In today's session, Dillon continued to work on the FSA English Language Arts Practice test. This part of the test covered the standards of asking and answering questions, determining main ideas, describing the relationship between a series of historical events, and determining the meaning of academic and domain specific words using context clues. Dillon is improving in determining word meanings, however he sometimes has difficulties grasping the main idea of a specific paragraph in a text passage. We will continue to work on these practice assessments while we work on close reading skills and test taking strategies.

In today's session, Dillon took a pretest for the FSA. Some of the standards covered were: asking and answering questions, finding the central message, distinguishing between fact and opinion, and using context clues to determine unknown words. He did not have enough time to complete this and will need to complete the pretest at our next session. He demonstrated good test taking strategies while taking the assessment and used several techniques we have been using in our sessions.

Dillon reviewed the story elements of fiction: setting, character, plot, conflict and theme or central message. Next, he read a short story about a farm family moving to the prairie. After reading the story, he answered questions about the story elements. Then, he identified the text features of the story, particularly paragraphs with dialogue. He was able identify the genre of the selection and the characteristics of the text.

Dillon brought homework to work on during our session. He completed a NewsEla passage that focused on asking and answering questions in an informational text. He also worked on describing the purpose of illustrations in narrative text. We used a passage about a family that was moving west to create a farm in the prairie. It was an initial read of a story we are going to use to review story elements.

Dillon completed session two of a practice FSA assessment today. He read passages and determined academic and domain specific word meanings using context clues. Dillon also answered questions that required text evidence as well as inferential reasoning. Dillon required some support and scaffolding when it came to responding to questions that required the student to explicitly state text evidence from the passage in their response. We will continue to work on this skill in our sessions.

Dillon worked through session two of a practice FSA assessment today. He read passages and determined academic and domain specific word meanings using context clues. Dillon also answered questions that required text evidence as well as inferential reasoning. He did a great job today and is being encouraged to take his time and work carefully on each question. I am happy to hear that he has the extended time accommodation on the FSA, and I feel that it will help him to work more carefully knowing that he does not have a time limit.

Dillon did a wonderful job today in class. He took the 2nd half of session one of an FSA practice exam. He read the article several times and then worked independently on the test questions. He did an awesome job on the vocabulary and word choice questions. He correctly answered 16 out of 17 questions. Dillon shared that they are working on literal and non-literal word meanings at school, so we will follow up on this at our next session.

Dillon worked on author's point of view in informational text today. He read a passage and worked on stating the author's view point including identifying how the words used and examples given strengthen and support an author's view point. He did a wonderful job on this. Dillon shared that he feels he is improving in reading and has been doing a good job on his school assessments. I wish him a relaxing and fun filled holiday break!

Dillon continued working on point of view today. He has been working on memorizing key response stems such as “According to the text…”, “The author stated…”, and “In paragraph_#_it states ….” . This helps as a reminder to Dillon that he must go back to the text and use evidence directly from the text when responding to questions. The FSA is paper and pencil for third grade. I shared with Dillon that it is also very important that he write legibly, so that the person scoring his test can read his response. Dillon worked neatly and carefully today, and he has improved in his response writing.

Dillon worked on his homework packet today which consisted of vocabulary and FSA type practice passages. The work on vocabulary consisted of work building words with prefixes. The FSA practice centered on answering questions about text features and on using text features to quickly locate information in a text. (3RI2.5). After completing this work, he worked on determining an author's point of view in informational text. (3RI2.6). I stressed the importance of close reading and using the question stems when writing about evidence in the text. Dillon was focused and put good effort into his work today!