Level: One (Narrative) The Surprise

The first passage I administered to Student A was Level 1 Narrative titled, The Surprise.

I chose this passage because she scored Independent on the primer QRI word list. I did not

want to start her below level one because she was Independent on the QRI those word lists. I

also did not want to start her beyond Level 1 because she was at Frustration level on a Level 2

word list. Student A read a Narrative passage because it would be slightly easier for her to read

than an Expository text. Her strength was in answering all of the explicit and implicit questions

correctly and her score mirrored that of her Level 1 QRI word list, Instructional. This means that

Student A is a little bit below grade level since she is in second grade and should be

Instructional at a level 2. The student correctly pronounced words that she did not correctly

pronounce on the word list. This was probably because they were put into context. She did

struggle with a few words but only two of them were on the primer or first-grade list. Student A

answered the concept questions and scored a 2/8. For the question, “What is an animal care

center?” She answered, “A person who takes care of animals.” As for the third question, “Why

wouldn’t a child get everything he wanted for his birthday?” She answered, “Because it’s

supposed to be a surprise.”

Student A did fairly well on retelling the story. She did it orally and I checked off the main

ideas and details that she mentioned on the score sheet when I listened to her recording. She

answered all explicit and implicit questions correctly which would seat her at an Independent

comprehension level. This means her comprehension level is more advanced than her oral

reading level. She is able to Independently comprehend Instructional level text even though her

oral reading level is Instructional. Her strength was that she remembered a detail about the

setting, one goal, half of the events that happened in the story, and one detail about how the

story ended. There were not many weaknesses in regards to the retell other than she did not

mention the other half of the events in the story. However, she understood and retold the main

idea of the story.

Level: One (Expository) Air

The second passage I chose was titled, Air. It was a Level 1 expository text. The reason

why I chose this text is because Student A was Instructional on the narrative text and I did not

want her to move up to level two just yet. She scored 0/8 on the concept questions before

reading the text. This text seemed much more difficult for Student A to comprehend than the

narrative text. However, she only had two miscues. Her oral reading skills were Independent but

her comprehension was at a Frustration level. She only answered one of the two implicit

questions correctly and zero of the explicit questions. The only things she could retell from the

passage were, “Moving air is called wind.” and “Something about balloons.” Her strength was in

her intonation as she changed her voice when reading a question and paused in between

sentences. This is clear because she scored on an Independent reading level. Her weakness

was in her comprehension. She did not glean anything from what she read even if she read it

really well.

Level: Two (Narrative) The Family’s First Trip

I gave Student A a Level 2 narrative text because she was Instructional on the Level 1

narrative even though she was at Frustration on the Level 1 expository. She did fairly well on the

concept questions before the reading scoring a ⅝. She did have 16 miscues which put her at

Frustration level. She did not have as good a prosody in this text than she did in the other two

probably because the words were at a higher level than before. When I asked her to retell the

story, she could only tell me three details. Many of the miscues changed the meaning of the text

which is why she had difficulty retelling and answering some of the comprehension questions.

Student A answered three out of four explicit questions right and two out of four implicit

questions right. Since her total score is ⅝ her comprehension level is at Frustration. Her

strength was in how she answered the explicit questions. She answered ¾ of them correctly
and has done well with them in the past two texts as well. She struggled in reading accuracy

which resulted in difficulty in her reading comprehension.