Notes
During a personal check-in, Katie said her family was doing well. Golf team try-outs are in early March for Jack. He is having trouble in algebra, but the trouble didn’t start until he got a new teacher. (If I can editorialize here, that is highly suspect!)
When asked how coursework was going, she said that she finished Modules 3 & 4, with only the Application Task portion to finish this week. When asked what had most resonated with her, she said that the review of phonological and phonemic awareness had been most beneficial, and she had been struck with its importance.
I shared that our main purpose today was to explore a possible area of inquiry for her goal.
I reviewed what she had shared last time about successes and challenges in literacy instruction, and then asked what she had been thinking since then.
She wants to focus on two girls (Sophie and Aubrey) who are struggling with blending CVC words (they can segment), which significantly slows down their reading and comprehension. On the last measure, Sophie read 12 wpm and Aubrey read 18 wpm, when the average first grader can read 47 wpm. We discussed the options of creating a phonics goal or a fluency goal, and she is leaning toward a fluency goal. I shared the fluency rubric contained in Module 6. She will be studying the Phonics and Fluency modules soon, so that will inform her goal choice.
In the meantime, she is devoting 10-15 minutes daily outside of regular group time to work with these girls, and is starting with decodable sentence trees (which contain CVC words and build from one word into a sentence). We talked about the value of repeated readings, and she showed me that they are on a ring for the girls to practice over and over.
We reviewed the components of a DREAM goal. Before we ended, we reiterated that we had identified: the focus group, their need(s), and the question. By the next call, she will be ready to share their current status and the new instructional strategies she will plan to implement.
We will meet next on Tuesday, 2/24/26 at 1:00.