Leisa+Module+5+Response

[|walllei@msu.edu]

Tasks 1&2Joanh is a 10 year Task One

 * Jonah is a ten year old boy who is going to be in the fifth grade this coming September. I have been tutoring Jonah this summer and one of the areas that we have been working on has been fluency. Fluency is a major issue with Jonah and it has been for some time. He worked with his fourth grade teacher on fluency all throughout the school year and while he made a bit of progress, he was still red flagged on our end of the year universal screening.
 * As far as assessments go, I gave Jonah a reading test so that I could test both his fluency and his comprehension. Jonah tested at an independent level 38, which is an end of third grade level. His fluency was very poor. He kept making mistakes and not going back to self correct. The mistakes that he made effected the meaning of the story. Self correcting is something that I am working with him as well as his fluency.
 * I also noticed that in his writing that Jonah had a lot of spelling errors on high frequency words. I gave him the Words Their Way Assessment so that I could see what spelling patterns he was familiar with and which ones he needed to work on. Jonah fell in the Within Word Pattern, specifically, he needs to work on his distinction between long and short vowels. I started working with him on long and short a, looking at spelling patterns using those two vowel sounds.

Task Two...


 * My case study does include some vocabulary instruction and assessment. I used the Words Their Way Assessment to find out what spelling patterns Jonah has done and which ones he needs to work on. This assessment looks for thins such as consonants, short vowels, digraphs, blends, common long vowels, inflected endings, syllable junctures, harder suffixes, and bases or roots. Jonah struggled in the common long vowel portion of the assessment so that I were I focused my instruction. I started off doing a long and short vowel word sort with Jonah where he had to first sort the words based on sound and then on spelling pattern. This sort asks students to find a word pattern and then apply it to other words that they know that have the same pattern. We also discussed what the words were and their meanings before the sort began.
 * My case study began with a reading test so that I could test both my students reading fluency and his comprehension. The assessment showed me that while he struggles with comprehension, the major area of concern is his fluency. The comprehension portion of the assessment shows me that Jonah needs to work on his inferences and adding details to his summary. These things will come up in my lessons with Jonah but they will not be the primary focus. I will be asking Jonah some questions based on the fluency passages that he is reading but it will not be anything major.
 * One idea in the reading that stood out to me was in Chapter 10 of Morrow and Gambrell on page 260 when they said, "Creating a 'safe' environment means creating a space in which it is 'OK' to be uncertain or wrong, and in fact it is celebrated when students say, 'I don't get it,' or 'I'm confused.'" (Morrow et al, p. 260). This type of safe environment is key for students to be able to take risks and say... I need some help. It is a lot harder to say "I don't get it," then to just say nothing and hope the teacher does not call on me. I love this! I try to do this in my classroom as often as I can because students need to know that it is okay if they do not understand what they just read about. As readers, no matter our age, this is something that can happen to any of use at any time so I make sure to tell my students. This has happened to me a few times as I was getting my masters degree.
 * Also, they discussed think-alouds... this idea is a great comprehension strategy. I do this at times when I do my read aloud each day but I need to do this more so that my students can see how the process works of thinking while you are reading about your reading. This idea is key because sometimes students will not share with you their thoughts on what they are reading about and by modeling a think-aloud, you are teaching them a great strategy to talk about their reading.