Week 4: Strengths and Weaknesses Based on the Running Record

This student displays a remarkable ability to read clearly and fluently. It’s obvious that she very good phonetic skills and is able to visualize the sounds of the letters before reading the word. This ensures that she makes much fewer mistakes in pronunciation. The listener can identify exactly how she uses various techniques so as to decipher difficult words. For example, when she attempts to read the word “fins” she first sounds out the letters. Another way to see how she aims to get the right word pronunciation is the way she repeats words. This is not a sign of weak reading at all! It means that she understands how words are supposed to sound in the context and she repeats them to make sure they fit. In all, one can see that this student uses sophisticated techniques to hone her phonetic reading.
Another strength that is evident is the fact that understands the meaning of the words. While this is indeed a strength, it leads to error. Because she understands what the words mean, she knows what sort of words might come next. This may be a result of a lot of reading. Since she has read other works, she knows which words are commonly used in conjunction. For example, after reading the word phrase “it has to find it’s” she says “way” when the real word is “own”. However, it makes a lot of sense that the word may be “way” but it happens not to be in this case. So this phenomenon is hinting at a major strength and weakness. The strength is that she understands how words go together in the context. This student must be very good at using context clues. However, the weakness is that she is pretty hasty in her reading. She jumps quickly and says the word she THINKS will come next as opposed to the right one. In fact, most of her errors are because of inserted words that did not come into the text.
Another strength is her ability to self-correct. She has a self-correction rate of 1:4. This means that for every four errors she corrects one. This is very good! What this is showing is that when she makes a mistake in the reading, she catches it quickly. This would occur when the student has a clear understanding of the background and the meaning of the text. Then, she is able to correct it when she realizes that something is off.
Lastly, is the fact that she tends to lose her place while reading. This may be a slight focusing problem or merely because she has an agile mind and is quick to jump from thought to thought. However, this leads to needing teacher prompts to get her back to her place.
In conclusion, this student displays a remarkable ability in phonetic language, reading comprehension, and self-correction. However, she often gets ahead of herself and either loses her place or tends to insert extra words.