November 21, 2019

Mrs. ______,

Hello, my name is Samantha Lindsay, and as you know I have been working with ______ this
past semester on assessing her in the different areas of: vocabulary, comprehension, word
identification, writing, and metacognition, as well as getting a feel for her affective development
(interests, background, attitude), and how those areas affect her skills. I performed a total of
twelve assessments, with which I gained the knowledge of her strengths and areas for
improvement (AFIs). After performing these different assessments, I then did five remediations
on the skills I felt were the most important for her to work on. Attached to this document is a
copy of the diagnostic chart that shows her strengths and AFIs for the following six areas of
reading and writing: vocabulary, comprehension (oral and silent), word identification, writing,
metacognition, and affective development.

______ worked really hard through the many assessments and lessons that were thrown her way,
and through her determination, I was able to come up with a list of strengths, some of which I
will share with you now. The first area I assessed and remediated on was in comprehension, both
oral and silent reading. When looking at the diagnostic chart, you will notice that a lot of the
comprehension skills are listed as both strengths and AFIs, and this simply means she answered
some of the questions correct about those skills, but not all of them. Therefore, I would say
______’s greatest strength in oral reading comprehension is being able to tell what the main idea
of a story is. For silent reading comprehension, inferencing was her greatest strength. Even
though she still needs to work on furthering developing these skills, she has a very good
understanding and foundation of the concepts. The next area I assessed was vocabulary. Her
greatest strength in this area was being able to use words conceptionally, and these are the
following vocabulary words she got correct in this area: demonstrate, support, suggest, compare,
explain, organize, describe, identify, locate, retell, and draw. For word identification,
contractions and using context clues (to find correct word, not the meaning of the word), were
her two biggest strengths. Lastly, for writing, even though it can still be developed, her greatest
strength was sentence fluency.

Just like ______ has many strengths, she also has some AFIs. For oral reading comprehension,
inferencing and detail are two areas that she needs to work on, as these two skills are ones of
utmost importance when trying to comprehend a story or passage. For silent reading
comprehension, justifying is an area where ______ is unsure of either how to answer, or is not
confident that her answer is correct so she shies away from speaking and tells me she doesn’t
know. When it comes to vocabulary, using words contextually is where ______ finds the most
difficulty, even though she has an understanding of what most of the words mean. The words she
struggles with contextually are: draw, retell, develop, describe, explain, identify, determine,
distinguish, support, comprehend, contrast, and infer. For word identification, ______’s biggest
area of need is with prefixes and suffixes. She knows what they are, and is able to do them, but
she does a lot of second guessing and therefore, changes her responses which makes them show
me she does not have an understanding of how to make prefixes and suffixes. Lastly, for writing,
I would say her biggest area for improvement would be the ideas trait of writing. ______
struggles with coming up with ideas, and if she can’t, then it puts her into a not good mood for
the rest of our time together.

Even though a lot of assessments and lessons were done, we did a lot of fun activities to be able
to help her want to do them more. One of the things that worked the best for her was playing
Kahoot games for when we did it as independent work after the lesson on prefixes and suffixes.
She is really into technology, so the Kahoot game helped masked the fact that she was actually
learning and allowed her to have fun. Another activity that worked well for her was when I had
her read on the computer, instead of in a book. ______ informed me that she reads better this
way, so I wanted to give her the opportunity to use it as a method. The last activity that worked
well for her was when I turned whatever we were doing into a gameboard. An example of this is
when I did the affective development assessment on her to discover her interests, attitude,
metacognition, and background information. I made a Pacman gameboard, with every dot landed
on requiring you to pick a card and answer the question. I also included some fun spaces as well,
like making a rap or singing a song. It was clear to me that ______ loves technology and playing
games. I also knew from having her a previous semester for a different class that she does not
like silent reading, and preferred to read on a computer or iPad as opposed to a book. It is
amazing what she can do when she wants to and is engaged in the activity.

Lastly, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for allowing me to have this extra time with
______. I know you do not have that much time to give, but it was worth it. She is a very bright
girl with a bright future ahead of her, and you have been a part of that success story. I enjoyed
every minute I got to spend with her, and will greatly miss our time together. If you have any
further questions for me, I would be happy to help! Please feel free to contact me at any time
through my Mount Union email address: lindsasm2020@mountunion.edu

Sincerely,

Samantha Lindsay