Case Study

1. Case Study Karen Kerr CUR503 Spring 2012 Learning and Instruction

2. Basis for Case Study I am the general educator of a fourth grade heterogeneously mixed class, of 17 students, at an elementary school on Fort Meade Military Base, in Anne Arundel County. All students attending our school live on post and have at least one parent serving in the military. In general, all our students are affected by deployments (at one time or another) of family members to overseas bases as well as active military zones. Some of these are deployments of a year or more with only a two week leave to come home. Our students deal with family members returning from deployment with physical and mental injuries. Our families also are frequently relocated to other military bases around the world. We are a small grade one to five school serving about three hundred students. We have a diverse population and students of varying socio-economic statuses.

3. Purpose for Case Study The purpose of this case study is to look through the lens of learning theory and brain development at two students with varying degrees of achievement. As Schunk (2012) states, “Effective teaching requires that we determine the best theoretical perspectives for the types of learning we deal with and draw on the implications of those perspectives for teaching” (p. 25). To maintain privacy for these students, one student who loves sports, especially basketball, will be referred to as Michael Jordan. The other student who loves history, especially the south during the Civil War, will be referred to as Robert E. Lee.

4. Student Introductions • Name • Michael Jordan • Age • 9-10 • Work Completion • struggles with class work, homework, make up work, • Grades • averages C and D • Services • 504 (last 2 years), qualified for IEP for OHI June 2012 • Medicine • ADHD, sleep, wake up, asthma, allergy shots • Attendance • Tardy/Absent – 45 days in 2011-2012 • Test Scores • Basic in Reading and Math (benchmark scores between 40-50%) Testing included accommodations based on 504 • Behavior • 4 referrals, behavior contract, daily trips to learning lab for lessons and breaks (breaks for cool down and after working) • Attention • minor difficulty in 1:1, slight increase in difficulty in small group, extreme difficulty in full class setting • Motivation • sports, extrinsic rewards, lunches with teachers, teacher support • Name • Robert E. Lee • Age • 9-10 • Work Completion • Not an area of concern • Grades • averages A and B (reading) averages C (Math) • Services • ESOL for grade 2, parents refused ESOL for 3rd and 4th grade, parents refused R-ELL accommodations for 4th grade • Medicine • None known • Attendance • Not an area of concern • Test Scores • Proficient in Reading, Basic in Math (benchmark scores between 60-80%) • Behavior • Not an area of concern • Attention • No difficulty in 1:1, slight difficulty in small group (especially in reading group as he often reads rather than participate in discussions), slight increase in difficulty in full class setting • Motivation • Personal areas of interest, checklists, group/partner work, desire to please parents at home

5. Michael Jordan • Michael Jordan is a ten year old, African American male. Michael loves sports and enjoys competition in a structured environment. He is the youngest of three children. His two older siblings are both in their twenties. Mom is out of the military on disability due to PTSD among other problems. There is very little support for attendance or homework/classroom completion from home. Michael performs well on spelling tests; however, he struggles with spelling words in context in his writing. He struggles with organizing his thoughts on paper in response to written questions across the disciplines. Michael performs better in Science than in other academic subjects. He is able to answer explicit questions in chunked text and is able to answer implicit questions of chunked text with support. He struggles with decoding and comprehension of complete grade level text, math computation and problem solving, and retention of skills that he has learned previously. Michael has discipline problems that interfere with his learning and peer relationships.

6. Robert E. Lee • Robert E. Lee is a ten year old white male. His father is American and his mother is Turkish; she has difficulty with the English language. Robert’s Turkish heritage is very important to him. He has one sister in first grade, who he does not speak of often. Robert is very interested in historical events, especially related to wars. He really enjoyed a unit on conflict in which he was able to investigate the Axis Powers during World War II. Robert is often drawing cartoons of wars during instruction and break time. Robert is very sensitive and cries easily when he is corrected for misbehavior. Robert’s strengths are social relationships and reading comprehension of preferred non-fiction text. Robert is weak in mathematics, computation and problem solving, and developing written answers to questions. He is very indifferent toward his academics, especially math. School/Academics are very important at home. His parents monitor his tests grades/report card grades and work completion with all of his teachers often.

7. Reflection Based on learning theory

8. Michael Jordan:Targeting Achievement in Reading Comprehension and Fluency • Peer-Assisted Learning • Michael was very influenced by certain peers in our classroom (often the athletic, seemingly popular, boys, although, he did also like to help others who needed help). • Michael was often paired with another student when completing activities. I would now instruct the tutor in specific goals for learning and expectations out of each student (Michael and the tutor). I needed to be very explicit in expected outcomes. This potentially would have helped build his academic and social motivation for learning. (Schunk, 2012)

9. Michael Jordan:Targeting Achievement in Reading Comprehension and Fluency • Metacognition: Knowing what skills, strategies, and resources a task requires AND how and when to use these skills and strategies to ensure the task is completed successfully (Schunk, 2012). • “A learner becomes aware of their learning processes when they believe that they will be successful in the outcome and use effective approaches to their learning” (Magno, 2009).

10. Michael Jordan:Targeting Achievement in Reading Comprehension and Fluency • Metacognition • Michael knew strategies for decoding. He knew strategies for comprehending text. He would try to implement the strategies when prompted and when he was motivated. He did not know how and when to use the strategies correctly in most situations. • Directly teach Michael using visuals and manipulatives (in this case thinking maps, perhaps). Encourage their use consistently (Noushad, 2008). • See also Article by Holton & Clarke (2006) for great metacognition sentence starters.

11. Michael Jordan:Targeting Achievement in Reading Comprehension and Fluency • Scaffolding • Michael needed a lot more scaffolding of reading strategies initially. He is very low achieving and success through scaffolding may have boosted his self-efficacy and outcome expectations. • Provide Michael with modeling support and gradually fade the support away, while starting out with Michael have little responsibility in the way of reading and gradually giving more responsibility over to him. (van de Pol, 2012)

12. Michael Jordan:Targeting Motivation in Science • Michael was more motivated in Science classes than other classes. Upon looking back at the year, I see that the hands on and interactive (both social and with manipulatives) environment was much more compatible with his learning style (Sevinc, Ozmen, & Yigit, 2011). • Based on social cognitive theory and the discussion of goals, I would assist Michael in setting goals and planning for their attainment (Schunk, 2012). Since Science was an area of strength and as Schunk (2012) states, “positive self-evaluations of progress raise self-efficacy and sustain motivation” (p. 139) this may have been a good stepping stone for Michael. I would then transfer the goal setting to math/reading/writing (his more difficult and non-preferred subject areas.

13. Robert E. Lee: Targeting Achievement in Mathematics “Working Memory is the ability to hold a mental representation of information in mind while simultaneously engaging in other mental processes” (Geary, Hoard, Byrd-Craven, Nugent, & Numtee, 2007, p. 1343). Robert was having difficulty remembering the steps that he had completed most recently and keeping track of the numbers he was using during problem solving. He often did not know what step was next or what steps he had already completed.

14. Robert E. Lee: Targeting Achievement in Mathematics • Information Processing Theory • To reduce interference, model examples in different contexts and explicitly teach their uses. Point out similarities and differences. Review frequently. • Make connections between previously learned material and new material. Review previously learned material often through warm-ups/homework to minimize forgetting. • Provide an advance organizer for Robert to visual the steps as they are completed, in this way, he would know what steps have been completed and what have yet to be done. (Schunk, 2012)

15. Robert E. Lee: Targeting Achievement in Mathematics • Constructivism • Offer plenty of time to work with manipulatives when problem-solving. Explicitly teach the connection between the manipulatives and the mathematics involved in finding the solution (Bielsker, S., Napoli, L., Sandino, M., & Waishwell, L., (2001).

16. Robert E. Lee: Targeting Achievement in Mathematics • Memory • In 1992, Sousa stated strategies to improve student’s retention of learning (as cited in Bielsker, S., Napoli, L., Sandino, M., & Waishwell, L., 2001) • Teach new material at the beginning and end of a lesson because that is what is remember the most. • Provide verbal cues to make connections • Provide Robert with visual models • Teach a small amount of steps at a time. Introduce new information to Robert in a small group, rather than as a whole class.

17. Robert E. Lee: Targeting Achievement in Mathematics • Scaffolding • I now realize Robert needed math to come alive for him in a way similar to how history/wars did.I needed to draw specific connections between the math skills and his life. He needed real-world, relevant uses for the math he was learning. • An example of scaffolding long division problems, would have been Robert only completing the division step first while myself/peer completed the other steps. Gradually Robert could have taken on responsibility for learning the rest of the steps. (Schunk, 2012).

18. Robert E. Lee: Targeting Achievement in Mathematics Scaffolding Questions during small group/1:1 • What are you doing? (Can you describe it exactly?) • Why are you doing it? (How does it fit into the solution?) • How does it help you? (What will you do with the outcome when you obtain it) Quoted from (Holten & Clarke, 2006, p.130) See article for a greater list of generic scaffolding questions.

19. A success! • I received an email from Robert’s father over the summer. He was thanking me for my work with Robert. That in the final quarter of the school year, Robert made honor roll. It was the first time in his school career that he had achieved that recognition. His father said that he was so excited!

20. References Bielsker, S., Napoli, L., Sandino, M., & Waishwell, L. (2001). Effects of direct teaching using creative memorization strategies to improve math achievement. Middle School Journal, 23(5), 1-80. Geary, D. C., Hoard, M. K., Byrd-Craven, J., Nugent, L., & Numtee, C. (2007). Cognitive mechanisms underlying achievement deficits in children with mathematical learning disability. Child Development, 78(4), 1343-1359. Holton, D., & Clarke, D. (2006). Scaffolding and metacognition. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 37(2), 127-143. doi: 10.1080/00207390500285818 Magno, C. (2009). Investigating the effect of school ability on self-efficacy, learning approaches, and metacognition. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 18(2), 233-244. Noushad, P. (2008). Cognitions about cognitions: The theory of metacognition, 1-23. Schunk, D. H. (2012). Learning Theories. (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson. Sevinc, B., Ozmen, H., & Yigit, Nevzat. (2011). Investigation of primary students’ motivation levels towards science learning. Science Education International, 22(3), 218-232. Van de Pol, J. (2010). Scaffolding in teacher-student interaction: A decade of research. Educational Psychology Review, 22(3), 271-296. doi: 10.1007/s10648-010-9127-6