Suits Blog Post 4: Conferencing

During my conference with my focus group, I learned that I have a group of very different readers.  B, I noticed had incredible comprehension skills. He was able to answer all literal questions and showed inferential comprehension abilities even when I did not ask for them.  He is able to take a topic and talk about it at a high level of intelligibility. T, on the other hand, has incredible decoding skills, but retells the story in broken pieces.  He struggles to understand the main characters and how they connect to the plot line.  He is not able to make connections to the texts we read.  I learned that B and T would make GREAT paired reading partners.  Their reading skills complement each other well.  D and C were both students with weak decoding skills.  D is able to make connections and answer inferential comprehension questions.  His inferences are weak.  He is able to answer literal comprehension questions.  C struggles to any comprehension questions after reading a text on his level.  He makes connections to the story, but struggles to stay on topic in discussions.  E and J are somewhere in the middle.  They are both able to decode words well and answer literal and inferential comprehension questions.  Neither of their answers are deep, but they are always correct. They are consistent as well.

The best information I received from conferencing with my group was how I may be able to group them as we complete our oral reading and paired reading assignments. It will best benefit this group to split them into three pairs, T and B, E and J, and D and C.  With D and C, they will need a lot of direct instructions on how to make inferences and even take literal meaning from a text.  I can guide T and B to help instruct each other using their area of strengths.  E and J will be able to work well with each other to grow steadily as better readers.