To the parents of Magaly,

Greetings! My name is Ms. Rath, I am a senior at University of South Florida pursuing my

Bachelors in Elementary Education. I have had the pleasure of joining Mrs. Gonzalez’s classroom this
semester to get some hands-on experience in the classroom. During my time in this classroom, I have
been working with Magaly to build her literacy strengths and help her become an even stronger reader
and I would love to share some information about the work Magaly and I have done together.
Magaly has strong re-telling skills and is able to recount the events and key details of texts
accurately. She uses active reading strategies such as annotating the text and looking back when asked
questions about what she read. Magaly has a strength of utilizing the tools and support provided to her,
She refers to our anchor charts in the classroom and asks for feedback and support during instruction,
which shows a thoughtful process in her work. When I first began working with her, I noticed that
Magaly would benefit from comprehension instruction to move past retelling of stories to thinking more
critically about the texts we read to be able to draw conclusions, make inferences, and make claims about
ideas not directly stated in the text. I felt that she would also benefit from strengthening her written
reading responses to synthesize and analyze information from texts
To support Magaly in her efforts of growing as a reader, I considered her strengths and consulted
trusted literature to find some instructional strategies that would best fit Magaly’s needs. One strategy that
I found beneficial was “Transitioning from Sentence to Sentence.” This strategy is used to help students
elaborate past a first thought to do some longer-form writing and explore their thinking. I encouraged
Magaly to think about the connection between two sentences she wanted to write. I provided her with
transitional words and phrases to help her connect ideas from the text to her own thinking. This strategy
can encourage her to use sentence frames and transitional phrases to expand on her writing.
Another strategy that was helpful to Magaly’s growth was a Quality Talk. This strategy has
students engage in discussions in which they ask each other probing questions, provide evidence to
support their claims, actively listen to their peers, and build upon each other’s ideas. Students were
encouraged to participate, think critically about the concepts, and reflect on their ideas. I believe this
strategy was especially beneficial to Magaly because she was able to bounce her ideas off of her peers
and she has positive relationships with her peers in our classroom.
To continue to support Magaly’s learning and literacy development at home, consider practicing
the following strategies at home. Ask Magaly questions about things she reads and encourage her to write
about it. Ask broad questions that give her creative freedom in her thinking such as, “what can you relate
to this story?” or “what did you notice about the characters?” Ask her questions about story development,
theme, message, or anything that could encourage her to bring her own ideas to the conversation.
An alternative recommendation is to role play with Magaly as different characters from the texts
she reads. This strategy can be done in many different ways and it can be done together or you can
prompt her to do it independently. Assume the roles of characters from a text Magaly is reading and act
out a scene from the text or improv how you think those specific characters would react to a situation.
This activity could help her further develop the skills of using her own thoughts to expand on ideas
presented to her in texts. Another way this strategy can be explored is by having Maglay write
diary/journal entries as a character from a text. Have Magaly think deeply about a character she is reading
about, ask her to write a diary entry from the perspective of that character about an event from the text.
Encourage her to explore the character’s perspectives and feelings to expand on the event detailed in the
text. Remind her that she is not writing a summary, she is exploring the perspective of a specific
character.
Magaly is a delightfully resourceful, hardworking, and diligent young student. She has the drive
and skills to be an extremely successful student and I feel privileged to have been a part of her journey. I
appreciate the opportunity to work and mutually learn with Magaly. Thank you for the confidence and
trust placed in me to provide the best possible learning opportunities to Magaly, I know she will go on to
do amazing things!

Kind Regards,
Avery Rath