Case Study Progress

To be perfectly honest, I took the news that our case studies could be turned in a week later as some sort of small miracle. There is just so much data and information to sort through in order to make any sense of my student, in terms of his literacy, that I was worried I would not be able to do it in time. Matthew has been absent for the last few days, and I still have two assessments to administer. Hopefully the extra time will allow me to get everything done and adequately interpret all my data.

I have recently gotten some clinical information that may or may not clear up some questions about my student. He clearly has language processing difficultios of some sort, but it seems that they are definitely not physical. His hearing has been professionally tested and is functioning normally, and a speech/language specialist has evaluated him and confirmed that he has no apparent physical problems that would affect his speech. This later fact is somewhat surprising to me, given that he has complained about mouth pain, cannot pronounce certain sounds well, and has occasionally stuttered. This information is raising more questions than it is answering, but is also giving me some very interesting issues to speculate on.

I am anxious to get my running record and reading comprehension assessment done as soon as possible, since I believe these will give me great insight into Matthew's strengths and challenges. I don't feel like I have a complete picture of him yet without these pieces. Hopefully I will get them done tomorrow and will be able to move on to interpreting the information. Luckily, I did get to examine these two assessments last week as administerd by another student teacher in our class. Her first grade student actually seemed very similar in development to Matthew. I am confident that I will soon have enough information to put together an interesting case study of a fascinating child.