DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
Individual Literacy Case Study
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[Click the link above to view this document as a Word file].
Individual Literacy Case
Study
Observing and working one on one with my case
study student allowed me: to use the knowledge I had gained in my
literacy course, to see the value and tremendous potential of
individualized attention, to recognize the ways in which I would
work with this student in future, and to desire and seek effective
and efficient ways of pursuing similar observational and
pedagogical approaches with each and every member of my class in
future.
Broadly stated, two particular texts have most
influenced my work with this case study. Sylvia Scribner’s article,
“Literacy in Three Metaphors,” sparked my thinking about the
personal and social functions of literacy generally, and Ruth
Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, Cristine Cziko, and Lori Hurwitz’s
Reading for Understanding text provided specific techniques
as well as a schema for developing what they term the
“metacognitive conversation,” which I found particularly
helpful.[1] I have divided the
following study into six major sections, (i) background, (ii)
reasons for choosing this student, (iii) reading, (iv) writing, (v)
speaking and listening, and (vi) ways I would work with this
student in future.
Background
This student came to the United States from
Columbia when she was six years old, together with her mother,
father, and younger brother. She comes from a supportive family
environment and speaks affectionately about her home life. She
speaks Spanish at home, and translates for her father who she said
speaks less English than her mother. At parents night her father
said that his children are his life and that he is very proud of
her, and she translated both statements in front of the group with
little embarrassment (even though she told me she does not feel
comfortable speaking in front of people she does not know). Her
fourteen-year old brother is in a wheelchair due to muscular
dystrophy and she spends a lot of time with him. She also speaks
more English with her brother than with her parents.
She is a rising tenth grader at Blackstone
Academy, and is evidently a diligent and dedicated student. She
enjoys sports, especially soccer, but also likes indoor activities,
especially art and reading. She reads a lot at home both for school
and for pleasure. Her favorite author is Nora Roberts (a celebrated
American romance writer) but she reads all sorts of different
things and is currently reading Paulo Coelho’s The
Alchemist. She is reading the book on recommendation from her
mother who read it in Spanish, but she is reading it in English
because she thought it might be more difficult for her in
Spanish.
Based on my initial observations of her, I
could see that she was initially soft-spoken, a little
self-conscious, and shy. She becomes more vocal and willing to
participate in class discussions once she gets to know people and
when she feels more comfortable. Although she does not like to read
aloud in front of teachers or her peers in the school setting, she
informed me that she does enjoy reading out loud to her mother.
When asked to say a little more about that, her comments reflected
the safe and loving home environment in which she feels confident
and supported. She is very self aware of her own learning, quick to
tell me her likes and dislikes and in which areas she feels she is
strong. She likes science, art, and history and is very explicit
about her dislike for writing. She also informed me several times
that speaking in front of people is difficult for her, as is
reading out loud in front of people.
She sets goals for herself and works to
accomplish them. In her art, for example, she is working on drawing
humans better (she showed me her art work and how she is now
concentrating on rendering the face as she feels good about the
other parts of the body). Similarly, in reading she keeps a journal
in which she records unfamiliar words to look up and define and
practice.
Reasons for Choosing this
Student
I found the assignment to choose a student who
you think is “struggling with literacy” slightly problematic for
two reasons: I was still struggling to define what exactly the
concept meant and encompassed, and we had only a short amount of
time with the students. I was initially drawn to this student as a
candidate for my literacy case study because of her quietness, her
written “entrance tickets,” her conduct during a small group read
aloud, and her responses to the “funds of knowledge” survey. I also
wanted to learn more about myself as a teacher and to challenge
certain assumptions linking student behavior and ability. This
student is very “well behaved” in class, that is to say she would
excel in a classroom that prized quiet attention and orderliness. I
fear that such a student might also go unnoticed by some teachers,
or at least not receive as much individualized attention as other
students. In the past I had worked with particularly rambunctious
young men who had disciplinary problems in school and failing
grades. I think it may often be implicitly assumed that students
who “act up” or have poor grades also struggle with literacy and
that quiet students who do their homework and pay attention must be
doing just fine. (It is usually distant or seemingly angry quiet
students that catch the teacher’s attention).
Unlike students who immediately catch the
teacher’s attention, I had trouble remembering this students name
in the middle of the first week (when I had mastered all the other
students’ names in the class). When I observed one third of the
class taking turns reading aloud, she was noticeably quieter than
the other students and did appear to struggle slightly more
(although she did not have any major problems that distinguished
her reading ability from that of her peers in this instance). To
what extent did the difficulties I observed in her reading aloud
come from the social aspect and to what extent from possible
comprehension issues? Disentangling her shyness from possible
issues with literacy, I thought, would be an important first step
in working with this student.
Reading
In observing this student read out loud in a
group of nine students early in BSHS I noticed her reluctance. She
was barely audible (even after being asked to speak up) and
appeared to have more difficulty than the other students. Her
responses to the funds of knowledge survey confirmed not only that
she found reading out loud in front of other difficult but also my
suspicion that her perceived difficulty in that instance had to do
with the social environment and not solely with issues of literacy
or comprehension. Three of her six responses mentioned that
speaking in front of people was difficult for her: “talking in
school in front of people is hard. Talking to someone who isn’t a
friend or a family member is hard;” “[reading] alone because if I
make a mistake in reading I won’t like be shy about it, I’m super
shy to[o] reading in a group is hard for me;” “speaking – hard for
me to speak in front of the class and to new people especially when
school begins.”
In our conversation and interview she spoke
primarily of the social dynamics at play, and not of specific
challenges with reading itself. She does not like the pressure of
being observed and judged by others and explained that sometimes
she messed up words because she was nervous not because she was
unfamiliar with them. The fact that she enjoys reading out loud to
her mother further illustrates the important of the environment in
which the reading takes place.
She seemed to have a much easier time reading
out loud in our one to one interview. It was three weeks into the
course and not a group setting. She read a passage from Barack
Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, (which came out at the 10th
grade level on the Fry readability scale). In her own reading she
was slightly quiet but read at a good speed. Her rhythm was a
little choppy but not halting (the cadence of her subtle accent
gives her inflection a slightly staccato sound). The first word she
had difficulty with was the word “candidacy” (the 22nd word in).
She stopped before the word and then said, “can-”…
“can-da-da-cy”… “can-di-da-cy.” She raised her
inflection and looked at me questioningly. She had sounded it out
correctly, however, and I nodded. Here she was clearly employing a
graphophonic decoding strategy, using sound cues to find the
correct pronunciation. She displayed slight difficulty with six
other words. She pronounced “remained” as remainded,” and
paused for noticeably longer before “endure” and “interruptions”
(which came one after the other in a sentence). She also repeated
the name Michelle with a questioning tone, even though she had
pronounced it correctly the first time. The only other time she
seemed to have difficulty was when she pronounced “projects” (as in
projects itself into the world) as “projects” (as in the
plural of things one works on). Overall, she read quite fluidly,
was clearly, and was easy to understand.
She was able to summarize in her own words
what she had read very well, and it was clear she had comprehended
it. When I asked her if she had any questions she said she had not
heard of Barack Obama before. Although I had began by introducing
the reading saying that he was a Senator, running for President,
and that he may be our first black President, her question reminded
me of the importance of context for what is being read. I had made
sure she knew what a Senator was and she demonstrated that was able
to understand the nature of his public life. The passage was on how
his life changed and stayed the same after being elected to the
Senate, and J was able to relate it to her own experience when
asked. She said that although not in the news like him, she felt
that at this age she was under a lot of scrutiny (which reminded me
again of her self-consciousness/shyness). She also said that she
liked that he had not changed his routine too much, that he would
still go out not matching sometimes for example. “I liked that he
was honest, he seemed real.” (I made a joke about his honesty being
especially noteworthy as he was a politician, which did not illicit
a response).
When asked where she struggled, she
immediately went back to the word “candidacy” (imitating herself in
stuttering over the word). She said it a few times and then I said
and provided positive reinforcement for the way she had sounded it
out. Interestingly, she displayed metacognitive awareness of her
own reading process. When I asked her what she did well, she
replied that she thought her pace was good. I asked her what pace
meant, and she explained that “I read not too fast and not too
slow.” I asked her if she thought about that while she was reading
and she said that she had. I asked if her teachers had made her
aware of pace and she answered yes.
In our interview, J also described a reading
strategy she had been taught. She told me that she keeps a little
book and always takes notes when she reads. I asked her what kinds
of things she would write down and she told me that she would keep
track of unfamiliar words and then look them up and write in the
definitions. She learned this strategy in eighth grade and has been
using it ever since. She had clearly been made aware of her reading
process, as she informed me that her “reading level went up a lot”
after she started doing that. I asked her how the levels were
determined and she said it was a computer test they took in school
every year. I asked if she had worked really hard on learning new
words between 8th and 9th grades and she replied that she had. She
said that she enjoyed the reading level tests they were given at
the beginning and end of each year much more as a result. When I
asked her how she tried to figure out unfamiliar words, she told me
that she looks at the things around it, and tries to pronounce it.
When asked if she tries to pronounce it out loud or in her head,
she said both.
Writing
This student wrote very little on her entrance
tickets. She is not at a loss for ideas and expresses them in a
concise way (she cuts right to the point), but she is explicit
about her dislike for writing. In our interview I followed up on
her response to the survey question “how do you honestly feel about
speaking, reading, and writing in school.” She had written:
“writing – I don’t like to write.” She repeated this same remark,
and I asked her why not. She said that writing was not “her thing,”
and that “grammar and rules take all the fun out of it.” She told
me that she gets frustrated trying to get all her ideas out at
once, a comment which led me to ask if she tried any prewriting
strategies. She said she had not. I asked her if writing in her
journal was easier and she said, “yeah, because it is not graded.”
She went on to tell me that “writing was never my strong point,” to
which I replied “it could be, you write beautifully.” She replied
simply: “I don’t like to write, I just don’t.” When I suggested
that there had to be some fun there to begin with if it could
somehow be taken out, she laughed and explained that writing for
herself was very different. She said that when you had to
write a “certain thing, a certain length, a certain way,” she did
not like it, and went on to tell me that she does not like English
teachers (assuring me that she is not disrespectful to them, but
just doesn’t get along with them). While wanting to pursue this a
little further, I asked her about her journal instead. Writing in
her journal was different than writing for a teacher, it was for
her and it was not graded. She said that she liked to write notes,
little collections of thoughts in different places on the page. I
asked if she used mechanics, and she replied “not usually.” I could
tell that she liked the freedom of knowing that only she would see
it. She does not write in her journal every day, however, only when
important things happen that she wants to be sure and
remember.
I had noticed her terse replies to our
entrance tickets, which consistently remained concise even after I
encouraged her to write more. In the first longer essay assignment
we had asked students to write two pages on their thoughts about
the terms “internalization” and “terrorism,” both of
which we had spent considerable class time dealing with. We also
asked students to pay close attention to proper spelling, grammar,
and so forth – “just as if they were writing for their strictest
English teacher,” Darnell had said. J managed to complete only one
paragraph, which made it difficult for me to assess using the
rubrics provided in literacy class. She had gone to the dictionary
first and defined both terms as a point of departure. I could see
why she did this, and it connected perfectly with the reading
journal she had told me about. She was very transparent about her
thinking processes in this written piece and wrote in the first
person. Her ideas were strong and were logically connected, expect
for the second to last which was followed by the words, “I don’t
understand the question.”
I chose her poem as my second writing sample.
Although it was also difficult to assess this piece using rubrics,
I was so impressed by this poem I had to include it! Students were
to write a poem incorporating our vocabulary words as well as all
sorts of associated words gathered from students in a “whip”
activity. Although she did not use many of the vocabulary words,
she used almost all of the associated terms. She used language
creatively, clearly, and expressively and her writing carried the
main idea through a logical progression that was dripping with
emotion and feeling. I could almost viscerally sense her personal
frustration with the injustice of the history we were studying. It
was interesting that given the freedom to disregard the conventions
and mechanics of essay writing she was able to articulate something
she clearly felt strongly about. Were I evaluating this piece with
the criteria from the rubrics we were given, I would surely give
her high marks. In the ideas/content, organization, voice, word
choice, and sentence fluency, for example, her poem clearly
exhibits qualities associated with the top score of the
rubric.
The third sample of her writing I used for
this case study was her final essay, which was a two page
reflection on both the content and the process of her group
presentation/exhibition. She wrote in one continuous paragraph for
one and a half pages and the essay had little structure or
organization. She rarely varied her sentence structure which gave
the piece a choppy rhythm and monotonous tone. Her ideas were well
expressed at times and her word choice was often very good. She was
very reflective on the group process and clearly engaged with the
material and took the issues to heart. She also unabashedly
explained her confusion with some of the ideas and concepts,
although she was able to state them fairly well in the end of the
piece. Evaluating this piece against the rubric, I would give her
very low scores in almost every category. I wonder to what extent
this is biased by my subjective opinion, knowing that she could do
much better and having seen the potential in her writing through
her poem.
Overall, this student is not a strong writer,
nor does she consider herself to be. She has tremendous potential
and could rapidly progress toward excellence in writing.
Speaking and Listening
From my observations this student appears to
listen well. Beyond my tendency to assume that quiet and attentive
students must be good listeners, I have looked at her notes,
checked for comprehension in various informal ways, and conducted
an oral interview. Although she had more difficulty summarizing
what I had read to her than what she read herself, this was not
evidence enough for me to assume that she has difficulties
listening.
She may have trouble understanding terms which
are unfamiliar to her if she only hears them, as she is practiced
in writing them down when she reads them. From what I can tell she
may be more of a visual learner. She mentioned to me a few times
that she had difficulty following what was being discussed around
her (she even wrote this in her final reflection essay about her
group work). She is also extremely shy and modest and may be
slightly self-deprecating in her written
self-assessment/reflection.
Although shy at first, J does not have
difficulty speaking. In terms of formulating ideas, connecting her
comments to previous statements, summarizing discussion, and asking
questions she seems to have little difficulty. When translating for
her father on parent’s night she did not fumble for the word in
English, nor did she even hesitate. In this instance, she displayed
good command of both English and Spanish and clear and
unselfconscious speaking skills.
Toward the end of the course she became more
vocal in class discussion and stuck up for herself, displaying
persistence and determination when cut off by one of the more vocal
and domineering students. She also spoke very well in her group
presentation and was best able to answer questions for the group on
the fly. This is in part because she is a very honest and
independent thinker.
How I would Work with this Student in
Future
I would work first and foremost on this
student’s attitude toward writing. “I don’t like to write… Writing
was never my strong point… Writing is just not my thing… I just
don’t like to write… Grammar and rules take all the fun out of it…
Writing for myself is very different than writing for
school.” Working with J to become motivated and empowered to write
would be tremendously beneficial for her continued acquisition of
literacy skills and for her educational development more
generally.
The four-dimensional schema described by
Schoenbach et al. in Reading for Understanding applies
perfectly to writing and relates to Scribner’s three metaphors of
literacy. The “personal dimension” is to work to develop the
student’s identity an self-awareness as a writer, as well as
their purposes for writing and goals for writing improvement. The
“social dimension” is about community building in the classroom,
and creating the safe environment. The “knowledge-building
dimension” is about identifying and expanding the kinds of
knowledge writer’s bring to their work. The “cognitive
dimension” is utilized in developing writer’s mental
processes, including their problem-solving strategies. Although
Schoenbach et al. use this framework for building the metacognitive
conversation as it related to reading in what they term the
“reading apprenticeship,” it can usefully be applied to writing and
to working with this student’s writing development. She has already
begun the metacognitive conversation about her reading and about
her thinking when it comes to school. Somehow, writing has been
left out and it will take a slightly different approach to
stimulate her writing development.
Scribner’s three metaphors of literacy –
literacy as adaptive, socially empowering, and
self-enhancing – relate to these dimensions of the
metacognitive conversation. While all interconnected, I see the
self-enhancing metaphor as particularly related to the personal
dimension, especially as they relate to motivations for pursing
literacy. The socially empowering metaphor naturally relates to the
social dimension, and both speak not only to the social context in
which literacy skills are developed but also to the social
functions and uses of literacy.
From what I have observed, the social and
personal dimensions are particularly important for this student.
Therefore, I would concentrate first on her relationship to writing
and on the writing environment. She clearly writes at her best when
she feels passionate about the material/content and when she feels
a certain degree of freedom in expressing her ideas (that is, to
disregard some mechanics of standard written English as in poem
writing). She also feels pressure getting her ideas out all at once
and pressure writing for an audience she perceives is judging
her.
In working with this student I would try to
provide experiences with writing which relieve the pressure she
feels. I might introduce her to the idea of a “culture of power,”
as described in the work of Lisa Delpit. This would help her to
contextualize what may seems as somewhat arbitrary standards
against which her writing is judged. I would certainly also work to
unlock her less-inhibited side. Linda Christenson’s “Essay with an
Attitude” provides a brilliant model for this, asking students what
gets under their skin, what makes them really angry as a starting
point for teaching the writing process. J has tremendous potential
and her development as a writer could be usefully sparked by
awakening her motivations to write in a provocative manner!
[1] Sylvia Scribner,
“Literacy in Three Metaphors,” American Journal of
Education, 93 (1984), pp.6-21; Ruth Schoenbach, et al.,
Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in
Middle and High School Classrooms, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1999. Kathleen Cuhman’s Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for
Teachers from High School Students was very useful in thinking
of students’ as active in their own learning processes, and Lisa
Delpit’s work also influenced me greatly.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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