Lesson #1

The first time I worked with my struggling reader for this class was not the first time I had ever worked with him.  This was good because we had already developed a sense of trust, which allowed him to feel comfortable with me.  However, that doesn't mean he was always willing to do what I asked.  He did the spelling inventory and the reading interest inventory with few complaints, but the running record was a different story.  The purpose for this lesson was to see where the student was in terms of his spelling and reading levels.
Spelling Inventory
After administering the spelling inventory to the student, I believe this is an area in which he really struggles.  The area he really struggled with was the long vowel sounds that consisted of two or more letters.  I think word work would be really beneficial for him.
Reading Interest Inventory
After administering the reading interest inventory my thoughts about the student's view on reading were confirmed.  He doesn't like to read and if he wasn't forced to read, he probably wouldn't do it at all.  He would rather play Xbox or watch television.  However, I did find that books about animals, science, art, and funny books are interesting to him.  I will definitely use this information to help me pick out books for future lessons.
Running Record
The student really fought doing the running record for me.  At first, he completely refused to read for me at all, so I tried to make a deal with him.  I asked him if it would help him if I read the story first and then he could read it.  This wasn't something he was interested in, but he suggested that we take turns reading every other page.  I agreed to this and I told him if he worked hard, we could just read half the book and then we could be done.  He finally agreed to read for me. 

This isn't the first running record I have done with this student.  He usually does a pretty good job of self correcting during his reading.  However, he struggles with looking all the way through the word.  He sees the first letter and guesses at the rest of the word based on what would make sense.  This tells me that he is using his meaning cues and some visual cues as well.  However, he rarely uses structure cues.  On this particular running record, the student had an accuracy rate of 97% and a self correction rate of 1:2.  This tells me that he can probably move up from a level J to a level K.

What I Learned
This lesson really taught me how important it is to be flexible with our students.  This is especially important when we are working with special education students.  Sometimes the students just aren't willing to cooperate and we have to be patient and take what we can get.