Collaborative Study Case Studies 3-5

John

John Smith is a third grade student at the Lost School. He is a well-liked, personable
8-year-old boy who is viewed by his parents and teachers as humorous, social, hard
working and caring. John enjoys the outdoors and family time with his twin sibling
brothers.

Since Kindergarten John has received satisfactory or 'meets the standard' marks in
all of the personal development and most of the speaking and listening skills on his
report cards. Academically his Kindergarten report card showed no alarming
concerns. He met the standard on 17 out of 24 essential math skills and nearly met
on skills such as rote counting to 50, reading and ordering numbers to 30 and
recognizing coins.

In second grade, mom noticed improvement in John's reading she also had growing
concerns about his math work. Word problems, complex directions and items
abstract in nature all required repetition and further explanation. The classroom
teacher agreed that John often needed directions broken into smaller steps. He was
described as responding impulsively and working through tasks quickly and without
forethought. During testing receptive language appeared compromised as he often
sought clarification on a number or items and demonstrated difficulty
understanding simple instructions. He needed prompts to describe commonalities
between objects and ideas. No atypical signs of inattention, hyperactivity or
impulsivity were exhibited.

Evaluation Data:

Intelligence Test: 6th percentile with confidence interval of 73-83

Verbal Comprehension- 4th percentile borderline range
(this subtest evaluates verbal concept formation , verbal reasoning,
knowledge acquired from one's environment and is closely related to
academic success.)
Perceptual reasoning- 6th percentile (includes perceptual and fluid
reasoning, spatial processing, and visual-motor integration.)
Working Memory 18th percentile
Processing Speed Factor in the average range of 42nd percentile.
TONI-II: nonverbal intellectual functioning average score of 30th percentile.
Math reasoning- low average 16th percentile
Numerical Operations- 10th percentile (difficulty with multi-digits
additions with and without renaming and subtracting multi-digits with and without
regrouping
Calculations- 50th percentile
Eligibility
John Smith did not qualify for Special Education services based on predicted scores
of achievement compared to present cognitive ability. John also did not qualify
under health issues, specifically ADHD.

Work Samples and other Concerns

John was one of three students that I was interested in analyzing further based on
his CRA responses. At the time I was aware that he had been referred for full
evaluation, but I didn't realize the process was complete. In fact, when I was
completing my record review, the evaluation report hadn't yet been filed in his
permanent record. It was during follow-up classroom observations and review of
his classroom math portfolio that I discovered a copy of his evaluation report. John's
current classroom teacher is out on maternity leave which is why I was especially
interested in working with this particular third grade class. I had personally
promised this teacher I would stay as involved as possible while she was away.
When I mentioned to the substitute teacher that I wanted to focus my work on John,
he responded both a bit surprised and grateful. He too sees John as hardworking
and eager to learn, but felt there was something about John that he couldn't quite get
a handle on. He shared results from a recent fact fluency check-up in addition where
John had gotten every problem wrong because he had subtracted instead of added,
even though the teacher made the operation explicitly clear.

I shared the results of the evaluation report with the substitute teacher and the fact
that I had been asked to complete a Student Numeracy Assessment Profile (SNAP)
last spring. Fortunately, we were also able to locate the results of the SNAP in John's
portfolio. This K-2 assessment is a one on one interview that assesses
understanding in forward and backward number sequences, numeral recognition,
spacial and finger patterns, place value understanding of ten, and addition and
subtraction understanding including inverse relationships and compensation
relationships.

Given my CRA assessment focus on part-part-whole relationships, I was especially

interested in how John had done on the tasks that assessed addition and subtraction
relationships. On tasks for additive reasoning, John used both counting up and
derived facts to efficiently solve problems such as 8+4 ("4+4 is 8 and 8+4 is 12") and
17+5 ("I started at 17 and counted up in my head to 22 and got 5"). On the
subtractive tasks John's responses suggest that his understanding of subtraction is
purely a "take away" concept. Two tasks in particular illuminate his limited strategy
use. On one task he was briefly shown 15 chips, they were then covered, 3 chips
were removed and shown to him, finally he was asked how many chips are left
covered? John started at 15 and used fingers to count back (take away) 3 and
responded with 12 chips. However, in a later task he was shown 12 chips and then
told but not shown that some were removed, he was then briefly shown the
remaining 9 chips and asked how many were removed. He said 12 aloud and used
fingers to count backwards to 3 and with 9 fingers held high stated, "3".

This suggested to me that he Smiths not yet see subtraction as a difference model
but only a "take away" model. A more sophisticated approach would have been to
count down to 9 and find the difference of 3. I also noted that on this same
assessment John hadn't yet made the connection between the inverse relationship of
addition and subtraction.

He was given a number sentence 14 + 4 = 18 with each number and symbol on a

separate card. He was asked if the sentence was true and how he could prove it. He
stated he knew it was true because 4+4 is 8 so 14+4 is equal to 18. The cards were
then scrambled and the + sign was removed. He was give a card and asked how to
read the minus sign (-) to which he replied "take away." He was then instructed to
use the cards to build a true subtraction number sentence. He first built 14-4=18
but stated that wouldn't be true because the 18 should be a "9" (I assumed a miss
count but let him continue with rebuilding a true sentence.) He next built 4-18=14
and said this would be true since both 4 and 18 are even. I asked if we could use the
chips to check since I didn't want him believing that his solution was true.

Even with the use of chips he made no connection to the relationship between 14
and 4 more equals 18 so 18 take away 4 would be 14. At the time he was still only in
2nd grade and it didn't cause great concern, however now I would like to re-
administer these portions of the assessment, as this information adds to the overall
picture of John and his understanding of part-part-whole relationships.

Brianna

Brianna is a nine year old third grade student Town School. Brianna is having
difficulty with number sense, specifically place value. Brianna has difficulty
accurately writing numbers in the hundreds and thousands. She has difficulty
finding the place value of a specific number. She does not understand the notion that
place value makes it possible to express all numbers with only the digits from zero
to nine.

Test of Early Mathematics Ability 2 (TEMA2)

Math Quotient .. 106 Standard Score

Classification Average
Percentile Rank .. 66
This test is designed to measure a students knowledge of informal and formal
components of mathematics. Questions are designed to evaluate counting,
calculation, number facts and knowledge of conventions. Briannas Math Quotient
score reflects her overall performance in comparison with that of other children at
her same age level. Her score of 106 indicates that she is functioning in the average
range of achievement. The tester reported Brianna appeared comfortable as she
answered the questions during the assessment. She correctly answered questions
about coins, counting by tens, addition and subtraction of single and 2-digit
numbers, mental math activities, as well as reading numbers. Reading and writing 3-
digit numbers, and solving single digit addition and subtraction problems were
where Brianna had challenges.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children- Fourth Edition (WISC-IV)

Composite Scores Summary:

Scale Composite Score PR Description

Verbal Comprehension 99 47 Average
Percept. Reasoning 110 75 High Average
Working Memory 91 27 Average
Processing Speed 123 94 Superior
Full Scale (FSIQ) 108 70 Average

CRA

Concrete-
Brianna used base ten blocks to show her numbers. She was able to show 46 using 4
rods and 6 cubes. She was able to accurately show 457 using 4 flats, 5 rods and 7
cubes. She was able to show 603 using 6 flats and 3 cubes. Brianna had difficulty
with 1760. She used 1 1,000 cube, 1 flat and 6 rods, so she made the number 1,160.
When she was working the problems she asked me to repeat the number five times.
She knew her answer wasnt correct because she said, This is confusing with a
scowl on her face. I asked her if she wanted to make any changes and she said, No,
Ill leave it like this. Brianna was then able to make 2312 correctly. She used 2 1,000
cubes, 3 flats, 1 rod and two cubes.
I then asked Brianna to write the numbers. Here is what she wrote:

46 as 46
457 as 457 (however she crossed out the correctly written number as if she had
made a mistake, and then wrote it again the same way).
603 as 603
1760 as 100703
2312 as 2312 (however she started by writing a 200, then crossed it out and wrote
the number correctly)
Representational- Brianna had difficulty showing numbers using representations.
Many children actually reverted back to using numbers. For 38 Brianna showed the
following:

000 + 00000000 + 000 +00000000 + 000 + 00000000 + 000 + 000 = 38

She also drew 16 boxes. She circled the first 3 boxes, left two not circled, and then
circled the next 3 boxes, then left the next 2 not circled, then circled the next three,
and circled the last three.

For the number 365, she wrote 3065.

Brianna wrote 404 correctly. She made a key showing a circle was 100 and a square
was 4. Then she drew 4 squares and 10 circles and 4 squares.

Brianna wrote the number 1113 as 10013, and the number 2307 as 200307. Once
again she made a key. A circle was equal to 100, a square was equal to 1 and a
triangle was equal to 10. She made a representation that looked like this:

1
1 00
100 13
10

For 2307 (200307) she made this representation:

1 ? 100 1
2 00 30 7

Abstract- Brianna was able to come up with thirteen different ways, using numbers,
to show the number 75. She had some patterns:

70 + 5 = 75
70 + 4 + 1 = 75
70 + 3 + 2 = 75
70 + 6 1 = 75
69 + 6 = 75
71 + 4 = 75
75 1 + 1 = 75
74 + 1 = 75
69 + 1 + 5 = 75
68 + 1 + 1 + 5 = 75
70 + 6 1 = 75
70 + 7 1 -1 = 75
70 + 8 1 1 1 = 75

She was able to come up with eleven correct equations for 107 too. She had some
difficulty with 240 because she transposed the 0 and the 4. All of her equations
equaled the correct number, 240, but for six out of the eight equations she had the
answer as 204. Brianna wasnt able to write the numbers 1392 and 2038 correctly.
For 1392 she wrote 100302, for 2038 she wrote 20038. Her equations were correct
for the numbers 100302 and 20038:

20038 + 1 1 = 20038
20038 + 2 2 = 20038 (two examples of the 11 she wrote)