EDU 345 SFA Tutoring Final Exam

Fall, 2015
Laura Boak

Introduction of Tutee
Justice is a first grade boy. He is Caucasian and speaks the Appalachian dialect. His
parents are no longer together so he lives with his older brother, younger sister,
mom, and grandparents. Justice loves Sponge Bob and watching football with his
grandfather. He is very talkative and has a little trouble sitting still in his chair but
he is generally very engaged in tutoring.

Pre-assessment and Formative Results

Pre-assessment
Concepts of print: Justice is also very strong in concepts of print. He had one
hundred percent accuracy for this section of the assessment and was able to
answer the questions with automaticity. He seemed very familiar and comfortable
with a book in hand and was interested in reading.
Phonemic awareness: Justice was very strong in phonemic awareness. He mastered
all the phonemic awareness objectives and only made mistakes on a few words. He
is very good at blending together sounds presented orally to say a word and he
does so with little hesitation.
Letter Skills: Justice struggles a lot with his letter skills, he did not master any of the
letter skill sections. He started out very strong and was able to identify most single
consonants and single phonemes. He did not recognize the q or ck sound. He
also could not identify most sounds from sets four through nine. Justice was able to
write most sounds accurately but could not figure out that ck was the third k
sound. The vowel sounds seemed to be the most puzzling to Justice. He had trouble
writing the letters corresponding to the vowels I said out loud and also had trouble

reading vowel blends. Vowel-consonant blends also proved to be confusing for

Justice and he could identify very few in his assessment.
Sight Words: Justice struggled with this part of the assessment. He was unable to
master any set within the sight words section. He tried to decode or guess words
but was unsuccessful.
Word Skills: Justice was only able to successfully read two of the words in set 1 of
the Word Skills section. He tried to blend other words but did not do so accurately.

Re-assessment/formative
Concepts of Print: Justice mastered this portion of the assessment in his preassessment.
Phonemic awareness: Justice mastered this portion of the assessment in his preassessment.
Letter Skills: Justice was able to identify nine sounds he was unable to identify
previously. Seven of these sounds were consonants or consonant vowel
combinations. The other two sounds were vowel digraphs. Justice was able to write
five new sounds. The only letter he was still not able to write the letter for was e.
He was able to identify three new letter names, u, l, and v. The only letter he
still needs to learn the name of is g.
Sight Words: Justice learned fourteen new sight words. Mastery for each set is 100%
and Justice has yet to achieve this for any set.
Word Skills: Justice learned ten new words. He was able to master the first two sets
of words.

Summative Assessment Results

Concepts of Print: Justice mastered this portion of the assessment in his preassessment. This was his strongest area of reading since the very beginning.
Phonemic awareness: Justice is good at putting sounds together but he sometimes
struggles with breaking them apart. His dialect makes it difficult for him to hear all
the sounds and some words. Sometimes he will add extra vowels when breaking
down a word into its individual sounds. This makes spelling difficult for him.
Letter Skills: Justice learned to read eight new letter sounds since his last
assessment. He still cannot write the letter to match the e sound. He has often
confused I and e since the beginning of our tutoring. He still continues to
confuse these letters even after spending a significant amount of time going over
them. Justice can identify letters very well but he has the most difficulty reading
sounds. This is a big area of weakness for him and it affects his ability to decode
words.
Sight Words: This is the area in which Justice has shown the most improvement
since his pre-assessment. Justice has mastered the first two sets of sight words. Of
the fourteen words in set three he can read eleven. He has learned to read fourteen
new words since the last time an assessment was completed.
Word Skills: Justice has gone from reading two words using blending from his preassessment to reading thirty-three words. He has mastered six out of nine sets.
Justice is good at sounding out unfamiliar words if he takes his time and uses his
finger to follow along. When he tries to go too fast he ends up guessing the word
instead of reading the whole thing.

Final Recommendation for Tutee

Justice has definitely made a lot of progress. He has learned many new sight words
and he is reading much more fluently. My concern is that he is very weak on his
letter skills. He easily confuses sounds of letters and struggles to read vowel
digraphs. When reading a text he struggles to decode sounds. This leads Justice to
guess what words are. I believe Justice needs more tutoring to continue practicing
his letter sounds. He needs individualized instruction to help him learn the
difference between i and e and to practice vowel digraphs.

Two Significant Ideas That You Learned In This

Experience
Although I had often heard the value of assessment being emphasized, I saw its
value first hand during tutoring. By assessing Justice and using data, I was able to
pick up on patterns I may not have picked up on otherwise. My data helped inform
my instruction so I was better able to meet Justices needs. Creating data is
especially useful for struggling students so that instruction can be individualized
and progress documented. I also learned the importance of students being able to
track properly with their finger while reading. One of my students had difficulty
reading when he was not tracking with his finger and many times when he was
tracking he was doing so too quickly. When he would track to quickly he would
begin to guess words instead of spending time to try and sound them out correctly.
My other student would struggle to read a word and after she figured out what it
was she would go back to the beginning of the sentence and read it all over again. It
took a long time to get through a page of a book because she kept back tracking

and starting over. I realized how important it is to explicitly teach reading strategies
like tracking and how much of a difference that skill makes in the reading process.