// The Focus Student Scoop \\

**Example of Neville’s writing.**

---

Recently, I have been gathering information on a student in my class. His name is Neville and I found certain qualities about him very interesting. He is in fifth grade and he loves telling stories and doodling. However, his love of story telling isn’t reflected in his reading and writing grade. His mid-year grade reflected an F in the category of reading and writing, and I found that interesting since his History and Science grades were such high As.

After informing Madam Hooch that I was interesting in Neville’s academic performance, she started providing me with information on his home life. She told me that his mother was an active parent in his education, and was easy to get in contact when necessary. She also informed me that Neville and another child was involved with a bullying situation. This situation had been going on since third grade, and when the school became involved to determine a solution, each student told a different story. They both explained that the opposing student was the one bullying. With the information that the school had, they came up with a suitable solution. However, when observing I noticed that he mentioned to his friends that nothing was done and that he would have to take care of it himself. Additionally, when I asked Neville a few questions, he automatically assumed that I was going to ask him about the bully situation, almost as if to offer this information proudly. When I informed him that that wasn’t the case, he didn’t say anything else about it. The only other questionable behavior that Neville displays is his gruesome twist on every answer he provides. I have heard how much he enjoys the TV show The Walking Dead and how much he enjoys Halloween, however I have never seen Neville display any aggressive behaviors so he couldn’t have a conduct disorder.

After asking Neville a few general questions, I found out that his father was a truck driver and his mother had two jobs–working in coat factory and working at a museum. I also found that he likes video games such as Call of Duty and Minecraft, his favorite subject is history, and along with other various pieces of general information. Additionally, I asked Neville how he learns best, and his response was that he likes to be active. From this I would think that his intelligence type developed by Howard Gardener is bodily-kinesthetic. All of this general information didn’t provide me with any indication as to why he was struggling in reading and writing though.

It wasn’t until I started gauging his demeanor and behavior in case when things started coming together. During writing or reading, in the beginning of the year, he would often ask Madam Hooch if he could go to the nurse because he didn’t feel well. Soon Madam Hooch caught on to this excuse, and stopped it. Also, I noticed that almost every day I was in the classroom, he had to work on the computer software “IStation”. When I asked Madam Hooch what this was, she informed me that IStation is for students who are below level in reading. They work on this program to practice reading skills such as comprehension. I found this very interesting and thought this was relevant information in my wonderings. Additionally, at the end of every Thursday at Hogwarts Elementary, students break off into their specific RTI (response to intervention) groups. I saw that Neville always left and when I asked Madam Hooch what Tier he was in, she said he was in Tier 1 (which is the level that requires individual one-on-one help). So not only does Neville receive assistance in reading through IStation, but also through RTI.

The only data that I’ve gathered so far about his writing, was his actual pieces of work. One time I was grading one of the class’ assignments, I came across Neville’s paper, and after trying to decode his answers for almost five minutes, I finally asked Madam Hooch what she wanted me to do. After seeing his paper, Madam Hooch returned a blank paper to Neville and asked him to redo it. Throughout almost every paper that I have seen Neville write, his writing almost appears as though it belongs to an emergent literate student. His writing shows signs of this because he doesn’t have spaces between some words and his spelling patterns are similar to students that are in the emergent stage. When I talk to Neville, he doesn’t show any signs of delay and if I hadn’t of known any better I would have assumed he was an excellent writer from the stories he tells.

After finding all of this out I found that it was imperative that I see what kind of scores Neville had received on his standardized testing that would require such extra help. When viewing his scores, I knew immediately why exactly he was receiving all of this assistance. Last year his first test scores–taken in the beginning of the year–indicated that he was in the 12th percentile for reading comprehension. In the end of the year, his test scores showed that he did make progression, however, it was still a worrying number. He had scored in the 35th percentile.

I’m still not sure what is causing Neville to struggle so much in reading and writing, which drives my determination to help him. I continue to seek an answer to this wondering and hope to break the silence of his struggle.

Reflective Questions:
1. How can I help Neville improve his reading and writing skills?
2. What can be done about the gruesome answers, and is it a problem?

// Fifth Grade Zing \\

The tone of the classroom was set early on by Madam Hooch today. She wasn’t having a good day because she has been sick all week. Before school started, one of the students, Ron, came into class and sat down. He then took out his Nintendo 3 DS and began playing it. Since third grade Ron has been at risk of failing every year. Some days he will do some work, but other days he refuses to engage. Madam Hooch has been very patient with him throughout the year in order to gain a relationship with in to increase his motivation. However, today Madam Hooch’s patient lacked. When the school bell rang to begin the day, Madam Hooch gave instructions to take out their math book. When she saw that Ron still had his gaming system out she took it out of his hands and shouted at him loosing her cool. Throughout the rest of the day, Madam Hooch had a short temper and I could tell that the students were walking on egg shells.

Even with this set back, the students were excited to start to build their roller coasters for the science Olympics. The last couple of weeks, the fifth grade curriculum has been working in a LDC roller coaster physics work book (FEAP 1A). The final assessment is to build a mini roller costar applying the ideas they learned about including: acceleration, inertia, force, kinetic energy, and potential energy (FEAP 1D, 1F 3B). Each fifth grade class chooses one group’s roller coaster in their class to compete in the science Olympics. The winner is determined by the distance the force of a marble coming out of the mini roller coaster pushes a cup. I was excited to have the opportunity to watch the students sketches come to life. As the groups began their designing process, I was able to walk around and discuss with various groups their reasoning behind their design (FEAP 1E). When I came to Luna and Susan’s group, they were experiencing difficulty with their coaster. The marble keep stopping before going around the tear drop loop, since they should be in-between Piaget’s Concrete and Formal Operational Stages, I questioned them asking: “why do you think this is happening?” (FEAP 3F) Luna’s logical response clearly showed an understanding for abstract reasoning because she said: “the marble doesn’t gain enough kinetic energy before entering the loop.” She then hypothesized a change of design, theorizing to place the loop closer to the initial drop. Susan, on the other hand, was preoccupied with the fact that she might loose her teacher directed P.E. because they were having to redesign their roller coaster. I reaffirmed them that if it came to that, then I would stay in the class with them while their working. Luna proclaimed right away, “that sounds like a deal!” I told them that I would check back in with them so I could see what the other groups were doing. The difference between Susan and Luna seemed as though a difference in their self-efficacy. Luna appeared to have a much higher self-efficacy and was self motivated to figure out why the roller coaster wasn’t working. She seemed determined to be successful in the task at hand, whereas Susan didn’t seem to care if she was successful or not. She only wanted to play outside. This could all be influenced from their past experiences within this field of education. After reflecting on this activity, I was pleasantly surprised by how much creativity and initiative the students had. Also, until today I never really had gotten back such a positive reaction to my presence in the class. The students never seemed phased. It gave me joy to know that the students actually really enjoy me being in there!

Additionally today, Madam Hooch had to finish up assessing the easyCBM reading fluency assessment. She advised me to sit in on the rest to give me experience in how this assessment worked. The easyCBM is a system that allows to progress the development of the student’s reading fluency (FEAP 4C). Every few weeks the school will give the teachers this assessment to give to their students and afterwards the teacher will send in each student’s results. At the end of the year, each teacher is able to see the progress that their student’s made in their reading fluency (FEAP 5B). I am glad that I got the opportunity to see how this official assessment worked because I will eventually run into these types of things when I am an official teacher with my own class (FEAP 5D).

Reflective Questions:
1. How can I help increase the self-efficacy and self-regulation of every student? Even those that aren’t motivated?
2. What can I do to have students think for themselves when asked higher order questions, instead of pulling answers out of them?