Comparing Literacy Learners using literacy profile

Student C: Student Literacy Profile: Transitional Stage

Jamie is a fourth grade student in an urban community. She enjoys reading books, being with her friends, and playing sports. Although Jamie stated that reading is a favorite pastime, she demonstrated several reading behaviors that suggest that there are particular areas of reading that would benefit from more support. For instance, the results from several of the cognitive reading assessments identify that Jamie struggles with reading with fluency. In the transitional reading stage, students can recognize many sight words. Her word retrieval skills need further development to ensure that she can automatically recognize words. During the oral reading fluency assessment, Jamie read with general ease, demonstrating both accuracy and automaticity. However, Jamie is a slow decoder, which might affect her silent reading abilities and consequently her comprehension. To develop Jamie’s decoding skills, one instructional consideration is to implement word sorts that support syllabic analysis. Because she is reading chapter books, Jamie is encountering multi-syllabic words. Additionally, Jamie’s comprehension assessments demonstrate that she needs to continue to build a working vocabulary. Jamie was able to discuss the reading selection and answer a variety of questions. Yet, several responses required her to return to the text. Within one passage, she asked for the meaning of three words. When encouraged to use the context of the passage, she hesitated before responding. An instruction consideration is conducting Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) sessions. SFA compares words specifically analyzing attributes amongst the words. By developing her fluency skills, Jamie’s comprehension abilities will continue to grow. Jamie was very eager to speak about her reading abilities and interests. A non-cognitive assessment, an Interest Reading Inventory, was administered. Jamie easily spoke about her interests in reading about animals and adventure stories. She reported that adventure stories allowed her to become different characters or to go to different places. Jamie shared that her family likes to visit historical landmarks. Although Jamie stated that the Magic Tree House books had been her favorites, she realized she was too old now to read them. Her expression showed a reminiscing smirk, but she quickly returned to the conversation. She shared that she is enjoying the 39 Clues series. In addition, Jamie addressed that although she likes to read, she often finds she reads slower compared to other children. She said this bothered her because she would like to read fast like other students. When asked if she enjoys book club format, she smiled and nodded her head. She shared that sometimes the teacher will ask difficult questions. Then she quickly added that the teacher would let them look back in the book for help. Lastly, when Jamie was asked about reading nonfiction texts, she bunched up her nose and shook her head no. Even though she enjoys history and animals, she shared that science topics can be boring, and she becomes lost in her textbooks. Jamie would benefit from direct instruction of content area texts. This instruction would include surveying the chapter, looking at the various headings, and engaging in explicit vocabulary instruction. Overall, Jamie appears to be a confident reader who enjoys reading.

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