Literacy coaching model and implementation

Literacy Coaching: Elementary Grades

Learning to read and write begins early in children's development, long before they enter kindergarten. Moreover, literacy skill development in early childhood provides the foundation for children's long-term academic success. Over the past two decades, researchers have identified key emergent literacy skills that develop progressively in children during their preschool years and are highly predictive of later success in learning to read (Elish-Piper, 2011). These skills include phonological awareness (e.g., hearing and manipulating smaller sounds in words), letter knowledge (e.g., identifying and naming letters), print awareness (e.g., noticing print and following words on a page), and oral language (e.g., describing events and telling stories). Many young children face significant challenges in learning to read because they lack essential early literacy skills when they begin school. In fact, children who are poor readers at the end of elementary school are most often those who fail to develop early literacy skills during preschool and kindergarten (Elish-Piper, 2011). Therefore, it is imperative to follow a literacy coaching model to ameliorate early reading deficiencies.

Preconference

In collaboration with another colleague, much emphasis was placed on the importance of a direct correlation between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness refers to all sound features in spoken language, including the ability to separate spoken sentences into individual words and to separate spoken words into syllables (Savage, 2007). Phonemic focuses specifically on phonemes, the basic units of meaningful speech sounds. In comparison, phonemic awareness is a subsection or element of phonological awareness. In contrast, phonological theory encompasses a macro view of the spoken language, whereas, phonemic awareness involves a micro view of the spoken language, which evolves over time. Therefore, phonemic awareness requires manipulation of the spoken language into more meaningful sounds, hence one of the factors that determines reading success. As a result, a series of instructional events will be conducted on a 2nd grade student named Caitlyn Fine.

Instructional Events

Student Assessments & Surveys

Caitlyn Fine completed the following surveys and assessments: Reading Interest, Reading Attitude, All About Me, Sight Word, Structural Analysis, Word Context Clues, and Basic Reading Inventory.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Her strength lies in her persistence to learn and social skills. Although, Fine is young, she has developed a sense of manipulation with her peers and uses this as a tool. Unfortunately, she seems to thrive in an environment when acting as if she does not know an answer that will spark attention from the young men. Her weaknesses are reading challenges, lack of focus, self-doubt, and fear of rejection. If her self-doubt is corrected, the other weaknesses will dissipate over time. Self- doubt can be pervasive, even crippling. It can affect relationships, destroys confidence, and cause procrastination or lack of effort. This can be extremely frustrating to live with the reverberating voice in the head saying, "You are not good enough to do or have whatever you might want."

Profile Summary

Fine demonstrates some potential, but she has many barriers to overcome. Her reading challenges, lack of focus, self-doubt, and fear of rejection prevents the attainment of self-efficacy and self-actualization. Although her strengths lie within her persistence and social skills, Fine uses these strengths to mask a much deeper issue -- lack of self-confidence. This study revealed some inconsistent reading challenges. Although, Fine tested between kindergarten and 1st reading grade levels on certain assessments, some aspects of the diagnosis revealed higher levels when reading in word context clues. Such contradictions denote affective filters impeding academic success.

Post Conference

Performance Summary

As noted in the Student Profile, Caitlyn Fine had inconsistencies in her assessments. Surveys assessing reading interest and attitude yielded some promising information however. Fine was not opposed to reading; however, she did not engage in it much, unless she was at school. Areas of interest included detective stories, novels, biographies, astrology, mysteries, and drama. This is a great starting point to at least heighten further reading interest. Additionally, her reading attitude denoted she would enjoy reading more if she could select the reading material. Surprisingly, Fine did exceptionally well with the Sight Words, Structural Analysis, and Context Clues but not too well with "All About Me" survey and the Basic Reading Inventory assessment. Overall, Fine has slight issues with phonics and reads at least between the kindergarten to 1st grade levels, which almost two grade levels below.

Qualitative Summary -- Miscues

Miscues were evident in two of the assessments: "All About Me" and Basic Reading Inventory. Because Fine is in the 2nd grade, using the basic phonics test was not applicable; although, the sight word test was given. Instead, a survey "All About Me" was given. Results depicted many spelling errors, which indicated issues with phonics since there is a correlation between spelling errors and phonics. With respect to the basic reading inventory, it was a great opportunity to assess phonics, as well. Fine missed the two words "believe" and "quietly," located in the Grade 2 box. Subsequently, she missed four words located in the Grade 3 box, "moment," "frightened," and "exclaimed." At this point, the level of frustration was mounting so the assessment ended.

Quantitative Summary - Comprehension

Surprisingly, Fine did exceptionally well with the structural analysis and context clues but not too well with the basic reading inventory. I expected some errors, based on the sentence structures. She achieved 100% on the sight words, structural analysis and achieved 92% on word meanings from context. Interesting observation is the level of accuracy when Fine has to select the correct words based on the surrounding groups of words. Furthermore, this indicates her connection with prior knowledge or experience with the information. In contrast, the basic reading inventory yielded dismal results. When reading only words that are out of context, Fine struggled with the pronunciation, not to mention the meaning or definition.

Reflection

Remediation Recommendations

Based on these results, it is recommended that Fine choose high interest reading material from a book series, which increases the level of complexity over time. Support is evident at home, because mom buys many books for Caitlyn; however, she reads very little at home. Additionally to aid in developing more self-confidence, a biweekly discovery discussion should be conducted with her and stop points should be included to assess comprehension of a reading assignment (before, during, after, using anticipation guides, graphic organizers, learning logs, portfolios). Small successes will lead to larger successes, thus boosting her self-confidence.