Final Literacy Profile
For Alexia
By Nazima Ally
Spring 2010
This artifact is included in my portfolio because it is the culmination of much of what I have
learned throughout the Literacy Program. I was required to conduct pre-assessment, intervention, and
post assessment and then analyze and evaluate the student’s progress. This study was instructional for me
as a literacy educator because I was required to create instruction that scaffolded the student’s literacy
development. Achieving this required much thought and creativity. This component of the literacy
program was essential to my own development as a literacy instructor.
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Background
Alexia Phillips is a petite twelve-year-old girl who lives in Queens, New York.
She attends the East West School for International Studies and is in the seventh
grade. Alexia is soft spoken, and at our first meeting, she was very friendly and
candid about her academic interests and her family.
Alexia is an only child, who lives with her mother and grandparents. She
pointed out that her father is absent from her life, but she did not elaborate. Though
ethnically a Punjabi, Alexia speaks only English. She gives much credit to her mother
for her academic success. She explained that her mother is her source of
encouragement and support.
Alexia indicated that her favorite subject in school is math and that she does
well in this area with an average above 80. However, despite being an avid reader,
English is her least favorite subject. She complained that her grades in English are
always lower than other subject areas, and she identified writing as the area of highest
difficulty. However, despite struggling with learning Chinese, she still enjoys the
class.
At the same time, Alexia expressed a strong interest in her cultural
background, particularly East Indian dance, music, and films. She also likes drawing
and painting, which she feels she inherited from her maternal grandmother, who
paints. Alexia likes reading mysteries, and she indicated that she would like to
pursue art in high school.
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Reading Profile
On February 11, 2010, using Leslie and Caldwell’s (2006) Qualitative Reading
Inventory-4, an initial IRI was administered to assess Alexia’s reading strengths and
weaknesses. Results from the pre-test data indicated that Alexia was a proficient
reader for her age and level. She accurately identified the words on the graded word
lists all the way up to the High school level. Even when given the high school level
graded word list, Alexia performed well, scoring 95 percent accuracy at this level. This
indicated her Independent Word Recognition level as High School. This was far
advanced of her current grade seven word identification level. The ease with which
she identified the words suggested that her phonemic awareness and decoding skills
were exceptional.
Alexia’s success and ease with word identification, also translated itself into the
oral reading and comprehension passages. Since her independent word recognition
level was at the high school level, the starting point for the oral reading passages was
sixth grade. The miscue analyses revealed that her word identification skill continued
to be of a high level – producing eight miscues at the high school level, indicating an
accuracy of over 90 percent, and therefore, her independent level. Also, her miscues
were high level miscues, not changing the meaning of the passages. Her miscues were
mostly omission of prepositions and plurals, and insertions of definite articles and the
conjunction /and/.
When it came to comprehension, however, Alexia’s independent level was at the
upper middle school, accurately answering nine out of ten questions. This suggested
that she was at grade level for reading comprehension. At the high school level, she
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answered seven out of ten questions accurately, indicating her instructional level. The
kinds of errors in comprehension were mostly with implicit questions demanding the
student to make inferences. This data suggested that though Alexia’s comprehension
level was on grade level, further instruction in critical thinking that would allow her to
make inferences on a higher level would scaffold her learning even further. At the
same time, without looking back, Alexia recalled many details from the passages,
suggesting that she possessed an excellent short term memory.
During testing, Alexia seemed to be at ease. She smiled at times when she
came across a concept with which she was familiar, and at other times, she would just
look up to point out something interesting from the passage. Her behavior while
reading revealed that she was quite comfortable with the process. However, stamina
may have been an issue with her as she kept asking how much more she would have
to read during the testing. This became quite apparent by the time she reached the
high school level; at this level she remembered few of the details in the retelling. In
addition, her behavior while reading raised the question of familiarity with the text.
Since she had been participating in the program for quite a while, she may have been
familiar with the texts. While Alexia demonstrated many strengths in reading,
particularly with word identification and retelling, as well as with explicit
comprehension questions, one area emerged as a challenge – vocabulary meaning.
Consequently, the following lessons were implemented:
The first lesson focused on vocabulary development using the strategy of context clues
in a graphic organizer to help her determine meaning of unfamiliar words. This lesson
went well as Alexia practiced rephrasing unknown words in sentences with known
words and checking its logic. The second lesson continued the focus on context clues,
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asking the student to respond in writing to higher level thinking questions – analysis,
synthesis, and application. The student indicated that she liked using context clues
to figure out meaning and is one that she would implement when reading. The third
lesson also focused on using the text to make inferences about characters. However, a
visual strategy was introduced to help the student draw inferences. The student was
required to interact with the text by highlighting and making notes to herself.
Following this, she created a visual as a representation of the characteristics of a
particular character. The student enjoyed applying this literacy strategy because it
incorporated an area in which she was interested – art. The next three lessons
focused on writing strategies, but on April 29th, the student did a comparison of two
texts by highlighting areas in the second text that reminds her of what she heard in
the first text. The student was very engaged in the reading because it explored issues
that were close to her heart – world poverty and immigrants. She highlighted and
discussed ideas with the tutors as she read.
After several sessions of working with Alexia to further her reading and writing
skills, a post assessment was implemented on May 13th , to evaluate her progress.
Once again, reading passages from Leslie and Caldwell’s (2006) text, Qualitative
Reading Inventory – 4 was used. The assessment began with the sixth grade reading
passage: “Early Life of Lois Lowry.” The graded word list was not required because the
student had mastered all the words in the pre-assessment. The student did not make
any miscues during the reading, and she recalled much of the ideas in the retelling
and her answers to the comprehension questions were accurate, putting her at the
independent level with sixth grade. Due to time constraints, the examiner moved up
the reading to the high school level passage: “Where the Ashes Are – Part 2.” The
student made four miscues, which did not affect the meaning of the text, and putting
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her at an independent word recognition level at the high school level. However, her
performance in comprehension at the high school level was not as successful. She
answered seven out of ten questions accurately, putting her comprehension at an
instructional level with the high school passage. These results indicated that when it
came to reading, Alexia did not make much progress from when she was initially
assessed. Initially, high school was her instructional level in comprehension, and this
did not change. However, a slight improvement was noted in the number of miscues
that she made – fewer than she did originally. It should be noted that Alexia was
already reading above her current grade level, so for progress to be made in this area,
consistent higher level comprehension instruction and practice would be needed
Writing Profile
An initial writing sample was collected from the student during the second
lesson on March 4, 2010. This writing sample was obtained in response to critical
thinking questions based on a reading passage. It was noted that the student wrote
the minimum and did not elaborate or go back to the text to add examples to the
writing. Therefore, it was determined that the student needs to change her
perspective of writing as a one time activity and more as a process that required deep
thought. Consequently, the goal of the fourth lesson was to use a visual to model the
components of a developed writing piece. The student was introduced to writing as a
process and so for this lesson, she focused on brainstorming ideas for her narrative
which she would develop the following week. Once again Alexia stalled the writing
process with her continuous discussion of the day’s events. By the end of the session,
she had brainstormed a few ideas and written the first few sentences of the
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introduction. This lesson continued the next session that the tutor met with the
student – April 15th. During the fifth lesson, the student was urged to complete her
initial thoughts on paper by going back to the outline on the planning page. She was
also encouraged to look back at the modeled writing and how the tutor revised a three
line paragraph and enhanced it by adding more sensory images and stronger
vocabulary. This lesson continued for another session (April 22nd). For the final
writing lesson, the student was provided with a model for editing written work and
encouraged to apply these strategies to her own writing. Finally, after three sessions,
the student had a completed written piece that was well developed in content. She
expressed her pride in her work and was very happy with how she had learned to
develop and edit her writing.
For the last two sessions with the student, she was encouraged to write about
her observations of an idea that was evident in her school community. This type of
writing required her to compare what she observed to what she read in a text. This
activity served as a post assessment of her writing skills. Her writing showed much
improvement from her initial pieces. She now used a planning page to jot down her
initial thoughts, and she also revisited the text that she had highlighted in order to do
a comparison. She seemed much more comfortable with the process now than she did
before, which in itself is an achievement because she constantly pointed out that
writing was her weakest area. However, she would still need to practice using the
written text to develop her own ideas further. Continuous practice would make her
even more comfortable with writing and provide a medium for her to deliberate all the
wonderful ideas she likes to discuss.
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Observed Lesson
Our student, Alexia, was absent on April 8, 2010, so the tutor observed a
literacy lesson conducted by two other tutors. The objective of this lesson was for the
student to use a graphic organizer to develop and expand his ideas when writing. The
student was responding to a prompt from a text by Ray Bradbury. The tutors revisited
with the student the writing he began the previous week. They explained that his
ideas were good, but that he needed to develop those more and to be able to do so at a
steadier pace. To help him practice the skill of expanding his ideas, the tutors
introduced a graphic organizer that required the student to list keywords for major
ideas and three details for each of those ideas, on which he would then elaborate.
Though the tutors interacted constantly with the student to help him think
about ideas that pertained to discrimination, it was a painstakingly slow process as
the student kept thinking and questioning each idea and wanting to write in complete
sentences rather than keywords. The tutors noted that his lack of practice with
identifying keywords may be a reason he is struggling with the state tests. They
decided that this would be a skill that he needed to develop and something on which
they could focus future lessons.
Observing this lesson, the tutor agreed with the other two tutors that the ability
to summarize ideas in keywords is a necessary skill for success at state exams and
that it is something on which they can focus future lessons. However, the tutor liked
the idea of the detailed graphic organizer that allowed the student to list both main
ideas and supporting details which he would use later to develop into a well organized
essay. Based on the pace at which the student was working, it would probably take
another two lessons for this student to complete his writing. This tutor thinks that it
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would be a good idea for the tutors to reiterate that it was acceptable to just put all
initial ideas down and then revise and edit later, so that the student begins to get an
idea of writing as a process. Perhaps next time the tutors can use the writing cycle to
demonstrate how writing is a process and not a one time activity.