Running Head: 5401 Final Project

5401 Final Project

Brieanna Caillot

Temple University
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The student that I worked with for this project is a third-grade boy named “Kaden.” He

attends Overbrook Educational Center, and I worked with him twice a week during his ELA

class. I spoke with his ELA teacher to get some background information before deciding what

would be best for him. I was informed that he was in the process of getting tested for an IEP

because he was not on a third-grade reading level. I also learned that his entire third grade class

missed a great deal of instruction due to staffing issues. “Kaden” and the rest of his classmates

had about three long term substitutes the year prior, and because of different teaching styles, the

students lacked some of the fundamentals that they needed for third grade. Keeping that in mind,

I had a conversation with “Kaden” about what he enjoys reading, and what skills he has

difficulty with. I learned that he enjoys reading about sports, and fiction books. “Kaden” also

mentioned that sometimes he struggled with some of the bigger words that he encounters in

books. I also chose to read a book with him that was considered to be on a third-grade reading

level.

The strategy I chose to introduce to “Kaden” was the phonological awareness strategy. I

noticed that “Kaden” was able to identify letters and sounds, but he had difficulty putting those

sounds together. This strategy had a series of pre-tests that the student was required to take

which included an initial letter sounds, pronunciation, segmenting, and blending. “Kaden” was

required to get at least a 70% on each of the strategies. There were some complications with my

placement in the beginning of the semester, so due to the lack of time, I allowed Kaden to move

on to the training portion of the strategy even though he scored a 60% on the blending pre-test.

For the initial letter sound he scored 100%, on the pronunciation portion “Kaden” received a

70%. On the segmenting portion he received an 85%. Although he received an 85% on the

segmenting portion, I noticed that one common sound he missed was the /k/ sound.

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See his results below:

The highlighted letters are what was correctly pronounced.

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As you can see, “Kaden” knew majority of his letter sounds, but majority of the sounds he

missed were either the letter “C” that made the /K/ sound, or the letter “K”.

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3

Scam - Sam Pest- Pet Fret- Feet
Scan- San Pet- Et Clinic- Click
Scrap- Srap Rack- Racks Froth- Fourth
Cost- Coast Picnic- Pink Brimful- Blimful & Beautiful
Clasp- Clap Tropit- Top It Flipem- Flip me
Scromp- Stomp Trovet - Tovit Flacket- Flat
Pratest- Practice Blombet - Bloombet
When the training began, we started out with mnemonic strategy which was “STOP.”

This strategy had four steps, which were: Stare at the unknown word, Tell myself each letter

sound, Open your mouth and say each letter sound, and Put the letters together to say the word.

“Kaden” and I worked on each step a couple of times before I decided to quiz him, and he got a

100% on the quiz four out the five times. Once “Kaden” understood each step of the strategy we

used the practice words to get accustomed to the strategy we would be working on, and then we

began to work on the weekly word lists. The weekly word lists required me to work with

“Kaden” twice a week, so during each session “Kaden” practiced ten words and two nonsense

words. The first session of each week included words that had either, three, four or five letters in

each word. Then the second session of each week included words that had between three and

seven words in it. I also made sure to model how “Kaden” should read the words off of the index

cards, and how to use the strategy if he gets stuck on a word. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic,

I was only able to complete eleven out of the twelve total sessions. The chart below shows the

real and nonsense words that “Kaden” got incorrectly (written in bold) and the word he ended up

reading out loud to me for the first three weeks.

In the first week, I noticed that “Kaden” was still having problems with his “C’s” that

made the /K/ sound. For the first three words in week one (scam, scan and scrap) I realized that

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he completely disregarded the letter “C” and I noted that he has trouble with the “SC” blend. He

also did the same thing for “Clasp” and “ Scromp.” When it came to the word “cost”, “ Kaden”

assumed that the word included a long “O” sound instead of saying the short “O” sound and

made the word “coast.” During week two he continued to simplify words by not saying specific

letter sounds for the words “Pest,” “ Pet,” “Tropit” and “Trovet.” Over the course of the two

weeks, I had encouraged “Kaden” to use the STOP strategy when he was hesitating to say a

word. He ended up needing the prompt sheet so he could remember each of the steps. At some

points, I felt like using the strategy might have overwhelmed him instead of helped him.

During week three, “Kaden” didn’t make any progress, but instead he stayed consistent

and got seventeen out of the twenty-four words correctly. I continued to track which blending

sounds that he was struggling with, and I noted that he was not able to say the “Fr” blend.

Because this was the mid – point of the strategy training, I also looked back in my notes for other

similarities that I might have missed. I looked at the words that “Kaden” had simplified as he

was reading them out loud, and I noticed that he is replacing the given words with words that

contain the same starting and ending letter, or same starting and ending sounds.

*See the examples below that were taken from the chart*

Scam Sam, Scromp Stomp, Pest Pet, Clinic Clink (in this example

there were the same letter sounds, just different ending letters)

Below is the table that shows the words for weeks four through six that “Kaden” read

incorrectly (written in bold) , and the word he read out loud instead.

Week 4 Week 5 Week 6

Dim- Dime Vast- Vest Peck - Peak
Deck- Deek Gust - Just
Grim- Gram Venack- Venex
Grant - Grance Nacket- Nectar
Drasket - Basket Westet - West

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Grivest- Givest Vislet - Visit

Before we began week four, I decided to work with Kaden on the STOP strategy again

because I felt like he wasn’t utilizing it to the best of his ability. We went through each of the

steps in the strategy, and I decided to just quiz him again before we went through the words. I

also gave him a sheet with the steps to refer back so it can eliminate him feeling overwhelmed.

After finishing week four, I noticed that “Kaden” had made some improvement, and instead of

getting seventeen words correct for the week, he got eighteen words correct. He struggled with

identifying the difference between the long and short sounds for some letters. For example,

“dim” has a short “I” sound and “Kaden” read the word with a long “I” sound. He also managed

to do the same with “deck” and turned it into “deek,” by saying the long “E” sound. Week five

ended with the same results, eighteen words correctly out of twenty-four. I noticed that “Kaden”

wasn’t struggling with figuring out the difference between his long and short vowels. But he was

still replacing or simplifying the given words with words that had the same letters. After we

finished the second session of week five, I looked at the words that “Kaden” had gotten

incorrectly, and I noticed that four out of the six words that were incorrect were nonsense words.

“Kaden” had also asked me if all of the words that we worked on for the past few weeks were

real words, and just to ensure that he was not intentionally reading the words incorrectly I told

him that they were all real.

Due to the school closings, I was only able to get through my first weekly session for

week six. Although I wasn’t able to collect accurate data, I did notice that “Kaden” had

potentially made some improvement, because he only read one word incorrectly out of the

twelve he was given. Instead of saying “peck” he said “peek (or) peak.” This error was consistent

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with his other errors in the past because he replaced the short “E” in the word peck, with a long

“E.” As I went through the training, I also graphed “Kaden’s” progress.

See the graph below:

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After reviewing all of “Kaden’s” results over the past few weeks, I noticed a very small

improvement close to the end of the strategy. For six out of eleven of the training sessions he had

gotten eight training words correctly, with one of those times being his baseline number. Then

for the last two sessions, they were higher than his baseline. As for the nonsense words, “Kaden”

got zero nonsense words correctly for five out of the eleven times. For three of the training

sessions he got one word correctly, and both words correctly for three other training sessions.

Based upon the results for the last two sessions, I would have predicted that his score for the

number of training words correct would have been a nine or ten, and possibly one nonsense word

correctly.

As far as the post tests, I could also see some potential progress in “Kaden’s” scores. I

think that his pronunciation could have gone from 70% to a possible 80-85%. I think this

because he would have been able to use the STOP strategy, and the post test is structured in the

same way that the training sessions were. When it comes to segmenting, I think that I would

have seen some improvement as well because this focuses on individual letter sounds. When

going through the training, I noticed that “Kaden” is able to identify his individual letter sounds.

However, when it comes to blending the sounds together to form a word, that is when “Kaden”

seems to struggle. The blending pretest results were a 60% , and I personally feel that if he was

given the test again, there’s a possibility that there would only be a 5 to 10% improvement.

If he ended up passing the post-tests, I think that the best way to support him would have

been through having maintenance sessions with him once a week instead of twice a week just so

that he doesn’t loose any of the skills he was working on during the strategy training. The

maintenance sessions could take place during an independent work time so that his instructors

could have tracked his progress without any distractions. If he was given the post tests and was

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not able to pass them, I would have supported him by continuing to work with him twice a week

and choose different words. I also think it would be fun to have activities that include different

materials such as a fundations board. Fundations is something that I have used in the past and it

is a tool that was made by the Wilson reading program. This board can help students like

“Kaden” because it includes magnetic tiles for letters, and vowel teams and blends, and students

use these tiles to create words; he could learn how to successfully break down the words and

sound them out by using this fundations board. After the post-tests the manual requires the

student to read passages for the generalization phase. The passages are about 50 to 70 words

long, includes ten of the training words and two of the nonsense words. These passages are used

to test if the student can use the STOP strategy to help them as they read different pieces of

writing. I was also not able to do the generalization phase, but I personally feel as if “Kaden”

would have benefited from additional training before moving on to this phase. I think that he

should work on blending a bit more and more data should be collected.

As I mentioned before, “Kaden” was in the process of receiving an IEP, and he did not

get some of the fundamentals that were needed in the second grade. In the second grade, that is

the last year that students have sight words. Second grade also focuses on distinguishing long

and short vowels, correctly identifying and irregular (trick) words, and knowing the sounds of

common vowel teams. I feel that because of the three different instructors that “Kaden” had, he

was not able to meet those standards, and it affected his performance throughout the training. He

does need some work differentiating between his long and short vowels. Some sound that I

would consider working on with him are the “fr” “sc” and “st” blends.

The phonological awareness strategy is pretty helpful, and I think that the pre-tests are

very proactive. However, I feel like this strategy could use some changes. I would consider

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having different word lists depending on the grade level of the student. This strategy is aimed for

students that are currently in the first through third grade, but I feel as if some of the words might

not be appropriate for all three grades. In “Kaden’s” case I think that he would have benefited

from a list of second grade sight words because it would have met his needs a bit better. The

STOP strategy is a clever, and it’s helpful to remember because STOP is a simple word. I

noticed that “Kaden” had some difficulties using the strategy in the beginning and middle of the

training sessions. It shifted his focus from the word he was stuck on to remembering the steps of

the strategy. For a student like “Kaden” who isn’t on the third grade reading level like he should

be, it might do more harm than good. I think that “Kaden’s” IEP should include some phonemic

awareness practice, and I think that if I was given the opportunity to work with him more, he

would have shown a ton of improvement.

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