SELF-ASSESSMENT

Tutor: Ashley Henderson

Tutee: Billy
Reflective Journal: Coming in to tutoring Billy, I had heard from Eliza (who tutors him once a
week through another program) that he was extremely hyperactive and had trouble focusing. In
the first few weeks, I found Billy to be slightly hyperactive, but he was well behaved. He was
funny and liked to tell jokes and make faces. He was a typical goofy first grader and I enjoyed
working with him. In fact, he loved working with the assessment flashcards. He thought the
flashcards were really cool because they were color coded and he could put them in order when
we finished. He felt that he was my little helper and he thought this was fun. When the
assessments ended, he I later found out that due to family situations, Billy does not get to sleep
until late, so he struggles on Wednesday mornings when I come to tutor him at 8:15am. On the
first day (March 25th), Billy yelled that he hated reading and stormed out of the room in a pout
only to throw himself on the floor. I was so discouraged. I felt like a complete failure. I am
supposed to be a special education teacher and my education has focused on working with
behavioral management, but I was failing. On this particular day, Billy was screaming, fake
crying and rolling on the floor. I had the opportunity to meet the Vice Principal because she had
to be called after the teacher and teaching assistant were unable to get Billy to participate. In
looking back, I probably should have realized that something was going on for Billy, but at the
time it felt like it was my fault. I knew he thought the program was boring. He had stated it on
more than one occasion, but I should have thought beyond that simple answer. In the last few
weeks, I was so excited to work with Billy. His attitude and behavior had changed significantly
and he reminded me of the little boy I worked with at the beginning of the semester. He was
excited to work with the assessment flashcards and he was willing to read. He told me stories
about his home life and he even tried to give me directions (it was really cute!). Although it is
unrelated to the actual tutoring process, I learned this semester how important it is to know your
student on more than just the academic level. Having that background information allows you to
work with your student to meet their needs, especially if they may not be met at home or if
something is going on at home outside the control of your student. Children are so affected by
the world around them and this just doesnt affect their home life, it comes into the school. As a
whole, I was curious about what exactly was being learned in the classroom. A lot of times I
would have liked to align my work with things he was learning, so it would be a consistent
pattern and continuing practices that he knew with additional support. We learned about strategy
instruction this semester and I think it would be helpful to implement this time of practice
through UFLI in the new reading section, but have it align with what he is doing in class. This
way he would be able to understand the work was universal.
Self-assessment Summary: Interestingly enough, the actual reading is my strength. I enjoy
reading a book with the students. For me, practicing reading significantly improved my reading
skills as a first grade student. As such, I think it is so important for a child to enjoy reading. So
much can be learned from reading about the world and also about yourself. If a child can enjoy
reading, they can always feel safe; they have an escape from the world. That is why I enjoy
walking through a book with a student: What do you think is going to happen in this story?
What is going on in this picture? Did our predictions come true? I struggled with the writing for
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reading section, which could be why Billy failed to participate. In the beginning, the sentences
were rather strange. I know Billy needed to work with the words and Elkonin boxes would have
been helpful, but I felt awkward showing him how to use them. I definitely need to improve my
skills with Elkonin boxes. In the future, I would like to start with chips that slide into the boxes
and then work our way up to breaking apart the word. This way he is used to the practice and it
is not just all of a sudden teaching him to break apart the word in boxes. We worked through
sounding out words a lot, but I think I became too helpful. Oftentimes, Billy would look at me
when sounding out the word rather than the word he was reading. This would result in a word
that was not at all close to the one on the page. I would remind Billy to use his finger to sound
out the words and sometimes he would actually look at the word and sound it out, but other times
he would come back with another entirely different made-up word. When this happened, I
would sound out the words with Billy. I would slide my finger across the word and have him say
the sounds with me before we put them all together. This practice is highly effective and should
definitely be used, but I think Billy got to the point where he expected me to help him more than
he actually needed the help. Something I struggle with in all areas of my life is time and this was
especially obvious in UFLI tutoring with Billy. We would never get to Extending Literacy. The
only time we did I had promised Billy that I was going to read a book when we got to that
section. Billy needed extra things in the middle of these sessions. He didnt like the structure.
As such, I need to be prepared with extra ideas that work through the same skills. Rather than
becoming discouraged, I could have an alternative method that helps him work through decoding
or writing for reading that may be slightly different from the initial plan.
Implementation Summary: Coming into this class, I knew nothing about reading. I know I
struggled with reading as a first grader, but my mothers answer was to pay me for each book I
read. This worked amazingly for me and I now love to read, but it is not practical or feasible for
every struggling reader, especially in the classroom. I had never thought of all the parts of
reading. For me, you learned the alphabet and then you used it to read words. I had never
thought of the sounds in words other than helping Kindergartners sound out the words they
already knew and had written on their page. The concept of learning the sounds and being able
to break them apart and put them together to create words was a skill I took for granted. I loved
learning about phonological awareness. The sounds of individual letters and digraphs and their
ultimate placement in words is so important for students, but it has to be fun. I am prepared to
become a teacher of individual students because I have interesting ways to teach them the initial
stages of reading. I understand all five parts of reading, so I will be able to assess my students
and those in the general education classrooms to determine which area is their weakness or if
they have a disability in a particular area. I am still worried about teaching reading to an entire
class because I have never seen this done in person, but I know all the parts that must be
included. I understand where students may struggle, so I can make a plan to cover those areas.
Thankfully, I have an order to teach the alphabet and their associated sounds, so I dont have to
implement the use of the alphabet in order with animal words that may not be normal, if that is
not what is going to work for my students. The alphabet and animal words are all I remember
learning in Kindergarten and I think that is the way Billy learned as well because octopus is a
strange word to name when asked for a word that starts with an o, especially when it is
repeated two months later as the only word he will give for the letter o. Students need to
understand the parts of a word before they are going to become effective readers. If students
know phonemes, they can break apart the words they dont know when reading and they have

skills that allow them to read independently and work through unknown words. I had never
thought of how many ways you could teach vocabulary. Words have so many parts beyond the
letters and sounds that can be associated with the meaning of the word. In addition, with graphic
organizers you can teach your students multiple words at once by helping them make
connections between synonyms and antonyms or words that share a common prefix, suffix, or
root. In my future classroom, I will definitely be using word webs and a word wall. These
practices make vocabulary fun and go beyond simple rehearsal for a spelling test at the end of
the week. My practicum last semester was a general education fourth grade class. Occasionally,
I was there for vocabulary instruction, but all I ever saw them working through was the spelling
of the words. This is important, but students need to understand what these words mean if they
are ever going to use them in the future. This particular teacher used words with common
themes, which would work wonderfully with a word web. In the future, I am going to be more
active in suggesting strategies and practices that work wonderfully in special education
classrooms, but could easily be implemented in the general education classroom as well to
benefit all of the students.