Impact of Student Learning
Elementary Education Example
Observation of a Reader—Final Summary Pre-­‐Assessment For the pre-­‐assessment, C.N. read the 5th grade Level U text “Frightful’s Mountain” with 97% accuracy (independent level). She then read the 5th grade Level V text “Yolanda’s Genius” with 99% accuracy (independent level). The majority of her reading was fluent; her speed and accuracy were almost flawless, but her reading lacked some expression. She answered three of the comprehension questions correctly on the first running record and two of the comprehension questions correctly on the second running record. All literal comprehension questions were answered correctly, however she only answered two of three followed by one of three inferential comprehension questions correctly. In both running record assessments, C.N. failed to successfully retell and summarize the important parts of the text. In both cases, C.N.’s accuracy rate was at an independent level, but the strength of her responses to the comprehension questions and retelling/summary of important details that happened in the text were very weak. According to the assessment, “students at this level should be able to retell/summarize a story highlighting fictional text features.” Although she is reading at an independent level, she does not comprehend what she is reads, therefore the level and text are too difficult. Due to the strength of her fluency skills and weakness in the area of comprehension, it seemed appropriate to work with her on comprehension and summarizing texts for main idea and supporting details. Recommendations I made included using easier texts to work on identifying main idea and supporting details, as this is a consistent struggle reflected in her comprehension scores. C.N. would benefit from working with a lower text level, such as the one suggested by her SRI score, considering her comprehension level does not match that of her fluency. Through learning the skills necessary to comprehend the main idea and supporting details, C.N. will then be able to apply the skills needed to comprehend on more difficult texts that may be closer to her fluency level. They have begun to work with identifying main idea and details in the classroom earlier this month. Working with her to slow down her reading will also be beneficial for her so that she doesn’t miss important details in the text. This will help to decrease miscues that look similar to words in the text. It is necessary to close the gap between C.N.’s fluency and comprehension so she can continue to succeed as a reader in all aspects of reading a text. +3/3 Instructional Design Based on the pre-­‐assessment results, two lessons were created to promote the learning of C.N. in the areas in which she needs the most instruction and support. (Insert CCSS here.)Each of the two lessons conducted with C.N. focused on chunking text in an effort to not only slow down her reading, but to make each section more meaningful to C.N. as she read. Another focus of instruction was to slow down reading because C.N. mentioned that she thinks she reads too fast and misses the big ideas and details, making it difficult for her to remember what she read and summarize the text or give the main idea with supporting details. The first lesson focused on introducing what it means to chunk a text and creating “chapter titles” for each section that we chunked. We talked about what it means to chunk and how we can separate text by the main idea or the event that is taking place. This creates many distinct sections and by writing and creating a title for each section as we Impact of Student Learning
Elementary Education Example
read helped C.N. to better remember the events of the story and the main ideas and bigger details. The text for this lesson, Amos & Boris by William Steig, was already chunked into meaningful units for C.N. The second lesson focused on C.N. chunking a text on her own and summarizing each section of the text that she chunked. By allowing C.N. to chunk the text how it made sense for her, helped her to better understand what she was reading, therefore increasing her comprehension of the text. The second text that she worked with was Sylvester & the Magic Pebble, by William Steig. C.N. was successful in chunking the text in appropriate and sensible parts and was able to summarize each section successfully. She created a summary of the overall text, but missed the key details, picking out what was important to her or what she remembered, rather than what was important to the text, the story, and the main idea of the story. +3/3 Post-­‐Assessment After instruction was administered, a post-­‐assessment was given to C.N. in order to mark the progress that she has made and identify areas of instruction to which attention should still be given. C.N. was able to read the 4th grade level P text, “Poopsie Pomerantz, Pick Up Your Feet” with 98% accuracy (independent level), answering all comprehension questions correctly. Despite reading with such fluency and correctly answering the comprehension questions, she was unable to retell or summarize what she read, including the most important details from the text. Her comprehension of text did show signs of improvement. She was able to site evidence from the text to support her answers of the comprehension questions, which is improvement from last time. Chunking the text has helped her to better remember the details in order to better understand the texts that she reads. Her answers are not as complete as they should be, but it is progress from where she began. She commented that she felt like she better understood what she was reading when she chunked the text and liked the strategy to help her make meaning of what she reads. The post assessment does reflect progress. Although C.N. was given Level U and V text during the pre-­‐assessment, I made the decision to assess her using a Level P for the post-­‐assessment test. It was very clear from the pre-­‐
assessment that the text used was too difficult for C.N. Although she read “fluently”, she did not read the text for comprehension. I had initially planned to use a Level P text on the pre-­‐
assessment with her. I arrived at a Level P text based on her Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) score from the beginning of the year. The SRI assessment is a research and computer-­‐based assessment that measures student reading comprehension. The test is taken multiple times throughout the year in order to measure growth in reading comprehension. The test adjusts the difficulty of questions asked based on the chosen responses to the previous question administered. C.N. scored a 737 Lexile score, which correlates to a Level P text. However, after speaking with my cooperating teacher, she had told me that she had listened to C.N. read and had gone all of the way up to a Level U text with her. However, she was only listening to her accuracy, speed, and prosody. C.N. was never tested for reading comprehension when she worked with these texts. Based on the recommendation of my cooperating teacher, I tested C.N. on Level U and V texts for the pre-­‐
assessment. Based on her results and based on my work with her, I decided to stick with the results from the SRI and use that as her reading level. Reading fluently and reading ability encompass accuracy, speed, and prosody, in addition to reading comprehension as Impact of Student Learning
Elementary Education Example
well. If she cannot read and comprehend and think critically about the text that she just read, then it is too difficult for her. Throughout this assignment, I chose texts close to Level P for C.N. to work with because I found that the SRI results were more accurate than the recommendation of my cooperating teacher. My cooperating teacher believe her fluency is consistent and accurate, but is confident that C.N. does not understand what she is reading, despite scoring above grade level marks on fluency assessments. I am aware that I used a different text for the pre-­‐assessment and the post-­‐assessment. Because the texts are not of consistent text levels, I am unable to make a true comparison at the same level text. However, growth can be cited through instruction. Chunking the text impacted C.N.’s learning and behavior in a positive and inspiring way. She carefully thought about each section of Amos & Boris that she had previously read. At times she would go back and look at the text, but she really focused on providing the main idea. By the end of the book, C.N. could see that there were many ideas and important details within the story and that these ideas from each section of the book, together, helped contribute to and create the main idea of the entire story. As a result of chunking the text, each section was more meaningful and manageable. C.N. was given a purpose and direction to help guide her reading, and by keeping that in mind, she was successfully able to focus her attention on the main idea of each section. C.N. was more successful in recalling information than previously on the running record assessment. Her answers are more complete and thorough, providing specific examples from the text, as opposed to what she remembered after reading a text or a passage. After completing the first lesson, I asked C.N. if she felt as though she better understood what she just read because of the way we divided the text into meaningful sections and taking time to think about what we just read, and she completely agreed. She mentioned that she had an easier time recalling information and that creating titles for each section of Amos & Boris helped her to remember and pick out the bigger ideas and themes of the story. She liked that she was able to read the story aloud to me, and I had her follow along with her finger to help her pace and slow down her reading. C.N. recalled and answered comprehension questions more successfully than previously. She was able to construct accurate titles and main ideas for each section, but she missed the bigger idea or overall main idea of the whole text. We talked about how each section helps us work towards creating a main idea. C.N. was very successful with chunking the text independently during the second lesson. Her summaries of the sections that she created were very accurate to the content of the book. C.N. would explain to me as she read the text why she would chunk the book at certain sections. Chunking the text is a wonderful strategy that will benefit her during independent and instructional reading. She is forcing herself to recall what she just read and attach meaning or importance to it. By attaching this meaning, each section is easier for her to recall. These lessons were successful in getting C.N. to focus in on her reading and to slow down her reading so that she can read to understand, rather than read to finish a book. +3/3 ACEI Reflection Impact of Student Learning
Elementary Education Example
In order to continue the success and growth of C.N. as a reader, continued practice of reading comprehension, with text on grade level is recommended. What I notice and continue to see through her work in class as well is that she struggles to synthesize her ideas based on the overall ideas of the text. She understands the book as she is reading, but she has a hard time picking out the most important details of a text. She remembers very specific details or things that are of interest to her, and then uses those things as the most important details, because she can relate and connect to them. She has no problem retelling the events of the story, but she can’t decipher which ones are the most important and use that information to create a main idea about the text. Her 4th grade ELA class has recently practiced working on sequence charts in order to map the important details throughout a story. One of the students mentioned that if you can delete it from the story and the story still continues and makes sense, then the information isn’t important to include in a summary. I would use this idea of determining important information in future instruction with C.N. They have also worked on the 5W’s in class (who, what, where, when, and why), and creating a few lessons on how to determine the 5W’s of a text may help C.N. create a well-­‐rounded and informing summary. It also is a way to self-­‐check her work to make sure she has included all of the important aspects of a story. After identifying key parts to include in a summary, I would continue instruction and work with C.N. on constructing a meaningful main idea for the overall text, as her retelling in the post assessment shows that she can retell parts of the text, but does not have a good grasp at the overall main idea of certain texts. For additional progress monitoring, I would want to focus on distinguishing between information that is interesting to her as a reader and important information to the text. A summary or retelling of a story isn’t what is interesting to C.N. or what she remembers, but rather the important parts of a story in order for the story to continue moving forward. Chunking has helped C.N. to make meaning of what she is reading, but she needs to learn strategies to help focus and organize her thoughts about what she just read. She needs to learn what is the most important information and what to include in a summary or retelling of the story. C.N. would benefit from strategies or lessons that make a distinction between what they think is most important to remember and what the writer wants them to take away from the article. What C.N. thinks is most important is not necessarily the author’s main idea of the article or text. Once C.N. can make this distinction, I believe that she has the tools to not only read fluently, but also read to critically think and comprehend the text in its entirety. With these skills, C.N. will be able to progress and be an even stronger reader. +3/3 Artifacts: 3/3-­‐ (submitted separately) Total points earned: 15/15