Reflective Journal Entry 2

Amanda Lilly

Ms. Albanese

MAS 7998

November 15, 2012

Journal Entry #2

(Pre-Assessment)

Observation	Reflection	Questions Raised/ Answers Attempted
First I helped students finish their homework on the three branches of government and long division. I helped them read and the three branches and identify, which one does what job. Then I helped show the students a method to check their long division answers to see if they were correct by multiplying. After this Josh and I went to a quitter location where I could administer the BRI pre-test. I explained to him what we would be doing and what was expected of him. He was very willing to partake in this BRI, but was somewhat antsy after 30 minutes or so. I could tell that he tried his best and he would continually ask if he was doing a good job. I was very encouraging throughout this whole process and kept motivating him to sound out the words and take his time while reading the passages. Through this process I was able to observe that he needs help sounding out words and taking his time while reading. He came across the word cabin, but pronounced it Caribbean. He needs some help breaking down the syllables in words. He also had good comprehension skills because I think he is an oral learner and has a better time grasping what is going on in a story when he reads it out loud to himself.	After I evaluated his results on the BRI pre-test I concluded he needs assistance with word recognition and decoding, along with reading frequency. He needs practice in these areas for him to improve his reading ability, since he is barely at a fourth grade reading level. I also found it interesting that he was weak in reading fluency, yet had strong comprehension skills. I found that when we went over the words that he mispronounced once I read them to him and then he was able to tell me what that word meant he just wasn’t able to blend the sounds of the words on the word list. I also observed that as the list went on the words got harder and he passed on words that he said he hasn’t seen before. He may have a limited vocabulary or maybe he has seen the word before, but just couldn’t recognize it on the word lists.	Q: Why is it that his reading fluency is weak, but his comprehension is strong?   A: This is possibly due to the fact that I asked the comprehension questions orally and he is an oral learner. I also think that while reading the passages he read at a slower pace because he wasn’t able to recognize or decode some of the words, which slowed him down even though he was able to comprehend what he just read.   Q: What can I do to improve his reading fluency?   A: Practice, practice, practice. The more opportunities he is given to practice his reading fluency skills the more opportunity he has for improvement in this component of reading literacy.