Real Life Inquiry

For my real life inquiry, I went to a fourth grade classroom. Once a week, I visit a school for four hours. It is very beneficial for me to see the vast amount of differentiated reading levels. During this time, I worked particularly with one little girl during centers, where reading was involved the whole time. One day, I worked with her for about forty five minutes on a tri-fold packet that asked reading comprehension questions about what they had read in class that day during group reading time. The only problem was, the little girl could not comprehend group reading it seemed because they were either reading too fast or the girl could not understand the vocabulary and order of the story. While working individually with the little girl, she often gave up very fast. I asked her to look at the first question and read to me what it said. It was difficult for her to even read the directions, and she often doubted herself while reading. When I could tell she didn't feel comfortable, I told her I was going to read the question, but wanted her to follow her finger with mine on each word. I read slowly. . . .very slowly.
   While we were looking through the text to find the answer to the question, it required that she read the whole paragraph to fully understand the answer. I don't feel like it was her fault that she wanted to copy the first sentence at the beginning of each paragraph to fill in her worksheet. I don't think she has ever been taught how to look for correct answers in the text, and she was about on a first grade reading level. The material was much too advanced for her. We spent about 45 minutes reading one paragraph. I asked her to read for me. I told her to read it slowly, and when she ran across a more difficult word, I broke the word up. I broke the word up so that I knew she would eventually get it right. The best part about working with this little girl is when she got the word right her face would light up. I think one of the major things holding her back was the lack of confidence she felt. What worried me the most was that I was personally worried for her in every other subject as well. How could she succeed in any subject if she couldn't even read directions? I think this little girl needed a word wall, reading/writing folder that fit her needs, and reading material that was on her level so that she could build her confidence.