Assessments
Assessments administered to Sophie were the DAR, DIBELS, Johns Early Literacy
Assessments, Yopp-Singer, Early Star and running records were completed at each session for
the reread and new read. I also completed a portion of the Clay Observational Survey of Early
Literacy Achievement (Letter Identification). I found the chapter on running records in the Clay
Observational Study text to be very helpful in learning more about scoring and analyzing running
records. Using the information gained from these assessments, as well as observing Sophie, I
implemented lesson plans for our tutoring sessions.
Summary
Sophie began tutoring in February with an understanding of directionality when looking
at a text and the parts of a book, including the table of contents and glossary if it is present. She
handled a book correctly and could point to the title and author on the cover. She could identify
all the letters and letter sounds but often confused –i and –e short vowel sounds when writing
words. Sophie was very good at segmenting words, but lacked confidence in her ability to put
them together after segmenting. Her first running record indicated she lacked a voice to print
connection, rather she told a story using the visual content in the book. She was limited in her
sight word identification, reading only I, a, and am. She was competent in first sound fluency
(FSF) and scored a 43, which is two points away from being established at the middle of the year.
She began the year with a score of 0 in FSF. Sophie began tutoring in the inventive spelling stage.
She often left out vowels or write “t” for “d.” She lacked confidence in both reading and writing,
often creating very detailed illustrations to make up for the lack of words on her paper. She is
very good at making text connections when listening and discussing texts in class.
I administered multiple assessments prior to tutoring. The DAR results reflected what I
was observing. Sophie did not master the print awareness checklist due to her lack of
understanding where a sentence ends and matching print word length to the length of the spoken
word. Sophie scored very high on the Literacy Knowledge assessment by Johns, missing only
those questions relating to her ability to frame a sentence. She can identify a period and
exclamation mark, but does not stop when reading. The information obtained from the Clay
Observational Study indicated the same results. With this knowledge I began lessons teaching
her to point to each word and stop when she saw ending punctuation.
Sophie did very well on the Johns wordless picture reading. She can create a wonderful
story using visual clues. This was evident in her first running record as well. Understanding that
Sophie uses mostly visual cues when reading will be important information when choosing a text.
Sophie sounded out the words cat, pat, big, and pets when reading The Cat from the Johns book.
When reading The Red Hen she continued sounding out words red, hen, sat, get, did, and had. I
read both passages to Sophie so she could answer the comprehension questions. Comprehension
is a strength of Sophies. Sophie sounded out four of the ten words from the Basic Word
Knowledge list in the Johns book. She could only read “a” with automaticity. Since there are
many sight words in the Johns’ passages and word list, our sessions will include focusing on
learning sight words and reading them with automaticity.
Sophie mastered all levels of phonological awareness on the DAR, which also was
indicative of what Sophie’s DIBELS scores implied. Sophie’s middle of the year DIBELS score
for phoneme segmentation was 60, which is established. I also used the Yopp-Singer assessment
and Sophie scored a 22/22. Knowing Sophie mastered segmentation would allow me to use this
skill as a reading strategy for unknown words. When Sophie would come across an unknown
word, she learned to ask herself, “What do I know about this word?” to help her decode. She
used her knowledge of initial sounds and segmenting the words to help her. As the tutoring
progressed, Sophie was able to look at words and find sight words within words and look at
blends and suffixes instead of sounding out every letter. Continuing to use this strategy will help
Sophie become a more confident, successful reader.
Sophie also mastered letters and sounds on the DAR, which complemented the results of
the Johns Early Literacy Assessment of alphabetic knowledge and the Letter Identification
portion of the Clay Observational Study. Sophie scored 26/26 on both upper and lower case letter
naming for the Johns and 54 on the Clay. In regards to her DIBELS score for letter naming
fluency, Sophie ranked in the far below category at the middle of the year. While she can name
the letters, naming them quickly was not an area of strength for her. She ended the year with a 60,
which is emerging. Not naming them at a rate of 89 letters per minute (established at end of year)
does not seem to impede her ability to decode words. In regards to the Clay Study, Sophie did
well giving words with the initial sound of a letter I indicated to her. Understanding this
information will allow us to move from any work with letter naming to using what she knows to
decode words.
Sophie’s Early Star scaled score increased from the beginning of the year and by March
her score indicated she was a late emergent reader. There is a problem with the program and
students have not been able to complete end of year testing, but once it is running I feel confident
Sophie’s score will indicate she has progressed to a transitional reader.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Throughout the twenty-five tutoring sessions, Sophie made gains in sight word
recognition, reading more than 50% of her words with automaticity and recognizing 70% of the
words in print. This is a huge gain from only reading three words when we began. She has begun
to cross check for information and is relying less on visual cues when reading. One example of
this was when asked how she knew the word was hen and not chicken. She replied that the word
began with “h” and chicken began with “ch.” The same was true for horse when she was asked
why the word was not pony since the picture looked like a pony. She replied that pony begins
with “p” and horse begins with “h.” Using what she knows about a word has been one of the
most meaningful strategies for her. She will ask herself this as she reads and gets stuck on a word.
She will also ask herself after reading and making an error, “Did that make sense?” She has
begun to self-correct more as she reads. She is very bright in regards to comprehension. She
regularly scores high on her accelerated reader quizzes and has taken 57 quizzes since October
and passed 55 of them with few scores lower than a 4/5.
Her writing has improved drastically since the start of the year. When Sophie arrived in
kindergarten she could not write her name. She quickly caught on to forming letters, but they had
no meaning to her. Now Sophie eagerly participates in our daily classroom free write. Writing
was one of the things she enjoyed about tutoring and the more sight words she was able to
read/recognize, the better her writing became. She was consistent throughout tutoring with
always beginning a sentence with an upper case letter and using ending punctuation. Spacing
was also good and most letters are formed appropriately.
As Sophie is promoted to first grade there are several recommendations I would make.
First, Sophie needs to continue to feel successful when reading. She needs to be reminded that
good beginning readers point to the words and know when to stop. As Sophie gains confidence
in reading, she will need to read text that has more meaning and less visual cues for her to rely
on. Since she relies heavily on visual cues, structure and meaning can be an after thought. She
will need to use the strategies that will help her make meaning of a text, using both structure and
meaning cues. Continued practice with sight words will be important, but alternative ways of
learning them instead of using flash cards alone should be implemented. I am recommending that
Sophie be put in a general education classroom and be pulled out for Title 1 services. Being a
part of a small group and hearing what fluent readers sound like will be helpful to her. Sophie
will also need some work with syllables. While she can segment words very well, the DAR
indicated she had little understanding of syllables. Sophie has begun to read with expression and
accurately. She will need to continue to practice reading fluently.