Personal Narrative: My Experience With Ralph

I am thankful for my opportunity to work with Ralph over this past semester and the amount of information I have gained from this experience is substantial. Ralph is a fourth grade students who enjoys school and his teachers, when I first met with ralph I thought he was going to be a shy, timid student. I was pleasantly surprised by how much he would warmed up throughout our first session.
My biggest take away from our first session was that Ralph defiantly does not enjoy reading, he would much rather spend his time playing video games or playing outdoors. He’s raw scores showed that he did not care for reading; Recreational Reading Raw Score: 21, Academic Reading Raw Score: 25, Reading Full Scale Raw Score: 46, and Writing Full Scale Raw
Score: 61. We also completed a learning style inventory; he is mostly an auditory learner, over my sessions working with Ralph I believe this to be true, he would become distracted when working in the library and a few students came in holding a conversation with each other or the librarians would be conversing. He would also repeat the questions I asked him aloud before answering them.
The following week we completed the San Diego Quick assessment. I now understand why it is called the quick assessment! Ralph scored; Primer, second grade, and third grade. Primer; the word he missed was ‘not’ in replace of ‘out’. His Instructional reading level was second grade for missing the two words, ‘believe and quietly’. Then he tested Frustration for missing three words on a third grade level, ‘middle, frightened, & lonely.’ Ralph missed a few words because he replaced them with other words. During this session we also completed the contractions assessment, where he scored 86.17%. He mostly missed words ending in ‘not’ and ‘would’, this also appeared to be true when we completed our contractions handout I brought for his last session.
During the listening comprehension passages Ralph scored lower than I expected, in 5th grade he scored 70% and 6th grade he scored 60%. I expected his listening comprehension to be much higher; it could have been to Ralph being distracted during this session. There was a lot of conversing taking place during this session. On the phonics test ralph missed the most in section 3i: Vowel pronunciation which is a common thing he struggles with.
Throughout the sessions I completed three running records with Ralph; A Mountain Blows its Top!, Mother Cats and Their Kittens, and Cool Cat.
The first running record completed was on a 5th grade level where he tested Frustration for word recognition and instructional for comprehension. Mother Cats and Their Kittens is a 4th grade reading level and ralph tested much better with word recognition at independent and comprehension at instructional. Cool Cat is on a 3rd grade reading level and Ralph tested frustration for word recognition. This surprised me because I selected it because it is on a lower level and it is over a topic that he greatly enjoys. I completed a few interactive strategies with Ralph over our different sessions together. He completed a sketch to stretch, story map, contraction worksheet, and we reviewed different vowel combinations. Ralph enjoyed completing all of these things, even the contraction worksheet.
Throughout my case study I have learned that comprehension and fluency are related more so than I thought they were. I can use student’s lack of fluency to enhance their comprehension. I also got hands on experience to assess a student’s reading abilities which an amazing thing for me to have experienced. I got pretty luck with the student I worked with because he was always cooperative and willing to work, which I know this will not always be the case when I assess my
students.