Case Study
Background Information
Danny is a 13-year old white skinny boy who in Grade 7 who lives with his mom and little bother. His mom works in a metal hospital and his dad just passed away due to drug overuse last Christmas. Danny wears a blue hoodie and jeans everyday. He has a “diamond” stud earring on his left ear. He likes rap and hip pop culture. His favorite food is spaghetti. Something he is best at is gaming. His favorite TV show is sponge bob. The coolest thing he wants to do is to fly in an airplane. The best vacation he ever went on was the amusement park at Branson, Mo. When he grows up, he wants to be a Boeing mechanic. His Christmas gift this year will be a Youth Motorbike. It costs around $500. According to him, his mom doesn’t have a lot money. The gift will be brought with the money his Dad left for them. He has a crush on his friend’s cousin. He prefers to work in a small group.
Survey Results
This survey is taken by 99 students on 7th grade. They are varying in races, home background and learning levels. Here is how Danny’s answer is replying to the whole classroom culture:
Danny is a 13-year old white skinny boy who in Grade 7 who lives with his mom and little bother. His mom works in a metal hospital and his dad just passed away due to drug overuse last Christmas. Danny wears a blue hoodie and jeans everyday. He has a “diamond” stud earring on his left ear. He likes rap and hip pop culture. His favorite food is spaghetti. Something he is best at is gaming. His favorite TV show is sponge bob. The coolest thing he wants to do is to fly in an airplane. The best vacation he ever went on was the amusement park at Branson, Mo. When he grows up, he wants to be a Boeing mechanic. His Christmas gift this year will be a Youth Motorbike. It costs around $500. According to him, his mom doesn’t have a lot money. The gift will be brought with the money his Dad left for them. He has a crush on his friend’s cousin. He prefers to work in a small group.
Survey Results
This survey is taken by 99 students on 7th grade. They are varying in races, home background and learning levels. Here is how Danny’s answer is replying to the whole classroom culture:
- Danny, like other 55 students, sometimes enjoy school sometimes not.
- His favorite subjects are math and social studies, like the majority of students’ choices.
- Like the majority of students, Danny thinks his teachers give enough support in his learning. But sometimes classmates can be distractive.
- He feels totally safe in school. There are six students have mentioned that they feel safe in school, but not on the school bus. Danny doesn’t take school buses home.
Observation in the classroom
He has very small voice. Sometimes teachers would get impatient with him, because nobody could hear him. He is very a polite and obedient student. Teachers seem to be all ok with his behavior in the classroom. But they also mentioned that he is not a motivated learner. When he seemed to be bothered by others. He chose to move to another seat and avoid the conflict during math class. He is easily distracted by others. Danny often appears unware of what is happening in the classroom. Sometimes I have to walk to his desk and give him specific instruction, or remind him where we are in the lesson. Some days he can be attentive and raise hands to ask/answers questions frequently, but most of the time the questions he asked don’t have anything to do with the lesson. According to the Reading Plus system, he is at 2nd Grade comprehension level. He has difficulty completing full sentences in his writing.
Stories outside of the classroom
One day he walked in classroom with a bag of ice on his band. He told me, someone stabbed him with a pencil in math class. I asked why did he do that, Danny answered, that person was just goofing around. I kept telling him, there is no excuse to harm others. It’s always wrong to do that. He was still trying to speak for him, at the same time he was in pain. We went to the nurse’s office and she gave him more ice without asking any further questions. We went to tell this to my cooperating teacher. He said Danny needs to remind him to talk to that bully boy. It didn’t happen. The next day, my teacher stopped me from looking for that boy and recommend me not to make a big fuss about it. He suspected that Danny probably did something wrong too. I wanted to respect his suggestion, but at the same time, feeling frustrated that we had to just let this good teachable moment go.
Another story was about reading a book with Danny. I found a book named “Fighting the ground”, the story is about a 13-year old boy living during the Revolutionary War and wanted to join the army and fight for independence. I thought this book might be a good choice to build connection. Instead of working on Reading Plus, we went to the hallway and take turns read aloud to each other. I asked him to imagine and play movies in the heads while reading, paying attention to the names of new characters and new place. I would answer pause him and check for understanding. Sometimes we would guess what would happen next. It was a fun experiences. Danny was following the instruction effectively. I can see some improvement happening. On the fourth day, he asked me if he could go back to work on Reading Plus, because he has been left behind. If he couldn’t reach the goal, he has to stay in reading intervention longer. We went back to work on Reading Plus together. I would read the articles together with him. We both were very surprised he got 90% correct answers the first time. His average score was around always below 70% before, now every time when we work together, he got over 85%. I can tell he suddenly grew a lot of confidence. He gave me a real big smile when I pated on his shoulder and said, “See, Danny! You can do this!”.
Intervention Plan
Danny doesn’t seem to have any behavior problem during the class from my observation during three-week internship. From looking at the survey results, he is mostly in the majority group. But he does have three areas need to work on. They are attention, communication, and motivation. Here are a few things I will do, if he is a student in my classroom.
The teacher needs to start with a conversation and asking what are the areas Danny think he can improve. It’s always helpful to have students reflect and come up his own plan for self-improvement than forcing to follow the plan the teacher makes. The teacher and Danny will create a special signal or gesture together. It helps reminding the student what they are working on. Teachers also need to ask him what areas we can improve to support his learning. Maybe write down the instructions on the whiteboard, or move him to a different seat that he could feel more comfortable.
The teacher can also create a reinforcement system to motive Danny in his learning. Break tasks to small chunks and give positive reinforcement after each chunk is being accomplished. Focus more on quality over quantity, the teacher can ask him to first write two full sentence, instead of writing a whole paragraph without one complete sentence.
Teacher needs to focus more on his growing, instead of how is he doing. We can show Danny how to create a chart to be used as self-monitoring system. When a student can physically see his growth, he is more likely to push himself to become better.
The teacher can also help Danny practicing ways to speak louder, using different voice exercises. Danny can use the strategy in the classroom and write a shot reflection everyday.
The teacher needs to start with a conversation and asking what are the areas Danny think he can improve. It’s always helpful to have students reflect and come up his own plan for self-improvement than forcing to follow the plan the teacher makes. The teacher and Danny will create a special signal or gesture together. It helps reminding the student what they are working on. Teachers also need to ask him what areas we can improve to support his learning. Maybe write down the instructions on the whiteboard, or move him to a different seat that he could feel more comfortable.
The teacher can also create a reinforcement system to motive Danny in his learning. Break tasks to small chunks and give positive reinforcement after each chunk is being accomplished. Focus more on quality over quantity, the teacher can ask him to first write two full sentence, instead of writing a whole paragraph without one complete sentence.
Teacher needs to focus more on his growing, instead of how is he doing. We can show Danny how to create a chart to be used as self-monitoring system. When a student can physically see his growth, he is more likely to push himself to become better.
The teacher can also help Danny practicing ways to speak louder, using different voice exercises. Danny can use the strategy in the classroom and write a shot reflection everyday.