Welcome Back, It’s been a while
26 04 2008- For this entry, as practice for your case study, tell what your student has accomplished as a result of your instruction. Look at your case study Part I . Use the Summary of Needs, and your Goals as a guide.
Sam’s decoding skills have improved through the instruction I have given him. He is more patient when sounding out the words and considers context clues as well. In addition, his vocabulary has grown throughout the different texts we have read together. When Sam approaches a previously unknown word a second or third time, he recognizes it and is able to both pronounce it and determine its meaning. He also remembers the meanings of the roots we discussed and, with assistance, can use them to unlock the meanings of words with those roots. However, Sam has shown the most growth in his fluency. He is a noticeably more confident reader, and his English Language Arts teacher reported that he read out loud for the first time in class toward the end of our tutoring sessions. Sam also reads with more expression, noting punctuation such as commas, periods, question marks, and exclamations. His speed has increased, and he can now read aloud for longer periods of time without getting flustered or anxious.
Kalleigh has come a long way since we began in the beginning of the semester. She is always eager to work with me and learn from all of her mistakes. A majority of the instruction thus far has been geared towards Kalleigh’s rate of fluency and expression. For this we have read numerous poems together. Kalleigh enjoys when I read a poem in order to model how the fluency should be. She responds by reading the poem after me and has done so successfully in that she slows down her pace and thinks about the way she reads. We have also been completing a ‘repeated readings’ activity where Kalleigh reads a page from a story she chose for exactly one minute. I record how many words she reads as well as her miscues and then we graph this data together. She has improved her words per minute each time we read and she is very proud to see this improvement documented on the graph. I believe that by charting a student’s improvements with the student, it provides them with ownership over their accomplishments as well as a visual to reinforce their success. I am seeing this type of reaction with Kalleigh and it makes us both very proud.
Tyler has shown much improvement over the past few weeks. When I began working with Tyler, his vocabulary skills and fluenct rate were low. Since working with Tyler, he has become more confident in reading and taking his time and his word recognition has improved. Most of the instruction that has been used when working with Tyler has been driven towards fluecy and vocabulary development. We spend time reading from one of the Goosebump books called, “Ghost Camp.” After Tyler reads a chapter, I either ask questions or he is given questions to respond to by writing them out. Tyler has learned to take his time reading so that it makes it easier to recall what was read in each chapter. For vocabulary instruction, I have had Tlyer spent time on Freerice.com. We began at the lowest level so Tyler could feel confident in his answers and begin to work his way up. This has helped tyler take his time reading and decoding other words and sentences to help figure out what a word could be in the sentence that he is unsure of. Tyler has shown improvement in vocabulary and shows even more of an interest in reading then he did before.
Will’s comprehension if very impressive to me for a number of reasons. Becauase Will’s fluency is way below average according to Flynt/Cooter, and I would have to agree, I didn’t think that Will’s understand would be where it is, simply because it seems like all of his energy has to go into decoding and reading word-by-word. Additionally, since it takes Will so long to read a short passage, the assumption would be that he merely forgets what he read minutes ago, but this is not the case. Will has complete understanding of almost every text we read together and furthermore, his ability to draw inferences, make predictions and form text connections is excellent.
Since Will’s comprehension is so strong, a main part of our focus was on his fluency. Although it has not been as big of an improvement as I thikn he would like, his oral reading rate has most certainly improved, and I am definitely proud of that. When I ask Will to re-read sentences or passages, his rate almost doubles because he knows all of the words the second time around and does not need to spend so much time decoding.
Will’s cursive writing and reading has improved by a percent that I probably couldn’t even calculate. At the start of our sessions, he said all he could really read and writ in cursive was his name. By the end of our last session today, he was writing to me in cursive sentences and reading cursive sentences that I had written to him. Again, although this is not part of the the “fab 5,” it is something Will really wanted to work on and I am ecstatic to see him improve his cursive writing ten fold.
Dezsirae’s vocabulary skills have grown over the course of our time together. After using graded word lists with Dezsirae, I determined that her level of mastery for vocabulary was at grade five. Since then we have worked on prefixes, suffixes, root words, recall strategies, and context clues, all of which have improved her vocabulary.
One of the most exciting portions of my time with Dezsirae has been seeing her excitement about learning. I always look forward to sharing a new vocabulary acquisition strategy with her, and in return she is proud of the words she has added to her repertoire. Unfortunately, I found out today that Dezsirae’s mother has withdrawn her from school, which makes it nearly impossible to finish my tutoring sessions with her. I am currently working with the guidance department to ameliorate the situation. Most of all, I am disappointed when I think about all the progress this student has made…and how much of that will change because of her withdrawal.
Savanna has made huge leaps in her fluency rate and her sight word recognition. I had a goal for both of these areas in need of improvement. To work on her sight word recognition, I worked with Savanna using flash cards that had the kindergarten and first grade dolce sight words. She has mastered all of the kindergarten sight words and is almost complete with the first grade sight words (I’ll have to check my data to see the actual number). I worked on increasing Savanna’s fluency rate by having her read a familiar book at the beginning of each session. I also used many of the strategies in the Fluency book for class, to help tackle this fluency problem. I re-tested her fluency rate at the end of our sessions, and she greatly increased. (I cannot think of her actual number off-hand, but I know it put her on-track for her grade level).
One of Emily’s goals was to improve her reading comprehension with both listening and read-aloud. We worked on a number of strategies including highlighting important words, using thinkmarks to write the who,what, when, where, and why of the story, and other strategies and she has come a long way. She is able to recall more information from the stories and answer comprehension questions based on her reading. I have found that when she has to listen while I read and knows she has to answer questions, she needs a very silent environment free from distractions in order to allow her to concentrate. I am going to redo the Flynt/Cooter passages that I orginally did with her to see if she can answer the questions since she struggled with most of them when I originally assessed her. She seems to be more confident to read aloud in class and even memorized and performed a poem for her class during her share time. With the weather turning nicer, I fear her motivation to read will diminish, but since I will see her all summer, I am going to try to make it a point to read with her as much as I can and hopefully the letter to the parent will encourage her mother to read with her on a daily basis before bedtime or something.
What a treat to read of all these accomplishments. As I read, I was smiling and saying yes, yes, yes. I felt proud as if I had done all this myself. Silly me. In the next entry, you can be proud and tell each other all the things you did to get these results
Jessica has made some progress through our tutoring sessions but I really wish I had so much more time to work with her. She was lacking confidence with her reaidng comprehension and didn’t know any strategies to use. I haven’t done my formal assessments yet to check her progress but informally I think she has changed.
Jessica improved her comprehension strategies. She is now able to summarize the main points of the story without leaving anything out or containing extra details. She also has been using a visualization strategy and connection strategy to better understand what she has read. Through modeling and practice she has learned to be a better reader.
I would like to say she is also enjoying reading more, and has learned about herself as a reader. At least that is what she shows me. It is hard to determine how many of these skills and attitudes will transfer to the rest of her schooling and life.
Matt has improved his reading level. He is also learning differnt ways to decode words. Before we started working together his stretegy was look and guess. He would look at the first letter or so and then quess the word. When I did a Flynt the first time he scored a level 2 on part B when I recently retested him he test level 4 on part C. That was awesome to see. He is starting to read more fluently as well.
Zack still needs to increase his self confidence regarding his ability to read. However, he has shown improvement in other areas, such as using context clues when reading unfamiliar words. I’ve been giving him cloze passages to complete which is helping him to understand the role of context in word identification. He is learning to self monitor his reading to see that it makes sense. We have been working on decoding strategies to help him read unfamiliar words rather than skipping over or mispronouncing them. As his ability to decode has improved, his reading comprehension has gotten better, and his fluency rate has increased. He is able to correctly retell (summarize) what he’s reading about 4 out of 5 times. We are still struggling with written retells, mostly because he does not like to write. Zack has a vision acuity problem (his eyes are slightly crossed). His mother told his classroom teacher and me that he would be having surgery over spring break; however, he came back from break without having the surgery and continued vision problems. We have been unable to reach his mother and she hasn’t responded to a letter we sent home last Friday. Zack is frustrated and has been acting out. I’m sure it’s partly because it is so difficult for him to see his work. I’ve been enlarging as much material as possible on the photocopier which seems to help a little. As Zack has little control over his vision problems and there are other issues in his life, I’ve been quite lenient about his reading selections. He loves Dr. Seuss books which is what he always wants to read when given a choice. I have never seen a child so interested in Dr. Seuss. He is able to easily read most of the Dr. Seuss books, which has created opportunities for him to be successful and to help improve his self confidence in his reading ability. Recently, Zack has shown an interest in fishing, so I found several “fishing” books (non-fiction and fiction) to expand his reading materials. At the beginning of the case study Zack was reading books at the Reading Recovery 9-10 level. This week we read a level 12 book, which he said was “just right” for him. He is making progress, although it is a slow process.
As I look back and reflect on the past few months I am amazed at the progess that Logan has made. As we began our tutoring sessions we I noticed that the areas that needed to focused on were phonics, fluency, and Dolch word recognition.
In the beginning Logan’s scores for the Dolch Sight Word List were as followed:
Preprimer: 98%
Primer: 87%
First: 85%
Second: 70%
Third: 56%
Now his scores are:
Preprimer: 100%
Primer- 98%
2nd- 89%
3rd- 65%
All of his Dolch word sight word recognition have increased. I think that the funny part about it all is that the way that I attacked his sight word recognition is through playing games. I love it when a child does not realize that they are learning through the process of playing.
I think the thing that I have learned the most from Logan is the fact that he understandings that he is not the best reader. I would tutor Logan at his babysitters because it was the most convient for both of our schedules. I remember specifically one day before we began our sessions that Logans friend Tyler was commenting on how Logan was only on his 20th book, Logan then turned to Tyler and said I know that I am a slow reader and that is okay. There is so much that we can learn from that lesson that although our students are struggling they eventually accept it and learn ways in which they can improve themselves. One way that I showed this to Logan was through various fluency checks. From this experience he learned that through practicing reading passages or stories several times it is possible to get better.
Overall, I believed that this experience was challenging yet rewarding. I have learned a lot from Logan and I believe in the long run he has learned a lot as well. Due to the progress that his teacher has seen within the classroom his parents asked me to tutor him throughout the summer
With Ethan, I have really been focusing on increasing his comprehension skills, vocabulary skills and fluency. I feel that I have really done this, which is exciting. When I started this I really didn’t think that I could accomplish much with my student during such a small period of time. I was definately wrong. Not only have I increased his skill base but I have also increased his motivation for reading.
When Ethan first found out that he would be getting a tutor for reading he was very upset. He didn’t want to meet with me so much that the first day he was hiding under the dining room table when I arrived. He was crying and obviously very upset about meeting with me and facing his difficulty. Just by chatting with him and showing him that I was just a normal person like him, I reeled him in. Ever since that day his mom tells me how excited he gets when he knows that I am coming. Everytime there after I brought books and activities that I knew he would enjoy so he would continue to feel this way. I never wanted him to consider our time together as work and I don’t think that he ever did.
Ethan is now able to read a story more fluently by knowing more vocabulary, he understand more of story elements and is able to make conversation about a story that he has read. I am very proud of the accomplishments that I have made with Ethan. His mother has also informed me that he has better doing better at paying attention in school now and more concientious when writing and reading. I will keep in touch with the family to follow Ethan’s progress.
From your words, I can see that you all have experienced that special feeling that comes when you see a child who can now read and is beginning to enjoy reading, and it’s because of what YOU did with him/her. Talk about power. What job gives greater power than that! Not much money, but a whole lot of power. Dr. Summers
Alexandera’s problems with large site words has improved. After reviewing the site words each session she is able to identify the words and read them within sentences. She is still struggling a little when it comes to new, long words, but she is a lot better at quickly coming up with a strategy to decode the word. The picture walking and text clue activities we have been doing has helped her make more accurate predictions. At the first few sessions, she was not able to make a prediction or her predictions were very inappropriate. She now needs to refer to the pictures a little to make a prediction, but there has been a few instances where she did not need them at all. I think as she becomes more confident in her abilities, she will no longer need the picture clues. Alexandera is also able to use a dictionary now. In one of the first sessions I learned that she was not able to use a dictionary at all. We had several sessions where we worked with a dictionary and she is now familiar with how it works and can look up a word fairly easily.
I have been working with both students Brevan and Crystal on learning their letters of their name, and being able to write their name correctly.
Brevan now is able to write his name very well. Before he was writing it backwards and from right to left. But now he writes it the correct way.
Crystal still needs a little more help writing her name. She likes writing it backwards still and right to left. But she is getting a lot better. I have seen her a few times writing her name correctly. She still likes to leave out the y.
When I did a letter test on both Brevan and Crystal, they both still missed letters in their name.
With Brevan, he was able to tell me what the different letters were. However the letters he missed, which were in his name are: Ee, v, a, and N. This shows me he almost knows all the letters in his name. He is getting there. When he was taking the test and we got to some letters like B, n, he told me that those letters are in his name.
Then with Crystal, I had to ask her where a certain letter was, and then she found it on the paper. She still is getting a lot of the letters in her name wrong. She got these letters wrong: R, Yy, t, Aa, and L. This shows me that she still needs a lot more help learning the letters of her name. However, she did learn some letters, Ss, T, Cc, l, and r.
I think if I was able to keep working with my students for the rest of the year, they would know all their letters of their name and be able to write their name like a pro.