Whenever our building's literacy coach would come in to provide guidance for teaching in order to enable more student

growth, she would always ask for the data such as the running records, writing samples, and most recent benchmark assessments. Through the few years that I have been teaching, I have learned how vital and valuable running records are for teachers. Through Reading Recovery the program "relies heavily on the teachers' ability to observe and support changes in students' processing and progress over time. sing daily running records !"lay #$$%b& of the child reading yesterday's new book, teachers capture children's processing and how they monitor, problem'solve, and self'correct while reading continuous te(t) !*yons, +,,%, p. $-'$.&. /oing into my students use of what she already knows when reading a new book, my analysis of this particular running record !Mushrooms for Dinner) gives me plenty of useful information that can be used for future instruction. 0er monitoring of the te(t in relation to first letter was much stronger with this book. 1t times, even the last letter was correct !fishing for finding& although this was inconsistent and rare. *argely, after carefully analy2ing her use of all three sources of information !meaning, structure, and visual information&, it was evident that at first she would attend to how words looked using mostly visual information. When thinking about the te(t3s meaning and how the structure flowed within particular sentences, she would correct the original substitution4 however, she would seldom go back to re'read. There were several other behaviors that I observed including re'reading !seldom&, using the pictures to aid in solving, and cross'checking for additional information. *argely, her reading was smooth with some e(pression and she had a thorough understanding of the beginning, middle, and end of the story. 5ne instance where she had a /ross 6isual 7iscrepancy !/67&, the

first letter did not matching the one printed in te(t, was reading perfect for beautiful. 8ost likely, she was attending to all three sources of information, and read the word as is at first, but then chose the word perfect instead. 9erhaps she believed that the first letter was a 'p' and not a 'b', therefore still attending to visual information. 8y original goal through this pro:ect was to help my student make an attempt when she got to a point of difficulty. This te(t, but very few overall, proved that she still re;uired additional support with using a strategy and sources of information to guide her towards trying words and not waiting for a told. The word clever was difficult because the structure and meaning of the te(t could have led to a number of choices if she was not thinking about the visual information provided. In relation to how to start the word clever, it would have been beneficial for her to find the two letter first part or the consonant blend at the beginning !cl'&. 1t that point I would have liked for her to re'read and then try a word. Through this particular evidence I knew that my focus would need to be on attempting words. /iven that this was the last running record that I would analy2e each miscue and self'correction !in addition to the other behaviors documented on the chart of the te(ts she previously read&, I was confident about my choice. This information paired well with the other analysis on the /67 chart that showed how she, ;uite fre;uently, was not attending to the first letter in several words. The visual information provided within the structure of the te(t paired with attending to known parts would ensure that she would be able to find a part, re'read, and then make an attempt.