Drake UniversityEDUC 175/275 Literacy Assessment and Instruction I

LITERACY TUTORING PORTFOLIO

Fall 20149 Sessions

Molly McClelland and Student A

PART I. STUDENT BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Identifying Data

Student: Student

School/Teacher: Valley High School – K. Moore

Chronological Age: 17 School Grade: 11th

Reason for Referral

Student A was referred to the Drake Reading Clinic by her special education teacher because she has difficulty comprehending text, along with fluency issues.

Background Information

Student A and the Drake Reading Clinic tutor will be meeting nine times, beginning on September 30th, 2014 and ending on December 2, 2014. All tutoring sessions take place on Tuesdays 11:30-12:15 at Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa. The assessments are given during the tutoring session in a small special education testing room.

Behavioral Observations

During tutoring sessions, Student A is always very positive and ready to learn about how to improve her reading skills. This positivity is displayed through her consistent participation each session and inquiring about what she will be reading that day.

PART II. TESTS ADMINISTERED

Materials and Procedures Administered

Throughout the nine tutoring sessions, Student A completed various assessments, which included secondary reading attitude survey, basic reading inventory, spelling inventory, plus more. These assessments helped guide her tutoring sessions in order for her to meet her potential.

Table 1. An Overview of the Assessment Materials, Purposes, and Uses

Assessment Purpose and UseDate of

AdministrationResults

Secondary Interest Survey

The purpose of this assessment is to provide information on how a student views himself/herself. This is useful in understanding what may motivate the student and what the student is interested in reading.

September 23, 2014

October 7, 2014

Interest Areas: Education & Training Hospitality & Tourism Human Service

Reading Interest Positive viewpoint Struggles with higher

level readingo Stressful

Basic Reading Inventory (BRI)

The purpose of the BRI is to assess what levels the student is at in word recognition, reading context, and comprehension. This information can be used as a baseline to begin instruction in each area.

Began on September 30, 2014 and finished on December 2, 2014

Word Lists Began at 10th grade

level, hit independent/instructional at 12th grade level

Reading Context Began at the 10th grade

level, hit instructional at the 12th grade level

Comprehension Began at the 10th grade

level, hit instructional at the 12th grade level

Running Records

The purpose of running records is to provide an authentic snapshot of how a student is currently reading. The information can be

October 21, 2014 Accuracy: 98%

Self-correction ratio: 1:3

*Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, page 3 was used for this running

used to assess if the current text is at an appropriate reading level for the student.

record

McCutchen Measure of Explicit Morphological Knowledge

The purpose of this assessment is to show performance on recognition and analysis than production tasks.

November 11, 2014

Frustration level: High

Accuracy: 50%

Spelling Inventory

The purpose of this assessment is to determine what spelling stage the student is at. This information can be used to guide instruction tailored to the student’s spelling stage.

October 28, 2014 Words Spelled Correctly: 16/31

Featured Points: 48/68

Spelling Stage: Middle, Within Word Pattern

Cloze Passage The purpose of this assessment is to determine how much the student understands context and vocabulary in order to identify the correct words or type of words that belong in the deleted passages of a text.

November 18, 2014

Frustration Level: High

Accuracy: 60%

Index of Reading Awareness

The purpose of this assessment is to determine decoding deficits within subtests including evaluation, planning, regulation, and conditional knowledge.

December 2, 2014

Evaluation –No significant weakness (8)

Planning – Some instructional support needed (7)

Regulation – Some instructional support needed (7)

Conditional knowledge: No significant weakness (8)

PART III. TEST RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS

A. Secondary Interest Survey is a reading survey given to students to determine how the students feel about recreationally and academically learning. The survey is 17 questions long, with each question asking about different feelings towards their interests. The students respond by filling out various options regarding their interests and hobbies. The interest survey is divided into 16 groups. Each group is a career cluster. Career clusters place similar occupations in groups. These clusters help narrow the thousands of career options in the world to a general areas of interest. The clusters connect what you learn in school to the skills and knowledge you need beyond high school. Some careers are placed in more than one cluster.

Top Interest AreasEducation & Training

Hospitality & Tourism

Human Services

B. Basic Reading Inventory (BRI) is an assessment tool used to determine what grade level of reading a student is functioning at. The assessment has three parts, and begins with words lists. The student is given a list of 20 words and must read aloud the list, one word at a time. The lists continue to be given until the student has reached a level of frustration. The lists are scored and assessed to determine what level of instruction the student is at (independent, instructional, or frustration). The grade level at which students are instructional is where the teacher should spend time finding material appropriate at that level to best suit the student’s needs and abilities.Once the words lists have been completed, the student reads aloud a passage while the teacher records notes of what the student read (i.e. writing down mispronounced words, skipping words, etc.) While errors such as substituting a word or inserting a word may be made, only the significant errors that change the meaning of the sentence are counted against the student’s score. The student continues to read passages at the next grade level until frustration is reached. The scoring procedure is similar to that of the word lists.The final part of the BRI includes comprehension questions that are asked immediately after the student finishes reading aloud a passage. Noes are taken to record the students’ answers and the score reflect how many questions we missed. Because comprehension questions relate to the passages, once the student has reached frustration with the reading passage, the comprehension questions also stop at the grade level.According to Student A’s results from the BRI, she is performing at an instruction level in word lists at a level for grades 10-12. She never hit frustration level while testing. In regards to Student A’s results on the reading passages, she read independently at the 10-12th grade level and never reached frustration. However, I recommend that Student A receive instruction for comprehension and reading passages at the 12th grade level, as this is where she struggled. In summary, I recommend that Student A receive instruction on comprehension and reading passages at the 12th grade level. This means that O’Tjta will be receiving instruction on grade level in these categories. Her word list levels is most likely higher than comprehension and reading passages.

Word Lists Reading Passages Comprehension

Total /20

Level Miscues Level Questions Missed

Level

Grade 10 15 Instructional 12 Ind./Inst. 0 IndependentGrade 11 19 Instructional 7 Ind./Inst. 1 IndependentGrade 12 19 Instructional 9 Ind./Inst. 2 Ind./Inst.

C. A Running Record is an informal assessment that is used to determine if the leveled text is at an appropriate level for the student. The student is given a text (in Student A’s case she was given a 201 word passage from Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You) and the teacher records any errors made while the student reads aloud. Errors include substituting a word, inserting a word, deleting a word, or reversing words. IF a student self-corrects (corrects without external aid) that is not counted as an error rather is simply marked in the teacher’s records. After the reading is complete, the teacher tallies the errors and creates an accuracy ration and self-correction ratio. The accuracy ratio provides information as to what levels the text is at for the student. The text is independent if the ration is between 96%-100%, instructional from 90%-95%, and frustration below 90%. Student A read her passage with only 3 errors and 1 self-correction. This makes her accuracy rate be 98% (independent reading level) and her self-correction ration 1:3, which means for every 3 errors, Student A corrected one. Of the three errors, Student A substituted words that look similar to the original word in the text. However, because she had one self-correction it shows that she understood that what she had read aloud did not make sense and went back to fix it. That is a necessary skill to have when reading and it seems that she is developing that skill.

Total Words Errors Self-Corrections

Accuracy Rate Self-Correction Ratio

201 3 1 98% 1:3

D. McCutchen Measure of Explicit Morphological Knowledge shows if a student had specific knowledge of words and their morphology. There are relationships between a student’s literacy achievement (both reading and writing) and their morphological awareness-that is, the ability to recognize, reflect on, and manipulate meaningful word parts such as roots and suffixes. Much of this work has been correlational, allowing for few causal arguments regarding underlying mechanisms. The assessment helps understand further mechanisms by which morphological insights are used by students to increase their vocabulary and comprehension. Student A completed the 30 questions while getting 15 correct with accuracy of 50%. Her frustration level was high.

Total Words Words Correct Accuracy Frustration Level30 15 50% High

E. Spelling Inventory is a spelling test in which the student is read aloud 25 words to write down and is used to determine what spelling stage the student is correctly performing at. Once the test is complete, it is scored using a table to show how many “featured points” each word is worth (students gain a point for each part of a word that is spelled correctly). The parts of the words are broken into columns, so once a student has missed 2 or more word parts in a column it indicates that student spelling stage. Student A scored 7/9 in

feature points in “Vowels” section in the Middle level of Within Word Pattern. Because Student A is in the Within Word Pattern spelling stage, she is considered a transitional reader. This means that she needs some guided instruction to help progress her reading. Using independent or instruction levels texts, along with vocabulary work, Student A will most likely improve her spelling.

Words Spelled Correctly

Featured Points Total Points Spelling Stage

16/31 48/68 64/99 Vowels, Middle: Within Word Pattern

F. Cloze Passage is an assessment consisting of a portion of text with certain words removed, where the participant is asked to replace the missing words. Cloze tests require the ability to understand context and vocabulary in order to identify the correct words or type of words that belong in the deleted passages of a text. Student A completed the 20 question cloze passage while getting 12 correct. Her frustration level was high. In result, Student A will benefit from vocabulary building to help with her comprehension.

Questions Correct Answers Accuracy Frustration Level20 12 60% High

G. Index of Reading Awareness is a multiple-choice format; the index of reading awareness may be administered in a group setting. Helps detect significant decoding deficits. This assessment comprises four subtests of five items each. These are evaluation, planning, regulation, and conditional knowledge. Each student earns a score for each of these subtests. The subtest scores are computed by using the following key:Subtest Score Interpretation

8-10 No Significant Weakness6-7 Some Instructional Support Needed0-5 Serious Need For Instruction In This Area

The response to each item receives 0, 1, or 2 points. The subtest score is simply the sum of these points for that subtest. Once the subtest scores are determined, the scale can be used to interpret them.

Subtest Score InterpretationEvaluation 8 No Significant WeaknessPlanning 7 Some Instructional

Support NeededRegulation 7 Some Instructional

Support Needed

PART IV. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Overall, Student A is performing at an instructional level on grade level for nearly all areas of reading. After given the seven different assessments, it is clear that Student A would benefit most from instruction related to improving her vocabulary to build her comprehension as her comprehension scores could improve in accuracy of reading the text.

O’Tjay is very strong in her reading aloud and silently of passages as she tends to self-correct her mistakes and read at a moderate rate to decode words, both which lead to high accuracy rates. However, because Student A does have a moderate reading pace, her comprehension is not at the same level as her reading accuracy. Increasing her fluency (particularly her decoding and vocabulary building) may lead to an increase in comprehension as she is able to concentrate on the meaning of what she is reading, rather than what the physical words are in the text. Because Student A has such high levels of reading enjoyment, encouraging her to practice her fluency skills while reading should not be a major concern or issue. This is a strength of Student A because enjoying the act of reading, generally speaking the student will read more often which increases their exposure to text. Increasing a student’s text exposure can lead to an increase in reading ability due to the increased amount of reading practice and vocabulary present.

In general, Student A would benefit from instruction in reading fluency this incudes vocabulary exposure. One of the major benefits to focusing on fluency strategies is that her comprehension will also improve because will also improve because she is not longer spending time concentrating on specific unknown words, but can instead concentrate on the meaning the text is creating. Following the results from Student A’s tutoring sessions there are three recommending goals and activities regarding her reading: Increase Vocabulary Exposure: Student A is currently reading at a moderate pace. This

could be due to the fact that she has trouble decoding words. To improve her pace, word work like words games, manipulating parts of words, or cloze passages will be done to teach her decoding strategies

Increase Comprehension: Student A currently understands a majority of the material she reads. When there is an unknown topic or words, frustration and struggle escalates especially when a student has limited experience with certain kinds of pathologies and techniques. Assigning directed readings will help Student A take a particular article or topic, research, and thoroughly explain her findings in a short synopsis.

Increase Application of Knowledge: Student A needs to enhance her learning, which she can do through writing and thinking about her own learning experiences. A learning journal is a personal way for her to connect and reflect on her preferences, knowledge, and experiences.