Case Study: Dimitrius, An English Language Learner Lisa

Running Head: CASE STUDY: DIMITRIUS 1

Case Study: Dimitrius, An English Language Learner

Lisa Engelsman

Michigan State University

CASE STUDY: DIMITRIUS 2

Brief Background and Reason for Project Focus

Since I am not currently teaching, the process of identifying a struggling reader to work

with has been especially challenging. After contacting my son’s fourth grade teacher I was

finally directed to contact the building principal. To my delight the principal was very

encouraging and felt she could easily identify a student for me. After identifying a student that is

receiving English Language Learner (ELL) services at the school, the process of gaining

permission from the parent and passing on contact information to me was a several day process.

After more than a week of emails between the teacher, principal, and myself I was finally able to

meet with the mother of the identified child to explain my project to her.

From my conversation with the mom today her child appears to be a good candidate for

this project as she feels that he is struggling with reading as well as with his English language

development. He has two older siblings and the mom reports that the middle child doesn’t seem

to have the same struggles with reading and learning in English as her youngest son is having.

Mom also reports that he doesn’t enjoy reading and is having trouble making sense of English

spelling rules.

Home and Family

Dimitrius is an eight-year old boy currently in the third grade. According to personal

conversations with his classroom teacher and ELL teacher he is reading about a full grade level

below the standard for the end of third grade. I met with his mom on June 5 at their home to

introduce myself to her, explain the purpose of my project, and get her to sign the consent form.

The following evening, June 6, I returned to their home for an initial introduction to Dimitrius

and asked him to read aloud to me from several different books. One of the books Dimitrius was


particularly motivated to read to me from was Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever (Kinney,

2011). He was able to read the text, pausing occasionally to self-correct and decode; but his

reading was generally done word by word rather than in chunks or phrases. As a result his

reading wasn’t as fluid a typical child his age.

Dimitrius is from a Greek speaking immigrant family and they primarily speak Greek in

their home. While Dimitrius lived in the United States (U.S.) when he was preschooler and has

traveled back and forth between the U.S. and Greece quite frequently, this is Dimitrius’ first year

in an American public school. Mom reports that he began studying English in the Greek school

system during second grade and with their frequent travels he is not brand new to English.

Based on his English speaking proficiency and the primary use of Greek in the home he is

identified as an ELL student and receives regular assistance from an ELL teacher and a bilingual

paraprofessional at his school.

It was apparent being in this family’s home that reading is encouraged. There were lots

of books around – both adult and children’s reading were visible on the coffee table. The adult

books primarily were mom’s and were mostly centered on the theme of Greek Orthodoxy. From

my conversation with mom over the weeks I have worked with Dimitrius it does not appear that

she reads aloud to Dimitrius at all.

Dimitrius has two siblings; the oldest is a 13-year old girl who lives with her grandparents

in Greece. She spent her first two years of school in the same elementary school Dimitrius now

attends before mom and kids returned to Greece. Dimitrius also has a 10-year old brother who is

in fifth grade at a local upper elementary school. Dimitrius’ parents are both highly educated

and speak multiple languages. Dad is a neurologist at a hospital in the Detroit area and his


mother is currently a stay at home mom who runs a private school in Greece from her home here

in America. Mom is quite proficient in English – we had an engaging conversation about

religion, politics, parenting, etc. and the depth and breadth of her vocabulary was quite

impressive. Mom is an avid reader, which was apparent from the amount of books on the coffee

table and in the book shelves in the living room.

Emotional Climate

Since I don’t teach at Dimitrius’ school and none of my own children had his classroom

teacher, I really don’t have any way of knowing what the classroom learning environment is like.

The school as a whole is a warm, inviting place and from my brief meeting with his classroom

teacher to talk about his reading level she seemed to really care about Dimitrius and was excited

that someone else would have the chance to work with him. Dimitrius enjoys reading and seems

a little envious of his older brother who is reading much more difficult texts by Rick Riordan.

Literacy History

Dimitrius has entered American school with an advantage that many new immigrant

children do not have; he is reading on grade level in his first language (L1). While this gives

him a framework for learning to read and write in a new language, it also presents problems for

him in pronunciation and with his confidence level. Another particular challenge for him has to

do with his mom’s attitude toward English spelling. During my time with Dimitrius she often

repeated how English spelling doesn’t make any sense. While I have to agree with her that

English spelling is complicated, I’m afraid that saying this in front of Dimitrius serves to make

him feel that English spelling is just too hard and he cannot learn it.


Tests Given and Summary of Test Results

In order to understand more about Dimitrius’ reading level I first talked with his English

Language Learner (ELL) teacher. She had recently completed an end of year reading assessment

using the Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System and had assessed Dimitrius as

reading at a Level L instructionally and a Level K independently (Fountas & Pinnell, n.d.). She

informed me that the goal in Farmington Public Schools is to have students reading at level O by

the end of third grade and Level L at the end of second grade, which places Dimitrius a full year

behind. After that conversation I wondered whether I would get similar results and so I

administered a running record Level L reading assessment (“Reading a-z Running Record Level

L,” n.d.). I also decided to use the Reading Attitude Survey (“Reading Attitude Survey,” n.d.)

to understand more about Dimitrius’ reading interests and after-school pursuits.

Because I have not administered a running record assessment before, I incorrectly

assumed that the Reading A-Z Assessment Tool and the Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark

Assessment System would use the same leveling system for their texts. So when assessing him

using Reading A-Z, I chose a Level L book, “Harold the Hungry Plant” by Harryman (n.d.), for

him to read to me. The running record in Appendix A demonstrates that Dimitrius’ accuracy

rate for the Level L text was 96%, his Error Rate was one error for every 23 words (1:23), and

his Self-Correction Rate was one error for every nine words (1:9). His accuracy rate was very

high, which would typically indicate that he is reading at the Level L independently, but

according to the Reading A-Z Assessment a self-correction rate of less than 1:4 indicates a child


is self-monitoring. The high rate of self-correction that Dimitrius demonstrated indicates some

difficulty with his self-monitoring (“Scoring and Analyzing a Running Record,” n.d.).

After Dimitrius read the running record selection aloud to me, we continued to read the

story. At first I asked him to read it silently, but then, as he became bored and distracted, I

suggested that we take turns reading the pages out loud. After we had finished reading the book

I used the Benchmark Quick Check (Appendix B) that went along with the story to analyze his

comprehension of the text. Dimitrius was able to answer three out of four text-based questions

correctly, two out of three inference type questions and only one out of three of the critical

response type of questions This gave him a total comprehension score of 60%. According to the

Benchmark Quick Check from the Reading A-Z program a comprehension score of 79% and

below indicates that the student is reading at their frustration level (“List of Benchmark Quick

Check Quizzes,” n.d.). While my results and his teacher’s results don’t correlate perfectly

according to the Reading A-Z Correlation Chart it is still fairly close. Considering my relative

inexperience with doing this kind of assessment it probably isn’t too surprising to have a slight

variation.

Another thing that I observed while listening to Dimitrius read is that, in general, his

reading lacks fluency. When thinking about fluency there are two important considerations:

automaticity and prosody. Prosody is the “melodic features of oral language, is that part of

fluency that completes the metaphorical bridge; it connects fluency to comprehension” (Rasinski

& Samuels, 2011, p. 96). There were occasional places where Dimitrius used expression, but

for the most part his reading sounded pretty flat. Another important component of fluency is

automaticity in word recognition; this “refers to the ability of readers to decode words not just

accurately but effortlessly or automatically” (Rasinski & Samuels, 2011, p. 95). It seems that


because Dimitrius was working so hard at decoding, his comprehension of the higher order

critical response and inference thinking didn’t take place. His lack of intonation in most of his

reading also seemed to indicate how hard he was working to decode.

Because Dimitrius did a lot of self-correcting when he was reading the passage it was

very apparent when he was really having trouble with a word. In particular there were a couple

of words he really struggled with; brought he managed to self-correct and caught he finally

asked for help on. Since both of these words have the variant vowel sound /Ô/ it is well worth

noting the difficulty he demonstrated with decoding these words.

The Reading Attitude Survey in Appendix B indicates that Dimitrius likes to read. In

particular he likes to read anything about Lego Ninjago – he said he would buy this kind of book

with his money – and he also said he likes to play with Legos. When asked about the difference

between home and school reading he said that at home he can read what he wants to read, but at

school reading is work. As a side note on his attitudes about reading, it came up that he is

embarrassed about reading aloud. He knows he doesn’t sound fluent. Since I was recording his

reading, I asked him if he wanted to hear it. He did, but after I played it for him and asked him

how he liked hearing his voice he repeated that it didn’t sound good and he felt embarrassed. I

also discovered that, like most other children, he loves to play on the iPad; in fact, getting a few

minutes to play a game on my iPad at the end of our session ended up being a motivating factor

for him to stick with me through the assessments.

Based on my time with Dimitrius and assessments I have decided to work on two things

in particular with him: reading fluency and words that use the variant vowel /Ô/ sound


combinations. As an ELL component I would also like to work on his pronunciation of the word

“April” to see if we can make progress in that word sounding more native-like.

Lesson Plan Matrix

Lesson Foci/Date

Improving Fluency,

Tuesday, June 11

Objectives Instructional materials On-going assessment

Reading Level

Assessment (6/6/13)

Improving Fluency:

June 11 & June 13

Approximately 30-45

minutes each time.

Student will improve his

self-correction rate and

comprehension level

while reading a Level L

text from Reading A-Z.

Common Core Standards

Grade 2 Fluency

Standard 4.a,b,c

Text: The Best Teacher

in the World by Bernice

Chardiet and Grace

Maccarone

Running Record

Reading A-Z Level L

text, “The Gray Wolf”.

Lesson Foci/Date

Objectives Instructional materials On-going assessment

Vowel Recognition

June 18

Student will

automatically recognize

and correctly pronounce

ou(ght) and au

(ght)vowel

combinations.

Common Core

Standards

Grade 2 Phonics and

Word Recognition

Standard 3b

Individual flash cards

with ou, ght, f,s,b,th,s

and au, ght, c, t

teacher created short

story using these vowel

combinations

Word sort

Observation over the

lesson of student’s

recall of words using

this combination.


Reflections on My Differentiated Literacy Lesson Plan

The two lessons I taught to my student were spread out over four days – with two

sessions for each lesson. The first lesson focused on increasing Dimitrius’ reading fluency using

Martin and the Tooth Fairy (Chardiet & Maccarone, 1990). The running record I had

completed with Dimitrius (Appendix A) showed that he is fairly good at self-correcting, but

because he isn’t reading with automaticity with many words his reading lacks fluency and

expression. One of the first things Dimitrius and I worked on was setting a base line reading rate

for a passage from our chosen text. Then over the course of our four sessions Dimitrius re-read

the passage and I marked errors and how far he made it through the passage (Appendix F). Each

time he read the passage his reading become more fluent and had more expression as evidenced

by the sound recordings I made. Dimitrius also enjoyed the visual effect of plotting his reading

rate growth on the graph in Appendix G.

During the fourth and final reading, however, things began to break down. While he read

further in the passage than he did before, in his eagerness to improve his rate again he skipped

words and parts of sentences. So while he read further through the text than he did the other

three times, his accuracy decreased. This outcome seems to support Rasinski and Samuels

assertion that “a reader can actually be disfluent by reading too fast, at a speed that does not

reflect comprehension or that gives evidence that the reader is not attending to the meaning of

the text” (2011, p. 97). It seems a potential downfall of tracking the reading rate on a graph as

we did is that it can create too much incentive to read quickly at the expense of expression and

comprehension.


When I began meeting with Dimitrius I knew that he was an English Language Learner

(ELL) and that this was a contributing factor for him not meeting benchmarks for third grade

reading. What I wasn’t sure about were the types of interventions I would need to consider

trying to assist him with his English proficiency. During the initial assessment screening I

completed with Dimitrius I noticed that throughout the text when he came to the name of the girl

in the story, “April”, he consistently mispronounced (Appendix A)i. There was such a

consistency to his pronunciation with hardly any hesitation that the more I thought about it the

more curious I became.

My curiosity drove me to access Google Translate for an answer. Google Translate is a

unique tool that allow you to put in an English word, select the language you want the word

translated into, and then actually listen to the word pronounced in that language. When I put

“April” into Google Translate the initial sounds of the Greek pronunciation were exactly the

same as how Dimitrius was pronouncing it. At our next lesson I pointed out his pronunciation

error and had him practice saying it with correct English pronunciation. This happened again

when we began to read Martin and the Tooth Fairy. Dimitrius mispronounced the word “model”

and upon investigating the Greek pronunciation of this word I determined that his English

pronunciation was being influenced by the Greek pronunciation. This word was included in the

words we used to play the matching game in Lesson 1 (Appendix D). When we first began

practicing and playing the game he had a hard time remembering the English pronunciation, but

as we moved through the two sessions of Lesson 1 he was able to monitor his pronunciation of

the word before he started to read it.

Another minor issue I encountered was related to vocabulary. For the most part

Dimitrius understood all of the words we read, but I didn’t anticipate words he might not be


familiar with. Most of the time I was able to give an example or short explanation and he

understood it. But when we were working on the / Ô/ sound I didn’t foresee that he wouldn’t

know the meaning for “moss”. I tried to verbally explain it “as something green that grows in

cool, shady areas under trees”. He still didn’t understand what it was, but I was quickly able to

fix that by taking a break to go outside and find some moss in his backyard.

A third minor problem that came up was during the first day of Lesson 2. As we were

going to be talking about word families as part of the lesson I wanted to make sure he knew what

a word family was. I used /ow/ as my example and we talked about the words cow, now, plow

as being part of this word family. The problem came when we started to read the story that went

with the lesson, A Crow with Flaws. We immediately had a problem as the word crow appears

to belong to the same word family as cow and now, but in reality it doesn’t. I should have

anticipated this and I should have figured out a way to come back to it in our next lesson.

Like most boys his age Dimitrius loves to play with any electronic game. Since I had my

iPad along to record his reading, he asked if he could play it. It became quite evident that

anything I could do that was more kinesthetic in nature would help him focus. Based on this

understanding I chose several of my activities to involve more than just reading and/or writing.

By using the matching game, bingo, and the vowel cups that he could manipulate I was able to

keep him engaged and focused.

Overall, I was pleased how my time with Dimitrius went. I believe that his confidence

grew as he tracked his reading rate on the graph and heard himself improve on the voice

recordings I made. As we worked on the difficult words from each text, playing games and re-

reading the texts his automaticity improved and he wasn’t struggling to decode as many of the

words. I also heard more expression in his later readings. I definitely didn’t anticipate some of


the small issues that came along the way, but do believe that this kind of foresight is partially a

result of experience. At the end of our time together Dimitrius wanted to know if I could

continue to work with him this summer. I’m excited to have the opportunity to do this over this

summer and continue my own learning about literacy.


Recommendations to Teachers and Parents

Dear Parents,

Dimitrius is a bright child and it has been a pleasure to work with him over these last

weeks. It is obvious that he enjoys reading and desires to improve his reading so that he will be

able to read the interesting books he sees his big brother reading. Dimitrius and I discovered

together that he is very good at self-correcting when he makes mistakes in his reading and when

reading a text that is at his level his comprehension is pretty good. From my time with Dimitrius

it was obvious that he does not like the way he sounds when he reads aloud because his reading

doesn’t sound fluid and natural to him. Considering the short time that he has been in school in

America, this is not surprising. Nevertheless he feels embarrassed about it and this detracts from

his enjoyment of reading.

Dimitrius and I worked on two specific areas in our lessons together. First we focused on

his reading fluency which has to do with how fast he reads and the use of expression in reading.

Although he self-corrects often when he makes errors, because he doesn’t automatically

recognize a lot of words his reading is choppy. In order to help with this we identified words in

the book we read together that were difficult, practiced those words, and read the passage

multiple times. Secondly we worked on the /Ô/ vowel sound that appears in words like caught,

thought, loss, song, and law. In particular Dimitrius had trouble recognizing the augh/ough

combinations and so we practiced recognizing these words automatically.

As we enter the summer months it is important for Dimitrius to continue to read

regularly. One key to developing his fluency and expression is just reading a lot. He would

benefit from regularly scheduling in 20 minutes of reading time each day. He should choose

books that are “just right” for him, meaning that he can read them with relative ease. It would be

great for him to read these books both aloud and multiple times as this will help his reading rate,

his automatic word recognition, his expression, and will ultimately make him feel better about

reading aloud.

Thank you for allowing me to work with your son!

Sincerely,

Lisa Engelsman


REFERENCES

Chardiet, B., & Maccarone, G. (1990). Martin and the Tooth Fairy. New York: Scholastic, Inc.

Ellingson, S. (n.d.). Middle Sound Cups - and How to Teach Kids to Find the Middle Sound of a

Word. Heidi Songs Classroom Resources. Retrieved from

http://heidisongs.blogspot.com/2013/04/middle-sound-cups-and-how-to-teach-kids.html

Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. S. (n.d.). Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Books Website. Retrieved from

http://www.fountasandpinnellleveledbooks.com/aboutFountasPinnell.aspx

Harryman, W. (n.d.). Harry the Hungry Plant. Reading A-Z. Retrieved from

http://www.readinga-z.com/book.php?id=677

Kinney, J. (2011). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever. New York: Amulet Books.

List of Benchmark Quick Check Quizzes. (n.d.). Reading A-Z. Retrieved from

http://www.readinga-z.com/book/benchmark-quiz.php?context=guided-

reading&f=site_and_dist/bench_quiz/l/raz_bmqll_00_f.pdf

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, & Council of Chief State School

Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards English Language Arts. National

Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School

Officers. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards

Rasinski, T. V., & Samuels, S. J. (2011). Reading Fluency: What It Is and What It Is Not. In

What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction. Newark, DE: International

Reading Association.

Reading a-z Running Record Level L. (n.d.). Reading A-Z. Retrieved from http://www.readinga-

z.com/book.php?id=677&f=members/runningrecords/raz_llrr_02.pdf

Roberts, B. (n.d.). A Crow with Flaws. Reading A-Z.


Scoring and Analyzing a Running Record. (n.d.). Reading A-Z. Retrieved from

http://www.readinga-z.com/assess/scoring-a-running-record.html?context=guided-

reading


Appendix A

Running Record A-Z – Martin and the Tooth Fairy


Appendix B

Reading A-Z Benchmark Quick Check for Dimitrius


Appendix C

Reading Attitude Survey


Appendix D

Lesson Plan #1

Date: 06/11 & 6/13

Objective(s) for today’s lesson: Student will increase reading fluency rate of selected passage

and will read with increased prosody.

“Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4.a

“Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive

readings.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4b

“Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as

necessary.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4.c

Rationale: Two components of reading fluency that go along with reading comprehension are

automaticity in word recognition and prosody. Students struggling with word recognition will

struggle with prosody which will ultimately affect comprehension.

Materials & supplies needed: My Reading Fluency Graph, colored pencils, reading fluency

graph, copy of Martin and the Tooth Fairy, flashcards

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event

• Introduction to the lesson

Teacher: Today and tomorrow we will be working on

reading more fluently. This means we will work on you

being able to see a word and know exactly what it is

quickly. It also means that we will work on reading with

expression. Do you know what that means? It means

that when we read out loud we change the tone of our

voice, how loud we read, and speed based on what we

are reading. Remember how you said you felt

embarrassed to listen to the recording of your voice in

last week? This is because you didn’t think it sounded

good. So we are going to practice making your out-loud

reading sound better using a book called Martin and the

Tooth Fairy (3 minutes)

• Outline of key events during the lesson

Teacher: Last time I said that if you worked hard with

Academic, Social and

Linguistic Support during

each event


me during our reading lessons I would give you time to

play on my iPad at the end of our lesson. Is that a deal?

(shake hands on it). We are going to work hard for

about ½ hour and then I will give you time to play for 10

minutes. After that time I will ask you to read one last

short passage before we end today.

1. Activate background knowledge (3 minutes)

a. T: We are going to work on reading this story this

week.

b. T: Ask student: What is a tooth fairy? Has the

tooth fairy ever visited you?

2. Reading rate (2 minutes)

a. T: One thing we are going to do several times

today and at our next meeting is to see how much

of this story you can read to me in 1 minute. When

we are done I will have you put that number on a

graph. As we practice reading this book, you will

see your ability to read the words quickly and

accurately increase.

b. Have student read as much of the story out loud to me

in 1 minute as he can. Mark errors on teacher sheet.

Quickly calculate reading rate. Have student graph it

on the “My Reading Fluency Graph”.

c. Model Fluent Reading (10 minutes)

a. T: Now I am going to read this story to you. As I

read I want you to pay attention to how my voice

changes as I read. Good oral readers use their

voice to help tell the story. Read out loud paying

special attention to reading with expression.

3. Vocabulary Practice (10 minutes)

a. T: There are some difficult words in the story.

Let’s take some time to read these difficult words

together and practice recognition of them. (usual,

tongue, wiggled, finish, supposed, pillow, beard,

quarters, model, mumbled)

b. Flashcards: Have students read the words that are

written on flashcards (2 cards for each word). Help

with pronunciation and sounding out as needed. Mix

the cards up and practice reading several more times.

c. Matching Game: Mix up flashcards. Lay them out

ELL – show picture of tooth fairy

and talk about what a tooth fairy

does to make sure he knows the

meaning

Pay attention to student’s

pronunciation correcting the

most obvious mispronunciations.


face down on the table in a random order. Student

turns over one card and reads the word out loud.

Repeats with a second card. If they match students

takes the two cards. Teacher goes second. Repeat

until all cards are matched.

4. Guided Reading: (10 minutes)

a. T: Now we are going to practice reading the story

aloud together. I want you to follow along with

your finger as we read. Adjust pace of voice to

allow student to read along with me.

b. Reading Rate/Short Assessment: (3 minutes) Repeat

the reading rate assessment used above to see if

student’s reading rate improves with this passage.

Student charts it on the graph.

5. Comprehension Questions: (5 minutes) Check

comprehension of story by asking the following questions:

a. What did Martin do with his tooth at night after it fell

out?

b. How many quarters did he get for his tooth?

c. Why did Martin make a sign at lunchtime?

d. Why did Raymond want more than 2 quarters for his

tooth?

e. What did Martin do to get his money back from his

friends?

• Closing summary for the lesson (3 minutes)

1. Record student reading the first 4 pages of the story

again. Listen to the reading and point out areas where

his reading sounds more fluent.

2. T: The more you can practice reading out loud and

in your head the easier you will find it to read more

fluently.

T: Part of being able to read more fluently and understand

what you are reading is being able to recognize the words

quickly. Remember how we practiced some of the difficult

words in this story with the matching game? In our next

lesson we will practice some words that have the variant

vowel /Ô/ spellings – words like “caught” and “bought”.

These words can be a little tricky so we will do some


activities to become more familiar with these words.

Assessment: From this lesson I’m looking for:

1. More expression from pre-test recording to post-test

recording.

2. Increased reading rate for selected passage

3. When asked, Dimitrius says that he feels better about

hearing the latest recording of himself reading out loud.


Appendix E

Lesson Plan #2

Date: 06/19 & 06/20

Objective(s) for today’s lesson:

1. The student will read words that belong to the variant vowel /Ô/ word family accurately and

with automaticity.

2. Student will increase reading fluency rate of selected passage and will read with increased

prosody. (This is carried over from our first two lessons.)

“Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams. CCSS.ELA-

Literacy.RF.2.3.b

“Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4.a

“Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive

readings.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4b

“Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as

necessary.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4.c

Rationale: The student struggles with decoding and recognizing words with /Ô/ and in

particular words like thought, bought, caught. Not being able to easily decode and recognize

these words leads to a breakdown in comprehension as he struggles to figure out the

pronunciation. It also interferes with his expression while reading.

Materials & supplies needed: Middle Sound Cups, word family cards, iPad, copy of Martin

and the Tooth Fairy, Vowel Pattern Bingo cards, pennies,

• Introduction to the lesson (3 minutes)

T: In our last lesson we talked about how recognizing

words right away when you see them helps us to with

understand what we are reading. If we have to think

really hard about sounding out a word, it is hard to pay

attention to what the text is saying. The first time you

read for me I noticed that words like “taught” and

“thought” were difficult for you (show cards with words

on them). In our next two lessons we will practice

recognizing these words quickly. We will also reread

our passage from Martin and the Tooth Fairy once today

and once tomorrow to work on increasing your reading

rate and improve how you sound reading out loud.

Academic, Social and Linguistic

Support during each event

/Ô/ Words

bought, caught, toss, song,

law, call


• Outline of key events during the lesson:(adapted from

Reading A-Z, Phonics Lesson 62)

1. Activate background knowledge (3 minutes)

T: Do you know what a word family is? If he doesn’t

remember start with an easy combination like /ow/ and the

word cow. Write cow on a piece of paper and point to the

/ow/ part of the word. Words that end with the /ow/ like

in cow are in the same word family. Can you think of

other words that would belong to this family? Write

down words students comes up with.

2. Introduce /Ô/ (5 minutes)

a. In order to practice recognizing the various letter

combinations/words that make up the /Ô/ sound I’ve

decided to use an approach to put the words/sounds

together that uses a series of clear and colored cups

(CVC Cups). The colored cups have the medial vowels

written on them. The clear cups (which are bigger than

the colored cups have the possible letters that could be

on either side of the vowels to create a word. In order to

create a full word the student can choose a colored cup

vowel and then place a clear cup over the colored cup.

The letter written on the two different cups now spell a

word (Ellingson, n.d.).

b. Create the word ball with the cups. Have student read

word aloud. Take off the clear cup and have student

make the sound that the letter a makes.

c. Create the words caught and ball with the cups. Ask

student what is similar about the sounds in the middle of

these two words.

d. T: The augh is a letter combination that stands for a

group of vowels called variant vowels. (show

combination with appropriate cup) They don’t follow

the normal rules you may have learned. Another

group of letter combinations that make this sound is

ough. (show combination with appropriate cup).

e. Create the word brought with the cups. Point out the

letter combination that stands for the variant vowel and

run finger over vowel combination while saying sound.

Blend the entire word while running finger over each

letter. Point out to student that the word has four

sounds, but 7 letters make up those sounds.

f. Repeat the blending activity with different word

Now, plow,

Student really enjoys anything

kinesthetic and I think this will be

more engaging than just looking

at the words on paper.

.


combinations (broth, moth, moss, and taught).

3. Blend onset and rime (10 minutes)

a. Place aught word-family card on the table in front of

student. Ask him what sound these letters make. Place

c card in front of aught. Have student read the word,

blending the sounds and using their finger to follow

along. Repeat with letter t.

b. Take out oss card. Repeat the procedure from aught and

use the t and b cards to create words toss and boss.

c. Repeat with ought. Use the b and s cards.

d. Repeat with ong. Use the s and l cards.

e. Repeat with aw. Use the l and c cards.

f. Place the word family cards in a row. Have student sort

word cards into their proper category based on their

spelling of the /Ô/ sound.

4. Reading Story with /Ô/ sound. (10 minutes)

a. Show front cover of book. Have student read title. T:

What do you think this story might be about?”

b. Ask student to point out variant spelling in the title.

c. Have student read “A Crow with Flaws” aloud (Roberts,

n.d.).

5. Practice putting words together using cups. Call out

words and have student use colored and clear cups to

create the words I call out. (5 minutes)

6. Create words using the cups and have student call them

out as quickly as possible.

7. Reread practice passage from Martin and the Tooth

Fairy.

8. Vowel Pattern Bingo (10 minutes)

a. Teacher and student play Vowel Pattern Bingo. Place

bingo card in front of both student and teacher.

b. Place cards with words on them upside down between

student and teacher.

c. Take turns turning over card and marking board with

pennies. When card is turned over ask student to read

the word aloud.

d. Play several rounds of this together.

9. Spell and Write (5 minutes)

a. Dictate words and have student write.

b. caught, taught, cost, floss, bought, thought


10. Final reading from Martin and the Tooth Fairy. Have

student read the passage one last time. Record reading

using the iPad. Calculate his reading rate in one minute

and have student graph the results on graph. Point out to

student the growth in his reading rate over the last two

weeks. T: When we practice reading a lot our ability

to recognize the words quickly and accurately goes up.

As we become more familiar with the words we can

add more expression to our voice as we read. As we

recognize words quickly and without thinking we can

focus on the meaning of the story. You have worked

hard in these last two weeks and your reading of this

passage sounds a lot better!

Assessment: From this lesson I’m looking for:

1. More expression from pre-test recording to post-test

recording of selected passage from Martin and the

Tooth Fairy.

2. Increased reading rate for selected passage

3. Student expresses greater satisfaction with how his

reading sounds.

4. Student will be able to quickly put the sounds together

with the cups to spell the words and he will be able to

write the variant /Ô/ words accurately.


Appendix F

Running Record for Martin and the Tooth Fairy


Appendix G

Dimitrius’ Reading Rate Graph


i Appendix H is attached separately and is a voice recording of Dimitrius reading Harry the Hungry Plant. If you listen you will hear his mispronunciation of April.

Documents

Case Study: Dimitrius, An English Language Learner Lisa