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Rita van Haren
Patriann Smith
Karen Loerch
Riley Wharton
Christina GuevaraMolly Mueller’s Updates
Update One
Hello! This semester I am going to continue to work with my student from last semester. She is making great gains, but is still missing some key skills that are needed to be a successful studnet and reader.
I sat down and spoke with her, and not a lot of changed from last semester. She is still the caretaker for her younger brother at home everyday after school. She also said that there is a lot more tension ( ie. fighting) at home. This stresses her out, so she just goes in her room and reads when she can. She has become a voracious reader, and I love it. She got a Hunger Games tote bcag for Christmas and it is filled with atleast 4 books every day. She has also started getting her friends into reading too. She really loves literature club, and can now go every Friday.
One thing that happened last semester, is that she was placed in an intervention study hall. She was able to work in a small group with the literacy coach and so she learned skills from both me and the literacy coach. However, the program was a canned program, and not necessariliy designed to be specific to each student's needs. I think that Katie picked up some skills, but others she might not have needed as much or was not read for them.
I plan on giving Katie the words their way assesment, as well as the graded reading words assesment to see where she is at compared with first semester. I also want to work on Katie's writing. She loves reading, but I want to see how deeply she is comprehending what she is reading. Writing and reading go hand in hand, and I think it will be great to help her work on this skill.
@Molly, I am looking at your plan and it seems to be a great one. I know we talked about using the motivation assessment as well and so this would be something that might help. It looks like you are needed to have a comprehension assessment for Katie because it will help us figure out the areas that she needs to work on. I am suggesting at least two non-fiction passages (perhaps from Newsela) and two fictional passages from texts of her choice that can not only serve as passages for a running record but can also allow you to conduct think-alouds with Katie. These think-alouds would really be more informal rather than structured as the ones that we used in the QRI last semester. I think that using these can provide us with authentic information about the areas with which Katie can be helped to improve.
After developing a plan for intervention, and as you instruct Katie, we might decide to continue this process of formative assessment weekly so that we see how she is responding to the genres. Of course, these are my suggestions. Feel free to let me know your thoughts!
She is not in the intervention study hall, but asked the teacher if she could still sit in on it this quarter. I think she likes it as a safe space, and feels more comfortable spending her study hall time in the literacy coach's room. So maybe she will pick up some more information from her time in there!
@Molly It sounds like you off to a great start! Is she in the intervention study hall this semester as well? If she is getting extra support from you and the literacy coach, this will definitely help her get more individualized attention. Hearing that she is reading a lot and that she is motivated is fantastic! The more you read (and write) the better you get!