EDU 345 SFA Tutoring Summative Report and Final Exam

Fall 2018

Brittney Vargas
Introduction

Abrianna is a six-year-old first-grade student with a lot to say about everything. When I

first met her, she was very joyful and excited to learn. She was certainly not shy and immediately

began telling me all about her life. I was glad to have such an awesome tutee who was excited to

learn and so willing to open up to me, which made working with her more enjoyable and gave a

personal connection to the sessions immediately.

Pre-assessment and Formative Results

Assessment Results 1. Based on the results of the initial assessment, Abrianna was

placed on tutoring plan one. The assessment showed that she needed a lot of work in meeting the

objectives in Phonemic Awareness. At the start of our time together, Abrianna struggled with

connecting sounds to the appropriate letters with some uncommon or very similar sounds. She

did not have a firm understanding of the alphabetic principle. Because of this, we focused on

building her phonological awareness.

Objective Initial Result During the Lessons Post-Assessment

PA 1 In the initial assessment, she
did not master this objective.
She struggled with
identifying initial sounds that
were similar to each other.
She struggled with In the post-assessment, she
distinguishing between “f” and demonstrated mastery of the
“th” ; and “ch” and “sh” when material.
the sounds were presented
orally. Over time she was able
to see the distinction with
prompting and then prompting
was not necessary.

PA 2 She was able to correctly
blend most of the words with
some effort. She misses a few
in the initial assessment. An
error pattern that I noticed
was that she would no
Abrianna would hear the
sounds said at a normal pace
and would need me to slow
down on occasion for her to
really hear each sound and be
able to blend it by saying it fast.
In the post-assessment,
Abrianna was able to achieve a
higher level of mastery because
we were working on listening to
sounds and putting them
together.

PA 3 In the initial assessment, she
was unable to break down
each phoneme. Often, she
would say the onset and rime,
or repeat the initial sound at
the end.
When breaking down words,
she would often omit the
middle or ending sound and
replace it with the initial sound.
For example, “d” “o” “g”
would be said as “d” “o” “d”
In the post-assessment, she
showed little signs of
improvement. Her score was
the same, but she was correct,
she was able to say it a bit faster
with less repetition of the word.
 We needed to go at a slower
pace in order for her to
accomplish the task. In our
sessions, we sped up the pace a
little but not by much.

LS 1 Abrianna was able to identify
most of the common letter
sounds but struggled on the
third letter set of the
assessment.
We drilled her letter sounds In the post-assessment,
using a whiteboard. We Abrianna was able to correctly
primarily worked on set three, identify more letters from set
occasionally tossing in letters three that the Initial assessment.
from set 1 and 2 when she
would start to lose confidence. I
did notice that she had some
difficulty distinguishing
between the “e” and “i” sound.

Assessment Results 2. Based on the results of the initial assessment, Abrianna was

placed on tutoring plan one. Upon reassessing after completing the first four sessions and giving

the reassessment, she showed improvements in phonological awareness, but would need support

in her sight words. Comparing where Abrianna is now to where she started, she has made

consistent progress. She has grown in her phonological awareness but struggles to put sounds

together fluently and with automaticity.

Objective Initial assessment During the Sessions Post-assessment

PA 3 In the assessment, she
showed little signs of
improvement. Her score was
the same, but she was
correct, she was able to say it
a bit faster with less
repetition of the word.
As Abrianna still needed
support in this objective, I
selected a different strategy
for this set of lessons. Even
with the new strategy, she still
needed support in breaking
down words. We still needed
to go slowly, and I did try to
move her to 4 phoneme words
because she was doing well
with the 3 phoneme words.
She needed more intense
support with these words.
In the post-assessment, she did
better than her previous
assessment, but has not reached
mastery of this objective. She
continues to blend onset and rime
and needs the word to be said a
few times before she is able to
process the correct response.

LS 2 In the pre-assessment, In our sessions, I wanted to In the post-assessment, she was

Abrianna was able to
identify most letters and was
able to write them. Though
she was able to identify and
write the more common
highlight the difference
between the easily confusable
letters and the more
uncommon letters. In our
activity, I set it up as a
able to get more letters correct
but did not reach the mastery
level required for this objective in
the third letter set. However, she
did vastly improve in her ability
 letters, she struggled with the
uncommon and similar
letters.
WS 1 In the assessment, Abrianna
was only able to accurately
read 2 words. She effectively
read the words she spent
time on. The other words,
she briefly looked at and
guessed.
WS 2 This section of the
assessment is where
Abrianna struggled. She
needed to use a lot of her
processing power to be able
to take a word and spell it
out. She did not get past the
first set.
SW 1 Abrianna was only able to
read 1-2 words in the
assessment. She did try to
sound out the words, but
since the words do not
follow the regular rules, she
was unable to.
Summative Assessment Results
Looking at the result from each formative report and the additional three lessons that I
had with my tutee, she made gradual progress throughout the semester. When looking at the
progress she has made, it is a lot, but when I was living it, at times it felt as if I was not making a
difference. In the beginning of the semester, she was struggling with phonemic awareness and
guessing game. I would give
the letter sound and she would
have to guess the letter by
writing it the white board.
When we got to “y” and “g”,
she would often interchange
the letters and had a hard time
writing “g”. To correct this,
we did several hand over hand
exercises.
Our activity focused on
looking at a few words in each
session and spending time
looking at each. She had a
difficult time blending
fluently. She needs more
practice with this to increase
her confidence level in
sounding out and blending
words.
In our sessions, we really
worked on breaking down
each word and going slowly.
She had a difficult time with
going slowly, but this may
have been because she was
uninterested. It was also not
surprising that she needed
support in this objective
because she struggled with the
break it down activity.
We read the partner practice
books and went over the sight
word page before reading. We
engaged in repeated reading
of the text. Each time she
needed less and less
prompting.
to write the letter “g”.
In the post-assessment, she was
able to read three words which is
an improvement. But she still has
a long way to go in building her
automaticity.
She showed a little bit of
improvement but did not achieve
mastery. She did learn the
importance of taking time to
listen to each sound in a word.
She would often want to just
write the initial sound and then
move on because she forgot the
middle and ending sound, instead
of just asking me to repeat the
word.
In the post-assessment, she was
able to read still only about 1-2
words. Because there was little to
no improvement, I Switched the
activity to a memory game
format.
improvements were seen in the results of the first formative report. She now has a stronger

understanding of the alphabetic principle, she will occasionally second guess herself, but I would

say that she is able to get it about 9.5/10 times. Another area of growth was her ability to blend

sounds. While she is not quite where she needs to be with this skill, she still made a lot of

progress from where she started. At the start, she needed a lot of modeling and prompting, now

she is able to perform this task with minimal prompting. She is still developing in her ability to

read sight words. She lacks the automaticity needed for fluent reading. In our final sessions, I

made a game for sight words and she responded really well to this format. Of the words we were

working with, she was able to read most of them with minimal prompting by the last session.

Overall, she is much closer to grade level than when we first started working together, and

though in the moment it is difficult to see gradual progress, when looking back I am proud of the

effort she put forth to become a better reader.

Final Recommendation for Tutee

Abrianna still needs support in her reading of sight words and blending and breaking

down words when presented orally based on the results of the formative reports and additional

tutoring sessions. I believe that with continued one-on-one tutoring she will be able to be on

grade-level. I do not think that she needs to be tested for an exceptionality. I think that it is very

likely that her setbacks are caused by a lack of early exposure to activities and experiences that

would have built up her early literacy skills. With continued practice, she should get to where she

should be.

Two Significant Ideas and Research Connections

Significant ideas. Two of the most important take-aways from this experience would be

the importance of progress monitoring and the importance of meeting the learner where they are
at. Progress monitoring is an excellent way to ensure that I will be making data-driven decisions

in my classroom. Progress monitoring will allow me to inform my instruction to see what is

effective for my students and what needs improvement. The second takeaway is meeting the

learner where they are at. In this case, my tutee needed to take a step back and work on the

foundational knowledge before moving on to reading. Had I just expected her to learn as she

goes along, she would have suffered in our sessions because the material was above her ability

level. These points can help me in my future interviews because it shows that I am capable of

making data driven decisions and that I am able to assess where a student is at and select the

appropriate strategies to get them on grade-level.

Research connections. The research that was done on the subject of poverty was helpful

when it came to working with my tutee. In my research, I looked at the effects of poverty on

brain development. Research showed that students in poverty are more likely to have less grey

matter in their brain with which to build connections. However, because of this I did my best to

stress the importance of giving it your “best try” to try and get my tutee to see that she is capable.

On the subject of resilience, I found that as educators we play a bigger part in promoting

resilience in our students that we realize. We can employ simple strategies to help students

become more resilient and cope with any adverse childhood experiences. Research shows that

students who are able to cope are more likely to have successful lives and graduate high school.

The research on resilience also shows that those who have experienced adverse childhood

experiences and do not have coping strategies are more likely to become drug users and have

health issues. The gravity of not having coping strategies is heavy, which drives home the

importance of employing simple strategies in the classrooms to prevent the possible effects of

not having any strategies to cope.