Haley Kunze

16 October 2017
QRI write- up

Since completing the QRI on a student in my third grade practicum, Brian, Ive begun to

look back at the results and analyze them. The first part of this QRI focused on Brians word

recognition in isolation. I printed out word lists and he read the words for me, from a pre-

primer list until a third grade list. The second part of this QRI was a running record of a passage

followed by a few comprehension questions. For Brian, based on how he did on the word lists, I

was supposed to start at a second grade level passage and keep going until I found his

frustration level. For the purpose of this QRI write-up and reflection I focus on four aspects of

literacy, word recognition in isolation, word recognition in context, comprehension, and

fluency.

Beginning with word recognition in isolation, I specifically focused on the first part of the

QRI. One of the most important aspects that I took away from this section, was Brians

dedication to attempting every word on the list, regardless if he knew it or not. Even though I

said it was okay if he did not know a word, he would spend time trying to sound it out.

Although he did not always identify the words automatically, he really tried his best to work

through it. I believe that this is an excellent trait to have as a young reader, the desire and

determination to learn those words and work through the ones that you do not know.

However, looking back on those words that Brian could not identify I see a pattern with those

silent sounds that fall at the end of a word. For example, four of the words that he got wrong

were tongue, rough, breathe, and though. All of those words have tricky endings that make

unexpected sounds or are silent. This is an area that I think Brian could grow in and where
progression would really benefit his further reading skills. Brian completed lists pre-primer until

third, where we found his frustration level as he got less then 70% of the words correct.

After completing the word lists, I moved onto the reading passages and comprehension

questions. In Brians case I started with a second grade level passage because it was one level

below his frustration level for the word lists. Brians word recognition in context, or accuracy

rate, was 89% at the second grade level, and anything below 90% is considered to be the

frustrational level. As I said previously, Brian really tried his hardest when reading this passage,

he was determined and really excited to work on this with me, which is a desire I think we all

want to see in young kids. Most of the errors that Brian had were either picking out the root of

the word and saying that or mixing up the words because of the first letter of that word.

Although I found that second grade was Brians frustrational level by 1 percent, I do believe that

this would be his instructional level instead.

Brian finished reading the passage and then answered six comprehension questions that

I had asked him. Brian did a really excellent job with these questions, he was quick to answer

them and I felt as though he had a deep understanding of what happened in the passage he

had just finished reading. Brian did get one question wrong which asked him Who are the main

characters in this story?. However, his answer was not far off, but he included another

character that was mentioned in the story and left out one of the main characters. One of the

aspects of his comprehension skills that I appreciated was when I asked him two of the

questions he actually looked back in the passage and referenced a specific sentence and told

me where I could find it. This is actually a strategy that my coordinating teacher has been

working on her students with, using highlighters to look back in the passage and find where
that information could be found. This is clearly a strategy that is helping Brian with his

comprehension skills.

The final literacy aspect that I want to look at for Brian, is his fluency. While Brian read I

timed how long it took him to finish the passage and then using how many words were in the

passage I found his reading rate. Brians reading rate came out to be 115 words per minute.

Referencing a provided chart with the grade level and the reading rate span, It looks as though

Brian is reading at the rate of a third grader. This is interesting because that shows he is on

grade level with his grade, third, but it also is inconsistent with his word recognition

instructional level. I did notice that Brian read at a very comfortable rate, sometimes a little

faster in parts but this is where I found him making those word recognition errors based on the

first letter of the word. Fluency is not all about how fast someone reads, but is also based on

the expression of the reader. There were some points in this passage where I heard Brian using

more expression, but there were also points where he was monotone. I think that this is

definitely an area of growth for Brian, emphasizing the importance of this for a reader and

when passages use quotations and have those extra elements how vital it is to use that

expression.

This was a process that I actually really enjoyed and think is very beneficial for my future

work in the classroom. My coordinating teacher talks about doing running records a lot so this

was definitely something that I needed to practice doing. It is definitely a tedious and

sometimes fast paced thing to do with young kids, especially when you have to do the math

and come to conclusions when they are still sitting there. One thing that went wrong when I

was doing the running record was that I forgot to time Brian at first, so I had to ask him to start
over about half-way through. I dont know if this impacted his reading rate, but it is definitely a

possibility. I think that this write-up made me look deeper into Brians reading abilities and

patterns that I dont know if I would have necessarily looked at. Both the practice of completing

the running record and then the analysis were very beneficial for me and good practice as a

future teacher.