Literacy Profile

Literacy Profile
Emily Duke
April 4th, 2016
Read 670

Literacy Profile
Contextual Framework
Mountain Middle School is located in Seaside Virginia which also known the heart of
Virginia. This community is mainly a southern rural area and has that hometown, caring feel to
it. There is not a whole lot to do here, there is not even a grocery store in town, therefore the
schools are the social-hub of the community. The school facilities are used for events and
school sports bring the community together. Seaside Virginia is a small country town where
everybody knows everybody and are always looking out for one another. There are only a few
schools throughout this town including one elementary school and a middle school that shares
the same building as the high school. Throughout Mountain Middle School there are about 400
students in grades 5th through 8th. In the middle school specifically, 69% of students receive
free/reduced lunch and the population of the student body is about 10% special education and
less than 1% English Language Learner
The classrooms in Mountain Middle School resemble those of most classrooms found in
rural Virginia. Each classroom has about 24 chairs, a promethean board, six computers, and a
laptop for the teacher. With technology playing a factor, textbooks are non-existent throughout
the middle school since they do not align well with the Virginia standards. The reading materials
for these students instead of textbooks include non-fiction materials, a leveled reader series, and
also high interest readings that require low readability. In the classroom, the students desks are
grouped in ways that would most likely promote student engagement and collaboration. The
make-up of students throughout the grade levels are heterogeneously mixed with some little
grouping of students who are proficient in math. The students in Mountain Middle School learn
through exploration, teamwork, and partnership which makes it difficult for students to make-up
lost time if they are pulled out for intervention. In order to help the students who need it most

Literacy Profile
without letting them get behind, Mountain Middle School has tutoring and after school programs
to help these students.
For my tutoring in particular, I have a fifth grade girl, Melissa, who is ten years old and
needs extra help with her literacy learning. Melissa is currently functioning slightly below grade
level and is reading on a fourth grade level while being in the early stage of syllables and affixes
for spelling. Throughout tutoring, the goals for Melissa and her literacy instruction will be to
help her with comprehending what she is reading as well as her prosody during her read-alouds.
Melissa seems to benefit from visual demonstrations as she learns best this way. Throughout
tutoring, she will be introduced to new material with visual aids. Melissa is all around a great
student who seems to love learning and school, and with some additional tutoring in literacy, she
will be able to read on grade level with high comprehension.
In order to ensure instructional planning and assessment are relevant and useful for
intervention practices, the tutor must take into mind the contextual characteristics of the
community, classroom, and student theyre teaching. These factors allow the tutor to more
thoroughly understand the student and their environment. Knowing these things allows for the
tutor to differentiate material in ways the best believe will benefit them. Contextual factors can
impact a student and how they learn, therefore the tutor must explore the students background
from their home to their classroom, in order to ensure they are teaching the student in ways that
are more beneficial for them.
Assessment
I was so happy to find out I was placed with Melissa for my tutoring this semester
because she is a hard worker and ready-be-learner. Melissa is an upbeat young lady who seems
to love life and enjoys coming to school. Focusing on her literacy in specific though, Melissa

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says that reading and writing are her least favorite subjects because she struggles with them on a
day-to-day basis. I did not receive any additional information about her literacy abilities from her
teacher or get any background on her familys literacy abilities, which could have been helpful to
more accurately pinpoint what is Melissa struggles with the most in reading. Also, Melissa did
not really talk about why reading was a problem for her, she only discussed that she typically
read in her free time or really find any enjoyment in doing so. Only after assessing Melissa
though, I could see where her frustration with reading was coming from. She is below grade
level for reading and tends to struggle with comprehending the text. Her comprehension struggle
definitely seems to come from her just reading the words, without thinking through what she is
actually on the page/what the text means. Overall, Melissa is an engaged student who I
personally feel will benefit from literacy tutoring.
Artifacts
Student Interview & Affective Measures
On the first day of tutoring, I gave Melissa a packet to take home that included a reading
attitude survey as well as a student interview. She was asked to complete them and bring the two
sheets back to me when we got together during the next tutoring section. Thankfully Melissa
remembered to do so and I was able to read through her interview and attitude survey. The
student interview (see Appendix A) is a great resource for getting to know the student who I am
working with a little bit better. It focusing on their interests, school, how they process reading,
and also their attitude and motivation towards reading. From this interview, I found out that
Melissa really likes hanging out with her friends and enjoys playing outside. She talked about
how her favorite subject in school is history, while her least favorite is reading (this is something
I definitely want to focus on and change!). When it came to the questions about reading, Melissa

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said that the letters are what make reading hard and if she struggles with a word she sounds it
out. She also talked about that if she does not understand something, that she doesnt mind
asking the teacher for clarification. Lastly for this interview Melissa pointed out that she only
likes to read on boring days and that no one reads to her at home, but she does like listening to
someone read. Also, she pointed out that she likes nonfiction books, specifically Dolphin Tale 2.
Throughout this interview I gained vital information about Melissa as a person, a student, and as
a reader. It is important that I try to get her more engaged in the reading process and help her to
think of herself as a strong reader.
Another way I gained information on Melissa was with the reading attitude survey (see
Appendix B). This survey focuses solely on reading and the attitude of the students towards
specific aspects of reading. Throughout this survey I picked up on a couple of key things that are
important for getting to know Melissa as a reader. First off, she does not typically enjoy reading
in her free time at school or at home, but she does like to start new books. Melissa also feels
negatively towards reading over summer vacation or reading instead of playing. She does enjoy
reading different kinds of books, but does not enjoy being asked questions about what she read or
completing worksheets on the reading. Even though Melissa does not like to read in school, she
does enjoy learning from her school books and reading stories in reading class. Lastly, Melissa
does not like to read out loud in class and feels very negatively towards taking reading tests.
Overall, this reading attitude survey allowed me to see what it is exactly that Melissa does and
does not like when it comes to reading. I also found out that Melissa much more enjoys
academic reading than she does recreational. This will be important when it comes to tutoring
because this could mean she will be engaged with the readings since it is in an academic setting.
Individual Reading Inventory

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After gaining knowledge about Melissas attitude towards reading and also getting to
know her on a more personal level, I moved onto assessing her in the fields of both reading and
writing. To begin the assessments, I had Melissa complete the Word Recognition in Isolation
(WRI) assessment (see Appendix C). This evaluation tool focuses on decoding and automaticity
in word knowledge. Throughout this assessment, students are flashed words on the computer
screen and they are asked to say the word aloud. If the students recognizes the word
automatically they get a check in the timed column. However, if the student does not
immediately recognize the word, the tutor will stop on that specific word and the student will
have a chance to figure out the word from there. If they do identify the word this time around,
they will receive a check in the untimed column, but if not they will not receive credit for the
particular word.
To begin the WRI, I had Melissa start with the second grade list. She automatically
identified 95% of the words in the timed section, and identified 100% of the words in the
untimed section which came together for a complete score of 100% of words correctly
recognized. Since she scored so high on this list, I noted her as independent for this level.
Next, I had her move onto the third grade list which she scored a 95% on the timed section,
100% on the untimed section, and had an overall word identification score of 100% which is also
an independent score. The next list I had Melissa complete was the fourth grade one. Here she
seemed to struggle a little bit more than the previous lists seeing that she only scored a 75% on
the timed section, a 95% on the untimed section, and therefore a score of 95% overall on her
word recognition. Since she had an overall score of 95%, she still remained in the independent
category. Moving onto the fifth grade list, Melissa actually did very well. She scored an 85% on
the timed, a 100% on the untimed, which concludes to a 100% overall score putting her score as

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independent. Even though she scored independent on both lists four and five, it is important to
realize that her timed score is in the instructional range because that means she is not as
automatic as she could be for these grade level lists. Lastly, I had Melissa complete the sixth
grade word list to which she did not do very well. Melissa scored a 45% on the timed section
and an 80% on the untimed section, giving her an overall score of 80% and put her in the
instructional score range. Even though she had an instructional score, she was clearly getting
frustrated with the words, and since her timed score was in the frustrational score range, I
decided to stop her at this list. Overall, this assessment allowed me to make an instructional call
for her Word Recognition in Context assessment to which I placed her at a 4th grade reading
level. I did this because her fourth grade timed scores where the lowest of her instructional
WRI scores.
The next assessment I had Melissa complete was the Word Recognition in Context
(WRC) assessment (see Appendix D). This assessment involves having the student read a
variety of different passages, either narrative or expository, and having the tutor mark mistakes
made as the student reads aloud. This assessment in particular analyzes oral reading accuracy in
the context of a given text. Prior to reading, the tutor will ask a variety of questions to gain
background knowledge as well as afterwards to assess comprehension of the text. Since
Melissas frustrational WRI score occurred at the sixth grade list and her lowest instructional
score was at the fourth grade WRI list, I decided to make the call and have her begin reading at
on the fourth grade level. My goal here was to ultimately find her instructional reading level
since this is the level that the most learning can occur. To begin the WRC assessment, I had
Melissa being on the fourth grade passage which was an expository text titled, Early Railroads.
Prior to having her read, I asked Melissa a variety of concept questions about railroads and travel

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to which she scored a 100% on. She seemed to have prior background knowledge about
railroads which would help her out throughout her reading. Next, I had Melissa read the 297
word passage aloud which took her 3:19 to complete. Throughout her reading she had a total of
9 miscues, while 8 of those were meaning-change miscues (missing these words altered the
passage in some way). The total of both the accuracy and acceptability miscues, her reading rate,
as well as her correct words per minute, made this fourth grade passage her instructional level.
Looking at the number of words in the passage and the miscues, Melissa ultimately scored a 96%
on this passage, putting her in the instructional zone. After she was done reading, I asked
Melissa a variety of comprehension questions about the passage. She was only able to recall
information for two of the eight questions immediately, while she got the other six right after
looking back in the text. Her comprehension score was a frustrational score which was a red flag
for me. If this is her instructional level, Melissa should be able to recall what she read with only
some hesitation or confusion, but she actually struggled a lot with the comprehension of this text.
Since Melissa had an instructional score on the fourth grade level text, I decided to let her
try to read the fifth grade level text. This reading passage was an expository text titled, The
Octopus and was made up of 254 words. For the concept questions that I gave to Melissa
before reading, she scored a 67% and therefore did not have a lot of prior knowledge about how
animals defend themselves, so I did inform her on this process to help her better comprehend the
text. Next, Melissa read the passage aloud for 3:00 minutes and had six miscues while only two
of those were meaning-change miscues. Looking at the number of words in the passage and
the miscues, Melissa ultimately scored a 97% on this passage, putting her in the instructional
zone. After Melissa was done reading, I asked her variety of comprehension questions to which
she got half of them right the first time and the second half of them right after looking back

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through the text. As I stated earlier, this is a red flag because she seems to only be reading the
words without thinking through what the passage is trying to tell her. Overall, Mackenzies
instructional range is fourth-fifth, but her comprehension is poor and will definitely need to be
the focus of our tutoring sessions.
The next assessment I gave to Melissa was the Qualitative Spelling Assessment, also
known as the Upper Level Spelling Inventory (see Appendix E). This assessment in particular
focuses on decoding abilities as well as the spelling abilities of the student. As I administered the
spelling test I would say the spelling word aloud, followed by a sentence in which the word was
used. The words throughout this test come from different spelling stages including within word
pattern, syllables and affixes, as well as derivational relations. Overall, Melissa received a raw
score or 9 out of 31, in which she got 39 out of 69 feature points correct totaling to a 48 out of 99
or a 48%. Looking through her assessment, Melissa did well with the within word pattern words
and got most of the blends/diagraphs and vowels correct. It wasnt until she came across words
with complex consonants that she began to struggle. Melissa also struggled with words that had
inflected endings, affixes, reduced vowels in unaccented syllables, and Greek/Latin elements.
Since Melissa is functioning the early stages of Syllables and Affixes which is right below where
she should be at this point in her grade, I feel the instructional pacing for her should be modest.
She is not super far behind therefore I feel taking the time to look over constructive sorts will be
beneficial to her learning. Melissas word knowledge is most likely influencing her automaticity
of word recognition which can be seen throughout her WRI scores. Since this is most likely an
area of weakness, it will be important to work with Melissa on being able to decode words both
phonetically as well as automatically.

Literacy Profile
The last assessment I had Melissa complete was a written language assessment (see
Appendix F). This assessment included giving her a prompt and allowing her to construct her
ideas in a pre-write, then organize those ideas into a writing sample. After looking at Melissas
writing sample I found a few things that were important for future instruction. Overall Melissa is
a pretty strong writer and was able to keep to the main idea, focus on the prompt, and used
supporting details to do so. She was organized in the fact that she had somewhat of an
introduction (could have been stronger), sentences supporting her argument, as well as a definite
conclusion. She also organized her ideas from the pre-writing into a web that she used
throughout her writing sample. Melissas writing sounded just like her and her sentences flowed
well from one to another. She also varied her sentence beginnings and the structures of them.
Overall, Melissas spelling of words was well done with only a few minor mistake and she also
had correct punctuation throughout. On the other hand there are a few things Melissa does need
help with. Her weaknesses mainly come through choice in words seeing as though they were not
very descriptive and did not vary very much. Also, her sentences did not really have any depth
to them and just briefly touched the surface of what the prompt asked. Overall though, I was
pleasantly surprised with Melissas writing because I thought it was well constructed and worded
and she also enjoyed writing about the prompt.
Summary of Data Analysis and Reading Levels
Melissa is a determined and eager student who has a lot of potential to become a more
well-rounded literacy student. Overall, Melissa is functioning just below grade level and still
needs some work in some areas of reading and writing. Some weaknesses of Melissa include her
comprehension skills, word knowledge, and automaticity of word recognition. These three
weaknesses will be the major focus throughout our tutoring lessons as Melissa will need extra

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help with becoming better at these. On the other hand, Melissa did well with reading orally and
expressing herself through writing. She reads with ease while only making a few mistakes and
she also loves to write. Knowing this, I feel it will be important that I help her with decoding
when it comes to both reading and writing as this will help her word knowledge and
automaticity.
Overall, Melissa is functioning on a 4th grade level. Looking at her assessments this
instructional level call comes from both her WRI and WRC scores. Melissas instructional WRI
scores place her in the fourth to fifth grade level, while her WRC does the same. Melissas word
recognition in isolation when it is timed put her slightly below grade level. Her automatic
recognition will need to be a focus throughout the tutoring lessons as her she is unable to
recognize words without stopping to decode. Also, when it comes to her word recognition in
context, she is functioning just slightly below grade level due to the number of miscues in her
aloud reading of the expository texts. What really comes into play for the WRC though, are the
comprehension questions. Melissas comprehension of the fourth and fifth grade level texts were
very weak which is a sign on concern. Although Melissa can read fourth and fifth grade texts
with ease, we will need to focus on her comprehension on these texts instead of just on the words
themselves. Focusing on word knowledge and comprehension throughout the tutoring lessons
will help Melissa with both her reading and writing abilities.
I believe that Melissa is strong student who has the potential to get on grade level for
literacy. Although she loves school, I do fear that in reading class she gets frustrated when it
comes to comprehending the text or being tested on a particular book. I feel that Melissas
reading abilities do probably cause problems for her in the classroom as she can grow frustrated
when not knowing the answer. Melissa is a bright student who, with some intervention, will be

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able to become more confident in the classroom, especially when it comes to reading and
writing. I do believe that Melissa will be on back on grade level soon once she grows the
confidence to herself as a reader and writer.
Instructional Goals
Throughout our tutoring sessions, I have had a few instructional goals in mind for Mackenzie
to meet. These goals were related to word knowledge, fluency, comprehension, and writing.
These goals were designed to guide our tutoring sessions and help Mackenzie increase her
literacy abilities in these sections. Also, having these instructional goals allowed me to design
lessons that would focus on bettering Mackenzies abilities for each goal.
For word knowledge Mackenzie was functioning on an instructional level for fifth grade.
Since she is currently in fifth grade I wanted to help increase her word knowledge to make her
fifth grade range independent, instead of instructional. With an increase in word knowledge, I
was also hoping to increase her fluency. Mackenzies fluency rates were okay, but I did feel like
they needed some additional work. Looking at her words per minute, Mackenzie was definitely
below grade level. Students in fifth grade should be reading 140+ words per minute, but
Mackenzie was only reading about 85 words per minute in the fifth grade leveled text.
Mackenzie did well with reading the text as she only had six miscues. On the other hand, her
prosody was low as she had no emotional connection to text, nor did she portray appropriate
expression. In order to help Mackenzie increase her fluency, I wanted to increase her reading
rate from 85wpm to 100wpm as well as work on her deliverance of a given text.
One of the main focuses our tutoring sessions was comprehension because overall
Mackenzies comprehension skills were pretty weak. She read the passages pretty easily, but
when it was time for her to recall the information, she simply could not do it. Mackenzie seemed
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to be reading word by word, instead of thinking about what she was actually reading. Also,
when it came time to answer the comprehension questions after reading the passage, she was
unable to answer most of the questions without looking back. She really seemed to struggle with
implicit and therefore it became apparent that she had problems with inferring information from
the text. Also, not only was recalling the information from the text difficult for her to do, she
could not find the information when asked to look back for the answer which again points out
that she was reading the words, but not processing the text. In order to help Mackenzie with her
comprehension, I feel that focusing on determining importance would best suit and help her with
her understanding of the texts she will be reading. In order to help Mackenzie with determining
importance of a text, I will be implementing a few strategies to help her do so. For the
comprehension/reading portion of our lesson, we will follow the before-during-after format.
This will help Mackenzie by ensuring I am activating any prior knowledge for the text, having
her highlight important information as she reads, then recalling the information and
understanding which ideas were the most important throughout the text.
The last goal for Mackenzie focuses on her writing abilities. Although Mackenzies writing
is one her strongest components of literacy, I feel she still needs some work. Mackenzies
writing seemed to be pretty well-rounded as she scored a four or higher on almost all of the six
writing traits. I feel her writing is typical of what a fifth grader usually produces because she
seemed to put a lot of thought and energy into it. One thing I would like to focus on with her
writing is word choice. Her choices of words were appropriate, but I feel more descriptive
language and more variation would really help to improve her writing. Introducing her to new
vocabulary throughout given texts, will help to encourage Mackenzie to differentiate her word
choice during her writings.

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Evidence of Research Base: Individualized Instructional Goals

In order to ensure students are correctly developing in literacy they must be developing in
more stages than just reading and writing. According to the authors of Words Their Way literacy
development is made up of multiple aspects that come together to form literacy such as
orthography, reading, oral language, stories, and writing, literacy is like a braid of interwoven
threads the size of the threads and the braid itself becomes thicker as each thread grows
(Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, Johnston, 2012, pg.1). Students should be developing in areas
such as word knowledge, fluency, comprehension, reading, and writing. Throughout our tutoring
lessons, I focused on helping to more thoroughly develop Mackenzie in these areas of literacy
because research has indicated that development in these areas are crucial to development in
literacy as a whole (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, Johnston, 2012) When it comes to word
knowledge, Gunning argues that it is developed through thorough and deep routed instruction.
He discusses that an increase in word knowledge can lead to a better understanding of a given
text, although having a rich vocabulary is important in its own right, it is often taught as a
means of improving comprehension (Gunning, 2014, pg. 293). Along with an increase in word
knowledge comes an increase in fluency. According to Beck and McKeown (1991), fluency,
along with word knowledge, must be apparent in order for a student to comprehend what they
are reading. Gunning states that students need multiple exposures to a word before it become
automatic and accurate, before students can recognize words rapidly or automatically, they must
first achieve accuracy low-achieving readers may take longer to achieve accuracy than higherachieving readers (Gunning, 2014, pg. 341). It is important to help low achieving readers with
their fluency because it will help their overall development in comprehension.
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Comprehension is the purpose of reading. According to Gunning, comprehension is an
dynamic process in which a reader inherently engages with a given text, today comprehension
is seen as an active process in which the reader plays a very active role, constructing meaning
bases on his or her cultural ad experiential background, purpose for reading, and the overall
setting (Gunning, 2014, pg.366). Comprehension is at the heart of reading and it is something
teachers strive to get their students to do. Gunning argues though, that students must have some
prior background knowledge and schemata in order to truly understand what they are reading.
Students who refer back to past experiences and prior knowledge before reading will be able to
determine importance, make inferences, and construct meaning (Gunning, 2014).
Another way to help students become well-rounded in their literacy development is to
focus on writing. Often writing is neglected when it comes to the literary portion of the day
because reading takes main stage. Writing is such an essential part of literacy development and
should be a focus of literacy instruction on a day-to-day basis. According to Gunning, writing
affects thinking, and thinking affects writing. When students are able to write, they are able to
move past just recalling facts, and instead are able to develop their own ideas and express
themselves through written word, over time, writers acquire the ability to transform knowledge,
in which they develop and revise their thoughts as they write so that writing becomes a way of
exploring and learning (Gunning, 2014, pg.493). Writing is process and teachers should take
the time to help student develop into strong writers by ensuring they are receiving high quality
instruction that allows them to be thinkers and explorers.
Instructional Plan
The instructional plan I have in place for tutoring with Mackenzie focuses around four
main components of literacy including fluency, word knowledge, comprehension, and writing.
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Throughout our instructional time together, I will have her practices these components of literacy
in order to help her develop as reader and writer. Also, all of these components will intertwine to
foster her development and help her achieve better reading and writing skills. There will also be
objectives put in place to guide our lessons and ensure that Mackenzie will reach the literacy
goals previously described.
Each lesson will consist of a five minute fluency warm-up, a five minute word
knowledge sort, a fifteen minute comprehension reading activity, and a five minute writing
activity. Throughout each of these, Mackenzie will be engage in numerous activities to help
foster her literacy development in these areas. The fluency portion of the lesson will be focusing
more on expression and prosody, rather than accuracy and rate. Mackenzie would benefit from a
more thorough understanding of how to read a given text aloud in the correct manner. The word
knowledge portion of the lesson will be focusing on inflected ending sorts. These sorts will
change periodically, but still revolve around inflected endings and sorting them into the
categories of e drop or double. Word knowledge is a time for Mackenzie to be introduced to
some new vocabulary while also being challenged to figure out how to correctly sort the words.
The main portion of our time together will be spent on comprehension, specifically determining
importance. Comprehension is Mackenzies weakest part of her literacy development, therefore
we will spend extra time when it comes to reading, analyzing, and making meaning of a given
text. The last portion of our lesson will focus on writing. I feel it is important for Mackenzie to
take what she read and translate her opinions about that text into a writing of her own.
Incorporating writing will also allow her to express herself about her emotions towards the
assigned reading.

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Appendix A
Student Interview

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Appendix B
Reading Attitude Survey

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Appendix C
Word Recognition in Isolation (WRI)

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Appendix D
Word Recognition in Context (WRC)

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Appendix E
Upper Spelling Inventory

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Appendix F
Writing Sample

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