Instructional+Decision+Making

** IV. Instructional Decision Making **
==== Being that the student was working out of his SRA Corrective Reading textbook in class for reading comprehension, I thought it would be best if he continued doing this so I decided that we would do his lessons one-on-one on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On these days, he would read the story aloud in order to practice fluency and decoding. I asked him questions before reading, during reading, and after reading in order to help him with comprehension. I found that asking him questions while reading helped him remember more details at the end versus when I let him read straight through. After he read the story, I usually allowed him to do his workbook on his own in order for me to check his progress. However, I always read each question to him to make sure he fully understood what was being asked. I noticed that he would often get answers incorrect when I didn’t read the questions to him because he thought it was asking him something else. I collected three samples from his workbook to show his progress in the area of comprehension. From what I’ve collected, he got everything correct which is an improvement because in the beginning he usually got 1-3 answers incorrect. ====

==== Since the student also needed to increase his fluency, I decided to use a one minute timed reading from the same passage each time until he mastered the goal of 105 WPM with 2 errors or less. In order to monitor his progress, I kept track of how many words per minute and errors he had on a graph. Each time the student read the passage, I showed him his progress on the graph. I thought about allowing him to keep track on the graph, but because of the limited time period I had to work with him, it was easier if I was the one who tracked it. ==== ==== The other work samples I’ve included are worksheets on main idea and vowel sounds. The main idea worksheets that we did were very simple. I figured that it would be less overwhelming and more effective if I found a worksheet that had only a few sentences for the student to read in order to determine the main idea versus having him read an entire story. The student did fairly well on this without my assistance. I was planning on eventually giving him an entire story to read then find the main idea; however, we never had a chance to get to this. The vowel sounds worksheet focused on the long /a/ and /e/ sound as well as the digraph /ea/ and the silent e rule. I chose this activity because I noticed the student was still struggling with decoding words such as team and time. ====

==== I also thought it would be helpful if I included the results from the silent e Bingo. I chose to create a bingo game to practice silent e words with the student because he told me that he enjoyed playing games. I made sure that it would be okay with him if we played bingo. I wasn’t sure if this game would be too juvenile for him since he is in 6th grade and also 13-years old. Although, he enjoyed the game and I was easily able to monitor his improvement by using a chart to call off the words. ====

==== In addition to the bingo game, I created a board game called, “Word Challenge.” I found that the student was becoming bored with using the flashcards to practice his Dolch word lists, so I thought it may be less boring if it was in the form of a game. I then designed a board game on the computer and went over how to play it with the student. He had to roll a die then pick up a flash card. If he said the word correctly, he could move the number of spaces but if he said it incorrectly, he had to pick up another flash card to try. The game was finished when he reached the last space on the board. To make it even more fun, I brought prizes for the student to pick from. This definitely sparked his interest. I kept track of his progress by writing down the actual word that was written on the card and his miscue. I also recorded the percentage that he pronounced correctly. ====