Hindi Krinsky
Diagnosis & Correction of Reading Difficulties
15:299:564
Student: Joey
Grade: 10
October 25, 2009
Session #7
Date: Sunday, October 25, 2009
Time: 10:30- 11:15
Location: Joey’s home
Quick Outline of Session
1. Brief Background Information
2. Goal of Tutoring Session
3. Tutoring Session Summary & Observations
4. Reading Connection/ Critical Reflections
5. Next Step
Brief Background Information:
On last week’s assessment, Joey took the Informal Phonics Inventory. Joey scored an 81,
well within the mastery level. However, because this assessment is geared for
elementary-age children, I am concerned that Joey is still quite a bit behind his
classmates. To further test his spelling ability, I plan to give him the Elementary Spelling
Inventory and Upper-Level Spelling Inventory.
Goals of the Tutoring Session:
 Elementary Spelling Inventory
 Read from The Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Tutoring Session Summary/Observations:
We began our session with the Elementary Spelling Inventory. Following the traditional
spelling test format, Joey wrote his name at the top and numbered his page (this tells me
that he is at least a little familiar with spelling tests). Though Joey got the first few words
easily correct (bed, ship, when), he misspelled ‘lump’ as “laop”. As soon as I saw he
skipped the ‘m’ I said the word again, but he failed to self-correct. The next word,
“float,” he spelled “flout”--- mixing up the vowel sounds again. In all, Joey got only 10
out of the 25 words correct. After analyzing his misspelled and correct words on the
Inventory Feature Guide, I realized that Joey got all the consonants and almost all the
short vowels, digraphs, and blends correct. His first noticeable drop was with long vowels
(3/5) and other vowels (5/7). At the syllables and affixes stage, he scored poorly on
inflected endings (1/5), unaccented final syllables (2/5), harder suffixes (1/5), and bases
or roots (1/5). The only exception to this was a surprising a 5/5 on syllable junctures.
Because Joey struggled on the Elementary Spelling Inventory, I chose not to administer
the Upper-Level Spelling Inventory.
In the last part of the session, we read from The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. We continued
trying to focus on identifying the main point vs. details. As in previous sessions, I read
first and modeled a “think aloud” Then, to help Joey visualize this better, I prepared a
graphic organizer (that I often use in my own classrooms) and some questions to help
determine whether something was the main point or a detail. Though this is still a
challenge for him, I think the graph really helped and Joey is starting to get the hang of it.
Reading Connections/ Critical Reflections:
Joey’s performance on the Elementary Spelling Inventory seems to place him (as I
thought at our last session) in the Middle-Late levels of Word Pattern. As McKenna &
Stahl (2009) state, children at this stage “(1) consistently spells words with short vowels
correctly, (2) begin to show sensitivity to patterns in words, (3) make distinctions
between long and short vowels, and (4) use long-vowel markers, although not always
correctly” (pg. 109). As evidence by his correct spelling of “bed,” “ship,” and “when”,
Joey has certainly mastered short vowels. He also seems to have mastered some longvowel sounds, having spelled “drive” and “bright” correctly. However, Joey misspelled
“float” and “train” which seems to indicate he has not fully mastered the rule. Though I
believe Joey is somewhere at the Word Pattern level, because he is an older student and
has been exposed to so many words over the years, it is a bit more difficult to pinpoint his
exact ability level and identify what he knows from his vast sight-word bank and which
spelling rules he’s actually studied and mastered.
Next Step:
In our next session, I plan to assess Joey’s oral reading fluency using the NAEP rubric. In
addition, I hope to continue working with him on his reading comprehension.