You are able to follow the progression of the following reading students within A Reading Tutor’s Toolkit.
Reading Errors
Student Practices
Insertions
Omissions
Substitutions
Reversals
Regressions
Pace
Anna is a prolific reader. She embellishes her
stories colorfully by adding words of her own.
Jax omits words – especially unfamiliar words.
Skyler exchanges words of her own for the
printed word.
Juan reverses the correct order of words.
Drew insecurely repeats single words and/or
complete lines of print.
Piper and Carter read word-by-word slowly
unable to comprehend the story line.
As a tutor it is your responsibility to listen to a student read and assess their ability to track an author’s intent. Does the student recognize the vocabulary used? Does the student understand the concepts portrayed?
These are measurable units and it is within your role to calculate the data and present this calculation to the student, their teacher, or parent.
In my book, A Reading Tutor’s Toolkit, you learn to inventory your student’s reading needs. You learn to take an informal reading inventory. This involves tallying the reading errors using a universal defined code that is recognizable by the person you are accountable to. It involves sorting comprehensive weaknesses such as
- not differentiating fact from inference
- not grasping the meaning of the whole
- not understanding antecedents
- not able to verify information
- not recognizing cause and effect
- not identifying antonyms and synonyms
By the time you finish my book you will have a firm grasp on your ability to add value to a student’s growth and self-esteem as well as your own. You can approach a classroom teacher and affirm your proficiency as a teammate in evaluating their reader’s abilities quickly in order to place the student within their correct reading group. You will be able to inform the teacher at what level the student is reading independently, instructionally, or at what level they frustrate.