Video Reflection

Week One
Goals:
1. John will understand that reading can be valuable even for children for entertainment and learning.
John will also gain confidence in his own reading skills. This will result in an overall MRP score of
80% by December.
2. John will be able to identify words out at an instructional 2nd grade level on the San Diego Quick
assessment by December
3. John will reach independent first grade reading level reading words in context on the QRI by
December
4. John will improve his reading rate to 45 WPM on first grade texts CORE assessments by December
5. John will improve in spelling vowel digraphs and igh/ough word teams, reflected by a move to late
within word pattern on the Words Their Way spelling inventory.
6. John will write a 3 sentence paragraph without help. Each sentence will contain an

independent clause. All sentences will be on topic, and will not repeat ideas. The paragraph
will be legible.
Background of the student: John is a second grade student who attends a private Christian school. He
has two older siblings, a sister and a brother, who both enjoy reading and have always read above grade
level. John is the only child in his family who struggles with reading. Though John has been well behind
his classmates in reading skills since kindergarten, he did seem to make some strides in his first grade
year, catching up in decoding (phonics skills) and comprehension. He is still behind in fluency and
writing. While his teacher from last year indicated on the classroom report that he was only one year
behind his classmates in these areas, I later learned that she was under the impression that the form
was going back to Johns mom and was not as honestly critical as she would have otherwise been. My
initial assessments indicate that Johns fluency and writing skills are at the primer level. The initial
assessments also indicate a weakness identifying and spelling words with vowel digraphs and igh/-ough
teams.
John has always been above grade level in oral language, which was evident also by the CORE
vocabulary assessment I gave him on which he scored independent at a 3rd grade level. As his classroom
report indicated, John also has strong comprehension skills despite his low fluency scores. He has the
advantage of being part of a family that often travels and has exposed him to various cultures and
experiences. His rich background knowledge seems to play a role in helping him to comprehend texts,
though his reading is so labored. John has never had behavioral problems in school, though he is easily
distracted when completing less desirable tasks (like those involved with language arts). He sees himself
as an okay reader, but he believes his friends are much better readers. Though he knows reading is
important for adults, he does not yet see the value of reading for kids except as it helps them later in
life.

What did he learn before this lesson?

The part of the lesson seen in the video happens in part two of the first week of intervention. By this
session, Johnny had covered writing legibly and reading with prosody.
Video lesson/ focus
The focus of this portion of the lesson seen in this video is to work towards the following goals 1)
John will understand that reading can be valuable even for children for entertainment and learning.
John will also gain confidence in his own reading skills. This will result in an overall MRP score of
80% by December. 4) John will improve his reading rate to 45 WPM on first grade texts CORE
assessments by December.
The hope is that John will find the reading amusing, thereby raising his value of reading. I am also
aiming to expose him to various texts and multiple readings in order to improve his word
recognition and fluency rate.

Description of activities in the video:

We moved on to the poem he chose at the end of the last session. He asked me to read it first,
which I did. Then I had him read to me, line by line, and point out any hard words. I told him how to
pronounce these and what they meant. We practiced saying the difficult words together. He read the
poem aloud. Reading was slow, and he stumbled over some simple words like ate and started. But he
did really well on the harder words like Grotesque that we discussed together. The next time through,
we did a choral reading together. After that, I asked if he wanted to do it together once more, but he said
confidently that he thought he had it now. He was able to get right through without mistakes and with
good prosody.
I let him choose another poem. As he flipped the pages, he would say, Too, long. Too long. I
told him that some of the longer ones were good, so if he skipped them just because they were long, he
was going to miss out on some fun ones. He asked if I would just read one to him. I said I would and let
him choose. I asked him to just follow along with me, and I read it aloud. As I watch the video back, I can
see that he was amused and engaged throughout the poem about a child bringing a worm for show and
tell.
Questions for Reflection
1. Was the objective met? What evidence from your video demonstrates this? If not, what would
you do differently?
I had two objectives to accomplish here, and though both need more time and
observation to tell if the end goal was accomplished, I can say that progress towards both was
made in this session.
The first was for Johnny to see that reading can be valuable as a source of
entertainment, and he was engaged and enjoying these poems. I could have tried to accomplish
this goal by reading actual stories together, but I believe the poems were a wise choice to meet
Johnnys needs. I knew Johnny would enjoy a text that was humorous more than something
dramatic or full of intrigue, and I purposely searched for a text that I thought he would find
funny, which he did. There are certainly many funny childrens books as well, but I thought the
poems would be more likely to keep him engaged because they are quick to read. Based on his

attitude of trepidation towards even the longer poems, this seems to have been a good choice
when it came to him reading these aloud. If I tried an actual book, he would likely have been
much more intimidated to read it aloud. Even when he read multiple poems, each one had an
ending in sight. The rhythm and rhyme schemes of the poems also helped provide extra cues for
decoding, which gives John more confidence as he reads. Just the simple act of being more
confident in his reading abilities should eventually help him to enjoy the act of reading more.
The second objective was for Johnnys reading rate to improve through multiple
readings of a text. As we can see in the first half of the video, the repeated readings certainly do
help him to get faster, and they also give him a chance to practice reading with expression,
which is extremely difficult for a struggling reader on a first read-through. Research tells us that
repeated readings build automaticity, and I could certainly see through our repeated readings
that Johnny was able to recognize difficult words more quickly. The real proof will be observing
later if he can recognize the same words in different texts.
2. Identify areas of teacher talk that scaffolded, extended, or redirected the student response.
I tried to scaffold the reading for Johnny by first modeling how to read the poem, then reading
the poem and reading the poem with him before making him read it aloud. The model/choral/
individual practice pattern I used came from suggestions for building fluency from Samuels and
Farstrup (2011), and it really seemed to work for Johnny. I changed it a little here by having him
go line by line between the modeling and the choral reading. I am just not sure that this was a
necessary step since the same objective might have been reached through the choral reading.
However, it did give us the chance to discuss the meaning of more difficult words. Perhaps he
would have been able to pronounce the words without knowing their meaning, and the reading
may have been less meaningful to him.
3. What is a possible alternative approach/strategy for follow-up?
An alternative strategy for building fluency is to mark the phrasing on the page using slashes. I
may try this in a future lesson. However, John seems to be grasping the phrasing pretty well
though his observations when I model the reading. If I notice that phrasing becomes an issue, I
will try this technique.
4. If you were acting in a coaching role- what question/s would you have for the teacher (you)?
I would want to know why the teacher is not keeping track of the students reading rate to have
data for guiding future intervention. I do think keeping data along the road of intervention is
important, and this is a step a will take from time to time, but I do not want Johnny to always
see me keeping time and make rate his priority. I have seen other students sacrifice prosody and
comprehension in an effort to read fast because that was the emphasis of the teachers
assessments. I am glad that John takes his time, and that he would rather pause and understand
a text than rush through it. I hope to build fluency more naturally simply through reading more
and having more exposure to written words.
5. What is a key learning you achieved from this teaching episode?
I learned that my idea of a short work does not align with what a struggling reader finds
manageable. From the start, I should have offered to partner read some of the longer poems
with Johnny, allowing him to take half, or switch by stanzas.