Reflection Essay

Initial assessments revealed that Cormac has strong listening comprehension and with support and explicit instruction in decoding (print skills) and sight word recognition, Cormac has the ability to read at a higher level. His strengths in certain phonics include many of the early emergent literacy skills such as letter identification and letter sound correspondence as well as initial sound identification and phoneme segmentation. He demonstrates weaknesses in sight word automaticity, effective use of the three cueing systems, and decoding unfamiliar CVC words with short vowels as well as phonograms, phoneme blending and phoneme substitution.

Within the field of education, a continuous debate about the most effective manner in which to provide reading instruction has been on-going since the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty Report of the 1960s. The primary focus of that debate is whether a skills-based approach or a meaning – based approach was most effective for teaching beginning reading skills (phonemic and phonological awareness), comprehension, and enrichment. (Frey, et.al, 2005) The silks-based or direct instruction approach to reading instruction focuses on explicit and systematic instruction of letter-sound correspondence, phonological and phonemic awareness, and their relationship to reading and comprehension. The meaning- based or balanced

Bellamy participated in the focused reading intervention Read 180 with the school reading specialist. Despite Bellamy’s excitement to personalize his learning, Bellamy has experienced limited success. Based on the individually administered Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement IV (WJ-IV), Bellamy performed in the Basie Reading Skills cluster with a standard score of 89 (low average when compared to same age peers). On the two subtests within the Basic Reading Skills cluster, Bellamy achieved the following: Letter-Word Identification- 94 (Average) and Word Attack-83 (Low Average). These scores indicate that Bellamy reads in the average to low average range when compared to his same age level peers. These tests measure sight word vocabulary, phonics application, and structural analysis skills. Currently, a consistent pattern in Bellamy’s word calling errors has not been discovered. During recent progress monitoring, Bellamy read aloud three different 100 word paragraphs at the early tenth grade level with 62% word calling accuracy. He can read and/or decode many predictable words. When using vocabulary flash cards (words in isolation) based on his reading level (early tenth grade), Bellamy could correctly identify and define 59% of the words. Each day Bellamy’s literature teacher

The first assessment we completed was Fry’s First 100 Words on October 13, 2015. On this day Peyton read 80 of the 100 words correctly and self-corrected once. When we retook this assessment with the same words on December 2, 2015, Peyton increased his number of words to 85 out of 100. During this reading Peyton took his time to sound out and segment words together. He self-corrected mispronounced words 6 times. It is apparent that having Peyton work with his special education teacher, myself and Mr. Trujillo has helped Peyton on his decoding and blending

Andrew is making steady progress in his literacy skills during Orton-Gillingham (OG) tutoring sessions. Andrew was given an informal OG assessment in late November. It was decided that Andrew would benefit from explicit, multisensory instruction starting with Level 1 concepts of the OG scope and sequence. OG lessons are divided into several sections: phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, word work, fluency and encoding (spelling).

Tyler is a 9 year old fourth grader whose independent reading level was assessed to be at the preprimer level. Initial assessments revealed that Tyler’s strengths include: using semantic and syntactic clues when reading words in context, and mastery of certain phonics elements including initial consonants, initial blends and digraphs, ending sounds, vowels, and phonograms. He demonstrated weaknesses in certain phonics applications such as blending, substitution, and vowel pronunciation, as well as comprehension and vocabulary.

During the oral reading and El Paso phonics assessment, Farrah exhibited difficulty with vowel teams, silent-e syllables, and r-controlled vowels. Therefore, intervention will focus on building Farrah’s foundational print skills through explicit phonics instruction and repeated guided practice through shared reading.

On Monday, March 22, I was given the opportunity to assess Graysen on his literacy skills. Graysen is a very sweet boy and his excitement to learn is evident. Graysen was given an assessment called a Phonological Awareness Survey, which looks at his letter and sound fluency, as well as his ability to identify compound words, syllable words, initial and final phonemes, and blending phonemes. Graysen excelled in blending and segmenting phonemes. He also showed great strength in combining syllables to form whole words. The following are some observations from the assessment. A couple of issues stood out that I will address during our weekly intervention sessions. Please find my comments below:

Reviewing all of the word families and all the phonics rules (cvc, cvce, r-controlled, ect) would help the student’s fluency even more because it would help with his reading and recognition of unknown words. Also future tutoring sessions could involve Readers Theater or echo reading of poems and short stories to foster the student’s prosody. Once the child becomes a more fluent reader he can then start to comprehend the stories he is reading. What we were doing with the student was helping, so I believe if he completed more tutoring sessions like this he would master reading fluency. Furthermore, this was also a learning experience for me. I got to see some of the literacy struggles we talked about in class first hand and I used what I learned to support the child in his learning. It is one thing learning about what to do, but it is a whole new aspect when having to apply it to a real life situation. Because of this experience I feel more confident teaching literacy, and I also gained experience working one-on-one with a child. If I had the opportunity, I would do this all over

Phonemic Awareness refers to the knowledge that spoken words can be broken apart into smaller segments of sound known as phonemes. We learned about two levels of PA, one is auditory-you can do this in the dark and the other is matching sounds to letters. Reading to children at home—especially material that rhymes—often develops the basis of phonemic awareness. Not reading to children will probably lead to the need to teach words that can be broken apart into smaller sounds. Correlational studies have identified phonemic awareness and letter knowledge as the two best school-entry predictors of how well children will learn to read during their first 2 years in school. This evidence suggests the potential instructional importance of teaching PA to

Only one third of students in the U.S. are scoring at proficient levels on reading assessments. The data from 2013 to 2015 has remained relatively unchanged with one exception – children with intellectual disabilities reading scores have actually dropped (National Report Card, 2015). The purpose of this study was to determine if evidence-based reading interventions from the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) would increase phoneme blending and segmenting skills in children who have intellectual disabilities. Two 1st grade special education students, ages 6 and 7, participated in an AB research design. Phoneme segmentation fluency and nonsense word fluency assessments (Dynamic Measurement Group, 2011) were completed at baseline and

We learn literacy through phonological practices prompted in reading development to increase fluency and comprehension (Konza, 2006). Phonological awareness concerns itself with manipulation of sound patterns related to speech and intonation and has a relationship to phonemic awareness, being the smaller components of language such as individual letter sounds (Hill, 2012). Rose recommends that synthetic phonics are needed for ‘letter-sound correspondence’, learning how words are blended and broken up for spelling and finally being able to recognize words in print, as well as singularly (2006, p. 18). Understanding of these literacy components culminate to skills required to read (National Reading Panel, 2000). Oral language is casual and elusive in syntactical meaning, so in order for children to become effective readers they need to have exposure to formal and ‘decontextualized’ language properties (Konza, 2006, p. 35). Students will not be able to associate speech to written language

Damian is a returning five year old kindergarten student on our campus. He is repeating kindergarten this year due to the lack of progress during the 2014-2015 school year. He has not shown mastery in identifying all his letters and sounds. He comes to school regularly with a positive attitude and ready to learn. He follows directions and listens to instructions always wanting to please the teacher. His smile on his face shows he is happy and content. However, he struggles academically in all content areas. He is stronger in math than in reading, yet significantly below grade level at the end of the school year. I chose Damian for this assignment because I feel that he needs extra support in phonological awareness. He works hard and could benefit from one on one instruction.

My decision on a major field of study at Western Michigan University was a process that took much thought and reflection. With my high school teachers’ strong leadership, they inspired me to possibly pursue anything as a career. The long process of finding out what I want to do with my life started in the summer when I was trying to figure out what career would best suit me for the future. Im that kind of person where I need entertainment in my life, so I narrowed it down to some jobs I can't do, such as being a business major and sitting in a office my whole life, and accounting, because I despise math. During my thinking process, I utilized what subjects I enjoyed in high school that I’d like to learn more about in college. I came to a

After the completion of these assessments, Lucy’s reading skills continuously improve by practicing reading strategies for word study that begin at the transitional long vowel patterns within word patterns stage. Word Study strategies should start as a teacher-directed two-step sort that examines the CVC,