Jessi Towne

EDUG 547
October 5, 2015
Appendix P
RICA Reflection
Competency 3: Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
TPE Connection 1.9: Candidates encourage students use of language across reading, writing,
speaking, and listening.
A. Definition In your own words state your understanding of this competency.
This competency is all about phonemic awareness and phonics and how they are
interrelated and correlate to reading literacy.
B. Personal Connection/Evidence Describe ways that you have engaged with this
competency which illustrate you know how to implement it.
a. In other words, indicate events/activities in which you have engaged which are
directly related to this RICA competency both in the Reading/Literacy course
and aside from this course. In this section, take ownership with words such as
the following: It has been my experienceThe lesson I created entitledis an
example of this RICA competencyI have observed Reflect on how your
understanding of this competency is connected to TPEs. How is it important to
your teaching and your students learning?
I have experienced the importance of phonics and phonemic awareness in two
situations. I have assessed students with the Phonics and Decoding and the Phonemic
Awareness tests to determine where their reading and literacy levels are at.
The first time I facilitated the Phonics and Decoding and Phonemic Awareness tests
was with the 2nd graders at my first teaching assignment. I took each of the students,
one by one, into another room to have a more peaceful and quiet atmosphere. Once
we were seated, I turned on my iPad to record the session. I have noticed that it really
helps to have the session recorded when you are working with a student one-on-one.
This gives you the opportunity to really focus in on what the student does well and
the areas in which they are struggling. Each of the sessions was less than ten minutes
because I know that it is difficult for a student to sit still and concentrate on a test
when they are the only participant. The phonemic awareness is the assessment I liked
the most, because it gave me a bigger and more detailed picture as to what sounds the
student struggles with and would need help overcoming. For the most part, the
students stayed on task with the assessments, but every once in a while, they would
stop to comment or ask a question. I did have to realize that these were 2nd grade
students, and they did not have the attention span of an adult yet.
The next students I assessed with phonics and phonemic awareness were my two
tutees, who were in 3rd and 4th grade. I did every one of the assessments on both

students. At first, it was difficult for me to assess each student one at a time because I
had to have the other student concentrating on something else while I assessed the
first student. The TPE that I connected this with was 3.1 which expresses,
Candidates understand and use a variety of informal and formal, as well as formative
and summative assessments, at varying levels of cognitive demand to determine
students progress and plan instruction (Commission on Teacher Credentialing
(CTC), 2013). The assessments difficulty was set in stone, since all students were
being assessed with the same test, but it was accurate in highlighting their struggles
and proficiencies. It was difficult for me to see how much more the 4th grader
struggled with these tests than the 3rd grader did, but I knew that these students were
at the lowest standing in their grade levels, and I had to cater to that fact. I do not
think my tutees are ELs, they dont seem like it, but they might be close to testing
out, but I am not sure. One way I can differentiate for the ELs is by building on the
sounds they already do know. They know all the sounds in Spanish, and I can just
capitalize that by adding in the English sounds and comparing and contrasting the
differences between the letter sounds in Spanish and English. My tutees can talk the
talk, but I do not think they are very competent in walking the walk of English
proficiency. English is the most difficult language on earth to learn, so I sympathize
with my students.

C. Differentiation
a. Describe at least three examples of when and why to use particular strategies
with a student need.
i. If a student struggles with his short and vowels, I will provide teaching
instruction that deals with short and long vowels.
ii. If a student struggles with seeing the word as a whole instead of guessing
what a word means, I will provide instruction that helps the student to
slow down and to read the word by comprehending each letter.
iii. If a student is struggling to hear the individual sounds in a word, then I
will provide teaching instruction that helps the student recognize each
phoneme in a word.
D. Text-To-Text
a. Reference a minimum of one reference mentioned in the reflection.
One of the TPEs I thought best applied to this was 1.9, which talks about students
using language across reading, writing, speaking, and listening. If students are not
understanding the simplicities of the English language, they cannot apply their
knowledge toward listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Another TPE I
thought applied was 3.1, which talks about using the proper form of assessment to
judge where students are cognitively, according to his or her needs.