Course: C&T 841: Early Intervention in Reading Practicum,

Title: Final Tutoring Report and Literacy Toolbox

In C&T 841: Early Intervention in Reading Practicum, I wrote a tutoring report using data I collected from a scholar I worked with for twenty minutes two or three times a week to help her improve in her decoding skills and comprehension.

In C&T 841, I also created a Literacy Toolbox that organizes the process of how to assess, plan, and deliver literacy lessons using the data collected from assessments. The reading skills and topics I discuss in detail in my Literacy Toolbox are phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, striving readers and writers, engagement and motivation, retelling narrative texts, answering questions, expository retelling, and prior knowledge and conceptual development. All of the information on this website could be used by classroom teachers, homeschool teachers, or tutors and can be used to support learners to improve their reading and writing skills.

Both artifacts meet the standards for Learning Outcome 1C because they contain lessons that connect to the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards included in both artifacts relate to reading. Within the Reading Common Core State Standards, I used phonological awareness, phonics, fluency and comprehension state standards to plan for future lessons, found in artifact #2, or lessons that I would implement with a scholar I was working with, found in artifact #1. These state standards kept me focused on how to plan lessons that would meet my scholars or scholars' needs while also meeting the standards expected by the state.

Learning Outcome 1C focuses on using and applying standards relevant to a specific context and assessing learning experiences. My final tutoring report indicates which second grade standards were focused on using certain literacy assessments and then showing the results for each assessment. The second-grade standards that were focused on were Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.10 and Phonics and Word Recognition-CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.3, and Fluency- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4.

Through this tutoring experience I was able to receive the practice I needed with implementing and assessing assessments given to beginning readers in order to find and use reading strategies that will improve their areas of need which were reading comprehension and reading fluency. So, we used the retelling strategy and would alternate from short to long texts on her reading level. We would echo read, choral read, and pause on each page to discuss what she/we read and what she sees (text and illustrations) on each page that relates to the next and helps her understand the text better.

The course C&T 841: Early Intervention in Reading Practicum focused on administering literacy assessments, analyzing those literacy assessments, and planning literacy lessons to help scholars improve their reading skills. This course gave me the opportunity to use assessments when tutoring one of my scholars, a beginning reader in my classroom. I assessed her on her attitude toward reading, phonological awareness, phonics, sight words, oral reading, and narrative retelling. After the assessments, I used the data to plan lessons that would meet her needs and meet second grade reading standards in order to help her improve on her decoding and comprehension skills while using a text at her reading level. Fortunately, I was able to see my scholar acquire and apply the strategies I taught her while she read independently. I saw her interest and enjoyment for reading improve as she practiced and learned more reading strategies that I taught her which I gathered from this course.

Throughout this course I have learned a lot about the process of how to purposefully and adequately teach reading. Having a positive reading experience motivates scholars to continue reading and improve their reading abilities. Having motivation to read is “like a reader's potential energy” (Afflerbach & Harrison, 2017). Lack or zero motivation causes difficulty for teachers to work with their scholars to help them improve their reading abilities and skills. So, using the steps, activities, and differentiation strategies in my Literacy Toolbox can be a good starting point for teachers and scholars. After C&T 841, I have a better understanding of how to assess scholars in order to meet their needs so they can build on their reading skills and become strong readers.

References

Afflerbach, P. & Harrison, C. (2017). What is engagement, how is it different from motivation and how can I promote it? Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 62 (2). p. 217-220.

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards. Washington, DC: Authors