Kaniyah, Tyjia and I co-read a short story by Jason Reynolds entitled "First-Day Fly." Told from the point of view of a middle school boy, the story details his preparation for the first day of school, specifically his outfit. I modeled a different note-taking strategy, underlining the text as we read and writing important details in the margins. We paused as we read to answer comprehension questions. I taught the concepts of figurative language, specifically metaphor and simile. The girls were engaged with the story and did good work.

I worked with Kaniyah and Tyjai together for one hour. My goal is to practice reading, reading comprehension strategies, and paragraph writing. I chose Bessie Smith, iconic jazz and blues singer, as a topic for exploration. We watched a brief YouTube video on Bessie Smith, followed by co-reading a passage about her from a book entitled "100 African Americans Who Shaped American History." As we read, I modeled taking notes as well as reading comprehension strategies (pausing to summarize, ask questions, and make predictions). Finally, we worked together to write a paragraph to summarize the life of Bessie Smith. Both girls were polite, engaged and worked hard.

I tested Kaniyah using the Gray Oral Reading Test V (GORT) which assesses a student's fluency (rate and accuracy) and comprehension. Kaliyah's reading rate is at a 2.7 grade level; her reading accuracy is 3.4. Taken together, her reading fluency is at a 3.0 grade level. Kaliyah's reading comprehension is in line with those scores at a 3.0 grade level. Kaniyah will benefit from reading practice utilizing strategies such as asking questions, making prediction and summarizing as she reads.

I did two interest inventories to determine what Kaniyah would like to read. I did an informal reading inventory to determine Kaniyah's word recognition and comprehension. I did an orton gillingham checklist to determine her letter and word skills.

We read "Halloween in Florida" (reading fluency/comprehension); visual drill (errors: y (3 sounds)); auditory drill (errors: vowel sounds for y (/E/ /I/); blending drill; today's lesson: the many sounds of y (/y/, /E/, /I/); Kilpatrick drill D1 #4 (8/10) D1 #6 (7/10) - this drill works on removing the final phoneme from the original word to form a new one.

Visual drill: ending consonant blends, h sisters (ch, wh, th, sh, ch) + vowels (short sounds) +consonants (x, g, q, c, j); Auditory drill: x, g, q, e, wh, lk, ft, sp, nt; PA Drill: blending short CVConsblend (ex. silt) trouble blends: -nt, x, a (schwa sound/short a); phoneme count and sort game (given a picture, tap the individual sounds in each and categorize by number of sounds (1-5); Kilpatrick drill (multisyllabic words, take away a syllable) D1 #1 10/10; D2 #1 10/10; sight words: wash, show, clean, together, please (5/5 correct); Reading fluency + comprehension questions: Hair Love by Matthew Cherry words struggled with: rocky, kinks, comb, coils

Critchlow Verbal Langauge Scales; CORE Phonological Segmentation Test; OG Level 1 Lesson#1: visual drill errors (x, g, q, e) auditory drill (/h/, /g/, /e/, /qu/; pet, hex, jug, six) blending drill (all level 1 consonants, short e, short i); reading fluency: silent e passage

Getting to know you questions; CORE Phonics Survey (Preliminary results from this assessment indicate that she has underdeveloped phonics skills for short vowels as well as consonant blends). CORE High-Frequency Words assessment for list 3 and 4. She made 2 mistakes on List 3 (many --> may; another-->other) and 2 mistakes on List 4 (through --> though; ) CORE MAZE Comprehension Passage 3-B: Provided a third grade leveled reading passage, Kaniyah had to select the word that made the most sense in each sentence of the paragraph. She read the passage with fluency and made accurate selections for each sentence with little difficulty. She made 0 mistakes. Next week, we will try CORE MAZE Comprehension Passage 4-A and well as Phonological Segmentation and Blending assessments. A formal write up of assessment results will be made upon completion of all necessary assessments.

Kaniyah practiced breaking vcv words into syllables identifying open and closed syllables. She also read another passage about The Badlands from ReadWorks.org. We used this passage and its questions to practice using test-taking strategies.

Kaniyah read an article about the Badlands and answered 10 comprehension questions. We identified the keywords in the question and then restated it. After that, she used the article to formulate her own answer. She read each of the four provided answers, looking for one that matched hers. In each set of answers, she looked for choices that could be easily eliminated and reread the remaining two choices. For word work, we practiced identifying open and closed syllables and breaking words into syllables.