Tutoring Summary

Tutoring Summary

           The purpose of the tutoring this semester was to mark the progress of the student I was with.  I will gave helpful tips and techniques to help my struggling reader.  Throughout the semester I gave the student assessments.  These assessments included two running records, one closed reading, a spelling inventory, two word sorts, and an attitude survey.  Through these assessments I concluded that the student I worked with is a very fluent reader.  She makes very few mistakes when reading and does a great job pronouncing words, even if she is unfamiliar.  She also uses great expression and pauses at commas.  In the two running record combined she only had six errors.  I think that this shows that she needs to read harder texts than she is currently reading.  She is at a high level and needs to be pushed.  The spelling inventory showed me that she was in the harder suffixes spelling stage.  I worked with her on these suffixes by giving her two word sorts that focused on suffixes.  She did very good sorting the words and pronouncing the words. 

I think this student needs to be pushed more than the average fifth grader.  She shows that she is far beyond the reading level of a fifth grader and comprehends what she is reading as well.  I would suggest to the classroom teacher that they suggest harder books for the student to read.  Maybe she can read a 7^th grade book for free reading and meet with the teacher and talk about it to show her comprehension.  Reading fifth grade books shouldn’t be as easy for her as they are, so she needs to be pushed.  Also, the teacher could give her some extra words for the spelling list for the week.  These words could focus on suffixes so she gets extra practice working with them.  Having said that, I think someone at home could work with her as well.  Someone should help her with her spelling list and practice spelling them with her.  Her parents could also give her extra word sorts for her to work on.  If the family has any books at home, the parents could read one with her and discuss it.  This would give her a great chance to practice her comprehension and retelling to somebody. 

I learned throughout this case study that I really enjoy working one on one with a student.  Teachers don’t often get to do this, which is unfortunate, but it was a lot of fun to get to know this student and really work with her on the things she could improve.  I thought I did an overall good job with instruction, but I could use more experience with close reading.  Since I had the chance to do a couple of the assessments more than one time, it got easier each time.  It would have been nice to have one more meeting to practice close reading again, but I will have more chances later on.  Analyzing the struggles of a student isn’t always easy, but it’s a challenge and that is great practice for everyone in the class.  Overall, this was a great experience and it brought a lot of the things we talk about in class into reality and was great practice for all of us.

Lesson 5

Lesson 5

Objectives:

Good readers can read for meaning and can understand text details and structure and relate themselves to a text.

Procedure:

1. Introduction

I will explain that we are going to read a short poem three times.  I will then have them tell me about it or answer some questions for me.  I will tell them the title of the story, but nothing else.

2. First Read

Before reading the poem, I will tell the student they are looking for the plot of the story.  This is important because they will be retelling the story to me.  If they do not understand part of the poem or certain words in the poem, I will have them highlight those words and we will talk about them afterwards.

After my student is done reading, I will have them retell the story to me.  Before they start, I will explain that retelling is what you do when you summarize what you have just read in your own words.  If the retell is missing detail I will ask questions to further engage them in the reading and get them to add more detail. 

When we are done talking about the story and what it was about, we will talk about the words they circled and what they mean.  I will ask them what they think the word means and if they can get clues by words that surround it.  If they still don’t know, I will help with defining the word.  After I define the word I will ask if knowing what these words mean makes the story make more sense.

3. Second Read

I will tell my student that they are going to read the poem a second time.  I will tell them to look for the structure of the poem and ask them questions such as:

“Who is telling this story?”

“What type of writing style did the author use?”

“What was the problem and/or solution to the story?”

“What is the author’s main point or the lesson they were trying to teach?”

“How does the author feel about the topic?”

4. Third Read

The students will read the selection for a third time.  After they read, I will ask:

Compare the story to their own life – how can you relate?


Reflection on student:
She did a great job of reading the poem fluently and not making mistakes.  After the first read when I asked her to retell the poem, she struggled with how to retell it.  I had to help push her thoughts a little bit and she did a better job after that.  After the second read, she did a great job of answering the questions.  She was aware that the poem was told in the third person and that it was a rhyming poem.  She identified the problem of the story as the girl being up to bat at the end of the game.  I thought she had a great answer about what the author's main point was.  Her answer was that people shouldn't worry about winning games as much as they should worry about having fun.  She said the author feels that people worry about winning too much and that they think having fun is more important.  My student could relate to the poem because she plays softball and she said that the other night her coach was screaming at the umpire and threw things in the dugout because he was mad.  She said she wishes he didn't do that because the team had fun and that is what matters.

Reflection on self:
This was my first time doing a close read and to be honest, I was kind of uncomfortable.  It didn't go bad, but it could have gone better.  I had to keep looking at my lesson plan to remember what I was supposed to do.  My student enjoyed this because she loves softball and that is why I chose this topic.  A lot of these things aren't "fun" for the students so I tried to make sure it was a little more interesting for her.  I really like the idea of close reading and the more I practice it, the better I will get so I am excited for the next one to see if I have improved.

Lesson 4

Lesson 4

Objectives:
Good readers learn and recognize word patterns while writing such as suffixes.
Good readers can show comprehension of a text by retelling what they have read in their own words.
Good readers can read fluently with expression, pronunciation, good speed, few mistakes, etc.

Procedures:
Student will complete a suffixes word sort with the suffixes -ly, -ful, -ness, and -less.  Student struggles with spelling of harder suffixes words and this will give them a good chance to practice sorting them by their spelling and their sounds.

Student will read while I am doing a running record for their fluency.  They will be practicing pronunciation and trying to get as few mistakes as possible. 

Student will read a free reading book to me and show that they comprehend it by retelling the story to me in their own words.  I will explain what retelling is beforehand.  I will encourage the student to ask me any questions she has over the text as well as me asking them questions.


Reflection on student:
Student did a great job on the word sort and sorted them all perfectly.  I had her read all of the words too and she knew all of them.  Student also did a great job on the running record.  This running record was a higher difficulty than the last one and it was a bit longer too.  I chose a passage over the Civil War because that is what they are doing in their classroom in social studies.  She had 4 errors out of 244 words.  Her error ratio was 1 : 64, which was an accuracy of 98%.  She self corrected 4 words and has a self-correction rate of 1 : 2.3.  She also did a great job of retelling the story she read to me.  She gave lots of detail of what happened as well as about the characters.

Reflection on self:
The more I meet with the student, the more comfortable I am.  She doesn't really like doing some of the "tests" I give her so I try to make them more fun by picking topics that she likes.  She was really excited to do the running record over the Civil War because it related to school.  She was able to retell the story very well after I explained what retelling meant.  She said they have practiced that in school.

Lesson 3

Lesson 3

Objective:
Good readers learn and recognize word patterns while writing such as suffixes.
Good readers can read fluently and show comprehension by retelling the story in their own words.

Procedure:
Student will do a word sort activity at their spelling level focusing on suffixes -ure, -ism, and -age.
Student will read free reading book and show comprehension by telling me a retell of the story.



Reflection on student:
My student did a very good job during the word sort.  She understands suffixes and the words that contain them, but just struggles with some of the spellings especially in -ar, -ur, ir, and er words.  After reading her free reading book, she did a great job of retelling the story to me with lots of detail.  She even asked me questions about certain things in the book such as, "What does this line mean?"  There was a line in the book where the dad said his daughter would "never live up to her name."  The characters name is Harper Lee, so I explained to her that Harper Lee was a famous author most known for writing "To Kill a Mockingbird."  If my student continues to ask questions while reading, I believe her comprehension will only increase. 

Lesson 2

Lesson 2

Objective:
Gain information about student's spelling ability and knowledge of word patterns

Procedure:
Running Record (100 word passage)
Spelling Inventory
If time, give student Garfield attitude survey
Student will read book


Reflection on student: My student did a great job on the running record.  She only had two errors in the 100 word passage.  She skipped a word and she said "and" when the word was "what."  Even though she put in the wrong word, the sentence still made sense.  Her accuracy was 98/100.  She did self correct one time as well.  In the spelling inventory, my student only missed four words out of 25.  She falls in the spelling stage of harder suffixes.  She had a pattern of missing the endings of the words.  Her errors were -er instead of -ar, -ite instead of ate, -ise instead of -ize, and -pis instead of -pos.  Her feature points were 58 out of 62 while her correct words were 21/25, giving her a total of 79/87.  In the Garfield survey, my student had 4's and 3's for all of her responses except for 3.  On 2 of her responses she put a 1 and for one response she put a 2.  It is obvious that she clearly loves reading, but is not fond of reading in front of people.  Her recreational  reading score was a 36 and falls in the 91st percentile.  Her academic reading score was a 31 and falls in the 82nd percentile.  Overall she scored in the 89th percentile.

Reflection on self: I tried to make these "tests" not so stressful for my student.  She wasn't too happy that she had to take them, but I tried to calm her down and make them seem like not too big of a deal.  I learned a lot about her between the three tests given.  It is obvious that she is a very fluent reader, loves to read, and is a very good speller.  The only thing she does not like is reading in front of people and taking reading tests. 

Lesson 1

Lesson 1

Objective: Good readers know what they are interested in so they can choose books that are interesting to them.

Procedure:
Interest inventory
Student will read choice book
If time, student will retell the story
If time, quick write about text

During this lesson I gave my student an interest inventory to find out how she feels about reading and what she likes to read. My student really enjoys reading.  It was obvious by her attitude towards the interest inventory and the questions I had for her.  She said she owns about 50 books and would really like to own the Harry Potter series as well as The Hunger Games series.  The topics she enjoys reading about: travel, sports, detective stories, poetry, biographies, art, and how-to-do books.  She even enjoys reading the newspaper and spends time reading the entertainment, headlines, and sports sections.  My student enjoys watching Nick and spends about an hour a day doing so.  She also enjoys magazines.  Playing sports and doing art are two of her favorite hobbies and the two best movies she has ever seen are The Hunger Games and Radio.  She describes reading as fun and also says "IT'S AWESOME!"

Reflection on self: Even though I know my student from my intermediate practicum placement, I got to know her even better in this first meeting.  I found out things about her that I didn't know and it will help me relate to her and help her pick books she is interested in.  I thought this first meeting was very valuable and I am excited to work with her.
Reflection on student: My student is very interested in reading and that makes meeting with her much more fun and enjoyable.  She is a fluent reader and does a great job of pausing at commas and using expression when there is dialogue.  I am very excited to work with her over the next couple of weeks.

Introduction

Introduction

Hello, my name is Brian Miller and I am pursuing my Bachelor's degree in elementary education with an endorsement in reading.  This is my second year at Grand View University.  I am currently in EDUC 325, Literacy for grades 3-8, which requires me to tutor a struggling reader at a local school.  This blog is will be used to mark the progress of the student I will be tutoring.  I will also be giving helpful tips and techniques to help struggling readers.