Literacy Portfolio

Tara Hopkins

Professor Anthony

RAL 221

May 1, 2018
 Background Information

My focus child’s name is Michael. He is an 11-year-old boy in the 5th grade class of Ms.

Thompson. I had decided he would be perfect as a part of this study because of his eagerness to

participate. I had noticed right off the bat that he was raising his hand to share during shared

reading on the first day of my practicum at Lore School. Michael is a funny kid and sometimes a

bit rowdy, but he always knows when to reel it in and do his work. In the morning he would talk

about Legos or Pokémon with his friends in class. One morning he was in such a good mood he

came in singing. He was always bright and cheery student to see every Monday. During class he

was never falling behind, he worked hard on assignments and was also eager to get done so he

could do his independent reading. From speaking with his teacher, it was clear that he was

reading at grade level if not above grade level. She had said he would be a T/U level reading.

Michael does like to read, but as most 11-year olds he also said he ideally would prefer watching

television. He is extremely into comic books and books about superheroes. He doesn’t feel as

confident reading out loud for the class, but I did catch him reading his book out loud to one of

his friends. One of his favorite books at the time was also Dogman, which seemed to be a

popular choice for the boys in the class. Michael does look at himself as a good reader and

writer, and whenever he was asked to come join me for some of my assessments it encouraged

him more and I know he was always excited for the one on one. Michael was one of the better-

behaved students during our literacy time. He stayed quiet while be given instructions and asked

questions and participated when the time was right. As far as out of school activities, he played

basketball and loved going to the movies (especially when it was a superhero movie). Overall,

Michael was a pleasure to work with and it was exciting to watch him become a better reader and

writer throughout the semester and through his assessments.

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 Reading Passages

Date of Running Record: March 5, 2018

I had asked my cooperating teacher about Michael’s reading level to help me gauge what

reading to give him. She had said that he could definitely do a level T or U. I gave him a level U

because I wanted him to be challenged a little bit. He ended up breezing through the reading for

the most part. He did repeat sentences a few times and also was unable to figure out some

unfamiliar words but tried his best to sound them out. But by the end of it he had 96% accuracy,

falling into the independent reading level. I felt that level U was a good fit for him, but I also felt

after hearing him read that he could handle trying level V because he seems to be a strong reader

but doesn’t love to read over playing. There was definitely room to challenge him more. He was

able to answer the questions about the passage too with no problem. His teacher in class has been

working a lot on being able to answer questions about a reading, so I think his skills have

definitely been strengthened in class. When I compare his reading to his spelling I can see the

correlation. He is a strong reader and he is also one of the better spellers in the class. He is

ultimately where he needs to be at this point in the year.

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Date of Second Running Record: April 23, 2018

On the last day of practicum, I squeezed in a final running record before PARCC testing.

I had him read at level Z. He read this with limited problems as he had done on his earlier

running record. I had jumped him a few levels since the time before because I had felt the

previous one had challenged him at all. His accuracy percentage for this running record was 95%

and that was what I had hoped for. He has improved a lot during his school year and I think is

full prepared to read higher grade level texts. After working on doing questions centered around

comprehension, he has very obviously improved. He was able to answer questions and

understand what he had read. He was also so excited at how well he read and I know it gave him

a little confidence boost in his abilities as a reader.

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 Phonemic Awareness/ Phonics Inventory

I started with Part I of the Informal Decoding Inventory. I knew he would read this part

with ease, and I wanted him to understand what we were doing and so it wouldn’t feel

overwhelming as the words got harder. Michael did extremely well, he is a very strong reader

and was easily decoding words. He tripped up mainly on nonsense words, where he tried to

sound them out as best as he knew. He never got frustrated with himself by he also was really

proud of how many he was getting right. The only areas that gave him a little harder of a time

were vowel team syllables and consonant -le syllables, which were found later on in the

inventory. These findings make sense when compared to his spelling inventory, where he also

starts to struggle at these types of words. I am not concerned about the errors being with these

syllables because the words tend to increase in difficulty at that point as well. He does as well as

I hope a student at this point of 5th grade would be doing.

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 Spelling Inventory

Date of Spelling Inventory: March 5, 2018

1. I used the Upper Level inventory because of my class being a 5 th grade classroom. It

turned out that when getting to my classroom that day my cooperating teacher was giving

them the expect spelling test that we were going to give them. So, myself and the two

other girls in my classroom administered the test to the whole class. The whole class was

excited for the spelling test because they never get to take them. I from this got to

practice grading a bunch of the students’ tests using the spelling inventory. I was able to

grade Michael’s test and keep a picture of his test and my own copy of his grading sheet.

2. Michael is right on target for his grade and is even strong in his spelling compared to

some of his classmates. Michael has mastered everything up to early syllables. He had no

errors until early/middle syllables. Michael started to struggle in middle to late syllables

and affixes, so I would say his spelling stage is mid to late syllables. On his test the words

“ripen” and “cellar” tripped him up. He wrote “rippen” and “celler”. He only messed up

once in syllable junctures and once in unaccented final syllables. He still did noticeably

well even with derivational relations only losing 3 feature points from that section.

3. After grading Michael’s spelling test, he still needs improvement in the syllable section

of his phonics. I think Michael would benefit from seeing root words, for example he

misspelled ripen, if had realized that all it was, was the base word ripe with an n on the

end it would make more sense.

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 Sight Word Recognition

I had Michael read the words from the 5th grade High Frequency Word list. I had put

them on flashcards, so I could easily flip them up to him. He was 100% accurate in reading all of

these words. He read them quickly and with ease. He had seen most of these words before, so he

didn’t need to sound out either. The only time he did was for the words “simple cells” because he

was surprised to see that as a word in the mix. As far as sight words go, he would be above grade

level in his fluency here. In March of 5th grade, it seems he has mastered the words expected of

5th grade. If I had had the time it would have been interesting to get him to read lists from higher

grade levels to see where he sits. I know the amount of reading Michael does inside as well as

outside of class aids his knowledge of these vocabulary words.

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 Writing Samples

I chose to grade Michael on Voice, Organization, and Word Choice.

Date of Writing Sample: March 5, 2018

This piece of writing was done after my read aloud in class. It was based off the book The

Invisible Boy. What was fun about this writing assignment was it asked the students to write

from a different point of view. The class had been working on point of view in writing anyway,

so this quick write after my reading helped to extend their understanding of perspective. In this

piece Michael did extremely well exemplifying his understanding of voice. He falls into the

proficient level in doing this. He was able to tell his story and commit to the voice, while also

interacting with the audience by using an interesting story. As far as word choice I wasn’t as

concerned with what he chose because this was a quick write. But he did use words he knew like

intergalactic and attention. The words did variate the story and made it more interesting. His

organization was his weaker part, he kept the story’s pacing well, but he would probably settle

around a 4 or 5 as far as use of transitions and predictable sequencing.

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Date of Writing Sample: March 12, 2018

This writing sample was taken from a morning quick write, where the entire class wrote

about their preference for either dogs or cats and why. This writing sample shows the practice for

an opinion piece as you can see the piece is organized by points defending their stance. As far as

voice, Michael had a clear stance and stays committed to that. Also, at the end he asks a question

to audience very much in his voice as he interacts with the reader. He organizes his piece well

for a quick write, he shows understanding that his opening needs to state his point and purpose

for the rest of the paper. He follows with transitions on to his other points defending his stance.

He uses a question as an interesting way to wrap up his paper. Word choice in this is limited but

he does throw in “companions” which is a really solid choice for a story about dogs. He did what

he could for such a small piece but definitely shows promise in his vocabulary.

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Date of Writing Sample: April 9, 2018

I chose to collect this piece on the Transcontinental Railroad because I was able to catch

his prewriting and revisions that went into this much longer paper. I wanted to use at least one

longer piece that he had written as one of my samples to grade on because it would allow me to

see how he writes in a bigger scale. While this piece doesn’t lend itself very much to voice, just

because it is an informational piece. You can still hear him in his writing. Organization and word

choice are more of the focus in grading this piece. He organizes this paper well by having each

paragraph written separately to be looked at. This allowed him to better organize his writing, so

each paragraph would have a clear focus. He does have a clear introduction and a clear ending

that ties up loose ends, the opening just doesn’t go above and beyond in a compelling way. He

does try to use strong vocabulary words. You can see the riskier ones end up misspelled in his

draft: ex: immigrants, construction, challenges, economy. His word choice does flow naturally

into the writing and he executes the use of them well. By this point in the year I can see change

in his writing as his understanding of research papers and persuasive writing as really been

worked on through various writing pieces and projects.

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 Conclusion

Michael appears to be meeting and surpassing many of his grade level norms. He flew

through sight words for his grade level with no problem. His phonemic awareness was also

exceptional, besides a few hiccups on nonsense words, which is understandable. His oral fluency

and comprehension were surpassing grade level as well. His running records from the beginning

and end of practicum marked his improvement and he especially improved in his comprehension

of what he was reading. He was also one of the better spellers in the class. He struggled only

when it came down to early derivational relations, which featured harder suffixes. From this I

can see his improvement will come through as he learns more vocabulary words. His writing also

improved throughout the semester as he developed more skills to make his papers more

organized and more concise. Michael is a confident student and I think that shines through in his

reading and writing abilities as well. I encourage Michael to keep on the path he is on and keep

reading as much as he already does.

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 Instructional Recommendations

Spelling

• His spelling for his grade is on level. He can use a little more help on syllables

and affixes but is also ready to tackle derivational relations in more difficult

words. For the derivational relations section of spelling, I would focus on

vocabulary development as a way to improve here. My goal would be to show

Michael that words similar in meaning are also usually similar in spelling, hence

the name “derivational”. As he reads more his spelling will improve because of

his vocabulary expanding. I would also in this phase of his spelling understanding

look to word origins to see consistencies in Latin and Greek word elements.

Reading

• His reading is his strongest subject so far. Taking that he was reading fluently all

of his high frequency words and was at the independent level of reading for all of

the running records I did with him, I would just keep encouraging him. I would

give him middle school level books to look at and see if any interest him. He

reads for enjoyment but could definitely benefit from being further challenged

and introduced into more difficult texts.

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Writing

• Michael’s writing is organized and showed promise in voice but sometimes

lacked riskier word choice. I would want to help Michael here with a mini-lesson

on conveying tone with word connotation. I would have him identify a setting and

have him write it with a few times over with different moods. Having him list the

words associated with his intended mood will be essential to getting him to

successfully do this activity. From doing this I hope to not only have him use

more vivid words but also words that would express feeling and would ultimately

help him create better voice in his writing as well.

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