Goals
Stage: Target Goal
Progress Data:
- The student has surpassed the goal of learning digraphs before the end goal date. She passed digraphs for nonsense words at 100% and sentences at 90%. The date of assessment was 3/30/26. Student A. passed her psi with 10/10 on nonsense words and 10/10 on sentences last week! The date of assessment was 4/20/2026. A. completed FastBridge tests May 4-7, 2026. She is still flagged for reading because she does not read fast enough; she read 13 WPM (high risk). She is expected to read 66 WPM for the assessment, and she was unable to do that. During the assessment, even though the nonsense words are all short vowels and that is discussed with students ahead of time, she read some as long vowels. She read 16 nonsense in a minute (some risk). Because she flagged on nonsense words, I also tested her on word segmenting. She scored 34/34 (100%). It is important to note that she is still flagged across the board for math skills, as well.
Goal Information
Date: February 12, 2026Attainment Scale:
Starting Point:
Allysa met with the female student, A, for lessons beginning January 26 with the initial goal of teaching the students L blends. While A is not identified as an English learner, it is likely that she is. A confuses L blends with words that begin with the letter L. When she was sorting the words, she was successful, but she did not want to say the words possibly demonstrating that she does not know how to say them. By the end of the week, she was doing better at the skill.
Something Allysa noted about the student during the lesson was that when she works with her one-on-one she is able to complete the skills with success most of the time, but she does not like to practice the skills. We also discussed that Alyssa might work with the student knee-to-knee instead of the horseshoe table because the student needs proximity to stay focused. She can transition back to the horseshoe table once the student keeps her focus during lessons.
Midpoint:
Student A will engage in one-on-one instruction for phonics and phonemic awareness lessons for digraphs through April 15. A will achieve 80% academic success measured by PSI and FastBridge assessments.
Target Goal:
The final target goal is that A will achieve 80% success according to PSI and FastBridge assessments for blends, digraphs, and long vowel sounds. She will become more confident in her responses when practicing and will transition to the horseshoe table and working with peers for these skills by the end of the school year.
Notes
Coaching Session #8 – Reflection on Problem of Practice, Student Progress, and Coaching Process
Coachee: Allysa Reck
Date/Time: May 11, 2027 4:15 p.m.
Overarching goal with students: Student A will engage in one-on-one instruction for phonics and phonemic awareness lessons for blends by March 17, digraphs by April 15, and long vowel sounds by May 15 at 80% academic success measured by PSI ande FastBridge assessments.
The student has surpassed the goal of learning digraphs before the end goal date. She passed digraphs for nonsense words at 100% and sentences at 90%. The date of assessment was 3/30/26.
Student A. passed her psi with 10/10 on nonsense words and 10/10 on sentences last week! The date of assessment was 4/20/2026.
A. completed FastBridge tests May 4-7, 2026. She is still flagged for reading because she does not read fast enough; she read 13 WPM (high risk). She is expected to read 66 WPM for the assessment, and she was unable to do that. During the assessment, even though the nonsense words are all short vowels and that is discussed with students ahead of time, she read some as long vowels. She read 16 nonsense in a minute (some risk). Because she flagged on nonsense words, I also tested her on word segmenting. She scored 34/34 (100%). It is important to note that she is still flagged across the board for math skills, as well.
Problem of practice goal: I want to supplement the existing curriculum materials for words containing blends, digraphs, long vowel sounds, etc. The words in the curriculum materials are limited and sometimes the words are not ones that we use regularly; this can be confusing to students. Generating additional words will further challenge my students to learn. I will consult lists from other resources such as Words Their Way to generate my lists. I will work on generating these lists before the end of the school year so that I can have them in place for next year.
Coachee reflections: A. has made tremendous growth in the areas of blending and segmenting. A. has been struggling quite a bit on spelling tests, writing and reading fluency. Because of this, I chose to focus her intervention time on decoding, encoding and fluency going forward. In this lesson, we used the Elkonin boxes and chips and she did really well. There are still some blends that are tricky at time (i.e. sw-). Since this lesson, we have been just writing the words on a whiteboard rather than using the chips and Elkonin boxes. I’m hoping this will help her focus on encoding skills that she can use during writing and spelling tests (when she doesn’t have Elkonin boxes & chips). Additionally, we have been working on decoding and reading fluently (smoothly). This is difficult for A.. She reads very choppy/robotically. It is often hard for her to remember what she has read. We are working on chunking the sentences and reading smoothly. She is getting better at this and trying to do it on her own with my prompting. It is still hard for her, and she will change words or leave out a word, but we will continue working on this for the rest of the school year. A. flagged on our end of the year FastBridge test. She read 13 words in a minute (high risk). The expectation is for her to read 66 words per minute. She just isn’t fluent yet and isn’t able to remember words that she had read previously in the story or that I had told her. Similarly, she read 16 nonsense in a minute (some risk). She often used the long vowel sounds even though they were all CVC words. Because she flagged on nonsense words, I also tested her on word segmenting. She scored 34/34 (100%) on this. I was so proud of her! She also flagged across the board in math. Because of this, I am going to bring her up to our Student Intervention Team and see if they feel that we need to move to an evaluation at the beginning of 2nd grade.
Coach reflections: Allysa submitted an audio recording with A. from 4/7/2026. They reviewed the chip colors and what each one stands for. A. was able to correctly say the long vowel sounds and the short vowel sounds with no problems. Then Allysa reviewed the digraphs that they would be using in today’s lesson. A. noticed that one of the digraphs (ck) was missing; she is a very observant student. She placed chips for spend correctly. The next word was swept, and she had difficulty getting started with the word. She asked Allysa to say her hard words for this task. She was able to correctly place chips for chest, chick, and zone. A. had to be reminded to use a long vowel sound for shine rather than shin. Silent /e/ is still tricky for her. She correctly worked on choke, that, and this. With the word with, she tried to use /wh/ first and had to be reminded of the sound. She was then able to do which correctly. W is hard for her. Alyssa and I discussed that perhaps she can work with her on distinguishing between /w/, /wh/, and /h/ sounds using the hand in front of the mouth so that A. can feel how much air comes out of the mouth with each of the sounds.
The final task was to read sentences. A. has difficulty reading smoothly; Allysa modeled what the beginning of the sentence should sound like when reading with fluency. Eventually, she was able to read the entire sentence (with help). Question: Can she practice this same sentence throughout the day—perhaps with a peer who reads well?
Focus questions for problem of practice:
Have you and the PLC been able to finalize the supplemental word lists or will you be working on those throughout the summer months? Allysa and other PLC members will be working on finalizing the supplemental word lists throughout the summer.
How have you been able to use the supplemental words at this point? Allysa has been using the new lists with A. and with another student.
What have you seen in using the words with your students so far? She is beginning to see a difference; the expansion of words has been helpful, especially when A. wants to be challenged as we heard in the recording discussed above. Allysa is working on deleting words that the students will not encounter long-term. These words are not helpful to the students because they do not know what they mean and it is unlikely they will be using those words.
Focus questions about A.:
Were the sentences that A. passed at the end of April different than the sentences she is currently working on? Yes, they were different. Alyssa is creating her own sentences using the lists of words so that the students are seeing them in context. Do you think that A. had difficulty in the audio recording because she could not focus or is this a typical reading behavior? This is a typical reading behavior for her. Allysa is impressed with A. because she is comprehending what she is reading. She used to ask “What does all that mean?” However, reading smoothly is helping her with meaning. She also demonstrates that she is making meaning with the questions that she asks about her reading. Wants to make meaning with what she is reading. I think it would be good to focus on sentences for the remainder of the year in the instructional group.
What about A.’s reading skills will you be sharing with next year’s teacher? Allysa is hoping for a time to sit down with next year’s teacher so that she can share what interventions have been completed this year and how they have benefited A. She wants next year’s teacher to know that A. has been in an intervention group all year and still needs to be in one so that she has additional time to learn her reading skills. Fluency practice is still needed. She will also suggest that A. needs to be brought up for evaluation in the fall. What kind of support do you believe she will need in the fall? In addition to the evaluation, A. needs to be in an intervention group, probably all year. Speech/language support in the future.
In a perfect world, what would you like for A. to work on over the summer either with family members or in tutoring? Allysa has a bag of books for each student. She wants A. to read and write every day. How will you let the family know about what she needs to do this summer to keep up her skills? A. goes back and forth between two homes, but Allysa will be talking to Mom about what A. needs to do this summer so that she doesn’t lose skills.
Focus question about coaching:
What is your biggest take-away from the coaching sessions this semester? Allysa said that coaching sessions have been good for her and she has learned a lot. She said the best thing that she did was working one-on-one with A. to help her with her reading skills and working knee-to-knee to help A. focus on what she does during small group. She has shared the progress that has been made with A. within the PLC and has recommended one-on-one groups to them, as well.