The Night Sky: A Qualitative Analysis

A rising third-grade student named Ayden Pollard was chosen to participate in this assignment. The second-grade reading passage, entitled “The Night Sky,” was selected for Ayden to read. He appeared interested in the reading topic and read the passage quickly and fluently. Upon scoring this reading passage, Ayden used one mispronunciation, five substitutions, three insertions, and eleven omissions. According to Tompkins (2014), “only words that students mispronounce or substitute can be analyzed; repetitions and omissions are not calculated” (p. 85). Thus, omitted words were not included in the student’s reading level score. However, the high omission total is the focus of a key teaching point that should be addressed to increase overall reading
accuracy. Ayden scored a 91 percent on this running record analysis, which places him at a second-grade instructional reading level. Students reading at their instructional level can recognize most words, may display fluency, and show some degree of text comprehension (Tompkins, 2014). In addition, accuracy for instructional level reading is between 90-94 percent (Tompkins, 2014). Ayden fits well within this category, as he displayed high levels of fluency and an appropriate level of comprehension. Ayden’s most common miscue was omission, followed by substitution of a similar word. The majority of his miscues caused minimal disruptions to the semantic, syntactic, or graphophonic aspects of the passage. His quickness in reading likely caused the omission errors, as he appeared excited to display his reading skills. This aligns with Crowell (2014), who often relayed to her students that "fast reading is not always good reading" (p. 2).
During his story retelling, Ayden was able to reiterate nearly all of the topics and the main idea within the story, including stars’ visibility at night, that the sun is a star, that there are a great number of stars, and that stars are present even if they are not visible. However, He was not able to recall other elements in the story, such as what stars are made of or if all stars are suns. Therefore, I deemed that he was almost completed in his recollection of characters, that he was able to ascertain the main idea, and that his story language was adequate. Data derived from the miscue analysis is pertinent to how students interact with and derive meaning from their reading (Crowell, 2015).
According to the miscue analysis, Ayden made one meaning miscue, two syntax miscues, and two visual miscues. For his meaning miscue, Ayden used the word “tickle” instead of “twinkle.” After reading the story, I discussed if the word “tickle” made sense in the sentence. He reflected and stated that it did not make sense. I then brought up the song “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and we looked at the word again. He sounded out the word and agreed that the word “twinkle” made sense in this context. Relating a well-known song to the reading passage activated his background knowledge, employing both general knowledge and literary knowledge together to comprehend the meaning of twinkle in the passage. Two syntax errors were found in two separate sentences. The first included the following sentence: “Our sun is [so] close that we cannot see others in the day” with no self-correct. Here, the omission of so causes the sentence not to make sense. The second error reads, “Stars are made [up] of very hot gas, and they seem to tickle [sic] because of [the] air moving across [them].” As previously mentioned, the word should be “twinkle” and not “tickle.” The two visual miscues were found in two separate sentences. The first miscue substituted “a” for “one” and the second miscue substituted “the” for “our.” These two miscues did not alter the meaning or
the syntax of their sentences.
Ayden relied equally on meaning, syntax, and visual cues to navigate through the reading. While it was not included in the overall scoring, omissions were a glaring concern. His speed likely contributed to his skipping over words. Thus, encouraging a more manageable reading rate would be a useful teaching point for Ayden to increase his accuracy and potentially limit omissions. To develop reading fluency, students need to think about reading accurately, with appropriate rate and phrasing, and with expression (Fluency, n.d.). Speed is just one portion of reading fluency. Fluent and understandable reading, not rapid reading, is the goal of reading instruction (Rasinski, 2000). While fast readers tend to have better comprehension and be more proficient readers (Rasinski, 2000), the benefits of rapid reading are not useful if students are developing the habit of skipping over words when reading.
Overall, accuracy is a crucial foundational literacy skill and an important aspect of reading fluency.
Ways to assist Ayden’s reading speed include increasing classroom modeled reading and shared reading. According to Tompkins (2014), teachers provide the greatest amount of support when they demonstrate how expert readers read. By reading at the appropriate pace and expression, Ayden could read along and observe how the prosody and expression with which his teacher reads. Shared reading would also be a useful strategy, as it allows students to interact with the reading and requires students to follow along while the teacher. Implementing strategies that foster reading accuracy would be helpful to ensure Ayden is reading at a more appropriate pace and furthering his development of reading
fluency.