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Alyssa Petrino

ELD-308

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Jane is nine years old and is in the fourth grade at Midville Elementary School.
She lives with her family that consists of her Grandmother, Father, Mother, and
younger sister. Her father works at a drug-store. She shares her room with her
sister and this is her special place to study. She also enjoys watching television in
her room for a half hour each night, and her favorite show is ¦
 
.
During the school week, Jane has a bedtime of eight thirty. Between school
dismissal and bedtime, Jane enjoys playing softball, playing with her friends,
knitting, and collecting rocks. Jane also completes her homework which typically
consists of a half hour of math and a half hour of cursive writing. She is also
responsible for chores around her house. These chores include washing dishes and
taking care of her younger sister. She likes the allowance she gets from
completing these chores. Every Saturday, Jane meets with her mother for book
club to discuss the book they are currently reading. She enjoys reading books at
home from her personal library. Jane also visits her local library for books as well.

Jane enjoys attending school and her favorite subject is Social Studies, with Math
being her least favorite subject. She likes to write, especially essays about her
family. She also likes to read and her favorite book is one that involves a mystery.
Jane believes she is a not-so-good-reader because her eyes move slowly causing
her to not see that well. By spending more time reading and by getting glasses,
Jane believes her reading will improve. Jane also believes that knowing how to
read will help her in the future because it is easier if you know how to break
reading materials up. If Jane was helping someone learn to read, she would give
them the advice to read in a quiet room where they can concentrate and to sum up
what they have read. She wants her teachers to know that as a student she loves to
write and is developing on her reading.
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0n March 31st, 2011, Jane was asked to read aloud from the novel Ñ  
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 which is an 0 level novel. A running record
of her oral reading miscues was recorded. Also, a brief comprehension check was
taken. For this passage, Jane was able to retell what she read with much detail.
She included explicit and implicit details. Explicit details were used to describe
the series of events and implicit details were used to describe the characters¶
thoughts and feelings. Jane demonstrated difficulty with decoding words for this
passage. At times, her reading became choppy and hesitant, which shows
difficulty with fluency. Jane stopped reading several times and would use her
finger to follow the words as she read. She would stop at end punctuation, but at
times she did not pause appropriately for internal punctuation, such as commas.
For word recognition, Jane did very well with semantic cues and grapho-
phonemic cues. However, Jane demonstrated difficulty with syntactic cues. A few
examples in which Jane had difficulty with syntactic cues are: Jane substituted
worry for know, them for then, and was for wasn¶t. A few errors noted were with
multi-syllabic words and irregular verb forms. c

0n March 24th, 2011, Jane was administered an IRA. At this time, she reads
independently on a third grade level, instructionally on a fourth grade level, and is
frustrational at a sixth grade level. Jane read the passage fluently and paused
appropriately at end punctuation. In terms of comprehension for the third grade
level passage, Jane was able to recall the main ideas of the passage. She answered
both the explicit and implicit questions accurately. Jane was able to draw
information from separate parts of the text. She demonstrated a sense of word
recognition skills. However, Jane made two miscues while reading this passage.
0ne miscue was syntactic and the other miscue was grapho-phonemic. Therefore,
Jane reads independently on a third grade level.
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In terms of comprehension for the fourth grade level passage, Jane was able to
recall most of the main ideas from the passage. She answered both the explicit
and implicit questions accurately, with one explicit error. When provided with a
look-back into the passage, Jane then answered the explicit question accurately.
Jane mainly demonstrated difficulty with syntactic cues for this passage, with one
semantic cue error and one grapho-phonemic cue error. A few errors noted were
with multi-syllabic words. Therefore, Jane reads instructionally on a fourth grade
level.

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0n March 10th, 2011, I was provided with a passage that Jane had written. Jane had
written this passage on February 9th, 2011. Jane wrote a personal narrative about her
first trip to Atlantic City.

In terms of mechanics, Jane demonstrates an understanding of left to right orientation.

Jane demonstrated an understanding of capitalizing words at the beginning of a
sentence. However, Jane also capitalized words in which it was not necessary. At
times, Jane did not format her dialogue the proper way, by using capital letters at the
beginning of the statement. The title of Jane¶s passage was also not capitalized
properly. In terms of punctuation, Jane used a lot of punctuation in her passage, with
very few mistakes. A couple of these mistakes include Jane ending sentences without
proper punctuation. Jane used simple, compound, and complex sentences in her
passage. Most sentence structures were written appropriately, but there were a couple
of mistakes in which Jane included a sentence that was not complete.

0n March 29th, 2011, I was provided with a word study evaluation that Jane had
completed. Jane had completed this word study evaluation on February 23rd, 2011.
Jane appears to be in the stage of a syllable juncture speller. This means that Jane has
least difficulty with single syllable words, and Jane has most difficulty with placing
vowel markers in multi-syllabic words. Jane¶s difficulty with understanding vowel
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marker in mutli-syllabic words causes her to omit these vowels. Jane spelled 12 out of
25 words correctly for her word study evaluation. Jane¶s word study evaluation shows
that Jane had least difficulty with ³Doubling´. Jane¶s word study evaluation also
shows that Jane demonstrated difficulty with the feature ³Syllable Stress´. Even
though Jane only made a few spelling mistakes in her personal narrative, it is also
confirmed that Jane has difficulty with ³Syllable Stress´. This demonstrates Jane¶s
difficulty understanding vowel patterns in a stressed syllable.

In terms of content, Jane used descriptive detail in her personal narrative and
discussed her personal experiences. This descriptive detail gives a great visual of the
ideas Jane was expressing in her passage. Jane used much dialogue in her passage,
which is essential in a narrative. Her setting was clear and strong and she organized
her events sequentially. Her lead was not very strong, but she stated what the passage
would be about. The middle and ending of her passage were clear.

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After conducting several informal assessments, I have concluded that Jane has the
most difficulty with fluency/decoding words and multi-syllabic words in reading. The
following objectives should be addressed: 1. Jane will read independent level texts
repeatedly to practice fluent reading, and will keep track of her improvement. 2. Jane
will use a mirror to determine the number of syllables each word has from her list of
multisyllabic words. I have concluded that Jane has the most difficulty with strong
leads and ³Syllable Stress´ in writing. The following objectives should be addressed:
1. Jane will read a variety of short stories as she discovers the details of a strong lead,
and will then write a story using a strong lead based on a rubric. 2. Jane will be given
a list of syllable stress words and by the end of the packet she will understand how to
write, say, and count the syllables in each word.

Jane will be provided with a variety of independent level texts that she finds of
interest. From these texts, Jane will be instructed to read one at a time. Jane will then
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read the text over and over again to guide her with becoming a fluent reader. Jane will
also be instructed to read the book aloud to either family members or friends. I will
explicitly teach Jane how to pay attention to clues in a text, in order for her to
understand how the material should be read. An example of clues Jane should pay
attention to are punctuation marks, which at times indicate emotion. Jane will monitor
her progress as she reads through these independent level texts. She will have a
fluency reader chart in which she records what she is finding to be her strengths and
weaknesses, every time she reads. I will also assess Jane¶s fluency by having her read
her text aloud. I will record the number of words she reads per minute and be paying
attention to cues, speed, and punctuation. I will record this information on a chart and
graph her progress. Jane will be able to view her progress by viewing this chart.

Jane will be provided with a handheld mirror and a list of fifty multisyllabic
words. Then, Jane will be guided with understanding mouth movements when
pronouncing words. She will practice with the teacher saying words that are
multisyllabic. She will watch for the amount of times her mouth opens to determine
how many syllables a word contains. An alternative to this is having Jane cup her jaw
and count the amount of times her jaw drops when saying a word. Through these
mouth movements, Jane will notice the amount of syllables and which part of a word
causes her mouth to open. (This is the vowel sound). This will guide Jane with
understanding how many syllables each word has from her list. The first twenty-five
words on Jane¶s list will have spaces separating the word parts. This will be done so
Jane becomes more familiar with syllables and how a word is multisyllabic. The last
twenty-five words will have no spaces, so Jane practices without knowing where the
words are broken up into syllables. This list will be given in order for Jane to become
more familiar with understanding multisyllabic words. Also, so Jane can become
more accurate with word recognition skills when reading.

Jane will be given instruction on strong leads and how a strong lead grabs/hooks
the audience¶s attention. She will be assigned to read the lead of a variety of short
stories (that interest her, but picked by the teacher). While reading these stories, she
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will need to answer questions about what she thinks the story will be about, if she
would want to read further based on the lead of the story, and why or why not. I
would then share a book with her that has a very strong lead and the reasoning why.
She would then need to brainstorm ideas about what she thinks would be a good lead,
based off the information she recently learned about strong leads. After brainstorming
these ideas, Jane would then have to write a story in which she demonstrates her
knowledge of what a strong lead is. Jane will be provided with a rubric to guide her
writing.

Jane will be given instruction on syllable stress words and how to determine the
vowels in the word. She will need to listen to a variety of words as the teacher speaks
and determine how many syllables are in the words and the vowels as well. She will
be given a list of words in which the words are separated by syllables and the vowels
will be in bold. Jane will need to practice writing these words, saying these words,
and clapping her hands to count the syllables. Jane will need to practice five words
each day and record her work. At the end of each week Jane will be tested on her
knowledge. Her progress will be recorded, so she can view how she is advancing. As
Jane advances, the words on the list become more difficult. Also, the separations of
the words and the bolding eventually get taken away. This will be done to help Jane
master syllable stress words and how to listen to the sounds and write them.














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Fluency. £ 

£ ¦
. WETA U.S. Department of Education, 0ffice of Special
Education Programs, n.d. Web. 31 Mar 2011. <http://www.readingrockets.org/helping/target/fl
uency>.

Fountas, Irence C., and Gay Su Pinnell. 


£  

  

Ñ 




 
Ñ


  . USA: 2001. Print

Geve, Wendy.  2950. Teaching Leads in Writing.    . Teachers. Net, 04 10 2003.
Web. 31 Mar 2011. <http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/2950.html>.

Kindig, Joan. Reading Advantage Word Study Faqs. Great Source Education Group, n.d. Web.
31 Mar 2011. <http://www.greatsource.com/GreatSource/pdf/Reading_Adv_Word_Study_FA

Qs.pdf>.