Confessions of a First Year Reading Specialist

I felt so honored/nervous/all the feelings you feel when you’ve gotten your dream job, but now the anticipation of what’s to come is looming over your shoulder. It was exactly the same way I felt when I first graduated from college, and got my first teaching job. There are so many feelings all bundled up: fear, joy, pride, nervous, etc.

I was finally a reading specialist! Sure, in the past I had provided intervention to my grade level team, I had completed my masters, I had tested and gotten my Reading Specialist certification on my teaching certificate. However, I had never actually held the title of reading specialist until now.

I couldn’t believe people actually got paid to meet with reading groups all day! That was by far my favorite thing to do during my teaching day.

Then the nerves and apprehension set in. How well would I know my students if I wasn’t spending all day with them? How do I provide intervention to 4^th graders if I’ve only taught kinder and 1^st in my teaching career? How do I progress monitor children so I can track growth?

Well, that was August. This is March. I have slowly figured out the answers to all of these questions, and am finally beginning to feel like a master at my craft. I have figured out a system to progress monitor all my students, and provide useful data at ARD’s and CST’s (Child Study Team is what we call our meetings about students). I have built relationships with the teachers, so that I am no longer an intimidating stranger they have to allow in their classroom. I am slowly learning all the ins and outs, working out the kinks, and honing in on what it’s all about: reading. Decoding, comprehending, attacking multisyllabic words, knowing spelling patterns, knowing where to begin instruction with each child and each reading group.

The first thing I do to know where to begin instruction with a student is look at their DRA and TPRI data. What are their comprehension skills like according to TPRI? How many grade levels behind are they in reading levels? After that, I administer a spelling inventory. I use the Words Their Way 

spelling inventory. 

It is basically a spelling test that you score using the sheet above. It’s a quick way to assess the phonics skills they need instruction on. Another assessment tool that helps me gain more information is the CORE Phonics Screener. These two assessments help me get a better idea of where the student falls in their spelling instruction. The CORE is administered one on one and is a bit more time intensive, so I use it at my discretion. 

Our district has several resources they’d like interventionists to use. One is called SRA, and has its own placement test for students. The resource I’ve used most this year is called West Virginia Phonics, and has lessons with each phonics skill (similar to SRA).  Unlike SRA, this resource does not have a placement test. That’s why I administer the Words Their Way spelling inventory and the CORE Phonics Screener. Based on these two assessments, I place students in the appropriate lesson for them. I have developed a routine using the lesson sequence in W. Virginia Phonics. It basically goes like this:

1.      Introduce the phonics skill/do an auditory task. (EX) Raise your hand when I say a word with the /sh/ sound

2.      Read a list of words with the phonics skill /sh/

3.      Phoneme grapheme mapping: I say a word, students segment the sounds using letter tiles, then write the word, one phoneme in each tile. Here is an example, using the magic e rule:

4.      Connected text: read the W. Virginia phonics passage (which has words from the word list in step 2)

**I supplement this sequence with games and other resources. Mainly, FCRR. I have developed the following resources to reinforce phonics skills. However, these are more appropriate for independent activities in a general education classroom setting as opposed to intensive small group intervention.

Short a

short e

short i

short o

Vowel Pair ay/ai

Vowel Pair ee/ea

This semester, I made objectives for my students in order to progress monitor them. I take scores on the percentage of words they read correctly from their word lists. In addition, for groups that are significantly below grade level, I am also taking a score on words correct per minute. I do this weekly using a fluency resource from McGraw/Hill. This is information I can refer to in order to adjust instruction, or bring to a CST or ARD if I need to.