Download Literacy Case Study Karen Bologna Michigan State University TE

Literacy Case Study
Karen Bologna
Michigan State University
TE 846
December 13, 2016
Background Information
For this literacy case study, I chose to work with a young man whom we will refer to as
Dom. Dom is a six-year old boy in my first grade classroom. I have been working with Dom for
the past five months. I was initially worried about Dom as the year began. He had a very rough
first five years of life. He was taken away from his parents and put to live with his aunt and
uncle. His parents attempted to walk back into Dom’s life several times which caused a lot of
emotional anxiety for him. After talking with his aunt, I discovered that Dom did not talk until he
was nearly four years old. He was eventually adopted by his aunt and uncle and they have been
working to provide him with a steady home life ever since. Dom also struggles with ADHD and
has recently been put on medication to help with this issue. Academically, Dom has been
deemed Tier 3 for both reading and math in kindergarten as well as first grade. He receives
intense reading intervention four times a week for 30 minutes each. In addition, he receives small
group pull-outs four times a week for 30 minutes to help with reading. He also meets in a small
group with me twice a day for 15 minutes. Dom does have difficulties with speech and meets
with our speech pathologist twice a week. Within the classroom, Dom is a very kind boy. He
tries so hard to please and smiles from ear to ear when he is praised for his hard work. I believe
in building strong relationships with students. I knew from the start of the year that I would need
to build a strong relationship with Dom. Through student-teacher lunches, goal setting, and
celebrations, we have formed a close connection and he seems to feel comfortable within our
classroom. Dom is always raising his hand to volunteer even when he is unsure of the answer.
The other children also praise Dom when he has been successful and they help him when he is
having trouble. I also have a strong relationship with Dom’s parents. We often talk after school
about how his day went, changes going on at home that might affect him in the classroom, etc.
(Standard IV)
In terms of literacy, Dom is Tier 3 for a couple of reasons. First grade is when many
students begin reading. We learn many spelling patterns, high-frequency words, and
comprehension strategies to help build fluency. We use the Reading Street literacy curriculum in
my district. Within this curriculum, we teach anywhere from two to four phonics patterns a
week. Students also learn four to six new high-frequency words a week. Students use this
information and many others to help them read. In terms of our benchmarking system, we use
AIMSweb Reading- Curriculum Based Measurement (R-CBM) as a way to track student growth
in terms of fluency and accuracy. Dom’s R-CBM scores are quite low. At the time of this case
study, he was only reading about 8 words correct/minute at 67% accuracy which puts him into
Tier 3. In the classroom, Dom has a difficult time remembering the phonics patterns that we
learn. As a result, he struggles to apply them to words as he attempts to decode. I do not believe
Dom is getting enough practice with these phonics patterns each week. In addition, Dom also has
a hard time taking those patterns and applying them to his spelling words. Dom has been doing
poorly on his spelling tests because he cannot seem to remember the patterns to use when he
hears specific sounds. According to Bear et al., phonics and spelling are directly related to one
another. In the text, Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling
Instruction, the authors mention that, “Intervention studies exploring the added value of
supplemental spelling instruction have repeatedly found better performance on reading tasks
such as oral reading, silent reading comprehension, and other reading-related measures in
addition to spelling” (Bear et al., 2015, p. 20). I wanted to teach both a phonics lesson and a
spelling lesson to see if they would work together to help Dom with the problems I was seeing
within his work. My hope was that by studying spelling patterns more in depth, Dom would be
able to apply it to his decoding/reading as well as to his spelling. Specifically, the two goals I had
for this case study were that Dom would be able to decode words with the short a vowel pattern
and the long a vowel pattern as well as apply both of these patterns to words as he spells
(Standards I, II, III).
Case Study Design
I began the lesson with a pre-assessment focused on decoding. I had originally wanted to
use the abecedarian phonics assessment but felt that it covered too much ground in terms of
decoding. In class, we would be learning the long a sound and discussing the a_e spelling
pattern. I decided to use a pre-assessment from my curriculum in order to make the preassessment more directly related to what we would be learning (See Artifact 1). Dom would read
a list of 20 decodable words. Some words would have the short a vowel pattern in them while
others would contain the long a vowel pattern we were learning. This assessment would allow
me to see which patterns Dom could recognize within a word and decode accurately and which
ones he could not. It would also allow me to see if there were any words that he knew by sight
and did not need to use the phonics pattern to help him decode. This pre-assessment would help
to guide my instruction while teaching the phonics lesson (Standards III, V).
The second part of my case study was an additional pre-assessment to assess Dom’s
spelling knowledge of words with long a vowel patterns (See Artifact 2). My students engage in
a spelling pre-test each week so that we can see which words they already know and which
words they need to focus on. Dom would take a spelling test with ten words containing the long
a vowel pattern in them. There would also be two additional challenge words which are high-
frequency words the students cannot sound out. These two words would not necessarily play a
role in my study (Standards III, V).
The next leg of my study would be a Making Words lesson from the Gambrell & Morrow
text. Dom would make words using letters and his knowledge of various phonics patterns. The
goal of this lesson was for Dom to see that by merely substituting a letter or moving letters
around, words can change. According to Gambrell & Morrow (2015), Making Words is a type of
instruction referred to as “guided discovery.” Children learn and retain information best when
they have the opportunity to discover patterns on their own. However, as a Tier 3 student, Dom
struggles to make said discoveries completely independently. In a lesson such as Making Words,
“children are guided toward those discoveries” (Gambrell & Morrow, 2015, p. 176). Several
words within this lesson would contain the a_e phonics pattern (Standards I, II, IV, V, VI).
Following the phonics lesson, I would implement a Word Study lesson to help Dom with
his spelling. The nice thing about Word Study is that this lesson would not only help Dom with
spelling, but with phonics as well. Dom would work to complete a word sort where he had to sort
words with the short a vowel pattern and the long a vowel pattern. Dom would meet with me on
Monday. I would pre-cut 18 words. Some words contained the short a vowel pattern and others
contained the long a vowel pattern. Together Dom and I would read the words. Dom would then
sort the words based on their vowel sound. He would then make discoveries about the words
based on their vowel sounds and spelling patterns. The goal was for Dom to discover that all the
words with one a in the middle were short a words while the words with a_e were long a words.
Dom would then sort the words various times throughout the week and practice writing his sorts
(See Artifact 3) (Standards I, II, IV, V, VI).
The last segment of the case study would be to complete the post-assessments with Dom.
He would read the list of 20 decodable words again to see if his accuracy had improved. He
would also take the final spelling test for the a_e vowel pattern to see if his newfound knowledge
of the long a pattern had stuck with him. In addition, I would informally keep an eye out to see if
this new skill was sticking with him in his reading, writing, and spelling. This would allow me to
see if Dom had just remembered the information for the assessment and then forgotten it or if he
would consistently remember it in the future (Standard V).
Pre-Assessments
I pulled Dom one-on-one during reading group time in order to have him take his phonics
pre-assessment (See Artifact 1). I told him that I had a list of words that I would like him to read
to me. Dom went down the list and attempted to read each word. Dom correctly identified 9/20
words. As one can see from the pre-assessment, Dom did very well decoding the words with the
short a vowel pattern but struggled when trying to decode words with the long a vowel pattern.
Dom simply used the short a sound for all of the words. For the words with the a_e pattern, Dom
did not sound out the e at the end of the word. I assumed this understanding came from the small
amount of pre-teaching he received with his interventionist before this pre-assessment was given.
For the second pre-assessment, Dom took the pre-spelling test with the rest of the class on a
Monday afternoon. After analyzing the pre-spelling test (See Artifact 2), Dom correctly spelled
0/10 long vowel words correctly. The number one mistake he made was forgetting the e at the
end of each word. He also included the letter k instead of c in the words cage and cake (Standard
I, V).
These pre-assessments allowed me to see the misconceptions that Dom had in terms of
reading and spelling words with long vowels. Dom had received a small bit of pre-teaching for
the long vowel pattern. This showed when he was completing the phonics assessment because he
did not attempt to sound out the e at the end of the a_e words. He left the e silent like he had
been taught. However, he did not recall that the pattern makes the a say its name. After looking
at Dom’s pre-spelling test, it was clear that he was not realizing that when the vowel sound
changes, the spelling pattern in the word must change too. Dom is inconsistent in his ability to
recognize patterns within words whether he is using it for phonics or spelling. Dom needs to be
made aware of this pattern and needs to understand how it affects words in all situations. Dom
clearly needs more time studying this pattern and analyzing this pattern within words if we want
him to correctly use it to decode and spell. I was able to use all of this information to guide my
instruction in both of the lessons I taught (Standard I, II, III).
Making Words Lesson (Phonics)
One of the goals that I had for Dom was to correctly decode words with both the short a
vowel pattern and the long a vowel pattern (a_e) in them. Understanding and addressing these
vowel patterns within words will ultimately affect Dom’s fluency and accuracy while reading. In
order to implement the Making Words lesson with Dom, I pulled him one-on-one during small
group time. I provided him with the following letters on small index cards: a, e, u, c, c, k, p, s. I
told Dom that we were going to be using phonics patterns that we know to help us build words
today. He seemed very excited and was already trying to build words with his letter cards before
I gave him any direction. I told him that we would be building small words to start and
eventually our words would get longer. After we had built some words, he would be looking for
a mystery word that could be made with all of the letters. Due to the fact that there was not a
permanent student product associated with this lesson, I created a record sheet to help me keep
track of what Dom was successful at and unsuccessful at throughout the lesson (See Artifact 6). I
first asked Dom to use two letters to build the word up. This was easy for him to do. Next I asked
him to change one letter to spell the word us. Dom was a bit confused and needed me to model
taking one letter away and putting a new letter in its place. Once I showed him what that looked
like, he traded the p for the s to build the word us. I then asked him to add one letter you don’t
hear to spell the word use. This was easy for him as use is one of the high-frequency words we
studied. I do not believe his ability to build this word was because he understood the u_e rule. I
told him to move the same letters to build the name Sue. Dom put the s first but put the u and the
e in the wrong positions. At this point I intervened and explained to him that the pattern ue often
makes the /ū/ sound. He fixed the word. Then I told him to change one letter to spell cue. He did
this successfully. He was then able to change one letter to spell the word cup and again able to
change one letter to spell the word cap. The next direction was critical as it involved the a_e
phonics pattern. I asked him to add a silent letter to change cap into cape. Dom did this perfectly.
I took a moment to stop and ask him why he added an e to the word. He said, “Bossy e tells the
vowel to say its name.” This showed me that some of the pre-teaching Dom was getting from his
interventionist was sticking. However, he was still not able to apply it when decoding words or
spelling words as shown on his pre-assessments. I told him that he was correct and praised him
for his observation. I then asked him to change one letter to build the word cake which he did. At
this point I asked him what he noticed about this word and he was able to tell me that the bossy e
was telling the a to say its name. Again, I applauded his observation and went into more detail on
the rule explaining that whenever we see the a_e pattern within a word the vowel will say its
name and the e will stay silent. We then moved on. I asked Dom to change one letter to build
sake which he did. I asked Dom to change the last two letters to build sack. Again, he needed me
to model taking away the last two letters and replacing them with two new ones. Although we
had learned the “ck” rule at the beginning of the year and had practiced using it several times
since then, Dom had a hard time figuring out that he needed to replace “ce” with “ck.” After a
minute, I reminded him that when “ck” is at the end of the word it says /k/. He then put the
letters in the correct position. I then asked him to change one letter to make pack which he did. I
then asked him to change the last letter to build the word pace. This direction was critical
because it would allow me to see if Dom remembered the a_e rule. Fortunately, he did.
However, when I asked him to read the word he had made he said “pake.” I reminded him that
when a c has an e following it it will make the /s/ sound. I then asked him to read it again and he
correctly said “pace.” I asked him to add one letter to spell space but he struggled with
determining where the s should go. Dom sometimes struggles with consonant blends at the
beginning of words. I prompted him by asking him what sound space starts with. He was able to
tell me it starts with the /s/ sound. I asked him where the s should go and he put it in the correct
position. Finally, I asked him if he could figure out the mystery word. I gave him a few minutes
to play with the letters and he created several “words” that did not make sense. This task was too
difficult for him so I built the first part of the word, “cup.” I asked him if he could use the rest of
the letters to finish it. He built “cake.” I asked him what that would be if we put both words
together. He said, “cupcake.” I asked what we could do with the final letter. He said, “We could
put it at the end and it means more than one cupcake!” I applauded his discovery and asked him
to read the word (Standards I, II, III, IV, V, VI).
For the next segment of this lesson, I laid out the words Sue, cake, pace, sack, and cup. I
then explained to Dom that we would be matching words together that rhymed. We reviewed the
idea that if two words rhyme, they have the same middle and ending sound. We began with the
word pack and Dom was able to tell me that it rhymed with sack so he put the card under sack.
Then I asked him which word rhymed with pace and he pointed to space. I asked him why it was
that word and he told me that they both have a-c-e at the end. I told him this was true but I tried
to probe for more information. I asked him what s-p-a-c-e spelled and he couldn’t tell me. He
kept saying “sace.” I believed this to be a part of his speech issue. He often has trouble
pronouncing consonant blends. I helped him put /sp/ and ace together and he eventually said
space. This told me that he knew the “ace” pattern but was struggling to pronounce the
consonant blend. Dom was able to tell me that sake rhymed with cake and that cue rhymed with
Sue. He was also able to tell me that up rhymes with cup (Standards I, III, IV, V, VI).
In the final part of the lesson, Dom and I worked together to write some words using the
patterns he had just practiced. The first word we attempted to write was snack. I had Dom write
the letters “sn” on his whiteboard. I then asked him which word on our chart rhymes with snack.
He pointed to pack. I modeled how to pull out the part of the word that says /ak/ and write the
letters after the “sn.” Dom wrote s-n-a-c-k on his whiteboard and when I asked him to blend it he
did it successfully. I then told him we were going to spell the word bake. I asked him what sound
bake started with and he said /b/ so we wrote a b on our boards. Then I asked Dom which word
on our chart rhymed with bake. He said that cake rhymed with bake. I asked him which letters
we needed to write after our “b” and he told me, “a-k-e.” I praised him for his discovery and we
cleaned up (Standards I, III, IV, V, VI).
After stepping back to analyze and reflect on the Making Words lesson, I felt that it went
somewhat well. I could see an obvious smile on Dom’s face the entire lesson, even when he was
unsure of an answer. He was so engaged the entire time which is often a struggle for him. He is
often distracted by things around him but this was not the case. I believe that having an activity
that was hands-on also helped Dom to stay on track. With his ADHD, he is constantly moving
and is often in need of an outlet for his energy in order to stay focused. Having the ability to
move and manipulate words provided that outlet for him and he did very well with it.
Throughout this lesson I learned a lot of information about what Dom remembers, does not yet
know, gets confused by, etc. I learned that the ue pattern is something Dom does not yet know. I
noticed that he struggles with consonant blends at the beginning of words. I was able to take
these moments to help Dom better understand these concepts. However, I do not know if this
lesson was a great one for focusing on one specific phonics pattern. Although we briefly
discussed a_e, I do not feel that we did enough with it to make it “stick” for Dom. This lesson
would be good to use in a review situation when students are reviewing various patterns they
have learned in any given amount of time. I would think about changing this lesson to make it so
that Dom is only spelling short a and long a words throughout the lesson. This would help to
focus in on the specific goal. It might be more difficult to determine a mystery word this way but
it could be done. A shorter mystery word could suffice. Despite this, I still believe it was a good
lesson for Dom as it encouraged deep conversation about various phonics patterns that will help
him when he is decoding text (Standards III, V, VI).
Word Study Lesson (Spelling & Phonics)
Another goal I had for Dom was to know when to use the long a vowel pattern, a_e,
when spelling a word. I was interested in using Word Study as a way to help Dom with both his
decoding and his spelling. In order to implement this lesson, I chose 18 words with short a and
long a vowel patterns. I pulled Dom aside one-on-one and told him we would be working
together to sort words this week to help us become better readers. I started by spreading the
words out on the table. I asked Dom to read all of the words. With some help from me, we read
all 18 of the words out loud. I then asked him what he noticed about the sounds in all of the
words. He said, “They all have a in them.” In order to probe deeper, I asked him what sound the
word bad had in the middle. He told me /a/. I then asked him what sound shade had in the middle
and he told me /ā/. His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh, I know! Some of the words say /a/ and some
of the words say /ā/.” I told him that he was correct. I then showed him a picture of a hat and a
picture of a cane. I told him we were going to sort the words. If a word had /a/ in the middle we
would put it under the hat. If a word had /ā/ in the middle we would put it under the cane. He
read through the words again, with teacher support when needed, and sorted each word correctly.
I then asked him what he noticed about the spelling of all of the words under the hat. Dom said,
“They all have an a in the middle.” I then asked him what he noticed about all of the words
under the cane. He replied, “They all have an e at the end.” We then discussed the fact that
whenever a word has the a_e pattern in it, it will make the /ā/ sound and when a word just has an
a in the middle without an e at the end it will make the /a/ sound. I then pointed out the word
have which was placed under the hat because it says /a/ in the middle. I explained that sometimes
there will be words that do not follow the patterns and that we would call them the “oddball.” I
made another category for the oddball and we placed have there. I then scrambled up the words
and told Dom to go to his seat and sort the words one more time. I pulled another group while he
worked and then I went over to check on him shortly after. I asked him why he was sorting them
the way he was. He said, “All of the words with an e at the end go under the cane and the words
without e go under the hat.” I then asked him what he knew about the vowel sounds in each
category and he told me that the words under hat say /a/ and the words under the cane say /ā/. He
was very excited about his word sort. When he was done we placed the words in a Ziploc bag
and put them in his work box for safe keeping. The next day during independent work time, I
asked Dom to sort his words again. On Wednesday, I had him sort them again and write down
his sort in his notebook (See Artifact 3). Dom was even asking to sort his words at other times of
the day such as math. I had to gently explain that this was for reading time only (Standards I, II,
III, IV, V, VI).
During this lesson, I was able to scaffold to help Dom make discoveries about words and
their spelling patterns. As time goes on, I will hopefully be able to decrease the amount of
scaffolding as he becomes familiar with the procedures. Overall, Dom did a nice job with this
lesson. When he was writing his word sort down in his notebook, he noticed that I had not left a
spot for his oddball. He immediately said, “Ms. Bologna, there is not a spot for have and it
doesn’t follow the pattern. We need to make a spot for the oddball!” Dom’s enthusiasm showed
through each time he pulled out his bag to sort his words. I liked that I had the ability to closely
monitor Dom while he had the opportunity to make discoveries completely on his own. I was
there to support when needed, but overall, he made the decisions and came to conclusions on his
own. According to Bear et al., “Students need hands-on opportunities to manipulate word
features in ways that allow them to generalize beyond isolated, individual examples to entire
groups of words that are spelled the same way” (2015, p. 3) (Standard VI).
Post-Assessment
After I had taught both lessons to Dom, I administered my two post-assessments. My
hope was that by teaching a phonics lesson and a spelling lesson, Dom would have a deeper
understanding of the long vowel concept which would show through in both assessments. I first
asked Dom to read the 20 decodables words in the word list again so that I could check for his
accuracy (See Artifact 4). This post-assessment would allow me to see if Dom could transfer his
newfound knowledge onto other words that were not a part of his word sort. By mixing short
vowel and long vowel words, I would be able to know whether or not Dom was simply guessing
or if he was truly looking at the spelling pattern within the words. Dom accurately read 18/20
short and long vowel words. I could tell as Dom was reading that he was paying close attention
to the a_e pattern within words. There were several words that he read with a short vowel but
when he got to the end and saw the e he went back and self-corrected. He read several of the a_e
words without sounding them out. The two words that Dom missed were stake and rad. I know
from the Making Words lesson and from other observations of Dom that he struggles with
consonant blends. This does not happen all the time but it does happen often. Dom said “sake”
instead of “stake.” Technically, if this assessment was only assessing the vowel sound, it would
have been marked correct but since we have to look at the whole word I had to mark it wrong.
For the purpose for this case study, this situation still tells me that Dom knew to use long a in
this word. The same thing happened with the word rad. Dom said “rab” instead as he frequently
confuses his b’s and d’s. Despite incorrectly blending the word, he still used the correct vowel
sound which tells me that he has a good understanding of when to use long a and short a after
teaching these lessons. It seems that hands-on activities keep Dom engaged enough to
successfully master the content. I am continuously observing Dom’s reading and I have noticed
that he is recognizing long vowels within words as he reads many different texts. This tells me
that this instruction did make a meaningful contribution to Dom’s reading progress. He is seeing
these rules used in authentic situations and addressing them successfully (Standards I, V).
The second post-assessment I gave Dom was the final spelling test for the week (See
Artifact 5). Dom spelled all 10 a_e words correctly. He missed the two bonus words but as I
mentioned above, these did not follow the spelling pattern, therefore, they do not count toward
this study. It is clear from looking at his spelling test that the pattern stuck with him, at least for
the test. As I continue to monitor his writing, I have noticed that Dom is inserting the silent e
when he hears a long vowel in a word. My hope is that this will continue in the future, even after
we stop talking about long vowels as frequently as we are now (Standards I, V).
Changes to the Lessons
If I were to teach these lessons again, I would make a few changes. In terms of the
Making Words lesson, I would try to use less phonics patterns at once. The example I did would
have been a good review lesson. For instance, at the end of a unit, after students have learned
ample phonics patterns, a teacher might implement Making Words as a way to practice and even
assess student learning. However, for a Tier 3 student who struggles remembering patterns and
putting them to use, it was a bit much asking him to remember and use so many different rules. I
would try to come up with just words that contain short vowel and long vowel patterns. I would
then have the student work to change the beginning sound, ending sound, and the vowel sound
using the two patterns we are working with. This repetition and practice would be more
beneficial for Dom and would make him feel more independent. I felt that I had to stop and help
him with so many of the words, it just felt too difficult. I did not feel it was within his zone of
proximal development.
The only change I would make with the Word Study is to make the sort more open as
time goes on. The sort I did with Dom was more of a closed sort as I did a lot of scaffolding for
him. As Dom becomes more familiar with identifying patterns within words and making
discoveries, I would hope to be less involved. For instance, I would hope that we could take
away the pictures and have Dom complete a sort just by listening to the sounds. I would also
hope that he would eventually make the discoveries on his own without the teacher having to
guide him in the right direction. In the future, I might even take away the Making Word lesson
and solely use Word Study. Word Study has proven to be an engaging lesson that incorporates
both phonics and spelling. As children get older it can eventually incorporate vocabulary as well.
In terms of assessment, I might try to use more authentic assessments in order to check
progress. For example, instead of a word list, I would try to find a decodable reader or an actual
story with a lot of short vowels and long vowels. This authentic experience of reading a story
would help me to better understand if Dom’s newfound knowledge will transfer over into his
everyday life. The same thing goes for spelling. I might ask Dom to write a sentence or a short
story with specific words to see if he is truly using his new skills correctly. I think children are
more likely to correctly use their skills in very rote assessments such as spelling tests or word
lists, but I think they are more vulnerable to going with their instinct on more authentic
assessments. It would be interesting to see if their new knowledge has really been instilled or if it
was merely just to get through a lesson (Standards I, II, III, V, VI).
Conclusion
After completing this case study, I feel that I have come away with several ideas for
teaching phonics and spelling to students of all academic levels in the future. Both Making
Words and Word Study are hands-on lessons that encourage discovery within reading. However,
in order to make the lesson more geared toward my Tier 3 students, I would manipulate the
Making Words lesson so that it focused on less material. Dom and my other Tier 3 students have
limited working memory and often get lost if given too much information at once. Staying
focused on one or two objectives is much more manageable for these students. Through my
observations, these students also require plenty of repetition and practice. Making Words could
be a very effective tool if these students had the ability to hone in on one or two objectives. In
order to make Word Study more effective for my Tier 3 students, I would continue to scaffold to
their needs. If a student was still needing phonemic awareness support I might use a picture sort
to begin. Only after they have mastered the picture sort with the sounds would I move onto
including words. Word Study is nice because the teacher has the ability to scaffold the learning
at various levels. The strategy I used seemed to work well for Dom and I hope that as time
progresses I would need to use less scaffolds because he would be more familiar with the idea of
identifying patterns (Standard III).
My case study student was very motivated throughout the entire study. He was excited
and engaged during both lessons. After analyzing his assessments, both formal and informal, I
feel that these lessons have had a significant impact on his ability to retain phonics patterns when
decoding and spelling. Dom went from 0/10 on his spelling test to 10/10. He went from reading
9/20 decodable words with short and long vowel patterns to reading 18/20. I believe this case
study helped my student to feel more successful. According to Gambrell & Morrow, students are
more likely to engage when they know they have a chance for success. Dom struggles so often
that sometimes it can be discouraging. It is scary to know that “without the belief in themselves
students in the upper elementary and middle school grades often retreat from books” (Gambrell
& Morrow, 2015, p. 72). As Dom’s teacher, I need to be sure that I am boosting his self-efficacy
by providing him with opportunities to feel successful. These lessons were scaffolded enough
and provided enough repetition that he felt good about what he was doing. He felt confident in
what he was doing and was explaining it to other students. This feeling of success seemed to play
a large role in his learning. With a couple of final tweaks in these lessons, I believe that Dom
will continue to make progress in terms of his reading and spelling as a result of hands-on,
discovery-based learning (Standard IV).
Resources
Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M. R., Templeton, S. R., & Johnston, F. R. (2011). Words Their Way:
Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction (5th ed.). Pearson Education.
Gambrell, L. B., & Morrow, L. M. (2015). Best Practices in Literacy Instruction (5th ed.). New
York: Guilford Press.