Background

My name is Ashley Cupp and I am an Elementary Education major at Grand View University- www.grandview.edu.    I am currently in a Special Education practicum at a large public school district.  I am working in a self-contained classroom with two fourth grade boys and one third grade boy.  This semester I am taking a class called teaching literacy to 3rd through 8th grade.  For this class, I am expected to work with a struggling reader five times.  Over the course of my time with the student I will be getting to know him and teaching him lessons that will help him to improve in his reading.  The student I will be working with is the third, grade nine year old boy from my practicum placement.  This student doesn't enjoy reading or anything else school related.  However, after administering an interest inventory I found that he is very interested in animals, so I will definitely try to use this information when I am picking books for him.  The reason I chose to work with this particular student is because he seems to be able to comprehend what he reads very well even though his fluency suffers.  My hope is that after working with him I will be able to understand why this is the case.