Kara Stack CI 47510/31/11Individual Child Assessment ReflectionWhen we were first given this assignment, I did not think that being in a gifted classroomwould have an impact on the student I chose for this particular assignment. I am in a 4
th
gradegifted classroom at Stratton and when I asked my cooperating teacher about this assignment, sheinformed me that every single one of her students is reading at grade level. Initially when shetold me I figured this meant I would have to go to another classroom to talk to a different childbut after working with this particular student, I realized that there are many ways in which
students can struggle in reading/writing even if they are reading at “grade level” according to
their DRA scores.The student that I chose to work with for this assignment is named Noah. He is 9 yearsold and part of the gifted program in the school. The students that are put into the giftedclassroom are put there for their mathematical skills but tend to be more advanced students ingeneral. After speaking with Noah, his teachers, and even his mom I learned a lot about him andsome of his habits when it comes to reading and writing.Noah is an extremely hard working student; he does not have the natural ability that otherstudents in his class have. He has to work much harder to get the same grades that some of theother students get fairly easily. I have noticed that he tends to rush through work sometimes inorder to do something else. With that said, in my observations I noticed that when he rushesthrough other work, he usually does so in order to read silently after finishing. This demonstratesto me that he has a love of reading. A child that has this much passion for reading can be taughtdifferent techniques to increase their performance in writing/reading/speaking and listening.
The books that he reads are usually fiction and are at his grade level. They are typicallyshort chapter books but he does not like one topic specifically in the genre of fiction. He seemsto like to read anything, although I have noticed that he reads the Warrior series often. Thevariety of books that are offered in my classroom library allows the students to read a variety of books and Noah definitely takes advantage of this.When it comes to actively participating in the class, Noah seems to lack focus. When wetry to do read alouds on the carpet, he struggles to pay attention. I have to ask him to resethimself multiple times while I am teaching a lesson. I think this lack of focus could havesomething to do with the fact that he has the third lowest reading level in our whole class (theother 2 have special accommodations made for them). He gets easily distracted when otherthings are going on in the classroom and does not efficiently finish his assignments to his bestability because of this.The one area that I have noticed the most lack of focus in Noah is when we work onWordly Wise. This is interesting because he loves to write reading responses. The students writein their reading response journals every other week about the books they are reading. I think thatthe fact that Noah loves reading so much and is given the chance to write about these books thathe is engaged in, is demonstrated through his reading response journals. When I talked to my co-
op about his scores, she said that he receives 9’s and 10’s on every response, which is great. I
think that he might struggle with Wordly Wise because it is not something that is of directinterest to his life. He rushed through his first Wordly Wise assignment and therefore did not dohis best on the test.
I took samples of Noah’s reading response journals because it demonstrates what a great
writer Noah can be. He loves to write when he is writing about something that interests him, and
he does it well. Many of the students were struggling with writing about what the book means toyou, as opposed to just a summary. To show this growth over time, I took a reading response thathe wrote at the beginning of the quarter and compared it to one that he did later on. After Ms.
Newman gave them instructions on reflecting instead of just summarizing, Noah’s work instantly
improved. This shows that he can follow directions and has the ability to do the work. I can tellby his writing that he really enjoyed the books he was reading.One of the other student teachers working in my classroom did a running record withNoah. He read an excerpt about Cassiopeia. Although there were some tough words in thereading, he was able to score a 98.3% in terms of the amount of words correct. Whenever hewould mix something up, he would usually self-correct himself. He is not a particularly fastreader but he was very accurate with the words. He also asked for help on some of the tougherwords that this passage used, which was very reasonable for a 4
th
grader. If I had done my ownrunning record, I would have possibly used a different passage that used more familiar words.During the first quarter my teacher performed DRA testing. Noah was reading belowgrade level last year and worked really hard to be at a 50 now. He scored a 6 out of 8 on readingengagement, a 13 out of 16 for oral fluency, and a 19 out of 24 in comprehension.Comprehension is the main category looked at which is the area that Noah struggles in the most.He was very hesitant when he was reading for the DRA, which could have potentially been dueto nerves. As I observed this DRA being done, I felt that he was trying to read the passage just tobe done with it, he was not reading for comprehension. I think this was made apparent whenlooking at his answers after reading the story.
When I looked at Noah’s written responses, it was clear that he was not doing a thorough
job; he was doing the work just to get it done. Ms. Newman made it very clear that the students
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