Welcome Sweet Springtime
20 03 2008Describe an instance this semester where your actions have been informed by assessments; a review of professional literature; listening to the learner; and a reflection on practice. What was the result in your actions;? on your actions?
(This came from a book entitled Negotiating literacy learning. Ed. by Janine Bixler (2009)
This week, Sam’s actions actually are influencing what I’m doing with him for the following few sessions. We’ve been reading short stories and poetry, and Sam has always been engaged and attentive. However, in our last session, Sam seemed distracted and/or possibly bored. He also mentioned that he liked the graphic novel series BONE. Taking his actions and what he has told me into account, I’m going to try reading some graphic novels with him instead. The pictures will hold his attention, and it will be a great point to work from to develop fluency (esp. with the speech bubbles!) as well as vocabulary in context.
The formal assessments that we took helped me to figure out what Ethan’s instructional level was and where his weaknesses lie. His instructional level for reading lies about third grade but his comprehension level as it pertains to the formal testing lies at about second grade. With this information I have been making instructional decisions based on fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
When I first met with him I thought that he had trouble with phonics but I was incorrect for he is pretty good at sounding out words. He is not so good though at using context clues and pictures as a clue of what the word could be. If he has trouble he tries to rush at just guessing it. I have really been trying to slow him down. When he comes to a word that he doesn’t know I have him try to sound it out and tell him to use the pictures and the words around it to figure the word. He has been getting better. We also picture walk every story that we read together. This will hopefully end with him using these strategies himself in the future.
During these reading sessions, I have used guided reading approaches to help him with his comprehension. He is so busy trying to read that he forgets to be listening to what he reads. I also noticed that if the book is something that interests him, he pays more attention to the story. I always try to find books that interest him but I’m not always successful. I can tell the difference when we are working together. I can tell you that the stories in the Flynt and Cooter did not interest him which we can’t really help:)
Another thing that I have been trying to work on him is learning words to increase his vocabulary and fluency. Like I said, he spends so much of his time focusing on words. I figure that the more words he knows the less focus he can have on the words and therefore his comprehension will increase. How I do this is while we are reading I write down words that he has difficulty with. The next time we meet I have about eight of these words on index cards. During our session, I introduce these cards and he draws pictures to remind him what these words are. The next time that I see him, I will make sure that I have two cards with each of the words. We review them and then we play a word memory game. He really enjoys learning new vocabulary. Every time we get together he reviews his words. He has definately extended his vocabulary in just the few weeks that we have been working together.
The formal assessment we used for this case study really allowed me to pinpoint Savanna;s weak areas. She is low in her fluency and her sight word recognition. She also verbalized this to me when we completed the interest/attitude surveys. Through this to Savanna and what she wants to improve on and the results of the assessment, I was able to gage how and what to focus on. I am working with her to improve her fluency rate and overall fluency by using the strategies in the Evidence-Based Instruction in Fluency book. It has a lot of great ideas and techniques I can use with her to improve these areas. I think its really neat that Savanna, as a first grader, was able to tap into what she didn’t know and turn it into something she wanted to be better at. Listening to her made me feel more confident in the results of the assessment.
In working with Will, I have learned a few things that have driven my instruction. Although, he is a typically “slower” reader, his comprehension is actually really on. Because of this, I focus more on his fluency and decoding, rather than spending time asking redundant recall questions, which he generally always gets right.
Because he is going away to college next year and expressed to me in our first meeting that he cannot read or write cursive, I decided to use the last 5-7 minutes of every session to review cursive. I started with reviewing the letters in isolation, than forming them into HFW and then forumlating harder words that I am not sure he would even be able to get autmotically in print. When I compliment him on a job well done at the end, because he is really trying and his efforts are showing, he is always smiling, which makes me incredibly proud and happy. I know this is something he really wants to be able to conquer, because he knows the college professors write in cursive and “sloppy cursive” which he described as a mix of print and cursive. Knowing that just spending a few minutes each session is improving this really makes me happy, even though it is not a component of the fab 5 : )
These responses are really great examples of negotiating literacy learning. Each of you have built a program around literacy strengths, needs, and wants based on formal and informal assessment data. You are helping your student develop literacy skills that they need to develop and develop skills that they WANT to develop. Well done!!
Over the course of this semester I have been able to pinpoint Logan’s areas of weakness. The assessments that I have been able to preform have helped to in the areas of phonics and fluency. The first half of the semester we have been focusing on the phonics aspect of this assessment and the second half I will be focusing on fluency. Up to this point I have noticed a change in Logan’s ability with phonics. I will continue the strategies that I have been administering.
My instruction has been informed by my informal observations, talking to my student and from the assessments.
During one of the first few sessions with Jessica one of her friends joined us in the room about half way through because she was getting a ride with Jessica after school. Jessica and I had just finished reading a short story. When her friend came in she went to tell her friend about what a cute story it was. After Jessica’s brief explaination her friend was like “huh?” This was one of my first clues that Jessica’s difficulty is with comprehending all the details of a story and summarizing or retelling the information.
The Flynt Assessment has also influenced my instruction. It is easy to see that Jessica has no problems with reading all the words. She falls apart when it comes to answering the questions about the story. It doesn’t matter the type of questions, she misses some of every kind. My instruction is going to be based around this need. We have been reading short stories then responding in a variety of ways. I will continue with more comprehension activities and strategies because this is Jessica’s main need.
Like everyone else seemed to express, I as well was able to pinpoint Chris’ difficulties with reading. The Flynt-Cooter Reading Inventory gave me the opportunity to see Chris read texts that were easy and hard for him; usually, he just reads texts above his reading level and he can’t keep up so having him read at his level really boosted his confidence. I have been focusing on decoding with Chris because I saw that he read WORD by WORD instead of reading with flunecy.
Just talking to Chris and conducting the different interviews/surveys, proved that he has not given up on reading. He loves to read and always has a book in this hand. He admits to being a good reader sometimes, but he has a difficult time because the reading is just “too hard” for him.
Through all of this information I will work with Chris on decoding skills to help him with fluency. He wants to become a better reader so anything I suggest he is up for, and is always excited when we have a session.
The instructional practices that I have started with Kalleigh have been most definitely driven by the assessments I completed with. For example, before assessing Kalleigh with Flynt and Cooter and the Developmental Reading Assessment, I was leaning towards comprehension and vocabulary as her main areas of weakness. However, it was from the results of these assessments as well as from the freerice.com activities that I realized I should be heading in a slightly different direction. Vocabulary is actually a strength of Kalleigh’s-she did great on freerice.com! Her literal comprehension is very good as well as her interpretation of stories. From speaking with her previous special education teacher, Kalleigh has improved her fluency and decoding strategies dramatically within the past two years. However, from the running record I completed on her, I decided to continue with fluency instruction in order to support and maintain the growth she has made. Now that Kalleigh is in fourth grade the focus in reading is not so much on decoding any more rather the application of higher-level thinking skills. For this, we are practicing summarizing skills and reflection skills.
Kendra,
Decoding is to help with Comprehension which leads to fluency. To work on decoding with the goal of improving fluency is to set Chris up for failure.
Find out what makes the reading “just too hard” for him. That is what will do him the most good.
Virginia– you sound like you are right on track for Kalleigh.
Amy–good detective work. You might what to try some schematic analysis of the stories with Jessica to begin with. It is a timewise way of dealing with comprehension. Schematic analysis is using schema theory: what happened in the beginning, middle, and end; or what is the protagonist’s goal and attempts to achieve the goal, and did he/she achieve the goal? That is looking at the story as a whole and understanding the details in context.
In working with Emily and doing the Flynt/Cooter assessment, I have started to realize that Emily’s comprehension really needs improving. I did not really notice it before, but as I was putting together the case study to hand in and looking through the two silent reading comprehension assessments that I did with her, I realized that she picks up very little from her reading. I am going to analyze that more and see if it is just her silent reading comprehension or if it is her oral reading and listening comprehension as well. Also, listening to her read aloud and trying to determine unknown words as driven me to create flashcards just as Christine has done to increase her vocabulary. Each time I listen to her read aloud or whenever she asks me what word is, I write down the words she struggles with and put them on a flashcard for us to review the next week. I have also discovered that she has the strategy to repeat what she reads if she thinks it doesn’t make sense, but depending on the book, it is a constant thing for her to reread out loud. This interrupts the flow of her reading. We are going to discuss the idea of rereading in her head to see if that helps her flow or if it makes it more difficult for her to read the text.
Sorry for the delay in this post–I could not get this site to load on my Mac at home for some reason.
My recent lessons with Dezsirae have definitely been led by assessment. I had originally determined that Dezsirae had an issue with fluency, but after completing a few lessons concerning fluency, I quickly realized that once she was familiar with material, she was quite fluent. After a discussion with her current reading teacher, we came to the conclusion that Dezsirae is lacking a lot of background knowledge and vocabulary skills. Because of this I have been working on identifying problematic vocabulary words and using context clues to identify them. Not only has Dezsirae been doing well in these activities, but she is also excited to learn these new words. She came into our last session very excited to tell me about how she told her mother about all of the new words she had learned.
Amber,
Emily needs some other strategies for unknown words. Other strategies such as context clues, analogies, other strategies. Look in the Phonics book. She needs to be able to decode a word quickly.
Tiffany,
I can imagine D’s excitment as she is learning new words. You are like Anne Sullivan to her Helen Keller–opening up the world to her. Teach her how to find new words and new knowledge.
Over the past feew weeks I have been able to see what different weaknesses Tyler shows. I have found that Tyler needs work in vocabulary, and reading fluency. There are many different strategies that we have been working on over the past few weeks. We have been working on covering up the other lines, because Tyler seems to be reading other lines in the story and missing the line that he is to be reading. We are also working on breaking up words that he does not know, and we are also working on slowing down the pace that we are reading, because Tyler tends to read to fast and skip words and jumble them up. We are continuing to work on these different strategies and they seem to be helping Tyler feel more comfortable reading.
It is good to see Tiffany and Valerie already doing what I am going to have you talk about in upcoming posts.
The assessment had great influence on my actions. They pointed me in the right direction. One of the assessments ( I believe the Garfield) asked how the student liked looking up a word in the dictionary. When my student circled the extremely unhappy face I asked why and she replied that it was because she didn’t know how to use one. This prompted me to create a few activities to teach her how to use a dictionary. There are many times when the student has influenced my actions also. One instance was when we were reading a story on her level, but whenever she came to big words she’d freeze up and it was clear she got almost scared. This led to a conversation about the big words and I realized she is very scared that she is not going to know the word. This led to a lesson reviewing her knowledge of decoding strategies and then I created some site words that are “big” words that we are going to review every session in order to make her more comfortable.
There has been a few times throughout the semester when I was working with Brevan and Crystal, and they started to get board and did not want to do any work. Or sometimes they would just keep saying the same word over and over. In these cases I try to pick something fun to do later on in my session. This way I will tell them, if they can just finish this little work, we can do something fun, like writing in the salt, drawing pictures, or reading a book. Sometimes I might even stop a few times when I am working with my students and allow my students to have a little break, and do some coloring or playing in the salt. They really seemed to love the salt. This technique really seems to work. They look forward to do something fun afterwards, also they look forward to me coming in more.
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