Ashley Carroll
RE 5715
April 11, 2006
1. Justin
Instructional Level:
After much careful consideration I feel that Justin is instructional at a 2nd grade level. My reason for this
choice is very simple: his rate. In this course there is one thing that we have learned a lot about and that is
rate. Rate must be considered heavily and in many cases a low rate can have a lot to do with retention of
the material that was read. While his accuracy is very high at 98%, his word recognition is also high at 95%,
and his comprehension is good at 86%, his rate is not very good for a second grader at only 54 words per
minute. The average second grader should be reading somewhere between 60 and 90 words per minute,
orally and silently. After looking at the oral reading rate I moved over to look at the silent reading rate and
found that he was reading within the rate of a second grader at 67 words per minute, despite the fact that
this is on the low end of the rate spectrum.
Frustration Level:
Justin appears to be frustrated at a 3rd grade level. There are several factors that contribute to his frustration
at this level. To begin with his flash is down to 60% and his oral accuracy rate is only at 90%. His rate has
also fallen to 42 words per minute which is well below where a second grader should be reading. When
looking at his silent scores they are similar. He has a rate of only 54 words per minute, which is even below
where a second grader should be reading (60-90 wpm). For this level I also looked at the errors that Justin
made, which totaled 14, and half of those errors were meaning change errors. When reading at a third
grade level, Justin is completely out of his league. This is obvious by the very slow rate, and the amount of
errors that were made during his reading. All these pieces of information lead me to believe that Justin is
truly frustrated when trying to read at a 3rd grade level.
Spelling Level:
After looking at Justin’s spelling scores, I would say that the highest level he would be instructional at would
be 3rd grade. A student scoring somewhere between a 50% and 83% is considered to be genuinely
instructional. Meanwhile when you move up to the 4th grade spelling list with Justin he falls to a 40%, which
is very close to frustrated.
Instructional Program:
I would certainly say that a program for Justin would include a lot of fluency work, because this is the one
area where he needs the most help. His rates are terribly slow starting all the way back in second grade.
The program I would use with Justin would be one similar to Beth’s from the Howard Street Tutoring
Manual. His program would consist of the following activities in the order as follows: guided reading of new
material at his instructional level, word study likely beginning in short vowel sorts, easy reading for fluency,
and then me reading to him to model what good readers sound like. In Justin’s case I think that I would allot
a little more time to easy reading so that Justin could build his fluency and word recognition. In the end I
would re-assess Justin with another IRI and then review his scores. If his scores increase then this would
mean that he has grown as a reader and that the instructional program made a difference for him. I would
specifically be looking at his rate scores to see if the added fluency practice had helped him.
John
Instructional
After reviewing John’s scores on the IRI I decided that he is instructional at 4th grade. His oral accuracy
reading score was 94% and his word recognition score was 60% which is not terribly bad. He had a solid
rate for a 4th grader when reading orally at 100 words per minute, and his rate was also good when reading
silently at 140 words per minute. My only area of major concern for John would be his comprehension
scores. Both of his scores were terribly low (oral 48%, silent 58%). In designing an instructional program
there would have to be a heavy focus in this area.
Frustration
When John’s rate fell to 95 words per minute and his word recognition score fell to 40% I knew that this was
a level where John was going to be frustrated. His oral reading accuracy was only at 93% and both of his
rates fell to somewhere in the fourth grade range. I also looked at his comprehension scores and they were
very low (oral 30%, silent 50%). When combining all these factors, it is obvious that John is not going to be
successful reading at a 5th grade level.
Spelling
In the area of spelling John is instructional at the 4th grade level, with a score of 60%. When you move him
up into the 5th grade list his score falls to 32% which is well below the frustration level.
Instructional Program:
In John’s case I would have to change his instructional program slightly to accommodate for the different
texts that he will be reading. For John his program would go as follows: guided reading which would consist
of a DRTA style at his instructional level, word study involving long vowel patterns and possible multisyllable
patterns, followed by reading for fluency which would be at his instructional level or slightly higher and then
we would possibly work on writing. In John’s instructional plan I would also want to put quite a bit of
emphasis on his comprehension since his scores were so terribly low in the initial IRI. I feel that by using
the DRTA this would help build John’s comprehension abilities because it forces the child to continually
build on the information that they have already read. After working with him in this instructional program I
would once again assess him with an IRI and then review and compare his scores to the previous ones. If
John’s scores had improved, then that would show the difference that the program has made. Specifically I
would be looking to see if his comprehension scores had risen but I would also hope that his instructional
reading level would rise as a result of the instruction.
2.The way that phonics should be taught is very sequential in nature. Students can not move from one level
to the next without mastering the level that they are currently on. To put it into simpler terms, you have to
crawl before you walk; walk before your run. Just like crawling, learning a phonics sequence is a
developmental process. The phonics sequence begins at a very basic level. Students start with beginning
consonants. This very simple level deals with students using picture cards and matching them to the sound
that the picture starts with. This is the level where emergent readers begin. After mastering this level, the
student moves to word families. It is in this area where we practice rhyme and students get a first look at
short vowels. At this level students sort the words by the endings they have. For example you would sort for
_at, _an, _ap in one sort as you were moving through the sequence, and then after you had mastered the
“a” word families you would move to I, then o, then u, and then finally e. Moving on, students will next go to
a contrastive short vowel sort, where they compare vowel sounds. You may start with short a and i, then
move to sorting for short a, i, and o. You continue moving through this contrastive short vowel sort until you
have sorted all vowels against each other and students have been successful. Next you will move to long
vowel patterns. Here students will have the chance to compare long vowel sounds to those of short vowels,
as well as looking at r-controlled vowels, and diphthongs. Finally when students near the end of the phonics
instruction, they will work with multisyllabic patterns. In this area students will learn about the differences
between open and closed syllables as well as how to divide words into syllables.
Throughout your work with this phonics instruction, there are several things that you can do to
enhance or make students more excited about the sorting they are doing. A few good examples would be
speed sorting, playing bingo, concentration, or pitty pat.
Also as you move through these sorts, it is important to continually assess your students to ensure
that they are at the correct instructional level. You can do this by giving them a quick six word spelling test
at the end of some sorting lessons and checking their accuracy.
3. After looking at the spelling assessment I would definitely agree that the student is instructional at second
grade due to the quality of the errors that the student made. In the second grade list the student’s errors
were very close to the original word that was given. Some good examples of close errors would be beches
for beaches, traped for trapped, chas for chase. It is obvious from looking at his errors, that this student
needs more instruction in the area of long vowel patterns, and when to double and when not to double
consonants. This student only had one error that was far off from the original word. When he attempted to
spell angry and he wrote aracy. As you look at his errors in a quantitative way he was able to correctly score
10 out of 25.
Looking at the third grade list it is obvious that he is having trouble at this level. His errors are all
over the place, and very few of them make any sense at all. Some examples include: knew for knee, chin
for chain, and calfer for careful. At the third grade level his errors are much more random and in most cases
are off by more than one feature (letter/sound). This child is over his head spelling at a third grade level
because he is still not successful with long vowel patterns, as we found out in the previous list. He is also
unsure of how to mark “ght” sounds as well as “r” controlled patterns. When you look at his errors
quantitatively he was only able to spell 5 out of 25 correctly.
Overall if I were going to start this student in a spelling program I would put him in a second grade
list where he could master long vowel patterns and consonant doubling patterns. In the end he has to be
able to master these basic concepts before he can move up into more difficult levels of spelling.
4. When I look back at all the topics that we have covered during the course of the class I would have to
say that the ones that have interested me the most were the ones taught at the very beginning and now at
the very end. From the first few days of class I have really enjoyed our discussions about the reading curve.
I have thought a lot about the numbers that are represented on the curve. I guess I never thought about the
amount of children that are don’t pick up reading easily which is about 22% of the reading population. Of
that 22%, a good portion of those students are tested and labeled as LD readers and then rest qualify for
Title One resources. The amazing thing about the 22% is that this group is considered tutorable, meaning
that with a very sequenced and personalized program, these students could be taught how to read, without
the label of LD hanging over their heads. Now the question pops into my head: why are we labeling these
students? Why aren’t we tutoring them? I guess my only answer is that it is easier to teach to the middle
than teach children where they are at. Some school systems are not aware that a simple tutoring program
may help struggling readers just as much or more than a label. I also think that we aren’t tutoring these
students because it would be too expensive for school systems to take up and they would not have the
support staff to fuel such a large program.
My biggest fear is simply what I mentioned above; labeling children incorrectly. In the scheme of
things approximately 3% of all readers are severely disabled meaning that they cannot be helped to the
degree we would like with the methods that we are using. There is a student in my class who I have been
tutoring since the beginning of the year and he came to me from kindergarten only knowing half of his letters
and about as many sounds. Automatically I was concerned. After much work he was doing better about
naming these letters and for the most part he could make the sounds that matched the letters, but currently
he still has a lot of trouble reading basic sight words (did, do, the, and, with she, he go etc). One minute he
knows the word and then next he appears to have never seen the word before. Needless to say after
months of tutoring he had shown no significant signs of growth and has only grown one reading level, he is
still below a pre-primer level.
After much thought and discussion I did have him tested to see if he would qualify for special
services to help him with his reading. They all told me that he would not qualify because he was too young
and nothing would show up, but it did.
This leads me to the next topic that has sparked my interest in this class and that would be the
severely disabled reader. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the articles concerning dyslexia and this is due
in large part to the fact that until reading these articles I did not know much about the condition. It was not
until I had read those articles that I felt confident about getting my student the extra help that he needed. He
has a naming problem like the students mentioned in the article and so after reading that I felt at ease.
I never knew that there were so many different versions of dyslexia either. I assumed that it was
one disability, but now I have learned that it is in fact one name for several different disabilities. It is
unnerving to think that there are plenty of people out there that think dyslexia only has to do with reversing
letters or words, when in fact it has to do with naming, patterning problems, and at the rarest levels there is
a meaning dysfunction form of dyslexia.
I really enjoyed reading the Henderson article because he makes a point to say that all types of
reading difficulties are not a form of dyslexia, they are more or less related to a deprivation of something in
that child’s life at an early age. Unfortunately as teachers it is a lot harder to say that a child should have
been read to more often, should have had more books available to them when they were younger than it is
to just give them a label of learning disabled and discuss ways to move forward. It is unfortunate that we
cannot be more proactive in matters concerning the children we are raising.
In Henderson’s article the section titled “Common Syndromes and Secondary Reading Disability,”
he states that he would like to see more story hours at libraries and churches. He also brings up the point
that older students could involve themselves in programs where they read to younger students. Henderson
says, “If we truly care about literacy, steps of this sort should be taken. Presently it is, I think, our largest
area of social failure.” It is truly disheartening to think that in a society such as ours, we are allowing our
children to fail at something as basic and as necessary as reading.