December 4, 2013 Melissa Pulliam Paradise Professional Development School 900 Cottage Grove Avenue Las Vegas, NV 89119-6889

Dear Mrs. Pulliam, During the Fall 2013 semester I was given the opportunity to work with your student Abygail during our weekly UNLV tutoring sessions. These tutoring sessions go hand in hand with my Literacy II class with Dr. McKinney. Abygail and I met for a total of 10 tutoring sessions over 5 weeks for approximately 50 minutes each session. These tutoring sessions have been such a great learning opportunity. During our first session together, I performed several different assessments in on order to help me to set up attainable goals for Abygail. A brief summary of the results from each of the assessments follow: Interest/Attitude Survey - I gave this assessment just to get a better feel for Abygails thoughts on reading and writing. Abygails responses showed me she is an average 4th grader in terms of interest in literacy. She did say that she was uncomfortable reading out loud, so I decided I would look further into her fluency. Informal Reading Inventory - This assessment was able to show me that Abygails ability to comprehend is right on track. When reading aloud, Abygail was a bit choppy, she also repeated words when reading. Abygail tended to self-correct a good deal of her miscues. From this assessment, I learned that Abygails reading level was a CRI Level 4. Elementary Spelling Inventory - I issued the Spelling Inventory to give me a clue to where I should start my word study activities. The assessment showed me that Abygail is within word patterns and isnt fully understanding long vowels, so that was where I knew to start. Writing Assessment - I gave Abygail a writing prompt and let her write her thoughts for a bit. This was to help me see what parts of the writing process Abygail already knew and what I would need to work on. Looking at her writing, it seems she didnt have much of a structure when writing, so that was where I thought it was best to start.

Based on the assessments that I performed with Abygail, we created some goals. Abygail and I both agreed on these goals as the things that we would like to work on during our sessions. 1. Increase Ability to recognize within word pattern words. 2. Be able to successfully write a two paragraph story. 3. Increase fluency and ability or strategies to attempt unfamiliar words. Abygail and I maintained a similar format throughout the sessions. We started each session with familiar reading on the iPad and then we went on to guided reading, where Abygail would read a book out loud that I picked for her at her reading level. Next, Abygail and I started working on a piece of writing, which we continue to work on throughout the rest of the sessions. We than moved on to word study and finished with book sharing, where I would read to Abygail for about 5 minutes.

During our tutoring sessions, Abygail and I used various strategies to help Abygail improve in her reading and writing. One of the strategies that was very beneficial for Abygail was guided reading. I think Abygail enjoyed guided reading, I always tried to select a book that I thought would be fun for her to read. Another strategy that Abygail and I used during our sessions was word sorts. I was using word sorts specifically for within word pattern words, where she struggled at first but as able to recognize the words more successfully towards the end. These activities also helped her to recognize patterns like CVCe and CVVC. She seemed to really enjoy the word sorts and they were very beneficial. Looking back at our sessions, Abygail showed so much growth over just 5 weeks. When Abygail started the tutoring she was reading about 36 words per minute and at the end of the session she was reading at about 46 words per minute. That is a huge improvement, 10 words per minute. Abygail also showed progress when it comes to recognizing long vowel words and sounding out unfamiliar words when reading. She really put the effort forth during our tutoring sessions and it definitely shows in her growth. Some next steps that you could take in your classroom would be encouraging Abygail to read to someone. I think that the more Abygail reads out loud the more comfortable she will feel and her fluency will only increase. Overall, working with Abygail has been a great experience. I hope that Ive had a positive impact on some aspects of Abygails learning. Sincerely,

Alyssa Duda UNLV Tutor