Informal Reading Conference This week I conducted an informal reading conference with Dylan a 10 yearold fourth grade student who attends school in a suburban New Jersey community During our interview Dylan expressed a strong love of reading and enthusiastically described his favorite books and his home reading habits Reading interests and home literacy practices SPEND FIRST PAGE DISCUSSING WHAT YOU LEARNED ABOUT THE CHILD S READING INTERESTS AND ATTITUDES BASED ON THE READING INTEREST INTERVIEW 1 Book selection and overview Dylan approached our informal reading conference with the same positive attitude and seemed eager to share a new favorite book with me to help me with another assignment I also looked forward to the conference since I was interested to hear Dylan read aloud and see his actual literacy and comprehension skills in action Dylan had already selected a book that he could read pretty well before our conference began The book he selected was entitled Rising Storm and is part of a series of fantasy stories called Warriors written by Erin Hunter I later discovered that Erin Hunter is a pen name for a team of authors named Cherith Baldry and Kate Cary Dylan explained that Rising Storm is the fourth book in the Warriors series and that he had recently read the first three books of that series The series was introduced to him by a friend of his older sister and in his own words Dylan checked the first book out at the library and loved it In his own estimation Rising Storm is at the just right reading level NOTE Ask child to explain why he feels book is just right Dylan described that the Warrior books deal with four clans of cats who live in the wild These cats are the main characters and are able to talk think and behave like humans Dylan stated that the four clans of cats are the Thunder Clan the River Clan the Wind Clan and the Shadow Clan and often fight amongst themselves for survival and food The clans also encounter humans who pollute the environment and chase them whom they must defend themselves against After giving me this brief introduction to the series Dylan summarized what had happened in Rising Storm up to the point he had read so far The story is focused on the 2 Thunder Clan which is led by a cat named Bluestar The clan has just been attacked by a cat named Tigerclaw who had betrayed Bluestar Many cats in the Thunder Clan were killed and Bluestar is very upset and unable to lead the clan For this reason she has placed a cat named Fireheart in charge Oral Reading Next Dylan read a few pages of the story aloud to me Dylan demonstrated a high level of reading fluency for he read quickly accurately and with expression There was not a single instance in which he had to slow down to decode a word he was even able to easily identify some of the longer more challenging words such as instinctively and apprentices Dylan consistently pronounced the common prefixes and suffixes of words such as the in in instinctively and intensity and the common verb endings of ed and ing He also demonstrated a knowledge of other common endings such as less and er as he seamlessly read the phrase the blind and helpless prisoner It is also noteworthy that Dylan read the ng sound of the ing endings he came across despite the fact that they are often dropped in vernacular speech Dylan also seemed especially careful to pronounce words clearly For instance when he reached the word depths in a sentence the p and th sounds were fully formed and blended together with the final s Neither full articulation nor proper pronuncitation of words were sacrificed even as he sight read at the a quick natural pace of a fluent reader Dylan also read with great expression For instance he gave each character a slightly different voice as he read quotations This not only demonstrated his enthusiasm for being able to share the book with me but also provided evidence that he was keeping track of which sentences were the narrator s voice and which ones were quotes 3 Similarly Dylan was sure to raise the usual intonation of his voice when he read a question being posed by a character and did this consistently each time he came across a question in the text Dylan also attended to other punctuation making slight pauses at commas and longer clean pauses at the ends of sentences and paragraphs Dylan did not accidently skip over or re read any sections of the text during this conference Dylan exhibited several self monitoring skills At one point while reading a sentence that involved diologue between Fireheart and a minor character named Golden Flower Dylan appeared to begin reading the proper name Golden Flower as the regular words golden and flower He quickly recognized his error however went back and self corrected the two words into the character s name This is the only instance in which Dylan had to correct himself for he did not mis pronounce any words produce any nonsense words or fail to phrase any of the sentences he read properly Dylan demonstrated another interesting example of self monitoring that could also be seen as a useful comprehension skill At one point in his reading just after completing the first page he stopped reading and began to give me a summary of what had just happened in the text He explained that all of the characters who were talking in the passage were the good guys from the Thunder Clan He also felt the need to provide me with a bit more background information from a previous chapter before continuing to read This not only demonstrated Dylan s comprehension of what he had read previously but may also suggest that he stops periodically to summarize events and monitor his own reading comprehension 4 Comprehension After Dylan completed reading aloud three full pages of text I asked him several comprehenstion questions He was able to name and discuss the main characters in the passage mainly Bluestar the Thunder Clan leader and Fireheart who is emerging as a leader and trains several of the newest members of the clan Dylan also described the setting of the passage he read which was the Thunder Clan camp in the forest He also noted that the mood of the passage was a suspenseful one since the camp had just been attacked by a traitor who was still lurking in the forest waiting to strike again This description tied in well to the main problem in the story so far whch Dylan summarized as right now Fireheart thinks that Tigerclaw who almost killed his clan leader is out to get the rest