EDU 345 SFA Tutoring Final Exam

Spring, 2016
Mary Thomas

Introduction of Tutee
The student who I tutored this semester was a first grader named Kenny. What I most enjoyed
about Kenny is that he always had an amusing anecdote to tell. When I first introduced myself to him he
told me the story of how he lost his tooth. Throughout our time together he also told tales about the time
that his Dads truck almost got stuck in a little crick, and the time that he cracked his molar when eating
a sandwich. I noticed early on that Kenny always came excited to learn, and this translated into the
diligent effort he put forth on every activity that we did. Thus the experience of tutoring was easily a joy
for me, and I looked forward to doing whatever I could to help him become a more fluent reader. Most
importantly, though, I tried to do everything I could to further ignite his love for reading, and ensure that
he continued to love learning.
Pre-assessment and Formative Results
Pre-assessment
1. Phonemic Awareness
In the phonemic awareness section of the pre-assessment, Kenny was easily able to identify the
initial sounds in spoken words. He also mastered the blending of sounds presented orally to say words,
and was able to break words presented orally into their individual sounds. Thus, prior to tutoring Kenny
had already mastered the three objectives of phonemic awareness.
2. Concepts of Print
In regards to concepts about print, Kenny also passed this section with flying colors. He was
very excited to pick up one of his favorite shared stories and demonstrate what he knew. He
demonstrated that he had mastered all six of the objectives.
3. Letter Skills
Kenny also mastered Set 1 of Letter Skills (1), which had him say the sounds of the letters which
were written. However, in the second set he was not able to identify the sounds for ck or ng. He was
also challenged by the letter combinations ea, oy, ue, aw, oi, oa, ur, ow, oo, u_e, ir, _y.
He told me that they had not yet gone over those combinations in class. When writing the letters for the
letter sounds that were presented to him orally (LS (2)), Kenny did very well. He only missed ck, ng,
th, and x. Lastly, for LS (3), Kenny demonstrated that he had completely mastered the identification of
written letters according to their letter names.
4. Sight Words
Since Kenny mastered PA(1) and Set 1 of LS(1) on Part 1 of the assessment, we continued onto
Part 2 of the assessment on the second day that I met with him. Kenny was able to read most all of the
sight words in Sets 1 and 2 with automaticity. However, he struggled with the words: is, says, and
her. When he got to Set 3 he was only able to pick out a few words, so we stopped that part of the
assessment and continued on to Word Skills (1).
5. Word Skills

Kenny was able to read some of the words in this section using blending and he mastered Set 5,
but he was definitely developing in this area and, in general, he had not yet mastered the skill. Therefore,
after spending some time on this section, we stopped this section of the assessment and went on to WS(2).
In this section, Kenny was able to correctly write all of the words in Set 1 when they were presented to
him orally, but for all of the remaining sets his spelling skills were still developing. Since Kenny did not
master both Sets 1 and 2 of WS(1), and since it was evident on all the sections of Part 2 that his word
skills were still developing, I chose to use the Tutoring Plan 2 template for my first tutoring sessions with
Kenny.
Re-assessment/formative
In the period of time between the pre-assessment and the first re-assessment, I noticed that Kenny
was making progress in his knowledge of the letters sounds, and his sight word repertoire was also
rapidly expanding. I would say that at this point in time the most difficult skill for him is spelling. He
does well in sounding out the words orally and counting the number of sounds that he hears, but his
spellings are often invented. He does not yet know many of the conventional spellings for the words in
the Shared Stories. Considering, however, that he is in first grade, I am not concerned about this, as I
know it is a skill that will continue to develop over the next few years. I was very excited to conduct the
first re-assessment as I believed that Kenny would show progress and would be able to move up to the
Tutoring Plan 3 template. Below are the results of the first re-assessment that I conducted.
1. Phonemic Awareness
Kenny mastered the PA (1), PA (2), and PA (3) sections of the assessment, as he had done when
he took the pre-assessment. I chose to re-assess this portion to see if I could notice any differences or
growth, and I did notice that from the pre-assessment to the re-assessment he had just slightly improved
in his ability to break down words into their individual phonemes (Objective PA (3)).
2. Concepts of Print
Kenny again mastered all six of the objectives for concepts of print; there is no value-added.
3. Letter Skills
I was very proud, though, of how Kenny did on LS (1), which is the identification of letter
sounds. Kenny correctly identified all of the sounds in Sets 1-9! This showed a tremendous amount of
progress from the pre-assessment, during which he had only mastered Set 1. In the LS (2) section, the
only sound that he didnt write correctly was ng. This means, however, that he did master th, x, and f,
which was another improvement from the pre-assessment. As for LS (3) objective, he again mastered all
of the letter names, as he had done on the pre-assessment.
4. Sight Words
Kenny mastered Sets 1 & 2, and compared to the pre-assessment, he indentified 22 more words!
5. Word Skills

In WS (1) of Part 2 of the assessment, Kenny mastered Sets 1,2,4, and 5, which meant that we
needed to continue on to Part 2 of the assessment! This showed progress in comparison to the preassessment in which he mastered just Set 5. In WS (2), Kenny struggled with his spelling and misspelled
some of the words which he had spelled correctly the first time I assessed him. I noticed that with most
of the words he is taking the time to sound the words out and he is trying to spell them according to how
he hears the sounds. His use of invented spellings appears to me to be developmentally appropriate.
Part 3 of the assessment began with WS 3, 4, and 5, all of which consist in the tutee reading sets
of words; some with base words, some with multi-syllable words, and others with multi-syllable words
with irregular vowel sounds. Kenny was very intimidated by this section, for he was unfamiliar with
most all of the words and he was not confident in his ability to sound them out, as they are longer than the
words he is used to. Within the first set he missed more than two words, so we stopped this section and
proceeded to the next section of the test, which was tracking.
6. Tracking
Kenny demonstrated mastery of all of the objectives of tracking, and he uses his finger to keep
his place as he reads.
7. Fluency
For fluency, I gave Kenny a 3, which means accurate, but not smooth. He only made a few errors
when reading from the shared story, but he struggled to read smoothly and with appropriate pauses for
commas and periods. On the WCPM part of the assessment Kennys score was 24 wcpm, which is
somewhat below the goal for his grade at the mid-year mark (40 wcpm). Kenny was definitely
challenged by reading fluently. He would often get caught-up on a word which he did not know.
Therefore, I decided to continue working with him on sight words and sounding words out. Also, with
the move up to template three, I was able to begin working explicitly with him on Reading Words
Smoothly, since that is one of the objectives for new story preparation.
8. Comprehension and Writing
Lastly, in the comprehension and writing section of the assessment Kenny mastered C1 (1-3) and
W1 (1-2). In regards to the rest of the objectives, Kenny was still developing his skills, so we concluded
the assessment with that section.

Summative Assessment Results

1. Phonemic Awareness, Concepts of Print, and Letter Skills
Since Kenny had previously demonstrated mastery of all of the phonemic awareness skills,
concepts of print skills, and letter skills on the re-assessment, I began the final, summative assessment
with Part 2. The value-added information for the objectives on Part 1 of the assessment was already
included in the re-assessment results given above.
2. Sight Words

Kenny was able to read 58 of the sight words on the final assessment, compared to 28 on his preassessment! That means that over the course of our time together he learned 30 new sight words; and this
does not even include all of the sight words which were not a part of the assessment, but which he also
learned. This made me especially happy, because when I had first assessed Kenny on his sight words we
had to stop after the 3rd set, since he was getting too frustrated. This was in stark contrast to the final
assessment in which he was eager to read as many words as possible in every set.
3. Word Skills
However, when we got to WS (1) (Reads words using blending), Kenny did not do as well. He
was struggling with some very short and basic words and he did not master Sets 1 and 2, as he had on the
re-assessment. I decided to re-assess this section at the start of the following session, since Kenny
appeared to be getting tired and somewhat sloppy with his attempts to read these words. He did much
better with WS (1) during that following session, mastering Sets 1, 2, 3, and 5. This was a significant
improvement from the pre-assessment as well, in which he had only mastered Set 5. As for the spelling
section, Kenny mastered Sets 1 and 2, which was a slight improvement from the pre-assessment in which
he had mastered just Set 1.
For WS (3), Kenny read some of the words with base words for the very first time. The last time
that I tried to have Kenny do that part of the assessment he was so intimidated by the length of the words
that he wouldnt attempt them. During the final assessment, however, (with a little bit of encouragement)
he went ahead and began breaking them down and reading them. He didnt master any of the sets, but he
did correctly read five words out of the first two sets, which I thought was definitely an accomplishment
that he should be proud of.
4. Tracking
Kenny mastered all of the objectives for tracking, just as he had during the re-assessment.
5. Fluency
For fluency I again gave Kenny a 3, as I had on the re-assessment. This means that he reads
accurately, but not smoothly or expressively. I noticed that he needs repeated exposure to a story and
practice reading that story in order to be able to read it smoothly and with expression. He also benefits
greatly from hearing an adult model fluent reading. He is not yet at the level of being able to read any
book he picks up with accuracy, smoothness, and expression. Kennys WCPM score was 27, which he
was personally very happy about. This is just a little above his last score, which was 24.
6. Comprehension and Writing
Lastly, Kenny mastered C (1-4) for the comprehension section of the assessment, and he also
mastered W1 (1-2), which means that he was able to write words and phrases in response to questions that
were asked about a story. For comprehension, this means that he made grounds in being able to use word
parts to figure out unknown words within a text. As for writing, there was no value-added.
Final Recommendation for Tutee

Based on my final assessment data and the value-added results for each of the objectives, I would
recommend that Kenny continue with individual tutoring. Throughout my time tutoring Kenny I
witnessed a considerable amount of progress in his ability to identify letter sounds, recall essential sight
words, and read words using blending. This was very rewarding for me to see since the three goals that I
had established after the pre-assessment were directly aligned with these three objectives. I think that
with continued individual tutoring Kenny will continue to make strides in these areas. Also, now that
Kenny has advanced to Tutoring Plan Template 3, I think that continued tutoring will also help him make
progress in the objectives for word skills (3-5), fluency, and comprehension and writing.
Currently, I think that Kenny is most challenged by spelling conventionally and reading with
fluency (more specifically, reading with a WCPM score that is at grade level). As I mentioned above, I
think that his difficulty in transitioning from invented to conventional spelling is developmentally
appropriate. Many first grade students are currently in this same period of transition, and thus I am not
very concerned that Kenny is experiencing difficulty in this particular area. Kennys WCPM score,
however, does give me cause for concern. In my tutoring sessions with Kenny he has demonstrated an
ability to read with accuracy, smoothness, and expression, provided that he is given the opportunity to
reread the text. However, he definitely struggles to obtain a WCPM score that is on target for his grade
level. At the end of first grade the goal is a score of 60 wcpm. In Kennys final assessment he was
reading at 27 wcpm. My recommendation to help Kenny improve his WCPM score would be to not only
have him continue with tutoring- with fluency as a focal point- but to encourage him to practice reading
stories that he enjoys everyday both at school and at home.