Name: *****Grade: Entering 4th gradeSchool: Holy Trinity School

Date of Report: 6/24/2014Dates of Testing: Various; included with each testExaminer: Katie Peterson

Background Information

All of the information gathered for this report occurred during the Drake University School of Education summer tutoring class. Student and Drake student met for 12 one hour sessions. ****** worked one on one with her tutor during their sessions.

The main focus for a majority of the sessions was word work and the development of comprehension strategies. Some of the sessions focused on building words and transfer patterns into spelling new words. Questioning, inferring, and summarizing were the three main comprehension strategies concentrated on during the tutoring sessions.

******* just finished the 3rd grade at Holy Trinity School. She is excited to be a 4th grader in the fall. ******* is really sweet and eager learn new strategies. ******* can be reserved at first but once you start talking and working with her she really opens up. She enjoys reading and reads often. If she loves a book she will ask to borrow it or take it home. ******* likes to do a variety of activities during tutoring sessions. Breaking activities up and doing a lot of tasks helps eliminate distractions.

Tests Administered

Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (6/9/2014)Full scale 86th percentileAcademic 95th percentileRecreational 60th percentile

Where To Start Word Test (6/11/2014)List 2 20/20List 3 19/20List 4 20/20List 5 15/20

Running Record (Level P) (6/16/2014)Accuracy 97%Comprehension 3/6 (50%)

Observations During Testing

The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey

The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey uses Garfield images to gauge student’s motivation and feelings about reading. The goal of the survey is to learn about student’s attitude towards recreational and academic reading. After finding student’s score you can see what percentile they rank for their current grade level.

This survey showed a lot about ******* attitudes as a reader. She prefers to read at school rather than reading at home in her free time. She is above the 50 percentile for a 4th grader with her attitudes recreational and academic reading. After completing the survey I asked some questions to gain a deeper understanding about her as a reader and to clarify the results. She told me that she likes books but when she is at home she would rather play or watch TV. She shared that she likes to go to the bookstore and that she recently got two new books (Frozen & A Fault in Our Stars). When she is at school she likes to read and talk about books. She doesn’t mind doing activities and worksheets. Learning new things about reading is fun during school or tutoring.

Where to Start Word Test

The Where to Start Word Test is a great place to begin when you are not sure about a student’s reading level or how to select texts that are appropriate for your student’s abilities as a reader. This is a fast and easy assessment to give and to score. Students read from word lists and you match their score to a chart that suggests a reading level for the student.

******* did really well on this assessment. She read almost all of the words on the lists. She breezed through all of the early lists. Her reading of the words was very automatic and fluid. She started to get a little bit frustrated on list 5 and skipped a few words. A few of her mistakes where based off of a visual miscue for example she said nose instead of noise. ******* was reading the words pretty quickly I feel at some of the word mix ups where from reading speed. But when scoring the results of the test it showed that she was at a Level P/Q which is on grade level for the end of 3rd grade/the beginning of the 4th grade.

Running Record (Fountas and Pinnell)

A running record helps with determining student’s accuracy, self-correction ratio, and it can help you evaluate student’s miscues when reading. Running records assist teachers in figuring out if a text is at an independent reading level, instructional reading level, or frustration reading level. We added a few comprehension questions in conjunction with this running record.

After completing the running record and asking comprehension questions I was better able to pinpoint ******’s reading level. She can recall and read a lot of words but when asked about information from passages she read she struggles with retelling the information. When she is not decoding words and vocabulary in text she can retell and discuss a story. So even though she can read some of the vocabulary associated with higher level texts it is important to find a balance between reading vocabulary and comprehension.

Recommendations

The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey is a great starting point for getting to know your student as a reader. I would pair this with observations from class or tutoring to gain a more clear understanding of her attitudes as a reader. Another survey that could be paired with this would be the survey that focuses on student’s role as a reader. Understanding how a students view themselves as a reader could explain their attitudes towards reading.

The Where to Get Started Word Test results helped with finding a starting level for instructional texts for *******. I would continue on with a QRI at a variety of levels (N-P) to find the reading level that is just right for *******.

Running Records helped show some of the strengths and areas of improvements for ******. The running record helped me pinpoint a level that would be the best fit for ******. But the running record was hard missing some of the information needed to fully understand ***** as a reader. I would do a QRI gather more accurate data on ****** as a reader.

After completing all of these assessments, I found that ****** has an amazing vocabulary and that she is really great at decoding words. She views herself as an average reader and she is confident with her skills. She could build up some of her comprehension strategies. I would recommend that future instruction focuses providing practice with the tools needed to build comprehension. I believe that with the growth for her comprehension skills she will gain more confidence as a reader. I would recommend observing what strategies work best for her and challenge her with different strategies. She is smart and with GRR she catches on pretty quickly.