CASE STUDY: FINAL PLAN AND PRESENTATION 1

Case Study: Final Plan and Presentation

Katherine Hewett

University of Kansas

SPED 741

Dr. Suzanne Robinson

December 10, 2021

Student Demographics, Interests, and Other Relevant Background Information

Jacob is a black student from Elkhart, Indiana, is eleven years old, and in the sixth grade.

He has attended Mary Beck Elementary since he was in kindergarten. Jacob is technically

bilingual: his first language was American Sign Language (ASL), as he comes from a deaf/hard

of hearing home. He is the oldest, with a younger brother, sister, and two baby twins on the way.

Jacob has an IEP for autism (ASD), with secondary disabilities of other health impairment (OHI)

for ADHD, as well as speech and language impairments. He receives academic, behavioral, and

speech services as part of his weekly school routine. Jacob tends to mumble a bit when he speaks

and therefore can be a bit difficult to understand in conversation (a problem not made easier by

having to wear masks at school), and has a stutter (usually made worse when he feels he is in

trouble).

Jacob is working below grade level academically, but is a very hard worker. On

classroom, district, and state assessments, Jacob’s scores are lower than those of his peers. He

has an IEP with academic goals in both reading and math. Both of his academic IEP goals focus

on reading comprehension, with the math goal placing an emphasis on solving multistep word

problems. Though Jacob struggles in school, he works very hard for all of his teachers, and

wants to please each adult he works with. He has especially positive relationships with his

homeroom and special education teachers, as well as the school principal and social worker;

these are the most productive relationships when it comes to making academic and behavioral

progress. In general, Jacob works best either in a small group or one-on-one with any of the

adults mentioned above.

Jacob is heavily motivated by positive affiliations, especially from his peers. He aims to

please everyone, but he wants more than anything to have close friends. However, Jacob
CASE STUDY: FINAL PLAN AND PRESENTATION 3

struggles socially, especially in the way he communicates with others, potentially due to his

autism diagnosis as well as his family background (the communication structure of ASL is

different than that of spoken English). Both last year and this year, Jacob received suspensions

due to the fact he sent inappropriate emails and videos to other students in an attempt to connect

with his peers; he claimed he thought they were funny and wanted to make others laugh. He

struggles to work with his classmates in small groups: what is intended as a sarcastic comment

comes across as rude and insulting, so students do not want to work with him. The first part of

Jacob’s daily routine is eating breakfast alone with his special education teacher, for two reasons:

he provokes students in the hallway before his ADHD medication takes effect, and he receives

social skills instruction to help teach him more positive ways to gain peer affiliation.

Jacob loves technology, especially his phone and school iPad. Before the incidents that

resulted in his suspensions, Jacob was on his iPad as much as he was allowed to be in class; he

even sent emails to his classmates and teachers in the middle of lessons. One of Jacob’s favorite

parts of technology is TikTok. To say he is obsessed is an understatement. During his morning

breakfast time with his special education teacher, Jacob likes to show off his TikTok dances, talk

about how many followers he has on the app, or even try to show his teacher a TikTok he made

over the weekend. Many of the videos Jacob has sent to his peers via email have been TikToks.

Like most of his peers, Jacob wants to be an influencer on TikTok. Jacob also likes playing video

games, and wants to become a famous streamer.

As mentioned earlier, Jacob wants to have close relationships with his classmates, and is

willing to engage in any activity that might help him make friends. Jacob especially wants to

make others feel happy by sharing something with them that might make them laugh.

Literacy Assessments and Results

Phonics/Phonemic Awareness

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) Score and Interpretation

Jacob scored a total of 20 correct sounds in one minute during the administered PSF

measure. He attempted a total of 30 sounds total and identified phonemes with 67% accuracy.

Jacob demonstrated some accuracy, but he made some common error patterns such as adding a

schwa sound to the end of certain consonants, and segmenting into onset and rime; these patterns

did not count against his score, but they should be noted. Overall, the number of phonemes

attempted in the one-minute timeframe is extremely low for someone of his age and grade. These

scores demonstrate that Jacob is indeed at risk. According to DIBELS guidelines, a child at the

end of kindergarten should be able to segment at least 35 phonemes in a minute; by comparison,

Jacob’s score is below that of a typical kindergarten student. Because the PSF is only

administered for students up to the beginning of first grade, Jacob’s scores can only be

interpreted relative to first grade. Through this lens, Jacob is below the cut-point for risk and

needs immediate and intensive intervention.

Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) Scores and Interpretation

Jacob scored a total of 28 correct letter sounds (CLS) and 0 whole words read (WWR) in

one minute during the administered NWF measure. His scores had accuracy ratings of 87.5% for

CLS and 0% WWR, with 32 sound and 12 word attempts respectively. Again, these scores show

that Jacob is at risk for reading. Jacob’s scores are below the cut-point for CLS and WWR, as

well as below the respective benchmarks. NWF scores go up to end of third grade; Jacob’s

scores indicate that he is at an NWF level at the middle of first grade. This is problematic
CASE STUDY: FINAL PLAN AND PRESENTATION 5

considering Jacob is in sixth grade. Again, the scores show that Jacob needs immediate and

intensive intervention.

Vocabulary

Jacob scored a total of 12 correct words on his CORE Vocabulary Screener assessment.

There were 30 words total, so Jacob’s accuracy on the assessment was 40%. The assessment

measure that was given contained vocabulary words found in a sixth-grade text. Based on the

scoring table provided with the assessment resources, Jacob’s score falls into the Intensive

category. Students who fall into this category typically struggle with accessing grade-level text

due to their lack of familiarity with grade-level vocabulary. Based on what we know about Jacob

as well as his score on this assessment, it is no surprise that Jacob is at extreme risk and needs

immediate intensive reading interventions. Jacob’s lack of grade-level vocabulary could very

well be a significant factor in what’s preventing him from accessing grade-level text with

appropriate fluency and comprehension.

Fluency

Jacob scored a total of 103 correct words per minute (CWPM) on his Passage Reading

Fluency (PRF) assessment. The assessment measure that was given correlated with a beginning-

of-year fourth grade text. Jacob is in the sixth grade, toward middle of the year. Though he was

fairly accurate and quick, Jacob did not read with much expression. Looking purely at the

CWPM, Jacob is a fluent reader at his instructional level, with the standard range of BOY fourth

grade being between 70-120 CWPM. However, due to the lack of prosody while reading, I

would not say that Jacob is totally fluent at his instructional level.

Comprehension
CASE STUDY: FINAL PLAN AND PRESENTATION 6

Jacob scored a total of 28 correct words on his CORE Reading Maze Comprehension

assessment. There were 31 words total, so Jacob’s accuracy on the assessment was 90%. The

assessment measure that was given was leveled as a fourth-grade text. Jacob’s scores are

significantly above those provided in the given scoring table. It should be noted that Jacob’s

instructional reading level as identified by his teacher is at that of fourth grade. However, despite

how well Jacob performed on the assessment, these scores still raise some concerns. Jacob is in

the middle of the year in sixth grade. While he should be celebrated for how well he did on the

assessment, Jacob is still reading two years behind grade level. Based on this assessment alone,

Jacob is proficient in his comprehension at his instructional reading level. It would be interesting

to see Jacob’s comprehension as measured by Wh- Questions (who, what, where, when,

why/how) after reading the text.

Disciplinary Literacy

Jacob’s scores on the disciplinary literacy formative assessment indicate that he does not

have mastery of 6th grade math concepts or grade-level question literacy. Before even beginning

the computation portion of the assessment, I had Jacob read over the assessment to make sure he

understood what was being asked of him. He was not familiar with the word operation, so I

explained the meaning as well as provided the corresponding symbols he would need to answer

the correlating questions.

In the first problem, Jacob was able to recognize the division symbol and knew how to

set up the problem to solve, but unfortunately he put the wrong numbers in the incorrect places.

He also multiplied when he should have been subtracting. Both of these errors resulted in him

incorrectly solving the expression.

The second word problem was more of a challenge. After working with Jacob previously

in math, I knew word problems were particularly challenging for him-he even has a

corresponding IEP annual goal in math for word problems. Jacob was able to identify the word

total as being significant in indicating an operation to solve, but he chose multiplication rather

than addition. He also did not convert one of the numbers to make like values (both mixed

numbers or both a whole number with a decimal). Jacob then attempted to multiply a decimal

with a fraction, and again solved the problem incorrectly.

Again, Jacob does not have high enough mastery of his grade-level math based on the

results of this formative assessment. As mentioned previously, Jacob struggles significantly with

word problems, an area where he is already receiving intensive instruction due to his IEP goal.

However, I will admit that I was unaware of how far behind Jacob’s computation is from his

grade-level peers. I was surprised to see how he attempted to solve both the division expression

as well as the word problem. Both long division and decimals/fractions were taught extensively

last year in 5th grade as well as in previous years, but those concepts have not “stuck”. This

formative assessment indicates that Jacob continues to be at risk and requires intense

intervention.

Writing

Jacob made a total of 6 sentence attempts when writing about the topic of his favorite

sport. However, only one of those sentences qualified as a complete sentence, and it was a

simple sentence. Based on the scoring guidelines, Jacob’s sentence writing mastery is 17%,

which puts him at significant risk. The rest of Jacob’s sentence attempts were non-sentences in

the form of run-on sentences.

From working with Jacob, I have two possible hypotheses as to why he struggled to write

complete sentences. First, he comes from a deaf/hard-of-hearing family, and American Sign

Language (ASL) was his first language before he learned to speak English. ASL has a

significantly different sentence structure compared to spoken and written English, so this may be

one reason for Jacob’s current writing. In the same vein, Jacob speaks in run-on sentences as

well as struggles to attend to punctuation appropriately when reading; he struggles with reading

fluency and comprehension. These two factors significantly impact Jacob’s writing ability and as

a result put him at risk. Jacob needs immediate intense intervention.

Student Strengths and Weaknesses

Based on the results of the assessments, Jacob has strong foundational reading skills. He

is able to decode words-both real and nonsense-with adequate fluency. When reading grade-level

text that is more difficult than his instructional level, Jacob is able to apply decoding strategies

appropriately when he comes across unfamiliar words in text. Jacob also has strong listening

comprehension skills, and is able to identify key details from the text.

However, Jacob’s assessment results demonstrate multiple areas of concern. None of the

reading assessments-aside from the vocabulary and questions on the disciplinary literacy

assessment-were at a sixth-grade level. The major areas of concern are in Jacob’s vocabulary,

fluency, and comprehension. The vocabulary assessment given was administered at Jacob’s

sixth-grade level, and Jacob had a significantly low score on the assessment. The fluency and

comprehension assessments were administered at Jacob’s instructional level of fourth grade; he

scored well on these assessments, but the results must be considered with the two grade-level
CASE STUDY: FINAL PLAN AND PRESENTATION 9

deficit. From these three assessments alone, one can see that Jacob has significant struggles

accessing grade-level text.

Recommendations for Future Literacy Instruction

Jacob needs immediate access to grade-level text. His most significant areas of concern

are vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Jacob needs targeted intervention in fluency and

comprehension with supplemental instruction in vocabulary; this is supported by the data from

these assessments, as well as previous data collected to create his IEP goal for reading.

With fluency, Jacob needs to focus most on reading with prosody. His rate and accuracy

were appropriate for his instructional level, but he struggled to read with expression. He could

benefit from a fluency exercise targeted to reading with proper expression, while also attending

to rate and accuracy via punctuation. In order to remove the barrier of unfamiliar words, Jacob

will practice expression by reading a “Blah” chart and the alphabet with punctuation embedded

in the text.

Jacob has some comprehension abilities, but needs to identify multiple key details found

in multiple places in the text rather than just at the end of the passage. In a comprehension

lesson, Jacob will work towards answering Wh- questions (who, what, where, when, why/how)

in a web from a fourth-grade text at his instructional level. This is a skill that he has been able to

do in his general education classroom, but has completed inconsistently. I want Jacob to be more

consistent in his comprehension while also working towards proficiency in a grade-level skill.