Raelyn Hoskins

ETE 443 01
Case Study
December 1, 2016
 I. General Information
Kaiden is a 5 year, 11-month-old Caucasian/African American boy. He was born on

December 7 in the year of 2010 to a single mother. When he turned 3 years old, he was placed

into the Early Learning Program for Preschool at Brigham School in Bloomington, IL. A year

and a half into attending Brigham, he had to transfer to a Special Education class for Pre-K at

Heyworth Elementary School. His mother and himself moved to Heyworth with his

grandparents. At the age of 5, Kaiden began to attend school at Trinity Lutheran School in a

regular classroom setting. Kaiden is monolingual, only speaking in English at home and in

school.

II. Background Information

Kaiden’s mother went into labor 6 ½ weeks before Kaiden’s due date. Her water broke right

around Thanksgiving in 2010 and it was not until then that she realized that Kaiden was breech.

She was taken to the hospital in Bloomington, Illinois and was driven by ambulance to OSF St.

Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois. She was there for over a week before finally a C-

section was scheduled and necessary for a healthy baby to be born. Kaiden was born at 11:32

A.M., weighing 3 pounds, 13 ounces and 16.25 inches long. Since starting from a premature

birth, Kaiden has had developmental delays throughout his life. He did not begin to walk or talk

until into his toddler years. He still has troubles with his learning and is behind in his

Kindergarten class.

From the start, Kaiden has had numerous medical concerns. During his infant and toddler

years, he had bronchitis every year and developed ear infections at least once every other month

that often lasted for weeks. This is often typical in babies but worrisome to most parents that
cause them to become concerned. To this day, Kaiden will not eat a variety of foods or try

anything new. When he was a baby, he never breast-fed yet still provided the nutrients through a

formula. It was very difficult for the mother to ever get him to eat at mealtime. He has gone to

the Health Department in Bloomington, IL to talk with a dietician on getting him on a plan to

encourage his eating. As of thus far, at the age of 5 years old, nothing has helped, and he has

been labeled as a resistant eater. His teacher has brought up her concerns for his eating habits

and worries that he is not getting the proper nutrition. His family feels the same way, and despite

effort, Kaiden simply refuses to eat any new foods. If he is offered he will throw a tantrum and

become very worrisome about having to eat it.

A month ago, Kaiden went in for a physical and they checked his eyes doing a short eye

exam, reading letters while covering one eye at a time. They discovered that out of his left eye,

he was having troubles seeing the letters they put up in front of him when he had to cover his

right eye. His mother has needed glasses since she was in the 2nd grade so she knew it could be

possible that he would need them as well so they took him for further testing. The doctors

discovered that his left eye had vision of 20/50 while his right eye was 20/20. The last week of

November, Kaiden went in for a fitting on a pair of glasses and is now waiting on the

prescription to be put into them so he can start wearing them.

Due to his developmental delays, Kaiden has received services through Easter Seals and

Illinois Department of Human Services Early Intervention. The family had a physical,

occupational, and speech therapist come into the home. According to his mother and

grandparents, they feel that the work that was done did not help. He received services for about 2

years until he was able to attend a school that provided free services for children in need of early

intervention. Right after Kaiden turned 1 years old, he began to receive early intervention
services. The therapists would come into the home so Kaiden could learn to develop in a natural

environment, one he is used to. The goal of the physical therapist was to develop Kaiden’s

walking skills. He was sitting up on his own and could crawl but lacked coordination staying on

his knees. The therapist helped him to try to teach how to stand and strengthen the muscles in his

legs to be able to walk. His speech therapist worked on teaching him to be able to speak while

his occupational therapy assisted the family on getting him in a proper routine and encouraging

daily habits.

Kaiden lives in Heyworth, Illinois with his family. His mother, 1 year old sister, Sienna,

grandparents and uncle live within the same household as he does. Kaiden and his mother moved

to Heyworth to receive support from the grandparents after his mother went into labor with her

second child in April of 2015. Kaiden’s uncle is currently attending Illinois State University to

become a middle school teacher. His grandparents are in their 40s and are two of Kaiden’s

biggest supporters when it comes to his development and his success in life. While he is at home,

he is able to receive help in his literacy skills and his overall learning.

III. Observations
During the time that I was able to observe Kaiden, I was mainly in his home setting. I could

collect data in my own way based off what he was learning in school during the time of that I

assessed him on the Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills. The different

days I observed each focused on their own content area: math, science, fine arts, writing, reading,

and social studies. Kaiden has been working on a pumpkin theme for the month of October so I

followed along with that.

The first day we went to Tanner’s Orchard to be out in the environment exploring pumpkins.

Kaiden enjoys being able to be out in the community, doing hands-on activities. He took his time
picking out the perfect pumpkin with his mother. The next day I observed, I performed the K-

SEALS test on Kaiden.

“Can we be done yet?” Kaiden does not like to sit still for any amount of time unless it is

something that he wants to be doing. To make it fun we read 5 Little Pumpkins because he made

a painting of 5 Little Pumpkins in school. The third visit consisted of creating a pumpkin to show

the different parts of the pumpkin before cutting into one for Halloween and being able to

explore the pumpkin himself.

“I can do one by myself.” Kaiden told me after showing him how I made one. Kaiden has an

abundant amount of literacy materials for his learning and to be creative. His favorite thing to do

is to create something new and show it off for everyone to see.

During the fourth observation, Kaiden had originally done in school math work using

pumpkin patterns and connecting number dots. We measured a pumpkin using Legos, drew out

the pumpkin on paper and drew each of the 30 cubes representing the height of the pumpkin.

Kaiden cannot spell so For the last day, we read Skeleton Hiccups and I assessed Kaiden on his

concepts about books and conventions of print using a checklist. The section he missed most was

on concepts about punctuation marks. His knowledge on where things are on and inside of a

book is pretty high.

Dates Times Location

October 16, 2016 1:00 P.M. – 3 P.M. Tanner’s Orchard
October 23, 2016 4:30 P.M. – 6:30 P.M Child’s Home
October 30, 2016 11:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M. Child’s Home
November 6, 2016 1:00 P.M. – 2:30 P.M. Child’s Home
November 13, 2016 12:15 P.M. – 1:00 P.M. Child’s Home
IV. Assessment Data
 V. Results of Appropriate Assessment Measures
To assess Kaiden’s language, pre-academic skills and articulation, I performed the Kaufman

Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills. Expressive and receptive skills, knowledge of

numbers, number concepts, letters and words, and articulation are including in the survey. The

K-SEALS is meant for children ages 3 years 0 months to 6 years 11 months. Since Kaiden was a

5 years, 10 month, 16 day old student when giving the test, he was scored using the 5-9 to 5-11

age category.

The first subtest is vocabulary. Four item types are used throughout the subset, receptive

vocab, expressive vocab, receptive riddles, and expressive riddles. This test showed that Kaiden

can identify, by pointing or by naming objects based on their pictures. Kaiden received a

Vocabulary raw score of 31, 14 expressive skills and 17 receptive skills. The second subtest

showed that Kaiden can point to or name numbers, letters, or words and solve word problems.

He received a raw score of 23, 10 expressive skills, 13 receptive skills. His number skills raw

score equaled 13 and his letter and word skills raw score was equal to 10. For the third subtest of

articulation, Kaiden showed that he can pronounce names of common objects or actions, scoring

a raw score of 16.

Once completing the 3 subtests, I scored each subtest and compared them. His standard score

for vocabulary was a 94, with a confidence interval of 90% at 86-103. He scored in the average

category, showing that his score is at a 5 years, 6 month age. For numbers, letters, and words, his
standard score equaled 100 with a confidence interval of 94-106. Once again, he scored an

average score but at a higher age level, 6 years, 2 months. He scored average for early academic

and language composite as well as his number, letter and word skills. Expressive skills scored

well below average while receptive skills scored well above average, a significance level of .05

between the standard scores.

VI. Instructional Recommendations and Educational Goals

My recommendations would be to set goals for Kaiden to be able to improve his

language skills and pre-academic development. For example, set aside time to work with the

child outside of school by practicing the alphabet. Make flashcards and go over letter sounds

as well as putting the letters into a proper word. Using words coming from objects or actions

done in the home, out at the grocery store, or in school, the child will repeat common vocab

after the parent, starting off with simple words and increasing as they go. A good strategy

would be using a simple word that the child would know, such as the sink. Next, using a

more complex word, teach the student what faucet means. An educational goal for Kaiden to

strive for is being able to read on his own. By learning the abcs and their sounds in more

depth will help promote the want to read because children like to sound things out.

The next step could be teach Kaiden how to read his numbers past 10. Kaiden can write

fairly well when it comes to single number digits but it becomes more difficult as they

increase. One recommendation would be to encourage counting higher than 10 and allowing

time to teach the 1s and 10s place so that he knows why a number is written a certain way.

For example, all 5s end in a 5 or 0 while all 10s end in 0.

Kaiden’s strengths are on vocabulary and being able to determine where objects or

actions are and tell what they are. He enjoys writing and this is a plus to encourage and
improve his literacy skills. His learning needs are in the areas of his expressive skills which

are when children can label pictures, named objects based on a verbal description, count

aloud and respond orally to number problems. He does not do well with being wrong, and

another learning need to work on would be his social/emotional skills, one way to do so

would to just model the appropriate social behaviors around him since he is still so young

and this may encourage him to calm his emotions.