Tutoring: A Descriptive Analysis In The Classroom

The student that I am tutoring is a ten-year-old boy named Justin, he is in fourth grade and his primary language is English. Justin is a strong reader and writer; he enjoys mystery stories, graphic novels, as well as non-fiction stories. He has expressed his love for reading by reading to his sister every night before bed. Although he stated that he enjoys reading and writing stories of his own choosing. During the tutoring sessions with Justin his strength in both reading and writing is evident. He reads with little to no miscues, reads with great expression, and understands context clues within the text as well as illustrations. He is able to comprehend the text when asked to do so. He is more than willing to read a variety of texts that

The student then reads the story out loud while the teacher records the student reading the text, paying close detail to the miscues that the student is making. The different types of miscues include: self-corrections, substitutions, insertions, re-reading, etc. Once the student has finished reading the text the student is asked to retell the story, this is important information, which informs the teacher the student’s comprehension skills. The teacher looks for key ideas such as characters, plot, and theme of the story. Once both the reading and retelling is complete and the teacher has marked the miscues the student has made, the teacher will observe the miscues to determine the correct coding. While the teacher is coding the different types of miscues the teacher is determining if the miscue sounds like language (syntax), if the miscues makes sense within the text (semantics), if the miscue changes the meaning of the story (meaning change), and how much graphic similarity the miscue has (graphophonics).

The book that I had Justin read for his miscue analysis was at grade level text and he had very minimal miscues, which means that this text was not challenging enough for him. Justin is a student that I would not do a miscue analysis on due to his ability

According to Harvey and Goudvis (2017), “The inner conversation helps readers monitor their comprehension and keeps them engaged in the story, concept, information, and ideas, allowing them to build their understanding as they go. Once we have modeled the inner conversation, readers will more seamlessly activate a particular strategy, such as questioning, connecting, or determining importance, when they read because they are more likely to notice and consider their thinking” (p.88). Many students struggle finding an inner conversation, therefore I believe a lesson in comprehension would benefit many students not just Justin. By teaching students strategies to comprehend text will be a lifelong skill that will help the students grasp the text in a more meaningful way. There are many lessons from Harvey and Goudvis (2017), that I believe would be helpful for students comprehension skills, but one in particular that I like is allowing students to write on sticky notes whenever they have a question, connection, or notice a key event that is of importance. Although Justin is capable of comprehending I believe that this lesson would benefit him by allowing him to dig more deeper into the text and have a better understanding of his thought process in terms of understanding the meaning of the literature. I also believe exposing Justin to a wide range of literature and genres would