Rebecca Gallanter READ 399 04 04 22 2014 Informal Reading Conference In the process of becoming a teacher there are many different firsts that we as students experience through our interactions with different students The process of helping a child s literacy evolve is one of the most important experiences a teacher in training can experience In my first reading conference with a student I chose to work with a five year old named Sarah She showed a lot of interest in reading throughout our entire conversation and worked hard to read her book Reading Interest and Home Literacy Practices Before we started our book I took some time to talk to Sarah about the kinds of things she likes and her general reading interests I started by asking her what she likes to do most about her hobbies and what she does when she s not in school When she s not in school she likes to go to the park she really likes the swings She also likes to play hide and go seek with her little brother She then explained about how she feels about reading and if she thinks she s a good reader She said she sometimes is a little nervous when she reads aloud and sometimes she doesn t like to read However she does think she s a good reader and told me she has books at home which she likes to read with her father She spoke in detail about the kinds of books she enjoys and said some of the books she likes are Green Eggs And Ham and the Lorax and says Dr Seuss is her favorite author I asked her how she decides what to read by looking at the cover of the book She reads books that have covers that she likes At home she likes to read on the couch and at school she likes to read in the library in the classroom She keeps her books in her room on a bookcase by her bed Currently she is reading The Lorax with her father The last thing she talked about was what she would put in a classroom library if she was making one She would want books ones with pictures and words so she could read and look at the pictures a big comfy couch to read on a lot of shelves to put the books and tapes to listen to the books with Book Selection and Overview Before our interview had begun I gathered together a few books I thought Sarah would like When I asked Sarah to choose a book she first looked through the pile I gave her and found one she wanted I then asked her why she chose that book and she said it was because it had a dog on the cover and she loves dogs Before we started the book Sarah did not have an idea of how difficult or how easy the book would be The book Sarah chose was called Biscuit Finds A Friend by Alyssa Satin Capicilli It was about a dog named biscuit who while out with his owner finds a lost duckling who becomes his friend Oral Reading Sarah began reading the book aloud from the beginning In our conference she read half the book aloud and as she read she tracked the words with her finger and sounded out words she had trouble with Being in kindergarten Sarah is still learning the fundamentals of reading As we went through the book She was able to point out her sight words for example the go to a is it they we was and for which helped to guide her through the story She had no trouble with the short vowel sounds in words like as duck and pond However she did struggle somewhat with the consonant digraph words such as mother and father Despite the shortfalls she did very well at recognizing the beginning sounds of the words even when she began to struggle with one such as with the word friend Before she read the word friend she hesitated and needed to break it down and sound it out before being able to read it fully The book did not have any rhyming patterns however when asked about it she showed that she understood how words such as matt sat and bat were all words that had rhyming sounds and was able to identify other common spelling patterns She showed a very good understanding of the endings of words reading words such as finding duck pond and lost She was able to use clues from the illustrations and what she had previously read to help her along as she read through the book In monitoring her own reading she did some things very well and yet with others she still needs practice When it comes to the meaning of words she understood what she was reading However when she would come across a word that she was not very familiar with and mistook it for something else she was not able to self correct When she read the word bring she read it as big Within the context of the sentence she could tell that something was off but didn t correct herself She needed that extra guidance to help get the correct word She also had trouble recognizing when a word was a nonsense word such as when she said litelt instead of little and would once again need a bit of extra guidance to get the correct word However one great thing she does do is she always went back and corrected her phrasing just so she could make sure she understood what she was reading After she had reread it for the correct phrasing she reread it one more time for fluency All throughout her reading Sarah read the book and was very careful with her phrasing making sure to read it how the book was written She is able to acknowledge punctuation somewhat and is able to understand when it s time to turn the page One of the best things I noticed about Sarah was how much expression she had through the whole conference Throughout our entire time reading together Sarah always had a great amount of expression in her voice Comprehension After we were done with our interview I use the questions to probe Sarah to see how well she understood and how much she comprehended what we just read She first explained what the point of the story was so far explaining that the little duck was sad because he was lost which was true in the story the duckling was lost She then described the main character and said that Biscuit is happy in the book because he found a friend Also Sarah does not think that Biscuit changes Sarah then talked about the setting and told me it took place at the pond in the park She then went on to describe her favorite part of the book She said she liked when biscuit lost his balance and fell in the water After that point in the story Sarah told me that Biscuit …