Running Head: Case Study: Natalie 1

Case Study: Natalia

Blake Byington

Piedmont College
Case Study: Natalie 2

Student Information

For the case study, I worked with a fourth-grader at Satham Elementary School. Her

name is Natalia, and she is ten years old. Natalia is a Hispanic-American who lives with her

mother, aunt, cousin, and older sister. Her mother is literate, being able to read and write in

Spanish, and has a moderate ability to speak and understand English orally. Her cousin and sister

are both in school and help her with her homework. Natalia seems to be in excellent health.

Natalia has a shining personality. It is easy to tell she is comfortable in her own skin.

Natalia has an enthusiasm to learn. When we first met, we were able to go to the fourth-grade

workroom, and she skipped down the hallway, excited to see what was in store. Once we met, I

was blown away by her maturity and focus on school subjects. When we worked together, she

always waited until after we finished an activity to sneak in a comment about what her sister did

or something funny that happened at school. According to her student survey (figure A),

Natalia’s low reading ability seems to affect her view on reading. She didn’t read much before

school and still doesn’t unless it is assigned to her. She likes fiction stories that relate to real life.

In my opinion, she is limited in choices for engaging stories that are on her grade level. She has a

middle school maturity but a much lower reading level. She is intelligent enough to comprehend

complex plots but can’t read many lengthy books.

I had a conversation with Natalia’s mother at the beginning of a meeting (figure B) and

discovered a low level of academic support. Natalia’s mother seemed to care about her child’s

education but lacked confidence in her abilities to help her. Since she is unable to read English,
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she hasn’t read to her or helped her out with her homework. The lack of English literacy is

unfortunate because it has set Natalia further back. I’m sure if she were surrounded by literature

at a young age, she would be at a higher level. Although we also discussed that previous teachers

have felt that Natalia might have dyslexia. Natalia has not been tested for dyslexia yet. (google

how to use figures in APA)

Interpretations of the Basic Reading Inventory and Other Assessments

Natalia has an interesting spread in word recognition and comprehension skills. When

looking at her BRI summary (figure C), you can see her reading level is around first grade, but

her listening level is at least at a sixth-grade level. When reading the Word List, Natalia

struggled with the first-grade vocabulary. On the first day, we worked with two lists (figure D1),

and she went through them rather quickly. The next time we met, I asked her to slow down and

sound out each word (figure D2). She would sound each word well and recognize each sound

appropriately. Rather than saying the word she sounded out, she would say another similar word.

I did not know what to make of the substitutions, so we went to read the first passage(figure E).

She struggled with the passage as I expected her to, but then answered every single

comprehension question correct. I was surprised because she substituted words that would have

changed the meaning.

The next time we met, I had her sound out nonsense words (figure F) to see if I could

figure out what phonetic weaknesses she may have. She did a great job with them. Knowing they

were nonsense words made it easier for her to sound out and not substitute words. I realized that

she had much stronger phonics skills than I predicted. The only thing she missed on the nonsense

words was recognizing “eigh” made an “ay” sound. The more tutoring sessions we had (figures
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G&H), the more I saw her sound out words above her reading level accurately. Her ability to

decode lead me to realize that her word recognition skills are weak because she had a limited

vocabulary. I mean, really weak. It is hard to find a strength other than her sight words are actual

sight words because she knows them immediately. It seems that she relies heavily on her limited

sight word knowledge. When she comes across a new word, she is more likely to substitute it

rather than sounding it out and using context clues to determine the meaning.

The low vocabulary has an interesting relationship with her fluency and comprehension

skills. When reading orally, Natalia understands what she is reading, even when it sounds like

she wouldn’t. She does well at using voice inflection and speaking in a clear reading voice. If she

didn’t have to stop often to decode new words, I think she would have strong fluency. Her

reading isn’t fluent because of the constant pausing, leading to issues she comes across with

comprehension. She can’t read the words as fast as her brain needs in order for her to make sense

of the passage. Her listening level is high because she has more precise access to the information

when someone else is reading it to her. Her biggest weakness in comprehension (found by the

analysis of comprehension by question type, figure I) was Vocabulary. Although she only missed

the sixth and seventh-grade vocabulary questions because she was able to look back and use

context clues to determine the meaning when she wasn’t reading the passage. Her high listening

level gave me a clear idea of what to focus on in our tutoring sessions.

Reflections on Tutoring Sessions

By doing the BRI assessments, I realized that Natalia had strong comprehension

skills, but lacked grade-level vocabulary. Her teacher told me that she was unable to decode, but
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when I would watch Natalia sound out words, she did it correctly. Words like “skinny” she

would sound out “sk” “i-n-n-y” with all of the right sounds, but she would put them together and

say, “sink.” Decoding wasn’t the issue. She was substituting out words she didn’t know with

known words. I realized this by looking at her comprehension scores and watching her decode

other words she was familiar with. When she recognized all of the sounds together, it was

effortless for her to decode. Also, her comprehension wasn’t affected by the unknown words

most of the time because she could fill in the gaps with other words she knew and context. Her

academic mind had taken off without a working vocabulary.

I decided to then look at ways to expand her vocabulary in a way that doesn’t involve the

whole class. I decided that the best strategy was the cross-check. Does it look right? Does it

sound right? Does it make sense? Because Natalia has excellent decoding skills and alphabetic

awareness, it was less critical for me to focus on “Does it look right.” All of the words she would

substitute have the same letters (at minimum same first letter sound and another letter). So for

her, it always did look right.

The next part was focusing on sounding right. For this, I wanted Natalia to see that

substituting words could either not make sense or change the meaning of the sentence. We

looked at sample sentences that I designed with certain words having a “substitution option.”

These are words that she substituted on previous assessments but used in a different sentence

(figure J). She did an incredible job reading the sentences and explaining to me why the

substituted words didn’t work. I never told her that these were words that she missed in the past,

but we did talk about how slowing down to make sure we are saying the right word is important.
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Finally, I wanted to make sure she could ask herself if what she read makes sense. I could

tell that she understood the main ideas of the reading based on how well she answered the

comprehension questions. So my goal was to make sure she was reading the sentences in a way

that made sense. I decided to use context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words.

Since she was already good at using these clues to answer comprehension questions, I knew she

had the skills. I found great worksheets from K5 Learning that gave the student a sample

sentence with a bolded vocabulary word. Natalia was able to define each word and

circle/underline words that acted as evidence. I wasn’t disappointed with her success in the

context clue worksheets (figure K). She was able to determine the meaning of unknown words.

I entered a brief reflection of the lesson plans (figure L) at the end of each one. I didn’t

need to change the lessons because they were effective. The only parts I modified was I learned

how to guide her to the correct answer with giving less and less hints. I was tempted to change

the last lesson into something new but decided not to. I wanted to make sure she mastered the

cross-checking strategy. If I were to do the lesson over again I would probably do the last day’s

worksheet at a higher reading level. This would have helped me see if the strategy could translate

into her reading for other subjects on grade level.

Evaluation of Tutoring

I was fortunate enough to see a few changes in my student as the results of tutoring. The

first is that I felt that I created an environment where the student was excited to learn. Because I

was able to pull her away from her peers, she could be herself and shine. I always expressed how

impressed I was with how intelligent she was and how strong her comprehension skills were.

Second, the student learned that reading well doesn’t always mean reading fast. Natalia became
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less stressed because she wasn’t trying to read at a pace that wasn’t good for her. Natalia slowed

down and substituted words less frequently. Lastly, she was able to use a strategy that was better

for her reading gaps than substituting. Because I was able to focus solely on her and see that her

substitutions were a response to low vocabulary, I gave her a strategy where she can

independently start to fix it. In the future, I don’t think she will always use it correctly.

Sometimes she won’t realize she substituted a word. Other times she may come to a wrong

conclusion about the meaning of a new word. The more she uses this strategy, the more her

vocabulary will develop.

Regarding my teaching ability, I am excited that I was able to participate in this

experience. When I started this program last August, teaching a student to read was the most

intimidating aspect of the program. I convinced myself that I would only be able to teach at a

school that departmentalized, and I was going to teach Math. Over the past year, I became more

and more confident with my ability to teach English Language Arts by learning about strategies,

participating in observations, and applying what I was learning in class with my actions at

after-school during homework time. This Case Study, start to finish, really helped me gain

confidence in deciding that I was not only able to teach reading, but I was able to look at a

struggling reader, understand what was going wrong, and put the student on a path to fix the

issue. I already knew where the disconnect was with Natalia and how to instruct before I even

consulted the book. Then, the book just reinforced what I was thinking. That was a massive

boost to my confidence. The other change was the case study guided me to find resources for

specific needs. Since I am not in the classroom yet, most of my lesson plans have been made up.

So, if I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I could change my plan. Now I know how to get
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creative with the resources I have. Between the internet, textbooks, and friends who teach, I was

able to find the resources I needed that were perfect for my lesson plans and teach Natalia the

new strategies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this has been a positive learning experience for Natalia and I. We both

were able to learn new strategies and implement them in a way that will benefit both of us for

many years to come. Using the BRI helped me learn how to assess reading and helped Natalia

learn to rely more on her brain to discover new words.