October 20, 2008

Today I worked with a student named Channell. I have Channell choose two books she would like to read with me one on one. The first book is to be one that she can read without a problem and the second one should be more challenging. We start with the first book which is called The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat by, Nurit Karlin. I do an unofficial reading record on her to see where she stands. I recorded the correct words, errors and self corrections. I have now obtained a copy of the book for $1 online. Channell is reading much lower then a third grade reading level and this book is said to be for ages 6. The book is a rhyming book with “at” sounds.

The book itself is longer then 100 words but I assed the fist 104. Out of the 104 words she had a total of 11 errors (one was for the insertion of a word) and 4 self corrections. She has a problem decoding words because all of the mistakes she made were words she knows. She has a tendency to look at the first letter of a word and instead of sounding out the word or looking at the middle or ending, she automatically changes the words to one that starts with the same beginning letter or sound. It appears instead of decoding words she guesses. She also has a problem with sub-sounds. Words that end in “ed” are substituted with “t” or words that end in “b” are substituted with “d”.

The book is on a rather easy level so she should have scored close to 100%. Her error rate, (total words/total errors) is equal to 1:9 which means that for each error made, she read approximately 9 words correctly. Her accuracy rate (total words read-total errors/total words read x 100) is equal to 78%. That means this book that is at a first grade reading level is too difficult for her. Her self-correction rate (number of errors + number of self corrections/ number of self corrections) is equal to 1: 4. This means that she corrects approximately 1 out of every 4 errors.
She has a hard time with comprehending what she is reading. Rather then substitute with words that make sense in the story or sentence she substitutes with words that begin with the same first letter. She uses visual cues on a few of the words but because of her problem with decoding they aren’t much help. She is going to need a lot of help in figuring out the sounds letters make together and from there sounding out words.
In the upcoming weeks we are going to be working on decoding and comprehension.

After doing the reading record I asked her about the book to see if she understood what she was reading. She was ok with the easier book but the second book which is about making apple pie while traveling the world for ingredients she had a harder time. Instead of explaining what the book was about she used familar words from the story to explain which ended up making no sense. She has a hard time comprehending the story. After both books I also had her write some some words. She has just as hard of a time with spelling. Because she can not decode or sound out words she writes words exactly how she hears them or she completly guesses. Some of the words she writes do not contain the similar sounds in any way. The words she does get right are only because I sounded them out for her. We slowly went through the words so she could see how the sounds were put together.

After the books I met with the teacher to discuss Channell. I learned she is reading at level I but should be at level G which is a first grade level. She has trouble with decoding and comprehension. She also has a problem with middle and ending sounds of words. For next week we discussed that she needs a lot of background information and it is important to make predictions with her so she can grasp what we are reading.