Christina Lantero CI 475 Individual Child Project Literacy Environment Observation: The classrooms literature lessons are split

into many different activities. Because this is a first grade classroom, the students are working on beginning reading skills, and therefore do not have quite as much time for independent reading time all by themselves. Instead, Mrs. Mink has the class time divided into many different periods of reading activities. The students have some time for Daily 5 everyday, and typically go through three rotations This is when they choose from activities such as partner reading, listening to a book on tape, writing spelling words on whiteboards, spelling them out with magnetic letters, or writing them on the Smartboard, reading independently on the carpet, or completing reading games on the computer. While all of this is going on, Mrs. Mink has students come to the back table for guided reading time. She normally gets through two or three groups in the 60-80 minutes, but the time is split-up by either specials or RTI, which can cause some awkward gaps in guided reading time. Every time she switches reading groups, she also has the students switch the stations they were at so that they are not working on the same activity all morning. Besides Daily Five, the class also completes Haggerty readings, spelling pages, Reading Street textbook stories, quizzes and vocabulary, and science lessons that incorporate non-fiction texts. After the three week fall break, my coop has now decided to move Daily 5 and reading to the afternoon, after lunch instead of first thing in the morning. She did this because she did not like how chopped up the reading time was and found that she could fit both math and science into the morning schedule, and reading in the afternoon and it made for a less stressful and more

fluid school day. The students have adapted very quickly to having math in the morning and reading in the afternoon, and seem more engaged throughout the day with the new structure.

Individual Child Observation: Parker, the child I observed individually, was a student that my teacher recommended I record, observe, and interview him based on his reading fluency and comprehension rates. I was able to observe Parker at many of the different Daily Five stations, which gave me great insight into his interests and strengths. He worked on the SmartBoard one day and spelled out each child in the classrooms name, and then stuck to repeating a certain few names over and over again. He spelled the words: dust, huge, state, spelling, sack and when, while I was observing him another day on the Smartboard. The book-on-tape area is directly next to the Smartboard, and many times Parker would stop spelling to stand and listen to the story that other students were listening to. On the computers, Parker would choose different stories to listen to, and many times they would match the same story that the other child at the second computer was listening to as well. Parker would also choose to read independently on the carpet or at his desk spelling out words on a whiteboard. He never chose to read with a partner, listen to the book on tape with a partner, write words on the window, or spell out words with magnetic letters. During guided reading time, Parker would participate and listen to the teachers instructions. He was always quiet at the beginning of the lessons, but would become more vocal as the lesson progressed and he became more familiar with the text. He was always the first or second student done reading his book, as well. He also wrote down all of the sentences Mrs. Mink modeled for them in his literacy notebook. She would model for them by having them help

her come up with sentences and then write them out on her own whiteboard. Then, she would have the students copy down what she had written in their notebooks. Furthermore, when given the option to illustrate the poems in his poetry binder, Parker would always choose this activity over the other Daily 5 options, such as, partner reading, read to self, writing spelling words, listening to book on tape etc... He would sit coloring for the whole time if Mrs. Mink did not remind him to switch stations. He would often share his pictures with the student who sat next to him, and his pictures always correlated with the poems plot or message.

Student Interviews: The student acknowledged an interest in reading books by saying he enjoyed reading. He also stated that he had over 100 books, and that he has read over sixteen books in the last six months. Furthermore, he enjoys reading fantasy, science fiction, biographies, and adventure books. He stated that he also likes to read on the computer and chooses his books based on whether or not theyre fantasy books, or have good pictures. He has read books twice, but only in class. He provided the example of the President book. His favorite author is Dr. Seuss and he likes to read about characters like the Cat in the Hat. He talks about what he reads with his parents, but he couldnt remember the last good book he read. His favorite T.V. show is called Trains, and his favorite movie is Cars 2. He considers himself a good reader because he reads a lot, but considers reading hard because if the words are too big he says he gets mixed up. He also loves to have the teacher read to him, especially the book about space.

Reading Conferences:

I conducted two reading conferences with Parker. The first conference was when he read a book called, Monty, the Missing Cat. He stated that he chose this book because his dads brother has a cat. It was a book he had read many times before and was from his personal reading box in the classroom. He considered the book Easy and finished reading it within five minutes with no mistakes, skipped words, or mispronunciations. He did have to slowly sound out both find and lost. He was able to summarize the story succinctly at both points where we paused, but retold lots of the story instead of summarizing. The second reading conference was about a book called, Brave Triceratops which was another book from Parkers leveled reading box. He chose this book because he liked the pictures and felt like it was just right for him. He finished this book in 8 minutes and was able to summarize the story, but he took more time sounding out some of the longer words like triceratops and tyrannosaurus rex. Whenever he made a mistake though, he was quick to self-correct. Some of the words he struggled to sound out included triceratops and tyrannosaurus. He also gave more commentary during this book, providing comments like, Call me Mr. Steak cause Im meat and Im almost done.

Running Records: I completed two running records with Parker; one before the break and one after. I decided to conduct an extra running record because I felt that I did not have enough data to access his strengths and weaknesses after the first one was completed. The first running record was taken using a book that Parker chose from his personal guided reading box, and a book that he had read previously. He made very few mistakes, only inserting one and and self-correcting twice on the names of the dinosaurs. Based on this data, he finished with a 99.4% accuracy rate. Because his score was so high, I felt that I needed another piece of data to accurately access his reading

abilities and provide any recommendations. The second running record I completed after three week break. This time I chose the book with the help of my cooperating teacher, and made sure to pick a book I thought would be slightly challenging due to the amount of text and vocabulary words used. I also was sure to choose a book that he had not read because I wanted see how he would do with a new text. During the second running record, Parker made 5 errors out of 264 words. That is an error rate of 1 in 53 words and an accuracy rate of ninety-eight percent. He had two mispronunciations and three insertions. The words he mispronounced were ate (he said at) and flour (he said floor). The insertions were all putting the word the before Little Red Hen. He mentioned at one point that he wished they would just put a the in front of Little Red Hen because they do it for the other animals and he didnt understand why they wouldnt do it for the hen too. I was stunned at how high of an accuracy rate Parker had when reading this book. For a first time reading a more difficult book with more text, and to still have a 98% accuracy rate was surprising to me.

Discussion: Parker is an enthusiastic and engaging reader and student, but he takes some time to come out of his shell and involve himself in group settings. He is much more talkative and lively during a one-on-one session then during a guided reading session. He takes his time when sounding out words he may not know and self-corrects his errors. He was able to summarize the stories after having completed, but his summarizes tended to be lengthy. He would also insert his own comments or questions while reading, showing interaction and engagement with the text. Finally, he expressed a love for reading and being read to.

I observed Parker using decoding strategies such as looking at the pictures for clues, committing hard names like triceratops and tyrannosaurus to memory after reading them a few times, and chunking big words. He struggled with summarizing the stories after reading, although he did comprehend the stories. It was difficult for him to retell the stories in shortened ways without repeating the story word for word. When reading the Little Red Hen he used all of the same decoding strategies, and continued to struggle with summarizing the main points.

Recommendations: My first instructional recommendation is that Parker should be reassessed by Mrs. Mink to make sure that he is still in the correct guided reading group for his level of ability. He scored very highly in both of the running records I took with him using his current level of books and a more challenging text. I would be interested to see if he would score as highly in a group setting reading as challenging a book as the second running record. Although I know it is hard to pull students out for one-on-one time due to time constraints, I would also recommend that my cooperating teacher try to pull Parker out for more one-on-one sessions when able. This would decrease some of the group anxiety that Parker has when reading during guided groups. I would also recommend that my cooperating teacher work more with Parker on fluency. He is able to comprehend the text, but he reads with little to no expression and takes frequent breaks, not always paying attention to punctuation. I believe it would also benefit Parker if Mrs. Mink paired him with one other partner to read with instead of reading only by himself or in groups. I think partner reading would be less stressful for him, but he would still get the fluency practice of reading out loud to a partner which he would miss out on if always reading by himself. Finally, I will improve his literacy skills by working with him on summarizing skills. His comprehension

skills are good, as he is understanding the stories and answering the questions correctly, but his ability to pick the main points out of the text to create a comprehensible story can still use some improvement. I think the best way to work with Parker on this would be to continue to have him write summaries in his reading journal by discussing three main points from the stories orally and then having him write the three main points out in his journal. Instead of having him write full sentences, he should write in bullet points to begin with just to come up with the main ideas and focus on pulling the main points out, and not worrying about writing complete and correct sentences. Once he has this mastered, then we can move on to full sentences. Parker is definitely on the right track, and with a few tweaks to his lessons and a little more attention I believe he can catch up to the reading levels of the other students in no time.