1. ED-291 Language and Literacy Case Study
Bailey O’Dell
Spring 2014

2. Pohakea Elementary School
I completed 25 service hours at Pohakea Elementary School in Ewa Beach. It is located right next to Campbell High School and Iilma Intermediate School. Grades: K-6 Principal: Judy Wong

3. Description of Student
Ryson is 7 years old
He is in first grade
He is about 4ft tall
Filipino
Black Hair
Brown Eyes
Wears Glasses

4. Background Information
Ryson comes from a Filipino family. He has one brother. Ryson has to wear eye glasses. At the beginning of the school year, it became known that Ryson has extremely bad food allergies. Because of the food allergies, all year long Ryson has been given many different medications to help. This caused some focus problems for him in class, because of the side affects from the medications. He is performing much better now towards the end of the year.

5. Interview
After getting to sit down and talk to Ryson, I found out some fun information about him. He told me that if he could watch any movie when he got home that it would be Mr. Peabody because that is his favorite. His favorite sport to play is football. When he grows up, he wants to be a Police Officer. Ryson’s favorite subject in school is math. He told me that his favorite singer is Bruno Mars, so for fun I asked him to sing me his favorite song and he sang me “Treasure,” too cute!!!

6. Classroom Observation
While observing Ryson, I quickly noticed that he is a very outgoing, nice little boy. He pays attention for the most part, but can get distracted easily by his neighbors. He quickly adjusted to having me in the classroom. After helping him with a few math problems, I noticed every other time I came into the classroom he started wanting me to come and help him all of the time. He knew how to do all of the work but would tell me that “this is so hard, can you help me?” He likes to have that attention. Ryson is very proud of himself when he finishes his work, and likes to share his writing or other assignments with the class. Ryson always raises his hand and always completes his work.

7. Assessment
I was unable to do a Running Records as my assessment tool for Ryson. My cooperating teacher, Mrs. Fukuda wanted me to use the DIBELS tool. The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of early literacy skills from kindergarten through sixth grade. She gave me a guide on how to use this method. I gave Ryson a short story called “Spring is Coming” to read to me, and explained to him that he was going to read as much as he could to me in one minute. While he read to me, I marked the words he read correctly, incorrectly, self-corrected, and repeated. Ryson was able to read 44 words out of 213 in one minute. He did a wonderful job pointing to each word as he read. He repeated one sentence and self-corrected himself on the word “wear.” He began to say the word “wore” instead, but repeated the sentence and corrected himself. He also self-corrected himself on the word “every.” Ryson had one mistake that he did not correct. He said the word “dry” when the word was “gray.” Although, Ryson read a little slower than a few of the other students I worked with, he had minimal mistakes and corrected most of them without any help.

8. Assessment(Continued)

9. Remediation Plan
An action plan for Ryson could include using flash cards and spelling games to increase his sight vocabulary.
I also think that working with him to recognize familiar “chunks” in words would be beneficial to Ryson so that when he is working with unfamiliar words, he can more quickly break down the words to figure them out.
Ryson could also benefit from one-on-one tutoring, which was not made available for him due to the limited tutoring spots, and was considered a little “too high level” to make the cut.

10. Verification Form Pohakea Elementary School 91-750 Fort Weaver Road
Ewa Beach, HI 96706
Phone: (808)