Today, Dillon completed reading the book we started at our last session, "Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights". Dillon did a great job pulling the important details out of the text and putting them in his graphic organizer. He then read a Read Works article, "American Heroes: Celebrate Black History Month". Dillon answered comprehension questions about the text after reading. He needs to be careful when answering comprehension questions and read the question critically so that he fully understands what the question is asking. He also needs to be reminded to read all the possible answers before selecting the correct answer. We ended the session by continuing our practice in fluency. Dillon read and reread a passage we started on Monday. He brought the passage home to continue this practice. He is doing quite well!

Today, we began our session with a short fluency session. Trenton read and reread a short passage. He was encouraged to read with accuracy, proper pausing at punctuation and at a smooth rate. We then read a Read Works passage about African American Heroes and Black History Month. Trenton has been studying this topic at school and had a great deal of prior knowledge about the topic. He read the passage and answered comprehension questions about the main idea and key details in the passage. He was reminded to read all possible answers before selecting his answer. He did a good job answering the questions and enjoyed the lesson.

Dillon has been showing steady improvement in his fluency. Today, he read a mid 2nd grade passage and met the Florida state benchmark for fluency. At one point, he tried to push himself and started reading a little too quickly. We discussed the fact that reading with fluency involved reading at a just right pace, pausing appropriately at punctuation and accurate word identification. I am very pleased with his progress to date. Next, we continued reading an informational text about the life of Rosa Parks. He is taking notes on the main idea and key details. He continued to jot his notes on a graphic organizer. Dillon is doing a very good job outlining the key details.

I'm so glad Dillon is feeling better and was able to return to tutoring. We began today's lesson with an Oral Reading Passage. Dillon read this at a rate of 68 WCPM (words correct per minute). Winter benchmark rate for second grade is 72 WCPM, so he is just about on target. The end of the year benchmark is 89 WCPM, so we are going to keep working on this to ensure that he stays consistently on level. He is reading at this rate with good comprehension which is something I always check for since we don't want to encourage speed at the expense of comprehension. He brought the passage home and it would be helpful for him to continue to practice with this. He should read it about 2-3 more times with the goal of reading more smoothly, with expression and at a quicker rate. Next, we began to read a text on the life of Rosa Parks. While reading, he is taking notes on a graphic organizer that asks for important ideas, and supporting details. He has been doing a super job so far. We will complete this next week.

We began the session with a fluency practice. Trenton has been doing repeated readings of a passage to practice reading with expression and appropriate pausing. I am also encouraging him to reread a passage if he has had to decode a sticky word in it. Rereading after decoding the word helps build comprehension. Next, Trenton did a close reading of a text on Olympic speed skaters and then answered some comprehension questions on the main idea of different sections of the article. In answering the question, I found that Trenton would pick the first or second response and did not read all 4 possible answers in order to determine which would be the "best" answer. When I asked him to go back and look at all the possible answers for a question he got wrong, he was always able to find the correct answer. I will be reviewing test taking strategies with him and encouraging him to make it his practice to review all possible responses before picking his answer. He is very serious about his work in our sessions and is a pleasure to have as a student.

Elijah began the session by reading an article about Mae Jemison, the first African America woman astronaut. He answered comprehension questions on her life and did a good job with this assignment. Next, he read a set of paired passages that are a part of the FSA pretest. Elijah needed reminders to slow down his rate of reading. He read very quickly and did not slow down for punctuation or to self check his understanding. He was encouraged to ask himself what the main idea and the key details are in each paragraph as he read. He needs to begin to monitor himself for comprehension and start to self check as he reads long passages or paired passages. After reading the passages, he was asked to answer some explicit and implicit questions. I observed that he does not thoroughly read the question and tends to rush. He needed to be reminded to read all possible answers before choosing the correct response. He knew that he should do this because he shared some techniques they were using at school. I stressed to him the importance of working carefully in all settings to ensure that he demonstrates what he knows.

This morning Macy started out with a journal entry. She wrote about her favorite outdoor games (tag/hide and seek) and illustrated her entry. We reviewed the Dolch words from previous weeks that she is still working on and I introduced the new words for this week. She also completed p. 144 (letter "S") in the Writing with Phonics workbook and pg. 144 in the Letters and Sounds workbook. I also began an author study by reading Owen by Kevin Henkes. This will be an ongoing unit. Finally Macy read from one of her "I Do Read" books. She really seemed to enjoy the author study as she connected with the main character Owen. She was doing well with sounding out her words as she read.

We started the session with an Oral Reading Fluency passage for progress monitoring. Dillon scored at 65 WCPM (words correct per minute). We will continue to work at improving this rate in our sessions. Some additional things that Dillon can do at home to work on this is to do repeated readings of the same passages that we used in class. He should be reminded that reading with fluency means that he is reading in a conversational voice with accurate word identification and pausing appropriately for punctuation.
We read a passage today about recycling and the Coca -Cola and McDonald's corporations. He then answered some questions about the main idea of the passage and the main idea of various sections of the passage. When answering the comprehension questions, Dillon needed a reminder to read the questions carefully and make sure he was looking at the correct part of the passage. Dillon went right to work when he arrived and stayed focused.

It was a pleasure to meet and work with Trenton! He is such a delightful, polite youngster and worked very hard during the entire session. Since this was our first time together, I administered some assessments to get a sense of his current reading levels and needs. On the Florida Oral Reading Fluency Assessment, he read at a rate of 94 words per minute. He is at the 59th %ile in oral fluency and is reading at an acceptable rate. He then took the Qualitative Reading Inventory. On the word lists he scored at the instructional level for 2nd grade for words in isolation. Based on this, I gave him both a narrative and an expository (non-fiction) passage. On both passages he scored at the instructional level for second grade. He did well on the “right there” questions and struggled with some of the Implicit questions, those questions that require the reader to draw conclusions from the text. Additionally, I noticed that he had some issues with tracking text. He skipped several lines in both passages and failed to notice when the reading did not make sense. We talked about the fact that he should be asking questions while he is reading so he can notice when he skips lines and can then ask himself, “Does this make sense?”. Trenton also wrote some written responses to questions, so I could see how he communicates his ideas in writing. Trenton was very careful about making sure he rephrased the question in his answer and I could hear him subvocalize as he wrote the answers. He exhibited some reversals and spelling errors, however, he was very thorough in answering the questions. He worked very hard the entire time and was obviously very intent on doing well. Based on these findings, we will begin our work with reading comprehension and focus on questions that go beyond the written text. We will also work on tracking text and reading with fluency. Asking and answering questions while reading text will be a strategy that we use to assist him with improving his tracking. I look forward to working with Trenton.

Dillon has been a delight to tutor. I am excited to hear that he is doing so well in class. He reported that he reached the "proficiency" level in reading and that his teacher told him he was doing a good job finding text evidence - which is something we have been working on in our sessions. Today he read a Newsela article, "Olympic speed skaters' suits can help them go faster". As he read he underlined the key details and we discussed the passage for comprehension. He was able to answer 3 of the 4 comprehension questions and explain his reasoning with ease. The 4th question was done with support and I needed to clarify for him what the question was asking. He then read the passage a second time to improve his fluency and prosody. He said he would like to read it to his parents when he gets home. All in all - a great work session.