The Nice Little House

I am very close friends with Shannon’s mom having worked with her previously. She described her daughter as an avid reader and stated that she does well in English in school. Shannon described some of the texts she had read and we had a brief discussion about our favorite book series before administering the test. Shannon was rather quiet during the testing waiting for my cues before responding or expounding on anything. Overall she did very well on the 9th grade informal reading assessment. Her reading accuracy was very high, with only miscues on unfamiliar names like “Trotula di Ruggerio” and “Salerno” which she was able to sound out. She had some challenges with the inference based questions, such as “Why would people be likely to regard ‘wise woman teacher’ as a good name for Trotula?”. Shannon was in the ballpark for this answer although her response could have been more concise.

The baseline data was established using the Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System (BAS). This test assesses reading comprehension through the process of students reading a text at the appropriate instructional reading level and answering comprehension questions. This assessment tool measures students' ability for accuracy, self correction, fluency, comprehension, and writing. An overall level score is given through a letter identification, A-Z. For the baseline data purpose the letters A-Z were numbered off 1-26 to give the students' scores an adequate numerical score. The assessment determines whether students exceed expectations, meet expectations, approaches expectations, or does not meet expectation. A third-grade student at the

This study followed three procedures: (1) the Burke Reading Interview (BRI) (Burke, 1987), (2) a Reading Miscue Inventory (RMI) (Goodman, 1973b), and (3) a Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) (Goodman, Y. & Marek, 1996). In the forthcoming sections, I will explain in detail the protocols required for each of these procedures.

At the middle school level, it is difficult to administer extensive interminable assessments, when you are trying to determine readability for over 100 students. Many middle school teachers rely on the NWEA/MAP assessment and “Standard of Learning” to provide them with their student’s Lexile levels and readability. The problem with using data from the NWEA/MAP assessment and SOL scores is that teachers only have data from the previous year and are unable to assess the factors that contributed to the students testing scores. A quick and easy assessment that can be given the first week of school, which takes 10 minutes or less and shows word recognition as well as readability is the San Diego Quick Assessment.

The student I worked with is in 5th grade. We did a DRA on a story called “Cry Foul”. This is a great assessment to assess a student’s reading ability in order to enhance his or her literacy achievement. I learned many things about my student that he likes to read adventurous books and books regarding sports. He wants to become a better reader by enhancing his understanding and vocabulary of the text. It’s also a bit difficult for him since English is his second language and a year ago he was taking ESL classes. It’s amazing that he has great goal settings that determines that he wants to become a better reader. The things that I observed about the student is that his oral reading is fluent since he had about three miscues in which one was

Addison read a narrative and an expository passage at Level P, “Plenty of Pets” a narrative passage and then an expository passage, “Animal Instincts”. Addison read both passages with 96% and 99% accuracy respectively. She scored satisfactory on both passages. When reading Level Q, she read a nonfiction passage, “Not Too Cold for a Polar Bear” with 97% accuracy and excellent comprehension. At Level R, she read with 95% accuracy and satisfactory for comprehension, although it is deliberate and arduous. However, when Addison read a narrative and expository text Level S, “Could Be Worse” and “Amazing Animal Adaptations”, reading both passages below 95% accuracy. When considering a fluency score, Addison primarily reads in three and four word groups, however it is not smooth and lacks expression with a slow rate most of the time. Aimweb progress monitoring data were considered to determine Addison’s correct word per minutes. According to the data, Addison’s word recognition skills significantly impacts her ability to read fluently, thus causing frustration. She is currently being progressed monitored at a third grade level, indicating she falls near the thirty third percentile when compared to third grade students nationally, reading a median of 109 correct words per minute.

Reading Fluency Composite: This portion of the test had three sections. In one section, she read actual words as quickly as possible. Next, she read made up words as quickly as possible. Finally, Lisa needed to read the sentence and answer if it was correct or incorrect. Lisa scored below average on each of these tests, which shows she has difficulty in reading quickly, which will result in having difficulty keeping up in the classroom due to the amount and speed of reading that is expected.

The documentary, The House I Live in, explains how drug use is a social problem and gives statists on whether the war on drugs is effective or not. Some say the war on drugs is very effective and it helping with society, others believe the total opposite that the war on drugs has no effect on society. Since 1971, the rate of illegal drug use has remained unchanged, but with that being said the war on drugs has resulted in more than forty-five million arrests. The war on drugs has cost over one trillion dollars so far to run. This makes many people believe that it is a waste of tax money. When Nixon was president, he compromised two-thirds of his budget to fund treatments and rehabilitation centers instead of putting money directly into law enforcement. During the time, the rehabilitation programs were working miracles. The programs kept many individuals from going back to jail and most importantly helped them stay away from drugs. These programs did not last long because the resources to keep the programs running became scarce. Taxpayers also did not like the programs, many rather pay for individuals who are doing drugs to be placed behind bars. Not only does the war on drugs have many positive contributions that come along with it; but it also has an equal amount of negatives. Therefore, the war on drugs is a running epidemic. The effectiveness of the war on drugs is unchangeable due to the targeting of class and race, police officers unwillingness to change drug

Addison read a narrative and an expository passage at Level P, “Plenty of Pets” a narrative passage and then an expository passage, “Animal Instincts”. Addison read both passages with 96% and 99% accuracy respectively. She scored satisfactory on both passages. When reading Level Q, she read a nonfiction passage, “Not Too Cold for a Polar Bear” with 97% accuracy and excellent comprehension. At Level R, she read with 95% accuracy and satisfactory for comprehension, although it is deliberate and arduous. However, when Addison read a narrative and expository text Level S, “Could Be Worse” and “Amazing Animal Adaptations”, reading both passages below 95% accuracy. When considering a fluency score, Addison primarily reads in three and four word groups, however it is not smooth and lacks expression with a slow rate most of the time. Aimweb progress

Sebastian was provided with 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. In the 4th grade passage Sebastian read the passage in 1 minute and did not miss words, placing him at an independent level for reading, comprehension, and retelling of the passage. In the 5th grade passage, Sebastian missed two words, he reversed the word “everyone” with “everytime” and the word “with” with “what.” This placed him at independent reading, comprehension and retelling of the passage level in reading. Lastly, in the 6th grade reading passage, Sebastian substituted 4 words and did not read the suffix of -ed for 1 word. Sebastian read “colossal” as “caleal,” “Eldwood’s’ as “Edward’s,” “felt” as “fell,” and “clothing” as “learning.” The word that Sebastian omitted the -ed from was “riled” instead he read it as “rile.” The errors indicated that Sebastian was at an instructional level in reading. In the comprehension questions, he missed 1 question which placed him at an independent reading level. As for retelling the passage, he was also placed at an independent level.

Reading fluency is considered an integral component of the reading process and it has a big presence in the classroom. Its importance became evident since the National Reading Panel (2000) pronounced fluency instruction and assessment an essential and was thus incorporated into the reading First guidelines of No Child Left Behind in 2002 (Shelton, Altwerger, &Jordan, 2009). Reading fluency has been defined in many ways; an outcome of decoding and comprehension, a contributor to both decoding and comprehension, the ability to recognize words rapidly and accurately, the connections

Looking at the QRI-6 passage, Brakke is a good reader. He didn’t miss any of the words, and for being a first grader, 75 WPM seems decently fast to me. There were no hesitations when reading the passage either. When I asked him the concept questions, it was just the first question that he didn’t know or didn’t want to answer. The question was, “What is a Mom?” and he just kept on saying, “I don’t know.” I think maybe he just didn’t want to say the wrong thing or didn’t think he had a good enough answer, so he didn’t want to say. The other two questions, though, he answered just fine, so he understood those. After asking him to retell the story to me, he provided half of the answers listed down, so I can tell that he comprehends and remembers what he reads, because most of the ones that he did miss were just repeats of saying, “Just like Mom,” and he only said that once, which is awesome that he remembered to at least say it one time. He also did a great job answering the other five questions after reading the passage, which were comprehension questions. He got all but one of the questions right, and because they were all explicit answers, that shows me that he remembers what he reads.

Designing an individual intervention to increase reading fluency requires completion of assessments that will determine the child’s reading strengths and weaknesses. An inaccurate reader needs direct instruction on improving word recognition, which may include sight words and decodable words (which rules is the student not applying) at their instructional level. Once the goals have been established, in this case fluency, the intervention will begin with an introduction on fluency and word recognition.

Many students are passed on through the education system without having proper reading skills. These skills consist of fluency, comprehension, and phonemic awareness. Reading skills are foundational building blocks for elementary aged students. Students who lack proper reading skills, such as fluency or the rate in which they read, will ultimately lack comprehension of what they are reading due to the amount of time in which it takes the students to read. This leads to the question, how does fifth grade students lack of fluency affect his or her reading comprehension? Unfortunately, because reading skills taught in kindergarten and first grade focus mainly on phonemic

When data from students who had average accuracy and fluency scores, but lower comprehension scores were compared to data from those with similar accuracy and fluency but average comprehension, the consistent differences were found to be lower oral language and vocabulary skills in the poor comprehenders upon entry into formal schooling. (Nation, Cocksey, Taylor & Bishop) Thousands of dollars each year are spent on intervention, trying to improve the reading of children that show delays. When one reads, the clear goal is comprehension of what is read. Without communication of ideas between the author and reader, decoding texts is pointless. Most intervention programs are focused on phonics and word decoding. Oral language interventions concurrent with vocabulary and comprehension tasks at age eight have been shown to lead to significant improvements in reading comprehension. (Nation, et al., 2010). Reading comprehension is not merely a product of being able to decode words and sentences. How we teach children to process and integrate the ideas found in text can have a large impact on their ability to function in a world of ever expanding knowledge and information.