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Rachel Antonelli

10/20/17

Formative Assessment #1

EDU 345

Reflection of Student Learning

The tutoring sessions have followed through as planned and the tutee has shown

consistent work ethic during each session. The pre-assessment for the tutee took 2 sessions,

followed by 5 sessions of tutoring plan template 2, and finishing up with three days of re-

assessment. In this formative assessment report, the focus will be on a reflection of the students

work in the areas of phonemic awareness, letter skills, and work skills. The tutee was not

assessed on fluency, vocabulary, or comprehension due to the stopping place in the assessment

packet.

Phonemic Awareness

In the pre-assessment the tutee did a great job at mastering the objectives in PA(1),

PA(2), and PA(3). When I planned the five tutoring sessions, I did not want to focus too much on

phonemic awareness since the tutee did well in the pre-assessment. However, I made sure to add

in some practice so the tutee was still getting some practice and repetition. The activities I chose

for the tutoring sessions were PA-3-B “Tap it Out” and the PA-3-A “Breaks it Down.” I chose

words from the Say it Fast/Break it Down list in the tutoring manual. Each session I chose five to

six 2-phoneme words and five to six 3-phoneme words. The tutee was required to break down

the words by using the “Tap it Out” activity in which he would use a pencil to tap out the sounds

on the desk or use his hands to clap out the sounds. After two tutoring sessions, I changed the

activity and the tutee had to break down the words by following the outline on a notecard. For
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example, I first wrote the word “rang” on the notecard as “r…..a…..n…..g” and the tutee would

have to sound out the word using long sounds. Then I shortened the word on the note card as

“r…a…n…g” and the tutee would have to sound out the word using a faster speed. Finally, I put

the word all together on the note card as “rang” and the tutee would have to say the word without

breaking it down. I believe these activities help the tutee to sound out words he saw that he did

not know as well throughout the rest of the tutoring sessions. There was no re-assessment of this

section due to the tutee mastering all sections in the pre-assessment.

Letter Skills

In the pre-assessment the tutee did not master the objectives in LS(1), but did master the

objectives in LS(2) and LS(3). When I planned the five tutoring sessions, I wanted to focus more

on identifying (reading) letter sounds because this is what the tutee was challenged with during

the pre-assessment. Also, I found the tutee to mix up the letters b and d a lot and, therefore, I

wanted to focus on establishing the difference between the two. I first started off the tutoring

sessions with the activity from LS-2-B “Writing with a Magic Pencil” and had the tutee work on

writing letters that are very common such as m, b, d, and p by writing them out on the desk with

his finger. After this warm up, I had the tutee practice writing out the letters from a-m of the

alphabet one session and n-z the next session. Once we went through this activity for the first

two tutoring sessions, I changed the activity to LS-2-D “Writing Letters on Paper” which once

again I noticed the tutee mixed up the letters b and d. When this happened, I explained to the

tutee by drawing out how the belly of the b faces the right and the belly of the d faces the left.

Every time the tutee mixed up the letters or asked me which one was which I would have him

tell me what I told him about which seemed to help him. In addition, the student did well writing
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the letters for all the letters of the alphabet. During the re-assessment, the student did about the

same for each section.

Word Skills

In the pre-assessment the tutee did not make it past the sight words section. After I

realized he did not know many sight words, I wanted to focus my tutoring sessions on being able

to recall sight words. Therefore, I chose the activities SW-1-A “Reading Red Words in Shared

Stories” and SW-1-C “Reading Sight Words”. During the first activity, the tutee reviewed each

red word in the story Late, which is a story the tutee has not read yet in class. After a few days of

this activity, I switched it to where the tutee was actually reading the words in the story. Once he

read a page of the story, I had him search for any red words that we reviewed. There were a

couple of sessions where we did not get to this activity because of time but the tutee noticed the

words after reviewing them in previous sessions. During the re-assessment, the tutee did better

with SW(1) by identifying more sight words, reading/blending sight words, and spelling a word

by breaking it down into separate sounds.

Next Steps

My next steps for this tutoring process are to plan better activities that challenge the

student and to use more visuals (letter cards) for the tutee to understand the different sounds and

letters of words. I plan on using a different tutoring template to fit the needs of the tutee and to

provide a challenge for him. If this works after the first couple of tutoring sessions, I will

continue to pan accordingly for the future.

Concerns and Challenges

One concern I have regarding the tutoring sessions is not having enough materials during

each session to teach the student what they need to learn. I really wanted to use letter cards
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throughout my first tutoring template but I felt that I never had the time to get the cards. Another

concern I have regarding the tutoring sessions is the place I tutor my tutee. For example, we are

never in the same room and it seems to be a struggle to find a room that we can stay in during the

whole 20 minutes of each session. This is something that is constantly being brought up but

never really seems to be solved. Both of these issues concern me because I want to be able to

provide all the necessary materials for my tutee to be able to develop the appropriate skills to

become a more fluent reader, and I want my tutee to not be distracted by having to move room to

room. Finally, one challenge I have faced thus far with my tutoring sessions is my tutee loves to

talk and tell stories. This has been a challenge mostly because it can be hard to get him to

refocus. However, I am still working on this challenge by using positive reinforcement (stickers

and M&Ms) when a section of the tutoring plan or activity is completed.

Self-Growth

Throughout this tutoring process, I believe that I have grown more well-rounded as a

future educator. I am continuing to work on my time management so that I can get to the school

early to set up the materials I need for that day and continuing to find a solution to the room

situation. I feel that my planning for the sessions is improving as I am learning what the tutee

needs to work and learning which areas to spend more time on. In addition, I believe there is still

a lot of progress to be made and think that I will continue to see growth during the weeks ahead.