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.