Amanda Cash

Reader Analysis
December 10, 2014

During the first week of my fall clinical experience I decided to have each child read a
few pages to me during independent reading time. I then asked my cooperating teacher for
the three lowest readers in the class, two of which qualify as tier I on RTI. After working
with these three students through conducting interest surveys, completing running records,
and reviewing word lists, I decided which student I wanted to focus my reading assessment
on. I will be discussing this student and calling her by an anonymous name of Ann.
Ann is an eight year old student in the second grade. Ann qualifies as tier I in RTI for
reading and math. Ann is a very vibrant and outgoing student. She is friendly, talkative, and
good natured. Ann comes from a supportive family that is involved in her education. Ann
enjoys animals, especially horses, her family, and friends. After conducting the reading
attitude survey, I discovered that Ann enjoys both recreational and academic reading. She
enjoys reading independently or with someone, but not aloud to a group.
After completing the reading attitude survey, I used the QRI examiner word lists to
assess Anns vocabulary. Ann is considered independent at the pre-primer level and
instructional at the primer level. Ann placed at the frustration level with both the first and
second grade word lists. Ann had difficulty pronouncing basic sight words and often
miscued with the first and second grade words. Next, I used the QRI reading assessment
with Ann. Ann read the text while I completed a running record, and she then answered the
implicit and explicit questions that check for comprehension. I orally asked the questions
and wrote down her exact responses. I started with the primer level QRI assessment.

While reading, I noticed that Ann has difficulty with reading through the word. She
would read the beginning part of a word or sound out what she knew and then say a word
with no connection. For example, when Ann encountered the word near, she said next and
continued reading. This happened with other words such as instead of saying lakes, she said
lives. Ann will begin by saying the beginning of a word or sounding out what she knows and
then substituting a word with no relation to the text. Another need I noticed with Anns
reading is the identification of sight words. Ann struggles with basic sight words and often
miscues on these words. For example, when Ann encountered the word right she
substituted the word ready. Ann also miscued on the words many, must, and walk. I also
noticed that Ann deletes words from the passage. Ann often skips words or omits phrases
and continues reading. I feel that deletion is a main issue of concern for Ann because this
interferes with her ability to comprehend what she is reading. Lastly, after reviewing Anns
responses to the comprehension questions I think that Ann is not reading for meaning. I
feel this correlates with the fact that Ann miscues often while reading and omits parts of the
text.
The first lesson I strategy I used for Ann addressed her need for developing the skills
to read through an entire word. The first lesson focused on word patterns. This particular
lesson used the word patterns an and it. The materials used in this lesson were magnetic
letters and a white board. Ann responded well to to the lesson and enjoyed working with
the magnetic letters. As an assessment, I used the word pattern it to see how many words
Ann could make. From this, she grasped the concept of the word patterns and made other
words using the word pattern. Based on the data from this lesson I thought that word
patterns would benefit Ann and improve her reading fluency so I chose to continue working
with word patterns for the second lesson.

The second lesson with Ann continued to work with word patterns. This lesson also
used magnetic letters and a white board which made Ann excited because she enjoys
making words using word patterns. For lesson two, we focused on the word patterns ay
and at. After working with the word patterns I assessed Ann by having her read a text that
used the word pattern at. The book is called The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat. Ann was able to
read the story fluently and she understood the concept of using word patterns to identify
words. This assessment showed that Ann understood the concept of word families and that
it did help her in her reading. With this data, I decided that for the next lesson I would work
with Ann on high frequency sight words.
For lesson three, I prepared a set of sight word flash cards using a second grade word
list. For this lesson, I explained to Ann that there would be three different stacks of cards.
The cards Ann identified immediately went in her stack, the cards Ann hesitated but said
correctly went in the middle, and the cards that Ann did not know went into my stack. Ann
responded well to this lesson and really enjoyed the idea of playing a competitive game
using the sight word cards. As an assessment, I simply evaluated which words Ann knew and
did not know and how many out of the stack Ann could not identify. Ann did very well and
was able to identify all but two of the sight word cards. With this data I decided to continue
working with sight words for the next lesson.
For the fourth lesson, I prepared a set of third grade sight word cards using the third
grade dolch word list. The procedure for this lesson was the same and Ann expressed
excitement about being able to play the game again. After going over the sight words
several times I looked to see which words Ann had difficulty with. Ann miscued on the
majority of the third grade words which told me that she needed more practice to become
familiar with them.

For the fifth lesson I continued working with the third grade sight words. One thing I
did differently in this lesson was Ann and I went through the cards together. I said the word
and had Ann repeat it after me and I also explained the meaning of some words. After this,
we played the flash card game and I assessed how many cards Ann miscued on. I was
disappointed because Ann still miscued on the majority of the third grade sight words. This
tells me that Ann is not familiar with high frequency sight words and that this a contributing
factor as to why Ann struggles to read fluently.
My recommended next steps for Ann would be to continue working with reading
strategies to build Anns fluency. Using the fluency rubric, Ann increased her fluency score
from the start of the first lesson to the last one. I feel the best thing for Ann at this point is
to work with sight words as much as possible and relate them back to reading a text. I
would recommend that Ann continues working with flash cards and also reading decodable
texts to build her reading fluency and confidence in reading. I feel that Ann learns best
when she sees the words frequently and becomes familiar with them. Throughout my time
working with Ann I saw a significant increase in her confidence and ability to make
connections to what she learned in my lessons.