Blog #7 Running Record/Miscue Analysis

For this assignment, I ran records on two fifth grade students, both of whom came from Hispanic backgrounds.  My first impression was one of grateful surprise, for it was very interesting to me to hear higher grade-level students read aloud.  I am used to third grade readers.

In terms of specific errors made, the male student made slightly less than the female student did.  He mostly made substitution errors such as using "election" for "elective", and "these" for "there's".  He left out only two words, and I think that it was mainly due to fluency and not for lack of trying.  Retell of the story was good.  There were no vocabulary issues involved.  Fluency rate was adequate for his grade level.

The female student made more errors in terms of adding extra words to her sentences.  For example, instead of saying "This time it was a white elephant", she said, "This same time it was a white elephant."  She left out three words completely within the passage, "time", "of", and "acres".  These are simple words; I think in her case it was her rush  to get the story done that caused her to make mistakes.  There were higher-level vocabulary words within the passage, and she said them just fine.  One mistake she made stood out to me when she substituted the word "seats" for "stands".  Although it had to be counted as an error, it showed that she had the ability to use another word with the same meaning in place of an unfamiliar word-hurray for her!

My suggestions for helping these two students would be to have them continue their daily oral reading at home every night so that their fluency rates do not fall.  When time allowed, perhaps the homeroom teacher could discuss the errors she saw in their oral reading, especially after the required Dibels testing.  Together, they could look at any mistakes and discuss what impact leaving out words, substituting words, or any other mistakes had on their comprehension of the material.

Blog #5 Comprehension in Children's Books

The first book I chose for this assignment was Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall.  It was written by an Australian author.  The first area in which ELL students might face challenges is in the vocabulary.  For example, kookaburras and gum-trees are not well-known items outside of Australia.  As an effective instructor, I would provide pictures as to what the items were.  Verb choice would be another area in which ELL learners might face difficulty.  The author describes a talkative area in the bush as " twittering" with news.  For language learners, I might act out what a word such as this meant, and provide a word web with similar-meaning words.  Spelling differences pop up throughout the book, and could cause challenges for ELL learners who are trying to learn English in an American classroom.  Students could not perhaps understand why "favorite" is spelled "favourite" in this book. The use of dictionaries or thesauruses could prove useful to the students in this case.  Finally, the formality of sentences could prove confusing to ELL learners.  The author's description of a character acting with vigour and "fairly flying round the shops" could be rewritten in a way so that language learners could understand it, perhaps "The character moved with a lot of energy" might prove easier to comprehend.

The second book I chose for this assignment was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.  The story takes place in a different era of American history, and is set in the South.  One area in which ELL learners might face difficulty is in the choice of vocabulary words.  Many language learners might not understand what oppossums, corn bread, and hounds are; I would have to provide pictures of them.  The choice of verbs would be another difficult area.  For example, "cooped up" might not be well understood by the learners; drawing the phrase on the board in picture form or acting it out would be beneficial to the students.  Regional activities such as hoeing corn and raccoon hunting could cause confusion; a class discussion would be needed to boost comprehension.  The formality of sentences in the book would, like my earlier choice, have to be rewritten on the board and explained during a class discussion.

Blog #4 Meaning from Unfamiliar Text

For this assignment, I chose a text in Spanish to read.  I have just a smidgeon of understanding of the language, probably enough to understand the basics of written text.  Speaking in it would be another matter altogether.

There were several strategies I had to use in order to make meaning from the text.  The first strategy I used was to look for any familiar base/root words.  If there were any similarities to words in English, it made it easier to understand the material.  I also relied on picture clues whenever possible.  I looked at punctuation marks such as commas to determine where emphasis on words fell.  I noted any highlighted or italicized words or captions to also gather any potential meaning.  If I had access to a foreign-language dictionary, I would have used it as well as the other strategies.  Doing this assignment put me in the ELL position, so that now I have more of an understanding as to what ELL students must endure every day.  Effective teachers need to be aware of the needs of their ELL students.

Blog #3 Oral language and the reading process

I thought that Gibbons had a good point when she wrote that ELL learners do not study a language in a separate context; they study a language by immersing themselves in it. I also found it fascinating to read that children are born with language understanding, no matter what country they live in.  They are prewired so to speak to be able to talk and read with some sort of common understanding that is developed as they continue through school.  I find it interesting that a student can come across a sentence while reading and have the natural ability to rearrange it or rethink it in a way that makes sense to him or her.  Hearing language being spoken out loud and being able to communicate with others builds upon not only the verbal ability of an individual but also his or her ability to read and gain meaning from text.

Blog Entry #2 : Writing instruction reflection

Thinking back on my early writing experiences, I can't help but recall my eighth grade English class.  The teacher had us diagram sentences.  I was not a big fan of doing this because it seemed too restrictive.  In my young mind, I already knew how to talk and put sentences together; why was I being asked to do something I already understood?  Now after reading about Chomsky's theory of surface and deep structure sentences, I can see how being able to break down a sentence and put it into order is important.  I ponder whether students still diagram sentences in classrooms of today.

Literacy philosophies

In a conversation with a fellow colleague, she stated that for successful literacy teaching to occur, all five of the components must be taught.  She expressed frustration that phonics skills for example, were lacking in her third grade students.  The students had holes in their learning that she felt she had to fill in.  They had missed something in their previous schooling that was now becoming a problem as fluency and comprehension gained more importance.