Presentation/Assignment

Instruction 

Using your knowledge of content and sound pedagogical practices in literacy and English language arts, analyze the information provided and write a response of approximately 500–

 to 600 words in which you:

• identify one significant strength the student demonstrates in the development of text comprehension or foundational reading skills, citing specific evidence from the exhibits to support your assessment;
• identify one significant need the student demonstrates in the development of text comprehension or foundational reading skills, citing specific evidence from the exhibits to support your assessment;
• describe one learning activity or instructional strategy that would effectively address the student’s identified need or build on the student’s identified strength; and
• explain how the learning activity or instructional strategy you described would be effective in addressing the student’s need or in building on the student’s strength.

 

Sample Strong Response to Constructed-Response item 1

Ehryu shows a significant strength in the area of listening comprehension. We can see this in her journal response to the questions from the Reading Informational Text. The teacher reads this passage aloud to the students before having them read it silently and answer questions. Ehryu’s answers to both questions – main idea and details – show that she understands the passage is about light traveling very fast and can provide two specific details from the reading to support this. We can also see this in the Teacher Notes on March 2nd. The teacher details how Ehryu is very engaged in the read-aloud the teacher is doing from Petra’s Garden. Ehryu was able to infer who the culprit is in the story before the teacher is able to offer some hints to the students. “She could explain her reasoning too.” This shows that she is not only following the story being read, but that she is also able to make inferences from what she is listening to.

Ehryu struggles with oral reading fluency, as is evidenced in the running record and subsequent discussion with the teacher. She has several issues in the area of phonological awareness, including long and short vowel sounds (present, making), vowel pairs (ou sound), and consonant blends (omitting letters in first, twins, boys, clapped, grinned). While she can make several self-corrections, this need is having an impact on her comprehension of what she has read. Ehryu knows the names of the characters, that Grandpa is nice, and that “everyone

wants Grandpa to help…” but she misses more specifics from the story, such as where the story is taking place and that it ends with Grandpa asking for help into the house, likely due to her struggle to pronounce many of the words as she reads. In the Teacher Notes, we see that she is more than 10 words below the spring 50th percentile benchmark and that her accuracy rate is only 92%, with overall limited comprehension.

The first area I would work on with Ehryu is consonant blends, because there are many errors here. I would start by telling her that two consonants next to each other in a word make up what we call a blend that makes a specific sound. I would write some of these on a white board – specifically some that she has struggled with – and would add a word that contains this blend. For example, I would write gr, along with the word grin. We would discuss what this word means and then draw a picture of a smile to help reinforce the understanding. I would have her say the word with me as we run a finger underneath the word for her to see how the g and the r combine to form the gr sound. Next, I would work with Ehryu to find words that have this same blend – growl, grass, grab – and have her write these words down and say the word while running her finger under the letters. I would do this activity for several consonant blends. To reinforce this understanding, I would periodically have Ehryu find words for me that contain the blends we have worked on, especially as we are reading together or in reading group.

This strategy would be effective because it starts by teaching Ehryu the rule, then giving her a visual to reference, and slowly turning the job of seeing these blends in her reading over to Ehryu so that she is able to recognize them more automatically.

 

Sample Strong Response to Constructed-Response Item 2

 

Joseph demonstrates a significant strength in comprehension skills when text is read orally to him or with him/the class. This is evidenced by his writing a satire of a poem read aloud in class (Exhibit 1). In this context, he was able to understand the structure, language, and meaning of the poem well enough to recreate them in an original poem clearly related to the poem he had heard. This strength is also evident when he defined the word “nurture” (Exhibit 3). Joseph defines nurture by saying that “Mzee nurtures Owen” when “Mzee takes care of Owen.” Joseph shows he understands the phrase “wise guidance” in the context of the passage in which the phrase follows an example of Mzee’s guidance and is then further explained as the kind of thing Owen’s parents would give him. Joseph infers that Mzee “helps him [Owen] learn about life” (which is not explicitly stated in the text).

Joseph demonstrates a significant need in decoding. The assessment data and notes reveal weak decoding skills that adversely affect his fluency, comprehension, and motivation to read. His teacher notes in Exhibit 1 that his oral fluency screening is just below the 50th percentile and his comprehension is low. In Exhibit 2, he struggles with automaticity as evidenced by numerous pauses and self-corrections. In particular, he struggles with decoding, pronouncing most vowels as short regardless of letter patterns (“Nel” for Neal, “tod” for toad, “snak” for snake). This difficulty clearly detracts from comprehension, as evidenced by his responses in Exhibit 2, where he can answer fewer than half the questions accurately. His spelling in Exhibit 3 also reveals phonics challenges (misspelling “r”-controlled vowels, silent “e” at the end of words: “Lif” and “taks”).

An instructional strategy to address Joseph’s needs would be to work with Joseph (small group or individually) to develop his phonics skills to improve automatic decoding. The first area of focus would be long-vowel patterns. I would start by giving Joseph letter cards and asking him to spell a simple 3-letter word, using a CVC pattern (e.g., not) while saying it aloud. Then I’d move an “e” on to the end of this word and guide him in pronouncing the word. I would ask him to notice what happened to the vowel in the middle when an “e” is added. We would practice this with several words (kit/kite, mat/mate, tot/tote) and then move to longer words with a similar pattern, such as “snake,” which is a word he had trouble decoding. Then I would give him blank cards to make word cards for his word bank. We would use the word cards to write sentences to practice oral reading. I would also use picture cards with the silent “e” pattern for Joseph to use in a matching game, to reinforce this pattern with a visual. This sequence would also be done with other word/spelling word or spelling  patterns. CVVC would be next because he exhibited a problem with this in reading “Neal” and “toad.”

This strategy would be effective in addressing Joseph’s need for decoding skills in several ways. Direct instruction in targeted letter patterns gives him the specific information he needs. The combination of making, saying, writing, and reading these new words promotes learning by engaging several senses: Joseph will be acquiring and applying new knowledge in several modalities. Repetition helps him discern and recall letter patterns.

 

 

 

1.Assessment

Nadia is second-grade student, who has no IEP. She likes to read about “an old people” and as per her words “an olden time”. The books must have illustrations. While reading, making frequent short pause, self-corrections and substitutes words with familiar ones (hears as hear and coil as col). Unfortunately she is quickly losing her interest during the second part of reading the story, and as a result, she makes up her own ending to the best of her judgment.

She has low decoding skills 37 words out of 50 expected words, with accuracy rate 91%. She was able to identify the main idea; she remembers well the beginning of the story and forgets the end of the story. She is not able to answer the questions and changes the end of the story. She is missing the key components and makes up her own end to the best of her judgment. Nadia’s parents were concerned that they were offering a simple book, but she refusing to read, since she has trouble to maintain focus during second part of the book.  The book is about from the Mars. She skips a lot of details and when she skips for missing part, she says “I think so”, “I do not know”, so she completes ending by her logical approach and the way she story sees. Nadia makes mistakes in verb times. She refusing to read bedtime stories, so that is why parents would like to meet the teacher and address their concerns.

 

2. Assement

 

Victor is a first-grade student who has no IEP plan. Victor is an English-speaking student who likes to read and has a tremendous expressive vocabulary. He recognizes characters and ideas from the story. The student can decode essential sight words such as “now,”  said, “he,” and “help” during reading.

Victor has significant difficulties with reading comprehension. He does not recognize some sight words, such as “very” and “today. He missed the last letter from the constant cluster, which changes the meaning of the sentences. As a result, he does not match benchmarks and is far below expected. He read only 20 words from the expected 50%, 23 comments, and more of that, he reads with an accuracy of 96%. He cannot automatically recognize words and Dolch fry words, and as a result, he has poor reading comprehension because the book he reads consists of 80% of these everyday use words. As we know, the student has limited descriptive vocabulary and struggles to describe all details from the story and put it in sequence and chronological order. Unfortunately, he can not understand the meaning of familiar and unfamiliar words from the text. As a result, he dons”t  understand the context overall. As we know from Teacher Notes student demonstrates his familiarity with decoding syllables in the text. For example, when he is reading the text, he  pronounces “lunch” as “lunch,” “ve-re” and “now” as “no.”

3. Assessment

Surya is a second-grade student (no IEP) who demonstrates many attributes as an advanced reader .her oral fluency grew to 79 WCPM with an accuracy rate of 99%. She likes to read her favorite books and doesn’t want to open new books and learn new vocabulary. She likes to read her book because it is easy to read, and she knows them by heart. She can read and understand sight words in general in the story. Surya understands the story’s main idea and can remember the sequence of the elements in the story and what happened with the characters. Suria is making pauses and self correct herself.

Despite all positive achievements, Surya has difficulty reading comprehension. She does not know how to build a conclusion. Also, she cannot identify small details in the story, which can be very important. When the teacher asks her, “Is the snow important to the plot?” she says not really.” Surya does not understand that her footprint will be visible when the snow stops falling, so she can not surprise her mom. When Surya did self-correction four times, she had difficulty reading constant clusters. For example, “We hung streamers” she read as “
Streamers”. She put many times the words  “arrive” and “ come,” which is familiar. So, we can decide that she has a limited vocabulary and replace the context with familiar words.