Wow, I just did part of an assessment and am I in for a lot of work. I did the phonic probes could only get 23 out of the needed 35 and lots of errors reversals, skipping sounds and adding sounds. And a child that says they are not comfortable with the program. We went thru a program before where it was timed and she hated it. Promised her a build-a-bear at the end of 4 weeks. looks like I might need to add daily incentives as well. The other interested thing I noticed is in the beginning stories, there is a sentence that says, “I fish” she got really upset when she read it not understanding why the child in the story was saying he was a fish. I explained it was fishing and kinda like I play. She also got upset about a sentence that said, “sad cat’s hat” wondering why the hat was sad. I am still trying to find her reading level. Not sure if I should skip a few stories as I am seeing these interesting road blocks in our way.
Language comprehension and reading
Here’s a very good report entitled: The cognitive Foundations of Learning to Read: A Framework.
http://www.sedl.org/reading/framework/
This report discusses the importance of language comprehension, as well as decoding, in learning to read. Along with detailed information on the elements of language, it also has a number of instructional activities.
Hope this helps,
Brenda
A suggestion
Ive been requiring my son to listen to story tapes. Another mom on the boards mentioned this
This mom said she just hooked her kid up while he was playing. Ive made it more structured(mine is 11) I give him something to do with his hands-stress ball, clay-and sit him down for 15 min with the headphones. We are doing “Indian in the cupboard” now.
I know it SEEMS they should be getting the ‘ways of language’ just from daily life-my other two did-but this guy struggles.
Even at 11, I can see him questionning “I fish”. I think just listening will help and hey, its pretty easy too!
If a student is having this much trouble right at the beginning and even with the placement test, I think you have the information that you need — this kid has real language problems (not understanding “I fish” and “sad cat’s hat”) and real reading problems; the student needs a lot of really basic work. Either start with the first level of the program you have, or go back even further to the very basics of a good phonics and a good beginning reading program. I would not even think about timing and speed until you get the rest ironed out.