an initial sound fluency seemed like the most developmentally appropriate step for

Babe Ruth.
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Babe Ruth was administered informal reading inventories to assess his knowledge of

print in books through a question-answer format provided by Reading Rockets. The assessment

started with fundamental and basic knowledge, like the parts of a book, and increased in

difficulty while asking for rhyming words and initial sounds. Babe Ruth was successful with

identifying the parts of a book, print direction, words, punctuation, and identifying and providing

rhyming words. Among his few errors were identifying a space between words and identifying

whether two words started with the same sound. This inventory was taken to give insight on his

ability to read and follow books being read aloud, something that he would be practicing in class

with his homeroom teacher and not me. Babe Ruth showed me he has basic book knowledge.

On Babe Ruths first progress monitoring, he earned a score of six correct sounds out of

sixteen. At the mid-point of this intervention, Babe Ruth shot up to thirteen correct sounds. For

his last progress monitoring, he gave fifteen correct sounds. It is also important to note that as

Babe Ruths score increased, the time he took to provide the given sounds decreased. This tells

me that Babe Ruth is becoming more familiar with the assessment and expectations. It also tells

me that he is getting faster at identifying the beginning sound. I noticed that in the DIBELs

progress monitoring, some words had a different name from what Babe Ruth is used to saying in

real life which caused him some confusion when he was asked to choose the matching initial

sound. Some of the words were soda instead of pop and slipper instead of flip flop.
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Lesson Plan Matrix

Lesson Foci/Date Objectives (include Instructional On-going assessment

including materials (what will (to measure
performance, use to deliver the attainment of
conditions, and main objectives of the objectives)
criterion. State the lesson)
Common Core State
Standard at the end of
each objective.
Initial Sound Students will Sound Cover Cards Students will be
correctly identify the Colored Chips observed as they work
initial sound in a word through their sound
by matching the given cover card. Teacher
sound to the picture. will note what
incorrect sounds the
student chose and
correct through
questioning: What is
this? What sound does
it start with?
Sound Segmentation Students will Pictures of CVC Students will be
correctly segment words (ie. bed, bug) observed as they work
sounds in CVC words Elkonin Boxes on their Elkonin
using Elknonin Colored Chips Boxes. Students will
Boxes. have time to practice
before they segment
the word in front of
the teacher. Teacher
will listen for
incorrect sound and
correct as necessary.
Repeat after me.
Bed. /b/ /e/ /d/ bed
will be used to help
correct students.

Reflections on Differentiated Literacy Lesson Plans

Literacy Learner Case Study 9

After looking at the progress Babe Ruth made, I would say that his Title 1instruction

along with his classroom instruction made a meaningful contribution to his overall progress. I

primarily taught my small group with a direct instruction model. Having a small group allowed

me to provide more frequent and meaningful feedback to my students when they were doing well

and struggling. Babe Ruth did not have many opportunities to practice sounds incorrectly as I

quickly corrected his errors before they became a habit to him.

An activity that really helped Babe Ruth was the ABC Sound Covers. I noticed that he

really benefitted from having a picture or the letter in front of him of the sound he was working

with. The picture-sound correlation of the Sound Covers closely related to the DIBELS Progress

Monitoring.

One thing that I struggled with was differentiating my lessons as the quarter went on.

Even though I was teaching a small group of five, I had a hard time providing activities that

suited everyones needs because as time went on, they all became very different in what they

could do and what they needed help with. Babe Ruth proved to be my highest performing

student, but with everyone performing at a lower level, my instruction was geared toward them.

I think it is also important to note that my classroom" was actually at the end of the hallway.

For most of the day there is little to no distractions; however, during my time with Babe Ruth, a

class does walk through the hallway after recess causing a distraction for all my students.

Unfortunately, sometimes my progress monitoring would collide with students walking in. The

progress monitoring is very prompted so Babe Ruth did not stay distracted too long, but he did

look away from the pictures more often and did not show his full attention to the task at hand.

My time in Title 1 was cut short due to me taking a full-time teaching position at this

school. There were many lessons and activities that I could not conduct with this group because
Literacy Learner Case Study 10

of this change. Babe Ruth showed great progress with initial sound fluency and had I enough

time, I would have moved on to harder reading skills like rhyming or phoneme segmentation.

Had time been in my favor with this project, I would have liked to see what his read-aloud

comprehension is.

Recommendations to Teachers and Parents/Caregivers

As adults, we see reading as the ability to say words and understand what we read.

However, there is much more to it than that! Before our little ones can even attempt to read

words, they must know all their letters and the sounds for each. Many students struggle with

phonemic awareness, distinguishing sounds (phonemes) in words purely from listening.

How hard can that be? you may be thinking to yourself. The English language has 26

letters and 44 phonemes, meaning some letters have multiple sounds. We know that all vowels

have two sounds each, but we cannot forget that C can sound like an s or a k, or that G can

also sound like a j. Developing phonemic awareness is crucial to a childs academic success.

Often times when students are not able to hear sounds in words, they cannot connect those

sounds to the letters they see in print. If they are not able to make that connection, they cannot

sound out words. Do not be discouraged and think this is an impossible feat that only teachers

can accomplish it is a team effort and we are all rooting for your child to be successful!

There are many simple activities that you and your child can do at home to help reinforce

what they are learning in school. Many of these activities are fun and our little ones are

tricked into more learning!

Rhyming is an enjoyable activity that can be done anywhere! You can ask your child

give a rhyming word for what you say like, What rhymes with dog? You can also have your
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child decide if words rhyme with two or three options like, Do cat and frog rhyme? Which

one doesnt rhyme: hat, sat, mad?

Sound Identification can be done similarly to rhyming. What does dog start with? or

Which words start with the same letter? Hat, apple, and alligator.

Appendix

Bibliography