Katherine bailey literacy profile edn340_10-16-11

Katherine Bailey Literacy Profile EDN 340

Assignment 2: Literacy Profile
Literacy Profile: Reading/Writing/Spelling Analysis

Gavin Sampson Age: 10 Grade: 5th
School: Belville Elementary School Teacher: Mr. Everett

Introduction: I am an elementary education student studying at University of North Carolina
Wilmington. I have been placed at Belville Elementary School to tutor Gavin Sampson.
During our tutoring sessions Gavin has completed a series of assessments that have given
me a better understanding on the areas that would be beneficial for me to work with him.
Through these assessments I have identified his strengths in reading, writing, and spelling
as well as his needs in these areas. During the tutoring sessions Gavin has been working
on his writing, reading comprehension and interacting with the text. We are now in the
process of furthering his understanding of new vocabulary words in addition to his
reading comprehension.

Strengths in Reading: Gavin is reading at an instructional and independent level of fifth grade
and a frustration level of sixth grade. He enjoys reading to learn when it is a subject area
that is of interest to him. He also seems to enjoy reading for fun, but also when he is
interested in the subject matter. He is great at reading with emotion and trying to
understand the different viewpoints of the characters in the story. He uses the strategy of
sounding out words well and when we used the dictionary to look up words he was able
to find the word he was looking for and would take time to make sure he understood the
meaning. Although many times he would not show that he did not understand the word
until I asked him to explain what it means.

Strengths in Writing:
Gavin’s strength in writing is his ability to create a piece of writing that is creative and
full of imagination. He writes to entertain. He has the ability to expand upon a piece of
writing but may lack the want to do so.

Needs in Reading:
Gavin’s need in reading is developing his comprehension level. He can retell a story
well but when asked to give further detail or to think more in-depth about a specific topic
it is hard for him to do so if it has not been expressly stated in what was read. He does
need to work on paying attention to the punctuation and pausing when there are commas
or periods; as well as reading the ending punctuation before he actually reads it
chronologically because there are many pieces of dialogue that he has read that is a
person asking a question and when he reads the question it does not sound like a
question. He also needs to work on not just reading the words but what they mean. In the
Burke Reading Interview I completed with him he even mentioned that he would like to
be a better reader and he feels he can accomplish this by knowing what the words mean.

Needs in Writing (use continuum to address specific needs)


Gavin needs to work on the idea of expanding upon a piece of writing. I can tell that he
has the ability from what he did expand upon but he does not show any interest in writing
longer pieces. He also needs to choose more challenging wording when he does write
and focus on the proper use of punctuation, especially commas.

Strengths in Spelling: Gavin is strong in spelling and has a good ability for hearing the letters
and phonemes. He does write fast and I feel that he is more focused on getting his ideas
down on paper rather than the proper spelling of the words.

Needs in Spelling: Gavin only had two errors on the piece that was used for his spelling analysis
and the one errors spelling analysis (interrupt which he wrote: enerupt) included a letter
“t” that sometimes is not heard if someone is speaking fast. He has done well on the
spelling throughout the tutoring sessions and simply needs to slowly reread what has
been written to catch his errors.

Instructional Plan: To develop Gavin’s reading comprehension I feel that the use of retelling
would serve him well. The more he can retell about what he has read, either prompted or
unaided, the more he will begin to understand the meaning of the reading and grasp the
concept of focusing on overall meaning and the importance of the details. Gavin also
has a tendency to skim when he is reading to himself and if he repeated the reading more
than once he would be more able obtain and retain the information he has read. For
Gavin’s difficulties with reading punctuation he needs to slow down when he reads aloud
and take time to look at the punctuations as he reads. Read aloud time when someone
else reads aloud with him would also be a good exercise for Gavin because it allows him
to follow along to what is being read as he listens to someone else read. He can then hear
what it sounds like to pause properly at periods and commas and what is sounds like to
read a question in a piece of writing. To work on knowing the meaning of words Gavin
should make use of the sticky note technique and place sticky notes on the words he does
not know, or is unsure of, their meaning and after the reading return to those words and
use the context of the writing, the root words, or a dictionary to find the meaning of the
words. He would also benefit from using a journal or notebook he could write the words
down in and include their meaning and the words correctly used in a sentence. By using
this technique he would have a reference to refer back to at times to either refresh his
memory of the words or to look up a word that he knows he defined before but cannot
remember the meaning.

To develop Gavin’s writing I feel that he should spend more time in the prewriting
process and develop more details and supporting information that can build and give his
writing more depth. I also think that the use of a writing folder for Gavin to keep his
work would serve as a good technique for him to make use of because he can go back and
revisit earlier pieces of work and critique himself on what he think he did well on and
what he can do better on. When it comes to his needs of using more challenging words in
his writing he will begin to do this when he follows the suggestions for understanding
word meaning that was outlined above. I believe that when he begins to build his
working vocabulary he will begin to use these words in his writing as well. He can also


use a thesaurus as an aid during the writing process to replace words that are commonly
used in his writing with words that are more of a risk for him.

Gavin is overall a strong speller and he should continue to use the techniques of sounding
out the words when writing. Where he does need to focus more attention is the process
of proofreading his own work and he can improve upon his spelling by rereading what he
has written slowly and thoroughly to allow for more time to notice the spelling mistakes
he has written.

The need I would focus on for Gavin to help him with the development of his reading and
writing is to further develop his working vocabulary. He does not take risks by using less
common words in his writing and skips word that he does not know in reading. By using
certain instructional strategies Gavin will build his working vocabulary and make him a
more effective reader and writer. The journal, Reading Improvement, details in the article
STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION ways to help
students build an effective vocabulary. Gavin would benefit by using the context of the
text to provide clues for the meaning of the unknown words. One strategy that I think
would be extremely beneficial for Gavin would be to use a graphic organizer for his
unknown words. The graphic organizer allows for him to identify the unknown words
during reading and then as a post reading exercise create and organizer that list the word
and then has branches underneath the word where examples, definitions or criteria, and
non-examples are written. I would take it one step further and after he has completed the
above steps use the words in sentences. By using this graphic organizer his higher level
thinking process will come into play and it serve as retrieval cues to promote learning.
THE USE OF A SPECIFIC SCHEMA THEORY STRATEGY-SEMANTIC MAPPING-
TO FACILITATE VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT AND COMPREHENSION FOR
AT-RISK READERS, an article in the Reading Improvement journal, also discusses the
importance of using graphic organizers to build vocabulary. This article explains the use
of semantic mapping to establish and build a basis of prior knowledge to aid the students
in building their vocabulary. One example given, “When teachers, during pre-reading
activities, use chapter summaries, key terms, outlines and graphic organizers, they are providing
students an introduction to new vocabulary and concepts that will be presented in the more
detailed text readings”. I think this strategy will work for Gavin because it introduces him to the
new vocabulary before he experiences it in the text. By using the strategy he will become more
familiar with the word and have a basic understanding of it before he reads it, leaving him less of
a chance of just skipping the word while reading or leaving out the meaning altogether.

Summary: Gavin is a student that has many possibilities. He is outgoing and a good speaker and
speller. He gets very interested in reading when the subject matter is interesting and
likes to read with emotion. He has the creativity and imagination to write interesting
stories. The areas he needs to work more in are building his working vocabulary and
improving his reading comprehension. He also needs to develop his writing to be
more in-depth and provide the reader with more details and adjectives. Gavin has
been a great student to work with and has tried hard at every task he has been given.


Bibliography
Phillips, D., Foote, C. J., & Harper, L. J. (2008). STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE
VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION. Reading Improvement, 45(2), 62-68. Retrieved from
EBSCOhost.

Little, D. C., & Box, J. (2011). THE USE OF A SPECIFIC SCHEMA THEORY STRATEGY-
SEMANTIC MAPPING-TO FACILITATE VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT AND
COMPREHENSION FOR AT-RISK READERS. Reading Improvement, 48(1), 24-31.
Retrieved from EBSCOhost

Serafini, F. (2001). The Reading Workshop, Creating Space for Readers. (pp. 130-131).
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.


Reflection

I found that by conducting the different reading, writing, and spelling assessments with

Gavin I have a better understanding of how to assess the students that will be in my classroom. I

also have gained more knowledge about the time that must be spent assessing each student. To

allow for the accurate assessment of twenty five students there has to be careful planning to

ensure that each student has an adequate amount of time for the assessments to be administered.

Assessments cannot be administered one time they have to be given more often to gain

knowledge from the results. You must use the results from the initial assessment and compare it

to the subsequent assessment to look for the student’s growth. The students assessments should

also not be compared to one another rather compare each student’s assessment to the previous

assessment. There is a direct link between assessing students and instruction because by

conducting these assessments educators can develop plans that will support the students’ growth

as readers, writers, and spellers. If there are no assessments made in a classroom the teacher will

have no real understanding what level readers the students are, what their writing and spelling

skills are. As educators it is vital to use assessments to determine the appropriate instruction that

reaches all of the students in the class.

There is a need for formative assessment is equally important as the need for summative

assessments. The formative assessments offer teachers details about the areas of literacy that the

students show strength and needs. I feel that most of these assessments would be more suitable

for individuals instead of the whole class due to the nature of the assessments. They focus on

specific individual comprehension and understanding. The one assessment that may be suitable

for the whole class would be the retelling. The students would each have provide an answer


about the reading and they could build upon on another’s answers to provide as much detail and

supporting information as possible.

I learned that children may or may not be risk takers (Gavin is not a risk taker) when it

comes to reading and spelling but with encouragement and creative instruction the teacher can

help the students to explore a variety of words, sentence structures and writing styles that will

develop the students into more effective readers, writers, and spellers. Many students may fall

into the comfort zone of using words they are confident with in their meaning and spelling.

Throughout my tutoring session I have learned that you have to push the students to use more

original sentence structure and branch out from the norm.

I discovered that, as a teacher, you really do not know what the students have

comprehended about what they read unless you ask them questions. I found that asking open

ended questions is a more effective way to assess the students knowledge because you are having

them draw their own conclusions, and develop their own answers; not describe exactly the

answer to the specific question posed to them. I also learned that not every student is

comfortable with answering open questions like: “What was the reading about?”, instead you

may need to be more specific and offer prompts such as discussing the characters, events, setting

in the reading.

Before this assignment and conducting the assessments with my tutee I thought that

assessments were just test given periodically testing the students’ knowledge of information

covered during instruction time and the end of the year standardized tests like the EOG’s. Now I

am realizing the importance of assessments such as the ones covered this semester are not to just

test their knowledge but to also develop an understanding of the students’ reading levels,


comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. Teachers need to have this knowledge about each and

every student in the class to be able to provide each student with instruction that is at their

specific level and this allows all students to have teaching that is effective for them.

I have learned that I have to be more flexible in my thinking and planning during

teaching. The process of conducting these assessments has given me a new perspective on

teaching and the desire to be able to be a proficient and effective teach that can reach every

student in the class.

Katherine bailey literacy profile edn340_10-16-11

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