11/18/19

To the Family of [REDACTED],

Hello! My name is Katarra Waldron and I am a senior Early Childhood Education major at the
University of Mount Union. During [REDACTED]’s time in 3rd grade at Rockhill Elementary, he
was involved in a program that we call RAC (Raider Aviator Connection). In this program,
[REDACTED] and I were given the opportunity to work with each other. We met twice a week on
Tuesdays and Thursdays for thirty minutes. During my time working with [REDACTED], I did
some activities with him in order to find out his strengths and areas for improvement in regards
to reading, language arts, and writing. I want to share with you the information that I have found
during this process.

[REDACTED] has some very prominent strengths in regards to reading, writing, attitude, and
word identification. One of his strengths in reading is being able to inference and predict what is
going to happen in a story when reading orally and when listening to reading. A major writing
strength for him is having the ability to expand simple sentences. He is very good at adding
detail to his writing. [REDACTED] has a very good attitude about completing tasks that allow
him to use his hands such as tasks that involve some sort of game or hands-on components like
rolling dice and sorting cards. Another one of his strengths is being able to pronounce unknown
words based on the context clues around the word. When he reads, he is able to use the
surrounding words to help him figure out the one he does not know.

In addition to finding strengths, I also found some areas for improvement that [REDACTED] can
work on. One of his areas for improvement in regards to reading is recalling details from a text
when reading aloud. While working with him, I noticed that he struggled to remember basic
details from the story or text such as setting and characters’ names. An area for improvement
in regards to his writing is to accurately use conventions such as capitalization and punctuation.
I asked him to write a paragraph on any topic that he wanted. After reviewing the paragraph that
he wrote, I noticed that there was a lack of punctuation and proper nouns were not capitalized.
For word identification, his area for improvement would structural analysis which is breaking
down and sounding out words that he does not know as he reads.

Additionally, I have come up with some home activities that I think would be beneficial to
[REDACTED] in helping to strengthen his areas for improvement. The first activity is to ask him
questions as he reads. Whenever [REDACTED] is reading a story out loud at home, someone
can ask him simple who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. This will help him to
recall
details from a story or text that he is reading. Asking questions at the end of the story or text can
be beneficial as well. One activity that [REDACTED] can do to help him remember to add
periods at the end of sentences and to capitalize words appropriately is to have him edit pre-
written paragraphs that are lacking punctuation and capitalization. I have attached some
paragraphs that he can edit. For word identification, [REDACTED] can practice using structural
analysis by using flashcards. He can write his spelling, vocabulary, or high-frequency words on
flashcards. When someone flashes the card to him, he can use structural analysis to become
more familiar with it.

I want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to work with [REDACTED] this semester. I
had a wonderful time and I hope that he did too! If you have any questions or concerns, please
do not hesitate to reach me via email at waldrokm2020@mountunion.edu.

Respectfully,

Katarra Waldron