Context: This activity increases awareness of the struggles connected to language development as compared to literacy development for all readers.
Task Description: Conduct a running record/miscue analysis on 2 second language learners, one that speaks Spanish, and one that speaks another language.
Analyze the miscues for M-meaning, S-Syntax, and V-visual cues. Are there some features of the errors that reflect the first language? Are there miscues that are universal to all readers?
What are some next teaching points based on this data? Answer these questions and discuss possible strategies or assignments to address the reading challenges you saw on your blog.
The only ELL students at the school where I teach are Spanish-speaking. I did the miscue analysis with 2 8th grade ELLS. One has been in the ELL program in our district since kindergarten. She is still in the program becuase she scores slightly below proficient on the standardized ELL test (ACCESS). The second student has been back and forth between our district and Mexico three times since kindergarten. He has spent 4 of the past 9 years in school in Mexico. Both have high listening scores, are verbally articulate, and are independent readers.
The first student read a passage for age 10-11 year olds. She is a fluent and confident reader. The main thing that I noticed in her reading is that she automatically made connections between the text and her personal experiences (Text-to-Life). For example, in the text, a mom was afraid that a rat would bite the narrator. The student instantly commented "A rat bit my brother!". This tells me that the decoding processor in her brain can decode, or recode according to Freeman, automatically. This automaticity strengthens her comprehension and fluency and allows her to comprehend higher-level texts. Of 30 lines, she only had one miscue, inverting "Said mom" to "Mom said". She did not self correct, but did not need to , since this was a syntactical error that did not affect the meaning of the passage.
The second student, who has spent 4 of his 9 years of schooling in Mexico, read a passage for 9-10 year-olds, and had significantly more errors. His errors were all grapho-phonical and syntactical. He has a strong enough sense of meaning and vocabulary that his errors do not significantly affect meaning. He said "hectors" instead of hecatares; "brush" instead of bush; and "fieriest" for fiercest. Each of these errors show that he has a solid base in phonics knowledge, since he retains the correct beginning and end sounds in all of the errors. This also shows that he has strong comprehension, since the words that he used in place of the actual word were very similar to and retained the meaning of the original word. This student did not have as strong of automaticity in decoding and comprehension as the 9-year ELL student. He lacks some instant word recognition, possibly because of his sporadic English instruction. His strong base in phonics knowledge (taught at his elementary school) is evident in his ability to recode to gain meaning from an unfamiliar text.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
# 6 - Learning vs. Acquisition activities
The students:
Look up words in the dictionary to write definitions: Learning. Looking up vocabulary is explicit instruction, the words are not learned within the context of the text.
Make a Venn diagram to compare two stories: Acquisition: students are using a graphic organizer to gain meaning from sources/texts.
Practice sounding-out words: Learning. Sounding out is a drill that focuses on phonics procedure, not overall meaning in context.
Read in round-robin fashion: Both: Round Robin is acquisition by the experience of reading and applyin learned strategies to gain comprehension and vocabulary. It is Learning because Round-Robin allows teachers to step in with instruction on word decoding or corrections at any time during reading.
Correct peers when they make mistakes while reading: Both. Peer correction is a way to use learned rules in an authentic way. The peers receiving the correction are learning, when they are directly receiving the reading cues from another student.
Identify words in a Big Book that start with the same sound: Both. Students are applying rules of reading, beginning sounds which is a learning exercise. And, the act of reading a new story is an experiential activity that promotes acquiring knowledge through the overall context of the Big Book story.
Group cards with classmates' names by a criterion on such as first or last letter. Learning. This exercise emphasizes identifying word parts in isolation. There is not much context to draw from for reading acquisition.
Write rhyming poetry and then discuss different spellings for the same sounds. Acquisition. Creating written expression in poetry puts emphasis on the message that a student wants to convey. Acquisition teaching includs doing mini lessons on all aspects of writing. Discussing homonyms is a mini lesson that addresses spelling, without making it a main focus of the objective: expression through writing poetry.
Ask the teacher how to spell any word they don't know: Learning. Since students ask about spelling, they understand that conventions are an important objective in writing. This is a learning view.
Work in pairs to arrange words from a familiar chant into sentences. Acquitision. Students are using their background knowledge of the chant, and of syntax to re-create their internalized knowledge of the chant.
Divide words into syllables: Learning. Manipulating word-parts without context is a word recognition method.
Make alphabet books on different topics: Acquisition. This encourages a meaningful activity ("Make a book") where students draw on their background knowledge to practice written expression. According to the acquisition theory, the students will naturally self-correct their books to make them appropriately communicative for the audience.
The Teacher:
Preteaches Vocabulary: Learning.
Does a shared reading with a big book: Acquisition.
Makes sure that students read only books that fit their level: Acquisition. This promotes comprehensible input where students best learn the new vocabulary and writing structures that will increase their reading level automatically, and produce the spillover effect in their writing.
Has students segment words into phonemes: Learning. Focusing on word parts is a phonetic exercise that emphasizes segmenting isolated words, instead of reading authentically in context.
Writes words the students dictate for a story and has students help with the spelling of difficult words: Both. The fact that students are writing a story for the sake of creating a story is an acquisiton activity. Since they focus on spelling; and have the opportunity to correct one another's spelling it is also a learning activity.
Asks students to look around the room and find words starting with a certain letter: learning. This focuses on phonics, word parts and does not require contextual background knowledge or syntax skills.
Uses decodable texts: Both. Re-coding can happen with decodable texts. So can using background knowledge and context clues to enjoy and learn from a story. Both improve reading ability.
Sets aside SSR each day: Acquisition. Students will learn new vocab and acquire syntax, background knowledge, and knowledge of conventions through SSR.
Teaches Latin and Greek Roots: Learning. This puts emphasis on spelling skills and not "whole picture" reading knowledge.
Has students meet in literature circles: Acquisition. Encourages students to learn about, share, and recall background knowledge and use comprehension strategies (questioning, predicting, etc.) for the purpose of authentic communication.
Look up words in the dictionary to write definitions: Learning. Looking up vocabulary is explicit instruction, the words are not learned within the context of the text.
Make a Venn diagram to compare two stories: Acquisition: students are using a graphic organizer to gain meaning from sources/texts.
Practice sounding-out words: Learning. Sounding out is a drill that focuses on phonics procedure, not overall meaning in context.
Read in round-robin fashion: Both: Round Robin is acquisition by the experience of reading and applyin learned strategies to gain comprehension and vocabulary. It is Learning because Round-Robin allows teachers to step in with instruction on word decoding or corrections at any time during reading.
Correct peers when they make mistakes while reading: Both. Peer correction is a way to use learned rules in an authentic way. The peers receiving the correction are learning, when they are directly receiving the reading cues from another student.
Identify words in a Big Book that start with the same sound: Both. Students are applying rules of reading, beginning sounds which is a learning exercise. And, the act of reading a new story is an experiential activity that promotes acquiring knowledge through the overall context of the Big Book story.
Group cards with classmates' names by a criterion on such as first or last letter. Learning. This exercise emphasizes identifying word parts in isolation. There is not much context to draw from for reading acquisition.
Write rhyming poetry and then discuss different spellings for the same sounds. Acquisition. Creating written expression in poetry puts emphasis on the message that a student wants to convey. Acquisition teaching includs doing mini lessons on all aspects of writing. Discussing homonyms is a mini lesson that addresses spelling, without making it a main focus of the objective: expression through writing poetry.
Ask the teacher how to spell any word they don't know: Learning. Since students ask about spelling, they understand that conventions are an important objective in writing. This is a learning view.
Work in pairs to arrange words from a familiar chant into sentences. Acquitision. Students are using their background knowledge of the chant, and of syntax to re-create their internalized knowledge of the chant.
Divide words into syllables: Learning. Manipulating word-parts without context is a word recognition method.
Make alphabet books on different topics: Acquisition. This encourages a meaningful activity ("Make a book") where students draw on their background knowledge to practice written expression. According to the acquisition theory, the students will naturally self-correct their books to make them appropriately communicative for the audience.
The Teacher:
Preteaches Vocabulary: Learning.
Does a shared reading with a big book: Acquisition.
Makes sure that students read only books that fit their level: Acquisition. This promotes comprehensible input where students best learn the new vocabulary and writing structures that will increase their reading level automatically, and produce the spillover effect in their writing.
Has students segment words into phonemes: Learning. Focusing on word parts is a phonetic exercise that emphasizes segmenting isolated words, instead of reading authentically in context.
Writes words the students dictate for a story and has students help with the spelling of difficult words: Both. The fact that students are writing a story for the sake of creating a story is an acquisiton activity. Since they focus on spelling; and have the opportunity to correct one another's spelling it is also a learning activity.
Asks students to look around the room and find words starting with a certain letter: learning. This focuses on phonics, word parts and does not require contextual background knowledge or syntax skills.
Uses decodable texts: Both. Re-coding can happen with decodable texts. So can using background knowledge and context clues to enjoy and learn from a story. Both improve reading ability.
Sets aside SSR each day: Acquisition. Students will learn new vocab and acquire syntax, background knowledge, and knowledge of conventions through SSR.
Teaches Latin and Greek Roots: Learning. This puts emphasis on spelling skills and not "whole picture" reading knowledge.
Has students meet in literature circles: Acquisition. Encourages students to learn about, share, and recall background knowledge and use comprehension strategies (questioning, predicting, etc.) for the purpose of authentic communication.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
#5 - Cultural aspects of childrens' books that affect comprehension
The two children's books that I looked at from the perspective of culture are Jean De Brunhoff's The Travels of Babar, and Falling Up, a book of poems by Shel Silverstein.
In Babar, the setting is very specific to wealthy people. This could provide a cultural understanding gap for many ELL students. Babar and Celeste, the main characters, are royal elephants. The settings that they visit in the story include the African savanna, a chateau in the French countryside, a cruise ship, a circus, and ski slopes in Europe. Of these, it possible that ELL students are familiar with some of these locations through experience or reading. It is likely that most of these locations are not in their personal schema. To build background, the class could do a quick vocabulary activity of vacation terms, or places around the world, using a map with graphics from the book drawn on it. This would help students to make text-to world comprehension connections between where the characters are in the book and the real geographic location.
In addition, the story was originally written in 1934 in French. It was translated in to British English, so some of the language is uncommon, like the elephants "inquire anxiously" "eat with relish", say they are "delighted to make your acquaintance", and "encounter savage cannibals" throughout the story.
It would be difficult to provide the necessary schema for students to learn all of these terms before reading the book. The teacher could quickly provide explanations for any unknown terms while they are reading. Since students are not likely to see this language in too many other contexts, there should not be too much effort in to having them learn the terminology before the reading. Since the advanced vocabulary is combined with very detailed pictures and a fun and simple story, this book it is a good opportunity for students to be exposed to British English to build schema for more advanced reading later on.
One cultural difference that could affect comprehension in Falling Up is a poem entitled "Cereal". The poem is an ode to the many kind of cereal, including Rice Krispies, All Bran, Shredded Wheat, Wheaties, Oaties, and Wheat Chex. Previewing this fun poem would be a great opportunity to talk about the American food culture, and the hundreds of choices that we have at the grocery store. The teacher could show pictures of each cereal box, or even have samples. Students could list, discuss, compare American cereals or other foods with similar foods or brands from their countries before reading the poem.
In Babar, the setting is very specific to wealthy people. This could provide a cultural understanding gap for many ELL students. Babar and Celeste, the main characters, are royal elephants. The settings that they visit in the story include the African savanna, a chateau in the French countryside, a cruise ship, a circus, and ski slopes in Europe. Of these, it possible that ELL students are familiar with some of these locations through experience or reading. It is likely that most of these locations are not in their personal schema. To build background, the class could do a quick vocabulary activity of vacation terms, or places around the world, using a map with graphics from the book drawn on it. This would help students to make text-to world comprehension connections between where the characters are in the book and the real geographic location.
In addition, the story was originally written in 1934 in French. It was translated in to British English, so some of the language is uncommon, like the elephants "inquire anxiously" "eat with relish", say they are "delighted to make your acquaintance", and "encounter savage cannibals" throughout the story.
It would be difficult to provide the necessary schema for students to learn all of these terms before reading the book. The teacher could quickly provide explanations for any unknown terms while they are reading. Since students are not likely to see this language in too many other contexts, there should not be too much effort in to having them learn the terminology before the reading. Since the advanced vocabulary is combined with very detailed pictures and a fun and simple story, this book it is a good opportunity for students to be exposed to British English to build schema for more advanced reading later on.
One cultural difference that could affect comprehension in Falling Up is a poem entitled "Cereal". The poem is an ode to the many kind of cereal, including Rice Krispies, All Bran, Shredded Wheat, Wheaties, Oaties, and Wheat Chex. Previewing this fun poem would be a great opportunity to talk about the American food culture, and the hundreds of choices that we have at the grocery store. The teacher could show pictures of each cereal box, or even have samples. Students could list, discuss, compare American cereals or other foods with similar foods or brands from their countries before reading the poem.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
#4 Metacognitave look at decoding
The assignment to read a foreign language with no background instruction was intriguing to me. As an ELL teacher, I have "Newcomer" students who are in this situation in English-speaking classrooms. Some of these students can call words (i.e., imitate the correct sounds when reading and speaking), and we the teachers sometimes wonder how much of the read-aloud they actually understand.
I chose to read a Czech article on a "Learn Czech" website; and then read some simpler phrases on the same site. As I attempted to decipher the passages, I found myself using the following strategies:
1. Look for cognates: The Czech letter combinations, accents, and syntax are totally unfamiliar to me, and my eye automatically jumped to a word in the middle of the page "Technicke". I thought "Wow, I know this one!" (I didn't, it was actually a near-cognate: "technical"). I found myself scanning the remainder of the passage for words that could be the same or similar as the English word, and therefore more decodable.
2. Look for word patterns, or words that repeat often: Words like "ma" and "je" were recurring, so I inferred that they are probably pronouns. This helped me to start to recognize some form of structure within the sentences in the passage.
3. Try to find familiar word families: This exercise was futile; I quickly realized that even if there are word families, they are very different from those that we have in English, or in the Spanish/French with which I am familiar. I found some similarities, but they did not at all give clues to the meaning of the reading.
By the time I tried these 3 strategies, and looked through more simple Czech phrases, I understood how difficult it can be to glean meaning from text without supports. Some supports that would have helped are: Someone reading it aloud with expression and/or gestures; a background lesson in pronouns or basic vocabulary; some sort of introduction to the context of the text; or direct translation(!)
Puzzling over the passage also brought to mind Suzanne Irojo's assertion in the What Does Research Teach Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners? article that "ELLs can not develop phonological awareness in English until they are familiar with the sounds of English". The sounds-letter correspondence of Czech is completely unfamiliar to me; it occurred to me that even if I know the meaning, I would not have enough phonemic awareness of Czech to read this passage aloud.
In order for me to be able to read this passage, I would have first needed sound-letter correspondence instruction to develop phonemic awareness of the letters and letter combinations. It is likely that I may not be able to reproduce some of the sounds that we do not have in English writing. Next, I would need a lot of vocabulary instruction, starting with basic phrases and the main verbs (to be, to have, etc.) so that I could recognize them as part of the sentence structures. This particular passage was about the right to universal education, so I would need to be taught a lot of academic vocabulary, and some background (shema) in the topic as well. I could clearly see how each of the components of reading instruction - PA, Phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension - are absolutely needed to be able to accurately decode, read aloud, and to gain meaning from an unfamiliar text.
Overall, I found this to be a task that was intriguing and even fun at first, though it became clear early on that I could not decode the meaning of the language without instruction. It also showed me how a student could easily become frustrated or overwhelmed by texts that are not at or near their language level if they are not given sufficient instruction for decoding and reading them. It was a great insight to the value of explicit and scaffolded reading instruction for non-English speakers!
I chose to read a Czech article on a "Learn Czech" website; and then read some simpler phrases on the same site. As I attempted to decipher the passages, I found myself using the following strategies:
1. Look for cognates: The Czech letter combinations, accents, and syntax are totally unfamiliar to me, and my eye automatically jumped to a word in the middle of the page "Technicke". I thought "Wow, I know this one!" (I didn't, it was actually a near-cognate: "technical"). I found myself scanning the remainder of the passage for words that could be the same or similar as the English word, and therefore more decodable.
2. Look for word patterns, or words that repeat often: Words like "ma" and "je" were recurring, so I inferred that they are probably pronouns. This helped me to start to recognize some form of structure within the sentences in the passage.
3. Try to find familiar word families: This exercise was futile; I quickly realized that even if there are word families, they are very different from those that we have in English, or in the Spanish/French with which I am familiar. I found some similarities, but they did not at all give clues to the meaning of the reading.
By the time I tried these 3 strategies, and looked through more simple Czech phrases, I understood how difficult it can be to glean meaning from text without supports. Some supports that would have helped are: Someone reading it aloud with expression and/or gestures; a background lesson in pronouns or basic vocabulary; some sort of introduction to the context of the text; or direct translation(!)
Puzzling over the passage also brought to mind Suzanne Irojo's assertion in the What Does Research Teach Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners? article that "ELLs can not develop phonological awareness in English until they are familiar with the sounds of English". The sounds-letter correspondence of Czech is completely unfamiliar to me; it occurred to me that even if I know the meaning, I would not have enough phonemic awareness of Czech to read this passage aloud.
In order for me to be able to read this passage, I would have first needed sound-letter correspondence instruction to develop phonemic awareness of the letters and letter combinations. It is likely that I may not be able to reproduce some of the sounds that we do not have in English writing. Next, I would need a lot of vocabulary instruction, starting with basic phrases and the main verbs (to be, to have, etc.) so that I could recognize them as part of the sentence structures. This particular passage was about the right to universal education, so I would need to be taught a lot of academic vocabulary, and some background (shema) in the topic as well. I could clearly see how each of the components of reading instruction - PA, Phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension - are absolutely needed to be able to accurately decode, read aloud, and to gain meaning from an unfamiliar text.
Overall, I found this to be a task that was intriguing and even fun at first, though it became clear early on that I could not decode the meaning of the language without instruction. It also showed me how a student could easily become frustrated or overwhelmed by texts that are not at or near their language level if they are not given sufficient instruction for decoding and reading them. It was a great insight to the value of explicit and scaffolded reading instruction for non-English speakers!
Saturday, January 11, 2014
#1 - Discuss with another teacher, his/her philosophies about teaching literacy
At the middle school where I teach ELL, I share classroom space with our Literacy Specialist. The Principal put us in the same area, since our students have many of the same instructional needs. 95% of my ELL students were actually born 10 minutes away from the school in our town. They have grown up in the USA, and have had ELL instruction for 7-9 years; yet 30 of them are still ELL since they do not have the literacy (reading and writing) skills required to pass the state language assessment.
Our Literacy Specialist has 15 years of experience teaching literacy, and it is interesting to get her insight on what works to increase students' reading achievement. At the middle school level, when the high- needs kids are clearly identified, she says that a variety of factors are necessary for developing literacy. Among them are motivation, personal accountability, and fostering intrinsic rewards from reading.
She provides each student with a "menu" of activities that they can choose to do during each 40 minute session. Some of the essential tools that she uses to create high-interest, active reading environment for students are:
Our Literacy Specialist has 15 years of experience teaching literacy, and it is interesting to get her insight on what works to increase students' reading achievement. At the middle school level, when the high- needs kids are clearly identified, she says that a variety of factors are necessary for developing literacy. Among them are motivation, personal accountability, and fostering intrinsic rewards from reading.
She provides each student with a "menu" of activities that they can choose to do during each 40 minute session. Some of the essential tools that she uses to create high-interest, active reading environment for students are:
- The students fill out a beginning of the year interest inventory, or personal interview. It discusses their favorite activities, movies, classes, etc. since a main way to get them hooked on reading is by providing high-interest materials.
- She has them choose from a comprehensinve list of variety of high-interest pieces about anything from school shootings, to poetry, to graphic novels or biographies of famous authors.
- To help students to establish strong foundation of reading for comprehension, she ensures that they are all well-versed in the 7 Keys to Reading Comprehension (Visualizing; using background knowledge (schema); asking questions; making inferences; sythesizing; using fix-up strategies). The strategies are posted on the wall, used as bookmarks, and discussed daily.
- Students are held accountable for what they read. This is a major philosophy of hers. They start to have dialogues using the terms "schema" and "I infer that...". It is important that the students feel empowered and informed by reading when they leave the literacy lab.
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