Literature Profile

1. Background / Introduction

The student I chose for my literature profile is a six-year-old first grader named

Cynthia. I chose this student because she is almost at grade level for reading and I want

to provide her the opportunity for extra support to help get her there.

Cynthia is Filipino and White. She lives in an English-speaking home with both

of her parents and her 11-year-old older brother. Both of her parents are college

graduates and her father is a military veteran. There are no serious health conditions

listed in her file other than having mild eczema. There also is nothing in her file about

needing specific accommodations, an IEP, or a 504 plan.

Cynthia transferred to her current school at the beginning of the year from another

elementary school in another district. Her family moved into the zone for her current

school and they did not want to make the daily commute back and forth. Last year, when

she was in kindergarten, she only missed a total of 8 days of school. She received 3’s for

every subject and category of performance at her old school, except for Physical

Education in which she got 4’s.

Her current 1st grade teacher says her strengths are that she is kind and always

tries her best. She is also helpful and an active participant in class. The goals that her

teacher had for her were to work on complex phonics patterns and reading fluency.

Cynthia received all “constantly demonstrates” on her parent conference form for

responsibility for learning behavior. Her mother says that her strengths are that she is

strong in math, self-motivated, kind, helpful, and good at problem solving. Goals that

she has for her daughter are to build a love for reading, increased responsibilities, and
 take ownership of her homework and projects. The end of the year first grade goals are

DRA 18/20, Fluency 60 words per minute, BPST 65/85, AR level 2.1 – 2.5, and writing

scores of 3.

She is extremely social and is constantly distracted by the people around her; this

may be impeding her academic performance. On the class clip chart, she always ends up

on either green (good) or a pink (great / highest) so there are no major behavioral issues

in class. She also does not enjoy reading so when it comes time to do the daily 20

minutes of silent reading first thing in the morning, she will complain and needs to be

constantly redirected to stay on task. Cynthia also has never received 100% on her AR

quizzes which means that when she does read, she is not retaining a lot of the information

from the text.

2. Pre-Assessment Data

Shared Reading Observation

Every morning, after 15 - 20 minutes of silent reading, the students enter the

period of literacy station rotations. One of the possible stations that the students get the

opportunity to go to is the "Shared Reading" station. During this part of the rotation,

students partner up, sit in rocking chairs, and take turns reading their book of choice to

each other. Cynthia was partnered up with one of her friends in the class, so the reading

that I observed was not constant throughout the entire 15 – 20 minute time frame.

When Cynthia and her friend finally got started, she volunteered her friend to read

first and her friend immediately began. While her friend was reading, I noticed that

Cynthia was not paying much attention to the story being read to her. She would look

around the room and at what other people in the class were doing. Every time her friend
turned the page however, she would always bring her attention back to the book. She

repeated this throughout the entire time her friend was reading to her.

When it was Cynthia's turn to read, she stalled for a few minutes before

beginning. Once she began, she remained in a constant flow until she got to a word that

she did not know. When this happened, she appeared to be embarrassed by not knowing

what the word was and flipped to the next page. She did this for 4 more pages. She

seemed to be self-conscious of the fact that her friend was one of the "star readers" of the

class and she was not. After completing this observation, it gave me some insight as to

why she acts the way she does when it is time to read. She is very aware of her

limitations as far as reading is concerned and she is also extremely aware of the level that

her friends are at. Part of her distaste for reading probably stems from not being as strong

of a reader as her friends are.

Decoding and Word Recognition Assessment

The Decoding and Word Recognition Test was done a few weeks into the school

year. This test is important to give the teacher a baseline as far as students’ abilities. For

the consonant sounds section, Cynthia scored a 19/21. She pronounced the letter h as

“ch” and g as “ja”. For nearly half of the consonants, I noticed that she added -a to the

end of the letter sounds. I asked her teacher about this and she told me that about a third

of her class does this because that is how one of the kindergarten teachers taught the

students to pronounce them. For consonant digraph sounds and short vowels sounds she

got all of them correct.

Cynthia had much more trouble with the last part of the assessment which was

blending words. For short, she only missed one in which she pronounced fell as “feel”.
Blends and final -e she got a perfect score. For long, r-controlled, and OVD, she only

missed one for each section. Her errors for long and r-controlled came very close to the

actual word: “lake” for leak and “barn” instead of burn; however, for the OVD section,

she did not give me a response for the word lawn. She struggled heavily with the

sections: inflections, 2-syllables, affixes, and 3 – 4 syllables. Most of which she did not

even give answers to. Her total score for the assessment was 65/85.

Sight Word Assessment

Another test that I administered to my student was the Sight Word test. The first

100 words are words that they are expected to know from kindergarten. The next 100 are

1st grade level words, and the last 100 are words at the 2nd grade level. She missed 19 of

the first 200 kindergarten / 1st grade words, and she missed. She attempted all of the 2nd

grade words. She attempted all but one of the words and for the most part, her educated

guesses on what the words were were not very far off from the actual word: "where"

instead of were, "these" instead of those, "form" instead of from, and "fair" instead of far.

After giving her this assessment and looking at the results, I can tell that she knows all of

her letter sounds, she just is not paying close enough attention to the sounds in the middle

of the word. When she is unsure of a word, she just guesses based on the first and last

letters of the word.

Running Record

The final test that I administered to my student was a passage in which I could

create a running record for. I marked my notes for the running record directly on the

passage while she read it to me from another copy. This assessment was done to see how

many words she could read in one minute. In one minute, Cynthia was one-word shy of
 finishing the first paragraph. She read a total of 39 words in one minute but made 7

errors which made her total number of correct words within the minute 32. The average

number of correct words per minute was 33 so she was very close. Three of her errors

were words that were not attempted, and the others were because she either added an

extra letter to the word or she replaced one letter for another. I also made a note in the

comment section that she was not listening to herself while she was reading aloud.

3. Diagnosis

After reviewing the assessments, the two areas that I would like to focus on

improving in my lesson plans would be listening to herself while she reads and paying

closer attention to the individual letters of words.

The majority of Cynthia’s shortcomings in reading stem from her not paying close

enough attention to the words that she is reading. If she does not know a word, she will

just guess what the word is based on the first and last letters of the word. Sometimes she

will have guessed correctly. Her guesses are never based on any contextual evidence she

gets from what she is reading, she just says the first word that comes to mind that begins

and ends with those same letters. If I can get her to slow down and isolate the individual

letters and letter sounds, she will start making fewer errors in her reading and maybe she

will begin to feel more confident as a reader.

Because she does not listen to herself while she reads, she does not pick up on her

mistakes that she is making while she reads. She does not understand that the words that

she replaces when she is reading a text does not make any sense because she is not

retaining any of it. By introducing comprehension questions after we read together, I

 think that will help her realize that she is not listening to what she is reading and will

motivate her to start doing so.

I think that the main way I can get her to improve in both of these areas is by

having her slow down while she is reading. She is making all of these mistakes

unknowingly because she is just trying to get that part of the day over with. She does not

want to read, and she definitely does not want to be pulled away from her friends to read

in another reading group with people at similar reading levels.

If she can improve these skills, I have no doubt that she will be able to catch up

with her friends eventually. She is very friend-oriented so that might be a possible

motivating force for her to want to improve. In class, she is a hard worker and an active

participant, so I know that she has it in her to advance her reading skills.

4. Intervention

I conduct reading groups in my practicum every morning from 9 – 10:30, calling

back different colored groups for 15 – 20 minutes. Cynthia is part of my yellow group. I

try to meet with each group at least three times a week. We alternate between reading

short reader books and reading one paged texts or stories. The reader books are good

because it helps them with their fluency and stamina, while reading a level-appropriate

text. The one paged texts are a little higher than their level but they are still able to

understand the majority of the text. They understandably tend to make more mistakes

with the one paged texts compared to the reader books.

Before this literature profile, when I worked with Cynthia and her group (three

times a week for 15 – 20 minutes each session), I was told by the teacher to have them

read through the book and answer comprehension questions the first session. They were
rushed through it in order to get to the questions. When it came to the questions, the

students were unable to answer the questions because they were not paying attention to

what they read and they were reading too fast. By the next meeting, we were already on

another text. The students were not getting anything out of it.

After looking at Cynthia’s data, I realized that I needed to extend the text

throughout the three sessions. The first we meet is dedicated solely to familiarizing

ourselves with the text. We spend those 15 – 20 minutes understanding the vocabulary,

previewing the text, making inferences, and actually reading the text. After every two

pages read in the reader book, or after every paragraph of the one paged texts, I ask

clarifying questions or ask the students to summarize what we read in that section or what

they learned from that section.

The next session we meet, we reread the story or text and work on a list2 of

comprehension questions. Before the students write down their responses, I have them

discuss with a partner their thoughts, and after, we discuss the answers together as a

group. Then, they record their answers. The reading groups focus is on fluency,

comprehension, and information retention. My personal goal for Cynthia in this activity

is to get her to slow down and listen to herself read. I knew that she would feel

uncomfortable with being pulled out by herself, so I decided to keep her with her reading

group as to not further isolate and or embarrass her; however, I knew that in order to help

her with isolating individual letters and their sounds in words, I would have to work

solely with her.

In order to help her improve her awareness of the middle letters and sounds in

words, I pulled all of the words that she missed from her sight word assessment and we
 practiced them together. We meet once a week during silent reading time for about 10

minutes, as to not entirely take away from her silent reading time. I put the words she

missed on flashcards and I make it into a game. If she can get the word immediately, she

gets to keep the flashcard, if she does not get it in time, I keep it. It gets her excited about

getting pulled out rather than her being embarrassed about it or having her dread coming

with me. We compare our stacks at the end of the time together and she always promises

me that she will have the lowest stack the next time we meet. She even asks throughout

the week when we will play again. The focus of this activity is for her to look at words

that she has trouble with individually. It forces her to look at only that one word at a time

and each of the letters and sounds each word contains. She tries to sound out each letter

of the unfamiliar words rather than just guessing.

5. Post–Assessment Data

Shared Reading Observation

Shared Reading is still a part of the literacy station rotations in my cooperating teacher’s

classroom. After 20 minutes of silent reading first thing in the morning, the students meet on the

carpet before breaking off into their literacy stations. Cynthia’s table was sent to the “Shared

Reading” station. Both her and her partner took out the rocking chairs and picked their books to

read to each other. Cynthia, once again, chose her friend to read to, so there was a lot of excess

talking while she was supposed to be reading.

Just like during my preassessment, Cynthia did not start reading, she made her fiend go

first. She was engaged in the story for the first five minutes of the story, then began looking

around the room and talking to whoever was near her. There was one point where her whole

body was turned away from her partner who was reading, and she was playing with her other
friend’s jacket. Her attention did not return to her partner until her partner told her it was her

turn to read.

I think because her partner sounded frustrated, Cynthia began reading immediately. Her

flow was constant throughout the book. She had read that same book for the 20-minute silent

reading period, so she had already been exposed to the more challenging words in the story. She

read through the book from beginning to end without stopping to talk to those around her or

stopping to take breaks because she was tired of reading. The friend she had chosen to read with

for that rotation was someone who was at the same reading level as she was.

Decoding and Word Recognition Assessment

The Decoding and Word Recognition Test was administered again to track the students’

progress from quarter 2 to be compared to quarter 1. The test this time around looks a little

different than before because they switched over to a new format; however, the same items are

being assessed. Cynthia had 100% accuracy with letter recognition and digraph consonant

sounds. She scored 20/21 on consonant sound, she missed h and said “ch”. She really struggled

with short and long vowel sounds, specifically i and o for both sections. She had 100% accuracy

with blends, words with final-e, long, r-controlled, and OVD. She struggled with 3-4 syllable

words and affixes and really had a hard time with 2-syllable words and inflections. She missed

15, so her total for the entire assessment was 127 / 142.

Sight Word Assessment

The High Frequency Words assessment was exactly the same list of 300 words that I

used at the beginning of the year to assess her. She went through the first 100 words quickly;

these words were the words that she should have known in kindergarten. The second set, the

first-grade words, she went through them a tad slower than the first set. For the last set of 100
words that were second grade level, she took her time with most of the words because she

noticed that she was getting the words correctly and she did not want to ruin her perfect streak

she had. I included the list that I used to assess her the first time in the appendix because it is the

same exact list I used for the post assessment; however, I did not include an additional copy of

the post list in the appendix because she got all 300 words correct the second time around.

Running Record

The final assessment I administered to her was using a higher-level passage than the one

that I assessed her with at the beginning of the year. The first passage she read for me was to get

a baseline of where she was at in her reading abilities; however, this time I assessed her using a

text level that my cooperating teacher had me give to all students because that was where she

believed that the students should be at in their reading at this point in the year. She read the

passage slower than the last time I had officially assessed her but there are a variety of factors

that could have played into that. The passage was much longer, there was higher level

vocabulary, and the classroom was very loud at the time she was tested so she may not have been

able to concentrate. She read through the entire passage in 3 minutes and 19 seconds. During

that time, she only made 1 error and it was that she read decided as “recided”.

6. Analysis / Evaluation

Cynthia has improved in every assessment that she retook; in most aspects of the

assessments, she improved dramatically. As far as her decoding and word recognition, she no

longer adds the extra -a sound to the ends of the consonants and she can blend all the words on

the assessment with short, blends, final -e, long, r-controlled, and OVD. When I tested her high

frequency words the first time, she missed 25 words, when I tested her for the second time, she
got all 300 words correct. She also generally reads a lot smoother and at a quicker pace than she

did at the beginning of the year.

During my time with her in reading groups, we have read only one story a week as

opposed to the two or three stories we were reading before. The first day is dedicated solely to

making predictions, reading the text, and making inferences. Day 2 of the text is usually about

looking at specific details of the story, sequencing, and looking at the concepts of print. The

third and final day with the text is spent summarizing the story and answering questions about

what they read. I have noticed that all of the members of the groups that I pull, but especially

Cynthia, have really benefited from taking our time with the text and pulling as much

information as we can from the story. She now enjoys the reading groups and she definitely is

getting more out of it now. She is typically the first person to volunteer to answer my questions

and she has become especially proficient at retelling key details of the story.

The flashcards that I created for Cynthia to help her learn the high frequency words that

she did not know helped a great deal as well. It forced her to isolate the word and really look at

each letter. After the first few times we played our game I could see her start to take her time

looking at each letter and trying to put the sounds together in her head before she said it aloud. It

only took her a little over a month to be able to say the words correctly and fast, no matter which

order I showed them to her in.

One area that I would like to focus more on with her if I had the opportunity would be to

help her to love reading. I think I might be easing her into it because she now likes being in

reading groups, although she likes it a lot more because of the social aspect of it than the actual

reading itself, but that is a start. When she gets to that point where she loves to read, she will

continue to get better and better at it. She will want to volunteer first to read in partners and she
would not be so reluctant to have to go to that station. She would also pay more attention to her

partner while they are reading because she would be more invested in the story.

As a language arts instructor, I learned that there are so many methods and activities out

there that can help strengthen just one area that a student may be lacking in. There are so many

resources, studies, and tools at our exposal as educators and it is imperative that we use as many

as we can in order to help the students in our classroom. Differentiating instruction may seem

tedious and burdensome; however, it will make a world of difference for the students who are

not getting the support that they desperately need. Taking that extra time to plan extra activities

or altering lessons to help support these students is definitely worth it.

7. Reflection

This was the first thing that I was trusted with as far as planning instruction. I was able to

see just how much the data that I collected from Cynthia affected what I was going to teacher her

and what approaches I would use to accomplish that. Before, I had just assumed that if a student

did not understand something, the teacher would simply reteach it over again, the same way they

did the first time around. I thought this because this is what I had experienced and observed

throughout my schooling. Through this experience, I learned that I was constantly referring back

to her assessments and other school work to see her specific areas of need and design lessons that

were specifically tailored to her needs as an individual learner. The whole reason that I slowed

down the pace that we were getting through our reading group books was because I saw how it

was affecting Cynthia academically.

 It also made me realize that there probably is not just the one person that is struggling in

that specific area, there are probably at least a few more in that situation. I went back and looked

at other students’ work and discovered that even though they were higher performing and read at

a higher reading level than Cynthia, they were struggling in the same areas that she was. The

changes I made in Cynthia’s reading group, I also made to the rest of my reading groups and I

could see the positive results immediately afterwards.

I think that the power of getting to know a student as an individual is highly underrated.

Cynthia by no means is a shy 7-year-old but it was not until we really started getting to know

each other that she allowed me to fully teach her. She started to trust me with details of her life

and trust me with her academic weaknesses and insecurities. Together, we were able to

dramatically change the way she performs in English in all facets.

I have learned so many valuable teaching strategies and techniques through this course

that I have and will be taking with me into my future classroom.

8. Appendix

Decoding and Word Recognition Assessment (Pre):

Decoding and Word Recognition Assessment (Post):
Sight Word Assessment (Pre):
Running Record (Pre):
Running Record (Pre):