April 27, 2011

Dear Family of Christine Thompson: It has been my pleasure to work with Christine during ten weekly tutoring sessions at McCaw Elementary School during the spring of 2010. As her reading and writing tutor, I have found Christine to be an eager learner, who takes direction well, and really enjoys new reading material. During our early sessions, I used several assessments with Christine for the purpose of determining Christines reading and writing levels. To begin assessing Christines reading abilities, I used a survey to determine Christines interest level when it comes to reading. This survey determined Christine to be a motivated reader in and outside of school. She said she likes to be read to during school and would even choose reading or being read to outside of school as a recreational activity. This is a positive gauge for Christines reading future, it tells us that she likes books and finds the learning to read process enjoyable. The next assessment given was the Comprehensive Reading Inventory. This gives us information on what Christines abilities are in reading, understanding what she read, and reading with fluency. Based on that information, we know what level of books to use with Christine so she is challenged but not overwhelmed when reading. It also identifies the next steps we need to take to develop her skills as a reader. The findings on this assessment for Christine determined her to be at the Preprimer stage of reading. This means that Christine can attend to and describe pictures in books, has a limited sense of story, follows verbal directions for activities, uses oral vocabulary appropriate for her grade level, responds to questions in an appropriate manner, and makes connections to pictures. The next steps of achievement for Christine were determined to be learning the features of text (author, illustrator, and title), telling a story using pictures, using clues to identify unknown words, and blending sounds to pronounce words. To assess Christines writing, I used a Reading Response Journal where Christine would draw pictures and write about one of the stories we had read that day. Based on her writing entries, I determined that Christine was able to write the beginning and ending sounds of several words and would sometimes use the vowel sounds in the middle. For example, she could write cat but for cut she may write ct and omit the vowel sound. Christine interchanges uppercase and lower case letters in her writing at this stage. Christine and I set several goals based on the results of the assessments: -Identify text features (title, author, illustrator) -Work on letter blending -Place a space between words -Use a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and for names -Use the pictures in the book to tell the story or help with unknown words -Retell stories in the order they were told -Recognize and recite rhyming words In order to work on these goals, we reviewed the text features (title, author, illustrator) with each book we read, wrote weekly in a journal, shared/retold the story with partners, worked on letter sounds and blending each week through hands-on games/Word Study, read a familiar book each week so Christine could eventually read it herself, made predictions and connections to books, and had a shared book read by the tutor each week so Christine could enjoy listening and hear good reading skills being demonstrated.

Christine has shown growth in her active listening skills by moving from just listening and maybe forgetting, to active listening with the purpose of doing something with the story after youve read it (drawing pictures, writing, retelling, sharing how you connected to the story). This improvement will help Christine with her comprehension and ability to remember a story. She also has really increased her willingness to try to sound out a word. She uses the clues in the book or surrounding words and the sounds of the letters to make her attempt at the word. I was so proud of her willingness to take that risk more and more as the weeks went on. As a parent, I know you are supportive of your childs education, and here are a few things you can do at home to help: -Have someone (mom/dad, brother/sister, grandma, etc.) read aloud to her every day (10 minutes minimum). -Help her with her homework (sight words, etc.) as this shows her how important school is. -Have her read to you and give her plenty of time to sound out words. -When reading, ask her, What might happen next? -After reading say, What happened firstnext.last? -Visit your new neighborhood Gibson Library. Membership is free and you can check out books, movies, use the computers, or participate in special events. Its located in the Target Shopping Center on Lake Mead and Water Street and is open Monday through Thursday 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and they are closed on Sundays.

Again, it was my pleasure to work with Christine this semester and I wish her continued academic success in the future! Sincerely,

Stacy Carpenter NSC Tutor

Kyle Kaalberg Course Instructor