Leanne and Adam

Leanne was the mother of three boys, aged 8, 6 and 4. Adam, the participant in the research was the eldest child in the family. He was in year 4 at school and was 8 years and 9 months old at the beginning of the research. The household also included Leanne’s husband, Dan. Leanne was a full time mother who supplemented the family income by caring for pre-school children in her home. Both Dan and Leanne were at the initial meeting but subsequent meetings occurred between just Leanne and me.

This family described themselves as active. The children were involved in a number of organised after-school activities including swimming and softball. Weekends often included family outings to the local beach, going on bush walks, collecting pine cones, and more recently, fishing. The home was situated down a long driveway which served approximately six other homes. There were in excess of 10 children of a similar age in these neighbouring homes. Dan shared that: “all the children are always outside playing together.” The parents of the neighbouring houses had developed a system of putting road cones in the driveway to stop traffic so the children could play wide ranging, physically active games on the extensive concrete driveway. Dan added, “They use bikes,

skateboards and play cricket.” The neighbourhood children attended several different schools in the wider local area. There were no books visible in the

lounge or dining area where the initial meeting was held. Leanne commented: “I don’t see the point of buying a book when you can go to the library.”

Leanne and Dan had been concerned about Adam’s reading progress for some time. Over the last two years, they had his hearing and vision checked and last year had an assessment done by a private educational psychologist. They also experimented with Adam reading with different coloured transparent filters over the text. “At first we thought it made a difference but no. Then we found out he actually needed glasses and that really made a difference.” Adam’s hearing is normal. However, he regularly had his ears syringed to remove a build-up of excess wax which negatively impacts his hearing. In 2011 Adam underwent a psychological educational assessment. Leanne and Dan reported that

subsequent to the educational psychologist’s report, Adam had weekly physical therapy with an occupational therapist who worked to develop handwriting skills, did exercises to increase Adam’s ability to concentrate and to integrate the use of both sides of his brain. For the past year Adam had also had twice weekly tutoring at a learning centre where he had received additional instruction in reading and maths. Leanne shared, “He’s doing really well [at tutoring] and he loves it because it is bringing up his confidence… His concentration is good there because it is in small groups.” She showed me his latest report from the learning centre which revealed some progress in all areas but particularly good progress in spelling. During this study, Adam did not attend learning centre tuition as Leanne and Dan decided that would be too much additional school based activity for him.

Leanne described herself as “not a reading person. The children have never seen me read a book.” Dan reported that he read the news online but gave a similar response to Leanne: “I’ve never been a book person, I lose track... I want to but then I start reading and I just lose track. I don’t know if I’m lazy or what.” Both Leanne and Dan appeared to be ashamed when making these statements, as if they were confessing to something unforgiveable. I believed that my response to these ‘confessions’ was going to be pivotal to the success of any future relationship. It seemed to me that Leanne and Dan were waiting for me to

reprimand them for their own shortcomings and blame them for Adam’s difficulty in learning to read. Instead, I accepted their comments and simply continued the session.

In response to asking about Adam’s early reading experiences, Leanne recalled that when Adam was little “we didn’t do bedtime stories because the priority was to get all the babies into bed.” She shared that Adam attended

kindergarten where, “he would listen to a story on the mat but that’s all.

Reading was not part of his pre-school experience.” Dan added that when Adam first went to school he “hated anything to do with reading.” The family had established a routine when the children went to bed they were allowed to read to themselves before lights out. Dan commented: “Now that he (Adam) has glasses he’s the first one to read.”

Dan and Leanne shared that Adam enjoyed being read to but never initiated reading himself. They reported that he sometimes enjoyed reading and had a good attitude toward it. He sometimes borrowed books from the library but Leanne shared that she would like support to choose appropriate books for Adam when she is at the library. Leanne and Dan believed they had a good sense of Adam’s reading abilities. They reported that Adam’s comprehension skills are variable; he can sometimes summarize what he has read and sometimes

discusses his reading. They identified that Adam’s key strategy when he met an unknown word is to guess. Leanne reinforced this strategy during reading by directing Adam to guess. However, she sometimes directed him to re-read the sentence which contains the unknown word. Leanne shared that Adam had a good memory and she sometimes uses this to help him learn new words by creating a memory for him by explaining what the words mean and how they are used. Leanne was keen to “use his strong memory to build other strategies,” but did not know how to go about this. Leanne discussed that in the past Adam would just get angry while trying to read and that she would get frustrated and reading time together would be awful. “He’s the type of kid I just wanted someone else to do the reading with.” However, things had improved.

Leanne and Dan discussed some broader concerns they have about Adam at school;

Everything is of concern, not just reading. But he doesn’t get the opportunity. No books coming home. Every time I go into school I get side-tracked by something else…. He’s the kid who will just come up with a weird noise. It’s not because he’s being naughty he just gets distracted. Kids in class are shunning him because they don’t want him on their table group because he keeps losing them points so Adam is getting isolated. Leanne was frustrated with the school. “I was nearly going to pull him out last week and send him somewhere else.” Following this, we discussed the

importance of self-esteem and the need for Adam to experience positive

interactions. Leanne and Dan believed it was important that Adam experienced a sense of achievement in other spheres (such as swimming) and have positive social interactions such as those which occur with the neighbourhood children. Dan described their parenting style as “hands on” meaning that both he and Leanne were actively involved in parenting their children. They had done a positive parenting course. Dan commented: “We acknowledge the kids when they do something well and when things are not great we try to support them. I think we do really well.”

4.2.2.1 Adam’s Initial Assessment Data

The following assessments were carried out at Adam’s school in a small meeting room. Only Adam and I were in the room and we sat at a table together. We were not interrupted during the assessments. At the time of the assessments, Adam was aged 8 years and 9 months. Adam initially arrived without his glasses. Following Leanne’s request, I asked him to go back to class to get them. He co- operated and wore them throughout the assessment.

4.2.2.1.1 Attitude Survey

The survey showed that Adam had a somewhat positive attitude towards reading at school and at home. However, there were a number of exceptions. Adam reported disliking reading during free time, reading during the holidays, using a dictionary and taking a reading test. When converted to numerical scores, he scored an overall score of 55/80 with an individual score of 28/40 for recreational reading, and 27/40 for reading at school.

4.2.2.1.2 Running Record

I administered a running record with Adam at level 22 which corresponded to a reading age of 8 to 8.5 years. This text was slightly below his chronological age. Adam read the text to himself, then out loud to me while I recorded his

responses. Adam read aloud with frequent pauses. Throughout most of the text he read 3 to 5 words with fluency then stumbled, resulting in reading which sounded laboured and stilted. He made 11 errors while reading giving an accuracy rate of 94% which indicated this was an instructional reading level. All substitutions which Adam made were visually similar to the original text, for example he read ‘hands’ for ‘handles’ and ‘drive’ for ‘dive’. However, none of the substituted words maintained the meaning of the text. Only one error was grammatically correct. Some of the words Adam substituted were not real words in English, for example he read ‘naylon’ for ‘nylon’ ‘lukey’ for ‘luckily’ and ‘laurned’ for ‘launched’. Despite these words not making sense, Adam self- corrected only one of the errors he made.

Adam was able to re-tell the story with correct sequencing and adequate detail. He answered all of the comprehension questions correctly but could have elaborated further on one answer. Interestingly, although he read the word ‘handles’ as ‘hands’ in the text, in one of the answers he correctly described the kite’s control mechanism as ‘handles’ demonstrating understanding of the word and concept in the text.

4.2.2.1.3 Phonetic Assessment

Adam completed the spelling test willingly. The assessment showed he had accurate use of single consonants, except ‘v’. He could use all short vowels accurately. He was able to correctly use most digraphs and blends except ‘mp’, ‘dr’ , ‘br’ and ‘ch’ when it occurred at the end of a word. He only had one of the long vowel patterns in place ‘igh’. In the section on other vowel patterns he did not get any correct. He got two letter patterns correct (‘ip and ‘ing’) and made 22 errors in the section on syllables, word junctures, consonant doubling, prefixes and suffixes. He scored zero in the section which required him to use bases and root words. This result showed that Adam had some gaps in phonetic skills which were likely to impact negatively on his reading.

4.2.2.1.4 My Assessment Conclusions

Based on the results of the above assessments I determined that Adam was reading just below an age appropriate level. He attempted to use letters in words to decode unknown words but he did not have sufficient phonological skills to do this effectively. He did not monitor or self-correct his reading even when it did not make sense. Despite this, he was able to make overall sense of what he read and could provide a good recount. He appeared to remember details, use inference well, and was able to make a personal connection to the text. He had a positive attitude towards reading.

The results of this bank of assessments implied that Adam’s reading was just below an age appropriate skill level. However, his reading skills were not

supported by a strong foundation of phonological or self-monitoring strategies. Without targeted support, progress in reading may become difficult for Adam to maintain in the future as the demands of reading become more challenging.