Zuleyma DeLaRosa
November 4th, 2015
LAI 551
Learners Profile A-I
On the first day of class I remember Professor Martello asking us, what does literacy mean
to you? Automatically what comes to mind is, someone who can read, write, and speak a particular
language and can communicate. However, literacy goes beyond just reading, writing, speaking,
and communicating. Literacy contains the five big ideas. The five big ideas are: phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
I strongly believe children’s literacy motivation and achievement can improve when their
parents are involved in their education. There are many everyday-things parents can do to
encourage literacy learning. In the book, Pathways to Independence the author expresses building
a classroom community starts the first day of school (Worthy, Broaddus, & Ivey, 2001). As
teachers we should always want to stay in contact with our students families and know who our
students are. Some ways the author expresses teachers can do this is by writing welcoming letters
to parents, requesting information of students, and inviting parents to their classroom (Worthy,
Broaddus, & Ivey, 2001). Partnering with parents can make a real difference in your relationship
with students.
My view on student’s interest on Literacy depends on student’s personal experiences and
how affective a teacher is in engaging students in the material for Literacy. In the article, Building
on Early Learning the author states, “Children’s experiences and interactions with a world of
written language are infused with personal meaning” (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996, p.12). Studies have
shown that it is more effective on students learning when students are able to relate to the material
in school. The author explains that students have personal experiences with the written language
by creating shopping lists, telephone numbers, and notes. We use literacy in our daily life without
even knowing. As people we often go out to restaurants and look at menus and that is a form of
using literacy, when we go food shopping we use literacy in reading the signs of the aisles and the
price tags. Using our daily lives as an example for a lesson for a class will help students be engage
and spark their interest more in literacy.
Oral language is often associated with vocabulary as the main element. However, oral
language consists of phonology, grammar, morphology, vocabulary, dialogue, and pragmatics.
The achievement of these skills usually begins at a young age, before students begin focusing on
print based concepts such as, sound-symbol correspondence and decoding. Sociolinguist theorist
believes that, “Oral language is the foundation upon which children’s reading and writing
achievement is built” (Tracy & Morrow, 2006, p.110). Therefore, in order for students to succeed
with reading and writing, they must first succeed in oral language. Whereas, children who do not
speak English at home lack exposure to critical oral language skills such as, vocabulary, grammar,
and dialogue. This can be related to social cultural theory. Social cultural theory and sociolinguistic
theory are almost similar, both emphasize the social aspect of learning. However, they also
demonstrate difference. The difference being that social cultural theory concentrates more on the
boarder concept of culture, which includes but is not limited to, language (Tracey & Morrow,
2006).
B) Description of Students
Sarah Nate is a nine-year-old girl who is currently in the fourth grade and attends Richwood
Charter Elementary School. Sarah is of Caucasian descent and was born and raised in Western,
New York. Sarah lives at home with both parents and her four year old little brother. Sarah has
stated that when she grows up she would like to work in an animal shelter, become a teacher, or
work in a daycare facility. Sarah had shared things about her family to me. She has indicated that
her mother was a stay at home mom for a while, but now she is currently working at a bank. As
for her father, he has always worked and has been in the same company for quite some time now.
To get to know a little more about Sarah, I asked her what she likes to do after school. Sarah
expressed that after school she likes to complete any of her homework’s that were given to her that
day, watches television, or goes on YouTube.. She also plays with her Barbie dolls, or with her
three year old dog-named Remy. On Saturdays, Sarah does gymnastics. When she does not attend
gymnastics she plays soccer with her friends.
Dario Night is a nine-year-old African American boy who was born in Western, New York.
Dario is also in fourth grade at Richwood Charter Elementary School. Dario lives at home with
his parents and his three sisters. Two of his sisters go to Richwood as well. One of his sisters is
five years old and she attends Kindergarten and his other sister is six years old and she is in the
first grade. To get to know Dario a little better I asked him a few questions related to himself.
Dario told me when school is done he likes to play with his friends at the park or play with his
toys. As for the weekends on his free time, Dario likes to play the drums or go to his grandma’s
house. He also enjoys playing football in his free time.
C) Description of Students Interests and Motivations:
The fourth grade students have a daily reading block from 12:00 pm to 12:40 pm. As for
Sarah, Sarah is a part of an advance enrichment group for reading within Richwood. The advance
enrichment group for reading meets every Monday and Wednesday throughout the class schedule.
Sarah mentioned that there are four people from her classroom who are also a part of this advance
enrichment class. During the advance enrichment program, the students all read the same book
and are assigned to complete a worksheet at the end of each chapter. As I continued the interview
with Sarah I asked her if she likes to read and to respond on a scale of yes, no, or sometimes. Sarah
stated that she likes to read sometimes. The reason why she agreed to say sometimes rather than
yes all the time is due to the distractions around her that she has access to such as, her iPod, iPhone,
and iPad. She also communicated with me that she loves to read to her baby brother hand down
books that were given to her to him. In addition, Sarah enjoys re-reading books for fun.
Although in school Sarah is required to read particular books, Sarah shared with me
other type of genre books she enjoys reading. Sarah enjoys fantasy, horror, magazines,
biographies, mysteries, plays, comic books, humor books, true stories, myths, and science
fiction. Sarah is currently reading one of her favorite books, which is called, I Wonder. She
believes it is a really good book although she has not finished it yet. As she quoted, “The book
comes from different points of views and at the end of each chapter it leaves the reader with
a cliffhanger.” Furthermore, Sarah communicated to me once she finishes I Wonder part one,
she would like to continue reading I Wonder part two this year. In the book, Pathways to
Independence all three authors speak about the importance of interest in learning tell us that
providing students with access to books that appeals to them is an important feature of reading
instruction. Furthermore, the book expresses that it is necessary for educators to confirm that
students have access to a balance of both high quality, conceptually challenging literature and
student preferred materials to enhance development of reading, writing, content knowledge,
and more (Worthy, Broaddus, & Ivey, 2001). I believe Sarah’s school does great in providing
her with different options of books to read. Especially, because she is in an advance
enrichment reading group they give her challenging books. Another of Sarah’s favorite books
is titled, The Human Race. She really likes this book because her mother has read it to her,
illustrations in the book are incredible, and wording is cool and funny. Sarah favorite author
is, R.L. Stine. Sarah stated “R.L Stine makes readings sound fake and the title majority of the
time is not related to the story,” which makes it even more interesting for her to read. Although
Sarah enjoys reading books, she enjoys reading American girl magazines, because they
include quizzes towards specific topics and cooking recipes. Additionally, Sarah spoke about
books she disliked. She came to the conclusion that one of the books she disliked was,
Disappearing Axe because the end of the chapters, which were not, described well.
When conversing with Sarah she did inform me that she believes she is a good reader but
can improve on some things. Sarah declared that one of her problems when is reading silently
because she finds herself coming up with distractions and forgets what she was reading. Yet, when
she reads aloud, she can hear herself and no distractions are prevalent. Though Sarah likes reading
aloud, she mentioned that she does not like when people see or hear her. I asked Sarah what she
does when she is reading and comes to a word she does not recognize. She answered, she would
try to figure it out by sounding each letter out and then ask for help and re read the phrase. To
finish the interview I wanted to see what were Sarah views on reading so I asked her to complete
a few sentences. The first sentence was, “I read best when I…” and Sarah’s response was, “When
it is raining, little light, have my covers and pillows and all warmed up.” The second fill in sentence
was, “I believe reading is important because…” and Sarah’s reply, “ ‘Because it helps you learn
new things, there is nothing else to help you learn new things without reading. Plus you don’t want
your brain to rot by just watching television. Better to read than watch T.V.” Hearing Sarah’s last
response gave me a little smile. I really loved Sarah’s last statement about the importance of
reading and liked how she correlated with watching television.
Dario is also in Sarah’s class, which means he gets the same reading block Sarah does,
which is from 12:00 pm to 12:40 pm. Within this time frame Dario can read any books of his
choosing. To better understand Dario’s interest in reading, I asked him what are some genre books
he finds interesting to read. Dario mentioned that he enjoys reading horror books and magazines. I
asked Dario if he was currently reading any books in particular and he was unable to respond to
my question. He did not know the title of the book was his response. However, he did mention that
one of his favorite books was, “Madagascar.” I also asked if he can name three books he had
previously read and the book titles he mentioned were, Shawn Michaels, Randy Orton, and The
Undertaker. All of Dario answers were straight to the point, he did not elaborate why these were
his favorite books, what can improve, or if he would re-read them again. Nonetheless, Dario did
express if he could pick two books to have in his library it would be wrestling and mystery books.
As stated above, the books Dario stated he has read above were names rather than book titles. The
names he provided, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, and Randy Orton are character names from
wrestling, not books. As educators we must know our students interest if we would like to see
them succeed in school. In the article Book Leveling and readers, the author raises an important
argument. The author expresses that many classroom teachers organize their books in their
classroom by book levels rather than by genre, author, or theme (Dzaldov & Peterson, 2005). If
the teacher knew Dario’s interest in readings, she can perhaps see him read a mystery book, then
reward him by telling him it is ok to bring a wrestling book to school if that is what he really enjoys
reading. My perception of it all is, as long as the teacher can detect his strengths and weaknesses
in reading whether it's reading something as a wrestling book or mystery book. To further
investigate Dario’s reading interest I asked him who was his favorite author and why. Dario
responded that he does not have a favorite author. Furthermore, I asked him if he had a favorite
book and why, his reply was, “Wrestling is my favorite book because I have a lot of wrestling
toys. ” As for magazines, his favorite magazines are related to toys in which he uses those same
magazines to show his mom and dad to get him the toys displayed on the magazines.
As Dario and I talked, Dario told me he thinks he is a good reader. However, most problems
he faces when he reads are the words and pictures in the book. Although he struggles with these
elements when reading, he did say he would like to read “Magic Tree House” this year because it
talks about going on adventures. I asked Dario has he ever read a book and disliked it. He
responded yes but was not able to tell me the title of that book. To extend the interview, I wanted
to understand Dario’s views on literacy in general, therefore I asked him to complete the same fill
in the blankets I provided Sarah with which were, “I read best when…” and “I believe reading is
important because…” As Dario was answering me he took a good pause to answer both questions.
He stated, “I read best when I’m alone” and for the second statement his response was, “helps you
learn.” As the reader you can see Dario’s answers are not giving me much to see how he really
feels about reading. Comparing Dario’s and Sarah’s answer we can conclude that Dario is below
average. According to Fountas and Pinnell, both authors agreed that parents and teacher show,
rationalize, and reinforce their child and/or student. Both, parents and teachers help children attend
effectively to visual information in print and to use that information in an active way in correlation
to their knowledge about language. Because of supported experiences, children form internal
control of the processes they need to match their thinking with the written words. Overall, the
objective of all literacy teaching is independence and ongoing learning (Fountas & Pinnnell, 1996).
In general, educators can do so much. Educators must feel the support of parents wanting to help
their children professionally and academically. Without parents contributing to their child’s
knowledge it makes it more difficult for the teacher. In general parents and teachers are the best
team when it comes to a student/child. Working as a team can create a better learning environment
for the child, this is probably what is lacking in Dario’s learning.
D) Description of the role of Literacy in Students Lives:
Sarah informed me that she really does not visit the public library often. She said that in a
year she probably visits the public library only twice or three times a year. What Sarah does is she
goes to the school Library every Monday because that’s when her class has Library period. Sarah
looks through the school library and write downs what books she wants to read and goes visit the
public library and borrows them. She told me she does borrow books from her school’s library,
however, they are only allowed to check out two books at a time and they must be returned within
a two week period. Additionally, as stated above we know that Sarah enjoys reading American girl
magazines. But then again, she does like reading magazines in general. She liked magazines that
have questions and include national graphics. She expressed that she has a lot of these magazines
at home on her bookshelf. Sarah expressed to me that at her house there is a bookshelf filled with
so many books and she chooses from there what books she would want to read. She also told me
that her mom and dad likes reading as well. She stated that her mom and her read books together
and she is really looking forward for her mom to buy the Nancy juice series so that they can read
it together. In Tracy and Morrow article they talk about different theories in their article but there
is one in particular I will like to discuss in related to Sarah, social learning. Social learning theory
also known to be called cognitive theory is defined as, “a behavioral explanation learning” (Tracy
& Morrow, 2006, p. 111 ). In other words, people learn more by observing rather than experiencing
something themselves. As mentioned above Sarah and her mother often read together or Sarah’s
mother reads to her. In Tracy’s and Morrow’s article it commented on the learning behaviors of
human. It was mentioned that learning humans interpret the behaviors of those around them.
Furthermore, it was also mentioned that, the role of self-efficacy in learning. Self- efficacy can be
described as, one’s beliefs that he or she own the abilities to achieve specific goals. According to
the article, people with high perceived self-efficacy try more, accomplish more, and continue on
task longer compare to people with low self-efficacy. As you have read Sarah mom is heavily
involved with her reading by having a book shelf at home where she is able to select books to read,
Sarah’s mom reading to Sarah, making Sarah read to her, and both sharing books and taking turns
to read. We can establish that Sarah can consider herself as a high self-efficacy due to her
involvement in school.
In Sarah’s neighborhood she does not receive newspapers which make it hard for her to even read
them. But Sarah did mention when she goes to her grandma’s house they always have the
newspapers and she skims through them. Sarah revealed that she likes reading newspapers
sometimes. You will find Sarah reading newspapers when she is bored. Still, Sarah always finds
the issue section in the newspaper so that she can enlighten herself about what’s going on in the
world and how she can fix it. In Richwood Elementary Charter School they offer so many
opportunities for children to partake in real world literacies. Some examples are, art, music, theater,
and sport events. Sarah’s favorite subjects in school are art and chorus. As for Dario, Dario told
me that he has never gone to the public library. The only library he has been to thus far is the
school library. Being that the school library allows them to check out two books from the school
library Dario has checked out books before. Furthermore, I asked Dario besides reading books and
magazines does he read anything else like newspapers. He told me that he does not read
newspapers either. I then asked him if he can rank some of the genres from a scale one to eight,
one being the lowest and eight being the highest. He rated mystery as an eight, followed by
humorous being a seven, and history being rated a six. Whereas the three lowest genres for Dario
were, romance rated as one, science rated as two, and science fiction as three. Authors Rudd and
Dunn mentioned in their article, the topic of reading material will effect if the boy students will be
interested in reading it or not. The author gives the example of genres boys mostly enjoy reading
which were, science fiction and fantasy, sports related, war and spy stories, comic and joke books,
and humorous fiction. If we were to compare what the authors Rudd and Dunn mentioned in their
article compare to Dario rating genre scale we can conclude that at least two of the genres do match.
Moreover, Dario expresses that his favorite subjects in school are recess and gym. As you can see
the two periods Dario has chosen as his favorite classes do not require him to do anything
academically. I have come to the conclusion that Dario does not find enjoyment in school due to
academics and his level in academics. In the article, Dudes don’t read, Ms. Rudd : The Voice
Behind the Statistics, the authors communicates that, students attitudes towards school is
associated with students attitudes towards reading. As a result of this, boys who have a negative
attitudes towards school can reflect a negative attitude towards reading (Rudd & Dunn, 2011) .
E ) Description of Students Perspectives on School Literacy:
As I sat and observed both of my students throughout their class schedule, I was able to
detect that both of my students are not on the same level in any of their subjects. In particular they
are not on the same level when it comes to literacy. In my opinion Sarah is at grade level, whereas,
Dario must improve some factors to be at grade level with his peers. When observing Sarah in
other subjects such as Math and Science I was able to witness her understanding for these subjects.
In comparison, Dario sits in the front of class and does not participate at all. In one of the activity
students were grouped in groups of four. Sarah and Dario were not in the same group. For this
lesson students were instructed to read the outline that was given to them as a group. As I walked
around I saw some groups read aloud and some groups read to themselves and then as a group
discussed. For Sarah’s group they read quietly and gather their thoughts after reading. While,
Dario’s group read aloud. Each person in the group read about four to five sentences. When it
came to Dario’s turn to read I noticed that he was reading in a very low and insecure tone. It has
been stated that, “… Motivational levels may be affected by expectancy value. In other words,
their perception of success in an activity such as reading matters. If individual believes they won’t
be successful in the activity lose motivation in reading” (Rudd & Dunn, 2011, p.282). Being that
Dario already lost motivation in the reading, for the rest of the activity I noticed he felt
uncomfortable.
When it was time to answer the open ended questions Sarah demonstrated comprehension
of the reading and answer the questions with details. On the other hand, Dario was struggling a
little. I strongly believe Dario was unable to participate in his group because he did not comprehend
the reading to be able to answer the questions. As Dzaldov and Peterson said, book leveling
theories guiding contemporary literacy instruction consider both the text and the reader. “Reading
is viewed as an active process that is influenced by factors inside and outside the reader. The reader
must actively infer and interpret what is on the page in the light of what he or she brings to the
task. Internal factors include the reader's experience and what the reader knows about language,
print, and the world, as well as the reader's interests, motivation, strategies, purposes, perspectives,
and repertoire” (Dzaldov & Peterson, 2005, p.223 ) Furthermore, we can see that both Dario and
Sarah both came from different economic status and backgrounds. Therefore, we must consider
the readers social and cultural identities influenced their reading and played a role in determining
how difficult a particular text is for individual readers.
F) Description of students Reading ability
Running record
Throughout the running record Sarah did not have any errors which means her
accuracy rate is at a 100 percent. As she read the passage she read it fluently and paid attention
to punctuation and phrasing with demonstration of enthusiasm. Conversely, Dario made 11
errors and only self-corrected himself once. Within the 11 errors Dario made 4 errors that
effected meaning and syntax, and scored 5 errors for visual. As Dario was reading the passage
Dario showed little attention to punctuation and phrasing and a lack of enthusiasm. Some
errors presented in Dario’s running record were, he inserted the word “all” in a sentence but
it did not affect the sentences meaning at all. What I found interesting to see was Dario kept
confusing the correct words in the passage with words that were closely related. For instance,
the word in the passage said, “known” and Dario said “now.” Another example is, the passage
stated, “were sold at the carnival” Dario replaced were for the word “what” then self-corrected
himself but still used the wrong word and said, “where sold at the carnival.” Throughout the
story Dario omitted some words. Some words Dario omitted were nutmeg, A’s, and two
words that was a part of a sentence which was, to an.
Fluency
When thinking about teaching fluency to students I think of how hard this can be. Teaching
students to read for correctness with the eye and fluency with the ear, two complex processes
working at once can be a bit challenging for some. Which now raises the question, what is fluency?
As a student and future educator I know how fluency sounds and so do others when we hear it.
However, as stated in the book Pathways to Independence fluency is fundamentally related to
comprehension and is a critical component of successful reading. But even reading researchers
don’t agree with this definition (Worthy, Broaddus, & Ivey, 2001). For fluency I evaluated the two
students reading rate by computing correct words per minute. For this section I used the story I
provided them with that contained 371 words. As for the results, Sarah read 269 words per minute.
Whereas, Dario read 164 words per minute. We can conclude that both students fluency are
extremely different. If we do the math and see the difference of words per minute the amount of
words would be 105. In the article Creating Fluent Readers, the author brings attention to the
reader that reading fluency has three important measurements that build a bridge to comprehension.
The first measurement is accuracy in word decoding. The author expresses, readers must be able
to sound out the words in a text with minimal errors. The second measurement is automatic
processing. Readers need to spend as little mental efforts as possible in the decoding part of reading
so that they can use their limited cognitive resources for meaning making. The third and last
measurement is prosodic reading. The reader must analyze the text into syntactically and
semantically correct components(Rasinski). After this statement we can assume that Dario is
lacking one or more of these measurements through reading and as a result it is effecting his
fluency.
Comprehension
I wanted to gain a better insight into my students reading abilities. I decided to give
both students the same passage to read. The passage that was given was at a 4th grade level, it
was a one page passage, and the passage included multiple choice questions about the passage.
Although I had my own comprehension questions about the story, I made the students answer
the multiple choice questions that were given. Both Dario and Sarah answered all five
multiple choice questions correctly. In spite of this, I had four comprehension questions, one
question being followed with a follow up question. The comprehension questions I was asking
Dario and Sarah were, How did Jessie come up with the idea of making pumpkin pies? Vs.
How did she come up with the idea of making pumpkin pies for the church? What was
people’s opinion on the pie? How do you know? What keys things in the story made you
come to the conclusion, How did the author help you understand the reason why Jessie
probably was not going to bake no more pies? and how did the author express how Jessie will
be making pies? For the comprehension question both students answered all questions in a
different manner. I did expect that to happen being that Dario is more of the type of student
that does not want to say much and just says what has to be said to just answer the question.
Furthermore, another feature I did with both students to help me see their comprehension of
the story was retelling me the story.
The title of the passage given to students was called, Pumpkin Pies. The passage was about
a girl named Jessie who had several left over pumpkins after Halloween. Being that Jessie had so
many pumpkins left over and all pumpkins were in good conditions she did not want to throw the
pumpkins away. Therefore, Jessie decided to make a pumpkin pie for herself. After making the
pumpkin pie Jessie went to her neighbor’s house and shared her pumpkin pie. Her neighbor then
told her it would be great if Jessie can make more pumpkin pies for the church’s carnival. At the
end Jessie agreed to do the pumpkin pies for the carnival. But then everyone wanted more pumpkin
pie although pumpkin season was coming to an end. Even though pumpkin season was coming to
an end Jessie decided to do pumpkin pies for those people who wanted for special occasions such
as, birthdays, baby showers, or for students with good grades. Within my meeting with Dario I
asked Dario to retell me what he just read. Dario’s response to my question was, “The story is
about Jessie having left over pumpkins and not knowing what to do with them… Jessie made some
pumpkin pies for the church carnival and everyone really liked the pumpkin pies she made.” For
Dario’s retelling I scored him a 1. The reason why I scored Dario a 1 was because there was a lot
of information and ideas he could have included but he did not. But what I find very interesting is,
I am positive to say that Dario did comprehend what he read because he answered all multiple
choice answers correct and was able to answer the comprehension question to an extent. I strongly
believe Dario has more of a confidence issue and does not know how to answer open ended
questions correctly. In contrast, Sarah demonstrated more comprehension when retelling the story
to me. Sarah retelling of the story was as follow, “The theme of this story is related to Halloween.
The story talks about a girl named Jessie and about the left over pumpkins Jessie had after
Halloween. Jessie does not want to throw out the left over pumpkins because she felt like it would
be a waste, the pumpkins were still in good condition. So Jessie decided to make some pumpkin
pie for herself and shared with her neighbor. After sharing with her neighbor, Jessie decided to
make more pumpkin pies for the church’s carnival that was coming up because her neighbor told
her about it.” Within Sarah’s retelling of her story she provided me with a theme, different
information and ideas that was provided in the story, and answered comprehension question
without me asking. Overall, I scored Sarah with a 3 for retelling.
Metacognition
To get a better understanding on Dario’s and Sarah’s awareness and understanding
of their own thought process in relation to literacy I made them complete the index of reading
awareness. The questions that were being asked throughout the index of reading awareness
were more related to the metacognition strategies they used. To further my investigation I
gave both students the same questions to answer. Within the index of reading awareness the
students were able to pick the multiple choice answer that best fit them in regards to literacy.
From the eight questions I asked Dario and Sarah they both had four different answers and
four similar answers. Some questions I asked Dario that differed compare to Sarah was, what
would help you become a better reader? Dario’s answer was, checking to make sure you
understand what you read. The second question Dario answered was, if you could only read
some of the sentences in the story because you were in a hurry, which ones would you
read? Dario’s response was, read the sentences in the middle of the story. As a follow up
question I asked Dario, as you read a book or a passage given to you, what parts of the story
do you skip as you read? Dario’s replied, the hard words and parts you don’t understand. To
conclude the index reading awareness questions my last question to Dario was, which of these
is the best way to remember a story? The response Dario gave was, think about remembering
it. Being that we already have been seeing Dario struggle with reading and fluency, these
answers give us the reader a better look on his thought process. With these answers we can
understand that Dario’s reading and fluency is effected because he skips hard words or parts
he does not understand. Also, another thing I will like to give attention to that Dario mentioned
was, he admits that he tries to remember the story rather than trying to understand stories he
has been reading.
On the other hand, I asked Sarah the same questions however, Sarah answered the
questions with different answers. The first question Sarah was asked was what would help
you become a better reader? Sarah’s response was, if more people would help me when I
read. Second question asked was, if you could only read some of the sentences in the story
because you were in a hurry, which ones would you read? Sarah's reply was, read the
interesting and exciting sentences. To follow up this question I asked Sarah what parts of the
story do you skip as you read? Sarah expressed that she never skips anything when reading.
To end the interview I asked Sarah which of these is the best way to remember a story? Sarah
replies, write it down in your own words. I really liked that Sarah said in order to remember
a story she writes it down in her own words. This is a way she can demonstrate comprehension
of what she is reading. She also mentioned the importance of not skipping anything when she
reads which shows her interest and value on literacy.
Although Dario and Sarah differed on some questions on the index of reading
awareness. They both shared some similarities on it as well. Four questions that Dario and
Sarah shared the same perspective on literacy were, why do you go back and read things over
again? If you could read very fast and could only read some words, which ones would you
try to read? What things do you read faster than others? and If you are reading for a test,
which would help the most? Both students agree that going back and reading things over again
is good practice. In addition, Dario and Sarah acknowledges reading the words that tell most
about the story while reading very fast and selecting some words to read is the best strategy.
As a result of this, both students engage in reading books that are easy to read in order to read
faster. Finally, both students admit talking about the material with somebody to make sure
you understand it is very beneficial on for a test.
G) Comparison:
As I mentioned throughout my learners profile both students academically are at different
levels. Sarah is in an enrichment literacy program where they provide her with greater
differentiation of instructions, challenge her in order to realize her fullest potential, enhance critical
thinking skills, creativity, and problem solving, and an opportunity to self-select in depth learning
experiences. Whereas, Dario is not a part of the enrichment program. He just receives literacy
within his class schedule every day. Another difference between both students share amongst each
other is the involvement of parents in their education. For Sarah, Sarah’s mother is really involve
with her literacy. Sarah expressed that she reads to her mother and baby brother. She also
mentioned that her mother reads to her and they both read series books together. Furthermore,
Sarah communicates that she really does not watch T.V and if she does it’s only for a short while.
In addition, she does use YouTube but for a limited of time as well. While Dario’s parents were
not really mentioned much throughout my interview with him. He also mentions that he does
enjoy watching T.V, playing sports, and playing video games. Which causes him to not to have an
enjoyment in literacy. If you remember early in my paper I mentioned that Dario’s favorite books
were related to wrestling. We can conclude that watching T.V has an effect on this.
H) Conclusion:
In summary, as students and educators we must ask ourselves what does literacy mean to
us. After identifying what literacy means to us we must identify the importance of literacy and the
foundation of literacy. Explaining to our students that literacy goes beyond just reading and writing
and expressing that literacy focuses on vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, phonics, and
phonemic awareness. Although I state that students and teachers must understand the importance
of literacy, I also encourage parents to get involved in their child’s education. Last but not least,
as educators we must want students to be as interested in literacy. Therefore, teachers must be
engaging with class materials and make students relate their personal experience in their literacy
lesson. As I was conducting these assessments I learned so much from the students and myself.
Seeing how both students have different perspectives on literacy by just answering a few questions
and how they both are at different levels but in the same grade and teacher amazes me to see how
they comprehend things differently. As for myself, I learned how to conduct a running record,
analyze it, and most importantly see what these students struggle with so that I can take it as a
lesson learn and better other students when I become an educator of my own classroom.
References
Dzaldov, B.S. & Peterson, S. (2005). Book leveling and readers. The Reading Teacher, 59, 222229
Rudd, L.L., & Dunn, K. (2011) “Dudes don’t read, Ms. Rudd”: The voices behind the statistics.
pp. 279-288.
Fountas, I.C., & Pinnell, G.S. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Ch. 1-3.
Tracy, D., & Morrow, L. (2006). Social learning perspectives. In Lenses on reading: An
introduction to theories and models, 100-124. New York: Guilford.
Worthy, J., Broaddus, K., & Ivey, G. (2001). Pathways to independence: Reading, writing, and
learning in grades 3-8. New York: Guilford Press.
Burkins, J., & Croft, M. (2010). Preventing misguided reading: New strategies for guided
reading teachers. Newark, DE: International Reading Association ;.
Rasinski, T. Creating fluent readers. In Issues and trends in literacy education, 4th ed., Robinson,
R., and McKenna, M., eds., p. 31-36. New York: Pearson.