Clinical Reading Report

Name: MaddieGrade: 4School: Stony Brook ElementaryAge: 9

Date of Report: March, 29, 2014Dates of Testing: February 14 – March 21, 2014Date of Birth: May 12, 2004

Background Information

Maddie is a nine-year-old fourth grade female student at Stony Brook Elementary School. Maddie’s parents are Pakistani natives, and Maddie speaks with them in a Pakistani language at home. Maddie also lives with her younger brother at home. Maddie’s favorite subject in school is math, but Maddie has also expressed her interest in reading at school and on her own time, especially mystery-genre books. Maddie’s fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Davis, administered the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA; Beaver, 2001) at the beginning of the academic year with Maddie, which placed her at an Intermediate DRA stage, which is appropriate for the average 4th grader. However, Mrs. Davis, has noted that while Maddie has great fluency and expression when reading aloud, she tends to have difficulties comprehending the text.

In school, Maddie raises her hand very often to participate in English, reading, and math, and seems to be comfortable with sharing her work out loud with the class. Maddie follows directions very well, has excellent focus during class, and is rarely distracted by the students at her table during lessons. When Mrs. Davis waits on tables to be quiet and raise their two fingers (to show they are being attentive), Maddie is often the first to raise her fingers and remind others at her table to do the same. In addition, Mrs. D presented Maddie with the weekly “Star Student” award because Maddie is someone who is always kind, follows directions, and someone who Mrs. Davis had never had to give a verbal warning for inappropriate or uncooperative behavior.

Tests Administered

Multidimensional Fluency ScaleText Dimension ScoreShiloh, p. 108 Expression and Volume 3

Phrasing 4Smoothness 4Pace 4

Hasbrouck and Tindal’s Oral Reading Fluency DataWords correct per minute (WCPM) Percentile (4th grade; winter)129 70%Running RecordText Accuracy Rate Errors Self-CorrectionsRhino Rescue (Level R) 97.5% 4 9

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Miscue AnalysisError TypeMeaning errors 7Syntax errors 5Visual errors 3Self-correct meaning errors 0Self-correct syntax errors 2Self-correct visual errors 3

Elementary Spelling Inventory Stage Feature Points MasteryEmergent Consonants 7/7 MasteryLetter Name Short Vowels 5/5 Mastery

Digraphs 6/6 MasteryWithin Word Pattern Blends 7/7 Mastery

Long Vowels 5/5 MasteryOther Vowels 7/7 Mastery

Syllables and Affixes Inflected Endings 5/5 MasterySyllable Junctures 4/5 MasteryUnaccented Final Syllables 5/5 Mastery

Derivational Relations Harder Suffixes 5/5 MasteryBases or Roots 4/5 Instructional Level

Total 60/62Words Spelled Correctly 22/25

Benchmark Comprehension CheckType of Question Correct/IncorrectRecall CorrectCause and Effect IncorrectVocabulary CorrectMake Inferences/ Draw Conclusions CorrectMain Idea and Details Correct

Elementary Reading Attitude SurveyPercentile RanksRecreational 78%Academic 87%Full scale 86%

Tests Administered by Cooperating Teacher

Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA)DRA Text Level 40/80

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DRA Reading Engagement Score 5/8DRA Oral Reading Score 16/16DRA Comprehension Skills/ Strategies Score 19/24DRA Total Score 80/128

Total Score DRA Stage Grade Level80 Intermediate Fourth

Observations During Testing

Fluency

Multidimensional Fluency Scale. The Multidimensional Fluency Scale (Zutell & Ransinski, 1991) provides a quantitative score for multiple dimensions of prosodic reading (expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness, pace). Under each dimension’s score is a detailed description of characteristics of that level that may be used to guide instruction. Maddie was asked to read aloud a page of the book that the whole class had been reading at the time, Shiloh. Maddie’s expression and volume, for the most part, was natural and appropriate throughout the text. Her phrasing was well phrased, and her pace was consistently conversational. Although there were occasional breaks in smoothness caused by the text, Maddie was still placed in the most advanced dimension due to the context of Shiloh (uncommon/unnatural phrases such as “I hardly finish telling about”, “he still don’t care who sees him cry”, and “Could you call ‘em up and ask could they drive down her tomorrow and take him back with them?”). As Maddie’s teacher had indicated, Maddie’s prosody, especially in phrasing, smoothness, and pace, is very appropriate and done without difficulty. Although her volume was not varied and matched depending on her interpretation of the passage, it was generally appropriate throughout the text.

Hasbrouck and Tindal’s Oral Reading Fluency Data. Another measure of reader fluency is Hasbrouck and Tindal’s Oral Reading Fluency Data (Hasbrouck & Tindal, 2006), which measures the reader’s words correct per minute (WCPM). Maddie was asked to read aloud a passage from Shiloh and was told to stop after 60 seconds of reading. Although the book Shiloh has a DRA level of 40 and is appropriate for a 4th grader to read, as mentioned above, it has various regional phrases that caused several breaks in the smoothness of Maddie’s reading. To score the WCPM, the number of accurate words in the one-minute time span was quantified. Maddie’s rate of 129 WCPM places her at approximately the 70th percentile for the 4th grade level in the winter term, which puts her fluency above the average fourth-grader.

Running Record/ Miscue Analysis. Running records are coded notations of a reading passage that is used to evaluate the reading errors, or miscues, that a child makes. After the child has read the passage, the miscues are assessed to determine the types of reading errors that the child made and the reason why the child made the error (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 1987). This information can be used to track progress of the child and gather evidence of his or her reading process, and can then be used to determine the plan of instruction that best suits the child. To perform the running record, Maddie was pulled away from the classroom and asked to read a brief passage from Reading a-z, “Rhino Rescue” while I recorded her reading and took

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some notes. The passage has a word count of 160 and is labeled as a level R, which was leveled at approximately a grade level of 4.5. I estimated this to be in the realm of her instructional level from Mrs. Davis’ DRA records, which placed Maddie at the 70th percentile for the 4th grade level in the winter term. Maddie made a total of 4 miscues: one omission, one insertion, one tense change (“lived” instead of “live”), and an added “s” to a word (“centers” instead of “center”). In addition, Maddie had some self-corrected reading errors that were either omissions or incorrect tenses of the word (“lived” instead of “live”).

All but one of Maddie’s errors were meaning errors, where the meaning of the sentence was left unchanged even with Maddie’s errors (e.g. “where the rescue centers is located”). Five of her errors were syntactic errors, which means that the structure of the sentences still followed grammatical form (e.g. “About two thousand rhinos lived in the part of India…”). Three of her errors were visual errors, which means that the changed word looks or sounds similar to the correct word in the sentence (e.g. “other” instead of “others”, “centers” instead of “center”). Because many of these errors, however, were a combination of 2 or 3 of the types of errors, none of her errors were just syntactic or just visual errors. The fact that the meaning of the sentence did not change from the majority of her errors could signify that she is directing her attention toward what the passage is saying rather than trying to read at a fast pace or focusing on what is syntactically correct. The self-corrects were either syntactic (2) or visual (2). Maddie read the passage with an accuracy rate of 97.5%, error rate of 2.5%, and a self-correction rate of 5.625%, which places the passage at Maddie’s instructional level.

DRA. The Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA; Beaver, 2001) is a multidimensional assessment of a child’s reading capabilities, with one component of the test being fluency. Maddie was administered the DRA at the beginning of 4th grade in September. She read a passage, “Meet the Octopus”, which was labeled a DRA text level of 40, the average level for a fourth-grader. On the rubric for her oral reading fluency, she was given a full score of 16 out of 16, meaning that her expression was appropriate, her phrasing was meaningful, she had a very good rate, and had an accuracy rate of 99-100%. This signifies that her competency is well above average 4th grade, even at the beginning of the academic year. To find her instructional level, at least according to her fluency, it would be beneficial to provide Maddie with slightly higher-leveled readings.

Spelling

Elementary Spelling Inventory. The Elementary Spelling Inventory (ESI; Bear et al., 2008) consists of 25 words, ordered from easiest to hardest and by stage (emergent, letter name, within word pattern, syllables and affixes, derivational relations). This tool is useful to see at what spelling stage the reader is independent and at what spelling stage the reader can benefit best from instruction. One-on-one, Maddie was told that I, the instructor, would read out some words and use them in a sentence, and she should try to spell them to the best of her abilities. Out of the 25 words, Maddie misspelled 3 words. The 3 misspelled words are as follows:

Correct Spelling Child’s SpellingServing SurvingRipen RippenOpposition Oposition

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Maddie had no problems with beginning or ending consonants, digraphs blends, or long vowels. Maddie has, therefore, clearly mastered the emergent and letter name stages. She did, however, use the incorrect vowel in the word “serving”, but this is a more ambiguous vowel because “er” and “ur” make the same sounds, and it could also just be a less frequently used word in Maddie’s vocabulary. Therefore, I do not believe Maddie requires much review or careful instruction in the within word pattern stage. Her misspelling with the word “ripen” shows that she realizes it derives from the word “ripe”, but incorrectly added an extra “p”. Maddie’s last misspelling with the word “opposition” shows that she has no problems with final, more difficult, suffixes, but has problems with some of the syllable junctures. Because she only had one error in the within word pattern, syllables and affixes, and derivational relations stage, I would place Maddie in the middle stage of the derivational relations stage, which is advanced for fourth-grade (derivational relations is typically the stage for 5th graders and beyond). The most prominent area that Maddie could benefit from review and instruction is using the correct syllable junctures in her spelling.

Comprehension

Benchmark Comprehension Check. To assess Maddie’s reading comprehension, I followed the Rhino Rescue passage that was given to her for her to read during the running record (Reading a to z; level R) with a set of premade questions, also found from Reading a to z. I read out 5 questions, each testing a different aspect of comprehension: recall, cause and effect, vocabulary, making inferences, and main idea. The questions and their multiple-choice answers were read verbally to Maddie, and she was asked to choose the answer that she believes best answers the question. Of the five questions, Maddie had no problem answering the recall question, the vocabulary question, the inference question, and the main idea question. She did, however, hesitate when answering the cause and effect question, which is as follows:

Question Correct Answer Child’s AnswerHow did workers help the rhino in the passage?

They cleared a path for her to follow.

They took her to a rescue center to heal.

Although Maddie did not choose the correct answer to the question, it does show her ability to reason that when an animal is hurt and in need of help, a solution can be to take it to a center to heal. The story told of rescue workers from a nearby rescue center that arrived at the site of the rhino, so it is likely that she recalled pieces of the reading, just not completely accurately. To fully understand Maddie’s reading comprehension, it would be beneficial to ask her to summarize the story to see her ability to recall details and understand the main idea either verbally or written, instead of choosing from a list of multiple choice options.

DRA. As described above in the fluency section, the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA; Beaver, 2001) is a multidimensional assessment of a child’s reading capabilities, with another component of the test being comprehension. Mrs. Davis administered the DRA at the beginning of 4th grade in September, and gave Maddie a comprehension skills/ strategies score of 19 out of 24. She read a passage, “Meet the Octopus”, which was labeled a DRA text level of 40, the average level for a fourth-grader. Looking at the rubric, Mrs. Davis assigned Maddie with

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scores that indicated that her summaries, literal comprehension, interpretation, reflection, and metacognitive awareness was adequate, giving scores of 3 out of 4 for each section. She was, however, scored a 4 out of 4 on her prediction section. Maddie’s summary of the text was very extensive and filled with detail (“an octopus can change color in less than a second!”, “the smallest size is as small as a thumb”, “it uses the taste buds along its arms to taste what it touches”), but when asked to interpret what the author says about an octopus’ “amazing abilities”, she answers very vaguely, saying that it is “because the octopus can do amazing things and its adaptions”. Maddie is able to recall details of the passage as they were told in the story, but has difficulties synthesizing the statements and extending on her ideas.

Motivation

Elementary Reading Attitude Survey. The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (McKenna & Kear, 1990) is a brief survey of a child’s attitudes toward reading. It consists 20 questions of how a child feels about reading in various contexts and situations (e.g. “How do you feel when you read a book in school during free time?”), and 4 reactions illustrated by Garfield for each question: happy, slightly smiling, mildly upset, very upset. I gave Maddie a copy of the survey at the beginning of the day, and asked that she complete it when she has free time during the day. Overall, . Maddie prefers not to take a reading test or read instead of playing, but generally indicated that she enjoys spending free time in school and at home reading and reading various genres of books.

Writing Samples

The following writing samples show Maddie’s competence in completing writing assignments at an appropriate length and detail. Although she tends to have a rigid structure to her writing (listing events), she shows that she is able to organize her ideas in paragraphs (specifically example 1). She has very few spelling errors, and the errors she does have are mainly simple words that were most likely misspelled in a rush (e.g. “where” “off” and “in”). It is important to note that her choice of words are relatively low-risk, with a lack of long, more difficult vocabulary.

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Summary and Recommendations

Maddie is a fourth-grade girl who is all around at grade-level for reading, writing, and spelling. Through informal assessment, I have learned that Maddie’s instructional reading level is fourth grade, but at the higher end of the spectrum. She is likely to be able to read and comprehend beginning-level fourth-grade text independently. Maddie has an overall positive attitude toward reading, both at home and at school.

One of Maddie’s strengths as a reader is her ability to read aloud with advanced fluency. As Maddie’s teacher has indicated, Maddie’s prosody while reading, especially in phrasing, smoothness, and pace, is very appropriate and done with ease and expression. This is an area of reading that Maddie does not require much specialized focus. The majority of Maddie’s errors made while reading aloud were meaning errors, which means that she is heavily reliant on the context and meaning of the text. In most cases, however, she is able to repeat and self-correct her errors based on if the sentence sounded syntactically correct, or looked correct visually. Spelling is another area in which Maddie seems to exceed her grade-level. According to an informal spelling assessment, she has mastered emergent, letter name, within word pattern, and syllables and affixes. Due to her 2 misspellings using the correct syllable junctures in her spelling, I would place Maddie in the middle stage of the derivational relations stage, which is advanced for a fourth-grader.

Comprehension and writing are areas that Maddie may benefit from special instruction. In regards to comprehension, an informal, multiple-choice assessment of Maddie’s comprehension on a short passage in combination with a DRA administered at the beginning of the academic year show that she is able to recall details about a passage pretty accurately, but when asked to reflect on the importance of the passage or extend on the author’s purpose of the writing, she has difficulty answering specifically and with detail. Another area that Maddie could benefit from instruction is writing. Although her writing displays appropriate length, she tends to write at surface-level. Her writing tends to be a list of events, and lacks depth in extending upon feelings and ideas. Although her writing has very few misspellings, she also seems to lack long, more difficult vocabulary.

Long-Term Goals:1. Increased ability to synthesize the main purpose and draw conclusions from a reading with support from the text.2. Build vocabulary to support a more expansive vocabulary range in writing assignments.

Short-Term Goals:1. Explicitly indicate the focus of a passage and support with at least 2 pieces of evidence on why it is the main focus.2. Learn 10 new advanced vocabulary words useful for writing assignments.

Instructional Plan for InterventionInstructional Approaches

Word Wall. According to Rasinski and Padak (2013), an important way to capture the students’ interests in words is by having words displayed in the physical environment of the classroom. One way of using the word wall to increase more advanced vocabulary that is

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beneficial for all students in the classroom is to focus on a certain type of writing like persuasive writing, and encourage students to come up with words that would be useful while writing a persuasive writing. This way, not only will kids be learning that certain words are useful to a specific type of writing, but it will be on display for students like Maddie who struggle to find and use new words in their writing. When they learn a new type of writing (e.g. narrative, expository), students will add useful words for each onto the word wall.

Mini-Lesson. According to Ruddell (2005), an essential component of fostering comprehension and to encourage students to go beyond recalling facts and details of a story, which is something that Maddie needs instruction on, is to engage students in active thinking by asking open-ended questions to make connections within the reading and determine the main purpose and idea of a reading. One way to create a mini-lesson to help students determine the main idea of text is to conduct a read-aloud where the instructor directs his/her questions and comments toward identifying the most important point at a given point in the text. A follow-up to this mini-lesson might be connecting the main point of another reading that has a similar focus to the main idea from the first reading. This not only provides more practice for the students to identify the main idea of a story, but it gives the student the opportunity to connect ideas across different readings.

Independent Reading. Independent reading is something that easily allows for differentiation between students and motivates students to become interested readers because the students have the freedom to choose what they read (Morgan et al., 2008). The instructor can support students to engage in independent reading by allowing 15-20 minutes a day for students to read a book of their choice. The instructor can also involve themselves in each student’s reading by conducting short conferences with each child throughout the year to see how well they understand the book, what they are enjoying best about the book, and what problems they have come across throughout their reading. Independent reading is also a way of expanding a child’s vocabulary; Maddie may use this as an opportunity to gain familiarity with more difficult words that can be then used in her writing.

One-on-One Tutoring Session

One way to specifically support Maddie in expanding her vocabulary throughout an independent reading book is to ask her to write down any interesting or confusing words that she encounters on a sticky note and then have a conference where she and the instructor can discuss together why the word is “interesting” or “confusing” (Morgan et al., 2013). The instructor will then scaffold in instilling the new words into her existing vocabulary by asking questions about when the words can be used in different contexts, and coming up with sentences with Maddie using a few of the words that came up in the meeting. Asking Maddie to think about these types of words gives Maddie a way to place some direct attention on expanding her vocabulary while reading, which can help fulfill the short-term goal of learning new, advanced vocabulary that can be useful for writing assignments in class.

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References

Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2008). Words their way: Word study

for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Perarson/ Prentice Hall.

Beaver, J. (2001). Developmental reading assessment. New York: Pearson Learning.

Goodman, Y.M., Watson, D.J., & Burke, C.L. (1987). Reading miscue inventor: Alternative

procedures. Katonah: Owen.

Hasbrouck, J.E., & Tindal, G. (2006). Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool

for reading teachers. The Reading Teacher, 59, 636-644.

McKenna, M.C., & Kear, D.J. (1990). Measuring attitude toward reading: A new tool for

teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43, 626-639.

Morgan, D.N., Mraz, M., Padak, N.m & Rasinski, T. (2008). Independent reading: practical

strategies for grades K-3. New York: Guilford Press.

Rasinski, T. V., & Padak, N. D. (2013). From phonics to fluency: Effective teaching of decoding

and reading fluency in the elementary school (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

Education, Inc.

Ruddell, R.B. (2005). Teaching children to read and write: Becoming an influential teacher (4th

ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Zuttell, J., & Rasinski, T. (1991). Training teachers to attend to their students’ oral reading

fluency. Theory into Practice, 30, 211-217.

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