November 18, 2019

To the Family of _________,

My name is Celeste Caserta and I’m a Senior Education major at the University of
Mount Union. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this student for the first part of the
school year as part of the RAC program. I’ve had the opportunity to get to know this
student and learn more about her educational strengths. I got to work with her one on
one and teach her in the areas of reading and writing. I just wanted to take the time to
share with you some of the information I’ve learned!

As a result of having many opportunities to work with this student, I have learned a lot
about her strengths in the areas of reading and writing. Some of this student’s strengths
are reading comprehension, writing organization, and contextual vocabulary. After
reading passages silently to herself and aloud to me, I would ask this student a series of
questions about what she read. She did really well when answering comprehension
questions about what she read. Types of comprehension skills she was using were
comparing, making inferences, predicting, and sequencing. This student’s greatest
strength in writing was her organization. When asked to write sentences about a topic,
this student would always stay on topic and organize her writing in logical order. Lastly,
this student really excelled when working on contextual vocabulary skills. She did great
when using her vocabulary words in a meaningful sentence.

In addition to learning about this student’s many strengths, I also learned about some of
her areas for improvement in reading and writing. Some of this student’s areas for
improvement are sentence fluency, using context clues to help identify unknown words,
and reading comprehension. When writing sentences this student often repeats phrases
instead of using conjunctions or commas to combine ideas and make the sentences
more smooth. This student also had some difficulty when trying to use context clues
within a sentence to identify an unknown word. Lastly, this student had difficulty when
trying to answer comprehension questions that included using the following skills, citing
evidence from the passage, analyzing, and critiquing.
I’d like to share with you some activities that this student can do at home to strengthen
her reading and writing skills. This student would really benefit from reading books
aloud to someone to help boost her oral reading confidence. She could read to a family
member, sibling, or even a stuffed animal. After reading, have her retell what the story
was about in detail. Writing in a journal or notebook is another activity that this student
could do at home to help strengthen her writing fluency. It would benefit her to
frequently write in the journal and then read what she wrote to someone to see if her
sentences sound smooth. Another activity that this student can do at home would be
making vocabulary flashcards. She could do this with the following words; compare,
contrast, describe, distinguish, identify, retell, demonstrate, determine, draw, explain,
locate, suggest, support, comprehend, develop, organize, and infer. Practicing the flash
cards will help this student with her vocabulary skills.

Thank you for the opportunity to work with this student! She is a great student and I
learned a lot from working with her. I hope this student enjoyed herself, she was great to
work with. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at
casertcr2020@mountunion.edu​ .

Sincerely,

Celeste Caserta
November 18, 2019

Mrs. __________,

My name is Celeste Caserta and I’m a Senior Education major at the University of
Mount Union. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this student for the first part of the
school year as part of the RAC program. During my time with this student I was able to
learn a lot about her academic skills including her strengths and areas for improvement
in the areas of reading and writing. I was then able to create and administer
assessments, and teach lessons based on her areas for improvement. I wanted to take
this time to share with you some of the information I’ve learned about this student.
Attached to this letter is a diagnostic chart that further explains in detail what I have
learned about this student’s educational skills in specific areas.

As a result of having many opportunities to work with this student, I have learned a lot
about her strengths in the areas of reading and writing. Some of this student’s strengths
are reading comprehension, contextual vocabulary, writing organization, and sounding
out unknown words. After reading passages silently to herself and aloud to me, I would
ask this student a series of comprehension questions. She did really well when
answering these questions and performing deeper thinking about the passages. On the
diagnostic chart it explains the level or questions she was able to answer successfully.
This student really excelled when working on contextual vocabulary skills. She did great
when using her vocabulary words in a meaningful sentence. This student’s greatest
strength in writing was her organization. When asked to write sentences about a topic,
this student would always stay on topic and organize her writing in logical order. Lastly,
this student always resorted to sounding out unknown words to help her identify them.
When she took her time and sounded out the word, most of the time she was able to
blend the sounds to identify the unknown word.

In addition to learning about this student’s many strengths, I also learned about some of
her areas for improvement in reading and writing. Some of this student’s areas for
improvement are sentence fluency, using context clues to help identify unknown words,
oral reading motivation, and using strategies to help her define words. When writing
sentences this student often repeats phrases instead of using conjunctions or commas
to combine ideas
and make the sentences more smooth. This student had difficulty when trying to use
context clues within a sentence to identify an unknown word. This student often gets
intimidated when faced with reading a lengthy passage aloud. When she completes the
reading she does great and understands what she read, but she often doubts her
abilities when initially faced with the challenge. On the comprehension and affective
development sections of the diagnostic chart it explains more about her oral reading
motivation. Lastly, this student had difficulty when trying to use strategies such as
antonyms and synonyms to help her identify the meaning of vocabulary words.

I’d like to share with you some activities that I learned work well while working with this
student. One activity that really connected with this student was turning any challenge
into a game, especially with oral reading. This student would quickly get intimidated
when faced with a lengthy oral reading passage so by turning this challenge into a
game it would boost her motivation to complete the activity. Another activity that this
student enjoyed was drawing. I would try to incorporate drawing into her vocabulary
activities by having her draw what words mean. I would also incorporate it into
comprehension activities by having her draw the main idea of a passage and explain it
to me. Lastly, another activity that connected with this student was matching activities.
She really enjoyed the challenge of matching together antonyms, synonyms, prefixes,
suffixes, root words, and vocabulary words to their definitions.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to work with this student! I really appreciate
the time that you gave me each day to work with this student. She is a great student
and I learned a lot from working with her. I hope this student enjoyed herself, she was
great to work with. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at
casertcr2020@mountunion.edu​ .

Sincerely,

Celeste Caserta