Case Study Findings

I am pasting in the synopsis of the results of the QRI-5 and also the lesson plan I create to target my case study student Jose and his struggle with comprehension skills.

Results

The student demonstrated much of what was suspected before the QRI-5 was administered. However, this was not the data that was shown by purely administering a Miscue Analysis. Jose was on an Instructional Third grade level. His Miscue analysis was borderline, however there were clear comprehension problems that identified on the third grade level QRI-5 level test, as opposed to the second level. As a teacher this should make one pause for concern. This student has demonstrated strength in phonics, and that is pulling him through his reading levels, however his comprehension is very week.  He struggled greatly with many of the implicit questions, and even when allowed to go back and look for the questions, there was indifference and no more answers were provided. His miscue analysis showed that he was borderline instructional. With a little help he could be boosted to independent. As an educator, I do not feel that is true and that could be cause for alarm, especially for ELL student where comprehension could be greatly based on prior knowledge.

Strategy for Intervention

In many ways, although the teacher has made Jose background and level tests available to me, I am not privy to confidential information like conversations between the resource room teacher and the classroom teacher. I do not think Jose has an RTI, and I know for a fact his resource room time has been slowly declining as he slowly gains level. However, once again, I feel that with the simple QRI-5 test Jose was failing comprehension his grade level. Could it be that neither teacher noticed this? Mrs. P has a guided reading group and one of the main components is comprehension. She is diligent about asking compression questions, and having the students formulate their own inquiry questions.

So what went wrong? I can assume there are certain variables that could affect a student’s literacy at any time. I do not think the QRI-5 was too far off. Right from the start Mrs. P told me Jose was on third grade level but struggling. This is what the results found. In certain context prior knowledge can have a huge impact on comprehension, as can a comfortable setting. After the first administering of level-2 the student lost focus. As a classroom teacher trying an intervention on a student I would try different stories and different levels, and administer the tests multiple times sequentially, of course giving the student a few days break in between so not to frustrate them. This would help gauge the level of the student and allow the teacher to be certain with the level. Unfortunately in the case study, I was only able to administer it twice.