Emily Wiezorek

EDU 361

Final Report

Student’s Abilities

This semester, I had the chance to tutor a second grade student named Sophia. Sophia
was very eager to learn, and came to each tutoring session ready to read, write, and improve her
skills. As we began Roaming Around the Known, I could see that Sophia struggled with fluency.
Her reading sounded very labored and robotic. She also was not able to detect errors within her
own reading, and if an error was detected, it was based solely on semantic information. As we
progressed throughout the tutoring sessions, Sophia’s fluency improved greatly. By the end of
our time together, she was reading with tons of expression, and her reading sounded smooth and
confident. Sophia also was able to detect errors in her reading with more automaticity, and was
able to use, with prompting, syntactic information to correct errors.
In regards to Sophia’s writing abilities at the start of our tutoring sessions, I could see that
her abilities were well below the second grade average. During our Roaming Around the Known
sessions, Sophia struggled with encoding common second grade level words, specifically words
with vowel teams. Sophia was asked to write some sentences, and struggled with words such as
glue (glow), meat (met), moat (mot), and mail (mal). Our main writing focus was recognizing
and encoding words with common vowel teams. By the end of tutoring, Sophia was able to
identify vowel teams within words in a text, give the sound that they made within the word, and
write vowel team words accurately and automatically.
Now, Sophia is able to read texts at instructional level J. She reads with expression and
fluency, even using specific voices for different characters. She is able to recognize and encode
words with vowel teams ay, ai, ee, ea, ue, ie, ou, oa, oi, ow, aw, and ew.
Assessment Data

Assessment Name Date of Assessment Results

Phonemic Awareness 3/2/21 ● Isolated Sounds: 6/6

Inventory ● Segmenting: 6/6
● Blending: 6/6
● Manipulation: 4/6

Decoding Inventory 3/4/21 ● Short Vowel CVC:

26/26
● Digraphs w/ Short
Vowels: 8/10
● Consonant Blends w/
Short Vowels: 10/10
● Long Vowels (Silent e
and Vowel Team):
8/10
● Variant Vowels: 7/10

Skill Monitoring: One March & Early April ● WCPM: 74, 45, 62, 90
Minute Probe

Skill Monitoring: PRESS 4/9/21 ● 23/30

Vowel Team Words

Evidence Based Strategies:

After using the PRESS assessments with Sophia, I was able to determine which
interventions would benefit her. We started with the PRESS PA-6 intervention, which targets
phoneme manipulation. Sophia scored 4 out of 6 in the phoneme manipulation section, which
shows me that she could use a little work building her automaticity with phoneme manipulation.
She had the most trouble manipulating medial sounds within words, and was able to better
manipulate the phoneme if she was able to write it out. Although this is technically no longer
phonemic awareness, this shows me her connection between the foundational skills of phonemic
awareness, alphabet knowledge, and letter-sound correspondences. After Sophia spent some time
working with the PA-6 intervention and was able to build some automaticity, we moved to the
PRESS P-5 intervention to work with vowel teams. This intervention asked Sophia to read words
with vowel teams, as well as to write them, so it was able to improve both her reading and
writing skills.
We also started off our targeted reading lessons with a reread of a familiar text. This
strategy helped Sophia to build fluency and accuracy while reading, as well as to help build her
confidence. I noticed that when Sophia read a text for the second time, her reading was more
fluent, and she was able to automatically read words that she had struggled with during the first
reading. An example of this was in the text “Rapunzel”. During our first reading, Sophia
repeatedly read the word ‘prince’ as ‘picture’. After stopping to correct this word during the first
reading, she was able to read the word ‘prince’ the second time automatically. Another reading
strategy put into place was guided reading. Before reading a new text, Sophia and I took the time
to preview. We would read the title, look at the cover illustration, and activate any background
knowledge in order to predict what the text might be about. We also would do a vocabulary
preview of words that I thought might be tough for Sophia to decode.
Another evidence based strategy that was used were the Fountas and Pinnell prompts.
Throughout the Targeted Reading Lesson period, I used prompts such as “Make your reading
sound like you are talking” to build fluency, and prompts such as “Does that look right?” “Does
that sound right?” or “Does that make sense?” in order to help Sophia recognize and correct
reading errors.

Effective Strategies Used:

The most effective strategies used with Sophia were the PRESS P-5 intervention and the
repeated reading strategy. The P-5 intervention was used to help Sophia recognize spelling-sound
correspondences for vowel teams. The vowel teams that we worked with during this intervention
included ay, ai, ee, ea, ue, ie, ou, oa, oi, ow, aw, and ew. Sophia was able to read each word with
the vowel teams automatically and accurately, but she occasionally struggled with encoding the
vowel team into her writing. A strategy that I used to address this issue was to tell Sophia
directly which vowel team we would be writing, and the sound that it would make within the
word. This way, if I told Sophia we were going to be writing words using the vowel team ‘ay’,
and telling her what sound she should listen for in the word, she would know exactly which
letters to use and where in the word to write them. This was another connection between
Sophia’s phonemic awareness and her writing abilities.
 Another effective strategy used was repeated reading. We began each Targeted Reading
Lesson with a reading of a familiar text, and this was often a text that Sophia had struggled with
during the first read. When we read each text a second time during our repeated reading, I
noticed improvements in Sophia’s reading abilities. She was able to read with more fluency and
expression, and often was able to automatically read words that she was not able to before. She
also knew when she had made a reading error, based on a word not making sense or not sounding
right with what she had already read within the text.

Results of Teaching:

One of the most noticeable improvements that I saw in Sophia throughout our time
together was her ability to write. When we had first begun tutoring, Sophia struggled with vowel
team words such as mail, meat, and glue. This is shown in this video clip from our lesson on 3/23
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OP4nvW882dfBWyOY1_eGyVMGU9WYvv5y/view?usp=shari
ng . In later lessons, Sophia was able to use the ai, ea, and ue vowel teams to write these words
correctly. This is shown in
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QNMK08YtTp_p3kkbDpU1CPl9FcGJAswr/view?usp=sharing
. Sophia was also able to demonstrate knowledge of several other vowel teams, when reading as
well as when writing. When reading texts, she was able to identify vowel teams on the page,
without any specific directions. I would ask her to find me a vowel team that we had worked on
that she saw on the page, and she would find me a vowel team and say the sound. Sophia’s
writing overall was definitely improved, and it was almost like a different student was writing
towards the end of our tutoring.
Another huge improvement that I saw in Sophia’s reading was her fluency and use of
expression. In the earlier lessons, Sophia’s reading sounds robotic and laborious, and in the later
tutoring sessions it sounds like she is comfortable with the text and with reading in general.
Something that I also did was pick texts that I believed would be interesting and engaging for
her, and she made sure to let me know which ones she liked. Sophia enjoyed reading fairy tale
books, and was very engaged with the reading of these. She was able to make text to self
connections when reading these books, as she had seen the movie versions of many of them. An
example of Sophia’s expression and fluency that stands out to me as being an illustrator of her
improvement is the video of her reading “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. When Sophia reads
this text, she uses a different voice for each character. This shows me that she is comprehending
the story. Another example comes when she is reading “Rapunzel”. Sophia uses a different voice
for the prince and the princess, and at one point makes an error and uses the princess’s voice for
the prince’s dialogue. When Sophia realizes that the text says “said the Prince” instead of “said
the Princess”, she goes back and corrects her reading, reading the dialogue text in the correct
voice. To me, this was a clear example of Sophia using her semantic information within the text,
and re-reading to correct her error.
Another improvement I saw during my time with Sophia was her ability to monitor her
reading and self correct. During the Roaming Around the Known sessions, when Sophia would
make an error, most times she would not correct it. Though this error would be obvious when
listening to Sophia read, she often was focusing on decoding the text, and not on monitoring if
her reading made sense. For example, in the text “Pip, the Monster Princess”, Sophia reads “she
tries (trims) the gown.” Though this would make sense with the meaning of the text, the visual
information does not match. This tells me that Sophia was not using the visual input to monitor
her reading. In our later lessons, Sophia was able to use her visual information to monitor her
reading. An example that I saw of this was when Sophia self corrected the word “fall” initially,
she said the word “fell”. Although this would have been consistent with semantic information in
the text, Sophia was able to see that the visual information did not match up - the a sound she
was saying did not match up with the e in print. Though Sophia still slightly relies on her
semantic information from the text, I noticed that overall Sophia was able to realize when she
had made an error and to self correct much more consistently towards the end of tutoring than in
the beginning.

Implications for Future Teaching:

If I had more time to work with Sophia, I would continue our P-5 intervention with vowel
teams. I think that this intervention was really benefiting Sophia, and I was seeing some great
progress with her writing. I think that continuing with these vowel teams would really help to
strengthen her writing. Something else that I would continue with Sophia is to try a more
advanced level text with her. During our last session, we had made it to a level J text. In the
beginning of our tutoring, Sophia’s instructional level was around a level H. I would have really
liked to see her move into the second grade level texts, and to see how she could decode these.
Another thing that I really wish I had more time to work with Sophia on is her one minute probe,
and bumping up her WCPM. When we first completed this assessment, she was able to read 74
WCPM. She had a slight dip during the next two probes, which I believe were due to distractions
and lack of focus. However, during our last tutoring session, Sophia was able to read 90 WCPM.
Our goal for Sophia was 82 WCPM, and the winter second grade benchmark is 100 WCPM. If
we had another tutoring session, I would really like to see if Sophia would be able to read that
many WCPM again, and if we could even bump her up to the 100 WCPM benchmark.

What to Change:

Something that I think I would change in my instruction with Sophia is to focus more on
her reading skills, including monitoring her reading. I think that with the PRESS intervention, we
spent a lot of time on writing some days, and reading was sometimes skipped due to time.
Although working with Sophia on her writing likely resulted in improvements in her reading
skills, I would have liked to do a little bit more with the Fountas and Pinnell prompts, and really
having Sophia learn how to use her metacognitive strategies and to be aware of what she is
reading. Something else that I wish I would have done earlier is to do a shared reading of the text
with Sophia. During the last few tutoring sessions, I began to alternate pages when reading with
Sophia. I noticed that after she had heard me read a page fluently, she was more likely to slow
down and make her own reading sound fluent. I also wish I would have done less cold reads of
text, and done some more text previewing in our earlier lessons. Even during the Roaming
Around the Known phase, it would have been a beneficial strategy to take the time to preview
the text, and discuss what the text might be about.

Next Steps for Learning:

One of the next steps that I would have Sophia take is to use the vowel teams that we
worked on in her own writing, without being prompted. I usually told Sophia which vowel team
we would be using when I gave her a word to write, and I think a great next step for her would
be to be able to identify the sound that she hears within a word, choose the correct vowel team to
correspond to that sound, and then monitor her writing to make sure that it sounds and looks
right. This goes along with teaching Sophia to be able to monitor her own writing. It would
benefit Sophia to be able to tell when she makes a writing error, and to use a metacognitive
strategy in order to think about how she could possibly correct this error. Continuing to monitor
her reading would also be a beneficial next step for Sophia. Sophia was beginning to use
multiple forms of input from the text in order to monitor and detect errors, and I think that she
could take this a step further. Rather than asking if she has made a mistake, I would like to see
Sophia know exactly when a mistake has been made, and to see her be able to think through how
to correct it. Another next step for Sophia could include some work with comprehension. While
reading our connected texts, we did some surface level comprehension analysis, and made some
predictions. Some questions I asked included “Bear says they must do something to stop the
humans. What do you think they might do?” and “Look at the cover page. Based on the animal’s
faces, do you think they are excited or worried?” Though these questions did help support Sophia
as she was reading, a great next step would be to take these questions further, once Sophia is able
to read fluently.

Overall, I am so glad I got the opportunity to work with Sophia this semester. She was an
excellent learner, and was always very motivated to read and write. She taught me a lot about
reading and writing, and I hope I was able to make a lasting impression on her also. I know
Sophia will continue to reach her goals in the future!