Module 3 Unit 2 Activity 3: Student Case Study

Report Requirements

• A student case study with suggestions for applying student-centered activities, approaches, and practices to effectively address a student’s learning needs. The case study and suggestions must be uploaded to your folder in the cohort’s wiki. Submit the link to the wiki.

Background:

Student L. is a first grade student at a private bilingual elementary school in Taiwan. Although he is close to the average age for his class and it is his first year of school, he is already significantly behind his peers in terms of ability. His grades are almost consistently the lowest in his class. Although he attempts most questions, his answers reveal little understanding for the content, and efforts to help him with revision show that he is significantly slower at learning the content than his peers. In this case study we will look at background of the problem including his home situation, his personality and behavior at school, and how student centered learning is helping him.

Home:

Student L. lives with both parents, who both work until late at night. His mother, who is his primary caregiver, works until 10 p.m. A discussion with Student L revealed that she is only available on Saturdays as she also works on Sunday. Student L’s mother has better English than most parents at our school, but just doesn’t have time. Student L’s is also unavailable to his son due to work obligations. Parental support is key in student success (Jeynes, 2005), but here support is very limited. Student L has two older siblings, a sister and a brother in third and fifth grade respectively. His siblings are both high achievers and are capable of working independently. For this reason, the parents expected that their son should also be capable of working independently and achieving comparable results. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. L. goes to sleep at 12:00. School starts at 7:30. This means he gets 6- 7 hours sleep at night, an extremely low amount for a 7 year old.

Behaviour:

L. is a quiet but friendly boy, he does not cause disruptions in class. Furthermore, he does not show an apparent lack of social skills. His work, while largely incorrect, is almost always submitted on time. He completes his homework quickly without referring to his book for the support that he needs. He does not do his corrections unless reminded. When I give him additional support materials he will attempt to complete them. When he first started school last summer, he would cry regularly.

Disadvantaged from the Start:

Student L. was the weakest student from the very first day of school. He went to a different Kindergarten than the other students and had little to no exposure to English there. Although our school has an entrance exam prior to entry, this is only a formality for children who have siblings that already attend our school. School policy demands that we accept students with siblings in our school, regardless of their behavior or ability. This policy frequently causes problems for teachers and it is very rare that weaker students accepted as a result of policies like this ever catch up (Davidson, Seo, Davenport, Butterbaugh, & Davison, 2005).

An Application of Student Centered Learning:

I believe all students can benefit from support with their learning. I create vocabulary sheets and vocabulary quizzes for each test. These sheets contain pictures of each word and traceable words under the pictures for each word from all the books together on one double sided paper. The traceable version is for initial stages of revision and correction, the quiz version is for self testing. I also provide the students with Super Study Sheets/Cheat sheets on one paper with all the content for each test, again on one double sided paper. Again this comes in two varieties, a complete version and a version with blanks to be filled in for self testing. Additionally we create revision worksheets and PowerPoint games (with questions and answers presented with a variety of media including sound and images) to help the students with their revision. I use dyslexia friendly fonts for all my worksheets. All of this content is uploaded to ClassDojo, where it can be downloaded and used by parents at home. I strongly recommend that students redo worksheets rather than passively reread completed worksheets.

In the weeks before the test I will give L. additional copies of these materials so that he gets additional revision, in particular I try to push the vocabulary worksheets as this content is more manageable for him. The increased practice with the vocabulary sheets helps, but it is not enough. I tested L. with the content, gave him additional materials to complete and then retested him the next day and saw an increase from 7/57 to 18/57. This can be built upon, but in order for it to be successful he will need continued individual attention either from a teacher, parent or from technology that makes it easier to grade his work and track his progress.

References:

Davison, M. L., Seo, Y. S., Davenport, E. C., Butterbaugh, D., & Davison, L. J. (2004). When Do Children Fall Behind? What Can Be Done? Phi Delta Kappan, 85(10), 752–761. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170408501010

Espinosa, Linda. (2019). Second Language Acquisition in Early Childhood. In New, R. & Cochran, M. (Eds.). Early Childhood Education. Westport,CT: Greenwood

Publishing Group. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265075052_Second_Language_Acquisition_in_Early_Childhood

Jeynes, W. H. (2005). A Meta-Analysis of the Relation of Parental Involvement to Urban Elementary School Student Academic Achievement. Urban Education, 40(3), 237–269. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085905274540