Running Record

My first running record that I administered was to a male 7th grade student whose first language is Arabic. According to his ACCESS results from last spring, he scored reaching (6) in comprehension, listening, oral, reading and speaking. He scored bridging (5) in literacy and expanding (4) in writing. This is very apparent when working with the student because verbally he is very articulate but his writing does not match this. It is to be noted that his family has chosen to refuse ELA services. After reading the passage, he scored a 97% accuracy rate with an error ratio being 1:30.5. He was very aware of his reading and self corrected at a 1:3 ratio. Upon analyzing the miscues I noticed that the student tended to make words singular when they were written as plurals, that could be a feature of his first language, I am not familiar enough with the Arabic language to make this assumption. Another common feature of his miscues were omitting words altogether but they were words that did not detract meaning from the passage.

The second running record I administered was to a female 6th grade student whose first language is Spanish. According to her ACCESS scores from last spring, the student scored reaching (6) in listening, bridging (5) in comprehension, expanding (4) in oral and reading, developing (3) in literacy and writing and emerging (2) in speaking. This student is truly all over the board in her language acquisition. This student is somebody that I do not teach so I am unaware of how they perform as a student, but through this activity it was very apparent we she scored by listening to her read. After reading the passage, she scored an error ratio of 1:4.9 and an accuracy rate of 80%. Upon analyzing the miscues I noticed that the student often substituted words that had no context within the reading making comprehension of the text very difficult. Furthermore, the student often pronounced or sounded out words based on that of her first language.

The only trend that I was able to locate between the two students was their tendency to make words singular when they were written as plurals. This could be a universal trend between all English Language Learners because that is difficult skill to transfer between languages.

Next teaching points based on this data would be, some explicit vocabulary instruction. This would be essential to both students reading comprehension and fluency. This instruction could take place as sight word practice for my second student and then more content specific vocabulary instruction for my first student. Furthermore, another teaching point based on the data would be continued guided reading to help them become more comfortable with reading and continue to develop strategies.

Language + Acquisition = Krashen's Theory

When answering these questions for this exercise I came back to the fundamental of both the theories; language is the view of word recognition that it must be learned while acquisition is the view that language is innate and can construct meaning through reading. That is why when it asked questions such as "read a language experience story they have created with a teacher" or "sets aside time for SSR each day" I felt that it most represented acquisition because the students are reading in order to deepen their understanding of their already acquired language and using that to help them to construct meaning. When it presented choices such as "divide words into syllables" or "on a worksheet, draw a line from each word to the picture that starts with the same sound" I deduced that it would best represent language because the students were being specifically taught word recognition. 

My understanding of the two views tells me that, language can also be acquisition activities but acquisition can not be language activities, therefore it was difficult for me to dual label many of the scenarios for that reason.

 I think this was a helpful exercise in investigating the two view points on teaching language acquisition. My idealistic self seems to want to side with the acquisition view because I believe that is the best way that anyone should learn is through the application of language and the acquiring of language in a real authentic way. However, the practical, realistic part of myself knows that they can't always happen and students need that explicit instruction around language in order to reach the authentic acquisition stage. In an everyday classroom, these two viewpoints can be blended in order to ensure that every student is able to access language and be able to apply it towards their literacy needs. 

Circle Time

    By Judy Schachner
Ages: 5-8 years 
Grade Level: Kindergarten through 3rd
Lexile Level: 740

"My name is skippito friskito. I fear not a single bandito."

This book would be a good choice to introduce to an English Language Learner because the story line is about a Siamese cat that believes he is a Chihuahua. ELL students will hopefully understand that confusion around identity and where they "fit" within a setting. 
For Spanish speaking ELLs they will be " especially delighted by the words and humor; others maybe bewildered by all of the foreign phrases and will need some explanation, but the story definitely has the potential of a fun read aloud. A good multicultural offering."Judith Constantinides, formerly at East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA

Students may struggle with:
                          idiomatic expressions
                          non-sense words 
                          rhyme
                          figurative language 

In order to activate schema the teacher can ask the students before reading to discuss a time that they have gotten lost in their imaginations or their thoughts and to describe what that was like for them. Another way to activate schema to model how to work through difficult vocabulary and determining if the word is essential to meaning or if they are primarily non-sense. Next, having the students repeat the process for other words through out the story. 

 By Anna Dewdney
Ages: 3 and Up
Grades: Preschool and Up
Lexile Level: 370

"Yucky music,/great big feet./Ladies smelling way too sweet....Try it on and take it off./Pull and wiggle,/itch and cough"

This second book would be good to introduce to English Language Learners because it is very repetitive, and students will very easily catch on to the pattern of the story. Also, it is a situation that many children can relate to no matter their cultural background. 

Students may struggle with:
                         rhythmic rhymes
                         figurative languages
                         non-sense words
                         Onomatopoeia 

In order to activate schema, teachers can ask students about a time that they became frustrated with a family member, and have them discuss how that made them feel and what actions they choose to take. After reading, students can then create a rhyme about the time they brainstormed before reading. Another way, teachers can activate schema is to discuss with the students before reading what is rhyme? Students could then brainstorm rhymes after defining the term. After reading, teachers can ask the students to identify the rhymes within in the story.  

Seeing French...

I found this assignment very interesting and decided I would challenge myself to rise to the occasion. It would have been easy to pick a text in spanish, but French is a language that I have been interested in but have been told it wouldn't be "useful" to me in the future… Well eight years of spanish courses, and I am not sure that has been anymore "useful". I searched Google for a text seen below, 

"Lucie, étudiante des États-Unis, vient d'arriver à Charles de Gaulle, l'aéroport qui accueille chaque jour à Paris, 1 million de visiteurs. Paris. Enfin. Ça a toujours été le rêve de Lucie : vivre dans la Ville lumière, la ville des beaux arts, du quartier latin, du vin, et qui sait, peut-être la ville d'une petite histoire d'amour.

Son projet est d'étudier en France pendant un an, pour obtenir sa licence ès informatique à l'Université de Versailles à St. Quentin-en-Yvelines. C'est l'université qui lui a offert une bourse pour faire ses études. En plus, sa copine Josephine fait ses études là-bas, et Lucie va pouvoir vivre avec elle dans son petit appartement. 

Elle prend le RER qui la mène directement à la Gare St. Lazare, en centre-ville. Une fois arrivée, elle cherche le quai du train pour Versailles. Elle monte dans le train, et bientôt il entre dans un tunnel sombre en direction de Versailles. Lucie est un peu déçue, parce qu'elle doit rester à Versailles bien qu'elle veuille vivre à Paris. Mais elle se dit que Versailles n'est qu'à quelques minutes en train de la grande ville de Paris, et qu'il y a aussi plusieurs attractions à Versailles.

Le train sort du tunnel, et en passant par la grande ville, elle voit un grand cimetière, la tour Eiffel et Montmarte avec la basilique du Sacré-Coeur tout près. Quelques instants plus tard, elle arrive en gare de Versailles.

Elle est arrivée à destination. Devant elle le grand Château de Versailles où Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil, organisa des fêtes et vécut la grande vie entouré de ses maîtresses. À droite se trouve l'avenue de St.-Cloud, où est situé l'appartement dans lequel elle va vivre avec Josephine. Fatiguée, mais joyeuse, elle commence à chercher l'adresse de l'appartement. « Toute seule dans un nouveau pays, ne connaissant personne, l'avenir, je t'embrasse vivement ! » se dit Lucie" ---http://french.about.com/library/reading/bl-luciea.htm

Once I got the text my eyes immediately went to words that I recognize from english such as "univeriste" "informatique"and I started to create meaning. Furthermore, I started using my language skills that I recognized from my spanish study days (hey! it did come in useful!) and began to find comparisons between the spanish words that I know and there french counterparts. 

What I noticed is as I read, I jumped around a lot in the text, unlike when I read English text my brain jumped around locating the words that it recognized. The more I looked at the text, the easier it was for me to focus my brain and actually read the text in actual sentences. Also, I observed that I kept recalling what I understood to the point that I had to write it down, and feel in the blanks very similar to word puzzle where you one by one fill in the blanks. While I know I did not understand every word of the text I do think I was able to get the general gist of the text. 

"Lucy is a student that has just arrived in Paris to study Computer Science at the University…" 

Implications as a teacher, through  this exercise I have found that English Language Learners have to read a text several time to even began to create comprehension of a text in their brains. Furthermore, it is very easy for students to forget the text they have translated so a good strategy is to have students write down what they understand as they are going through a text to create meaning of what they have read. 

This was a very insightful exercise. 

Reading & Language

"Language is our cultural tool-- we use it to share experience and so to collectively, jointly, make sense of it… Language is therefore not just a means by which individuals can formulate ideas and communicate them, it is also a means for people to think and learn together." 
--Neil Mercer, The Guided Construction of Knowledge

When I consider the relationship between reading and oral language, this quote struck me. Reading is just an extension of oral language which is another cultural tool that we have as a group to think and learn together. However, their seems to be a considerable leap from oral language to reading comprehension for many ELL's. The same cultural tool that connects us, also separates are understanding of one another. As students began to learn a new language speaking, comes much quicker to many than written language. Furthermore, while language is learned and comprehended simultaneously, teacher's cannot pause and wait for a student's written comprehension to catch up to their verbal ability. Therefore, teachers  need to implement strategies that can support both such as academic vocabulary development and activating prior knowledge of topics before reading to help support a diverse learners comprehension needs. Another way teachers can support language learners is to allow them to struggle with their comprehension, not to the frustration level but to help them equip themselves with strategies that can help them in the long run;"And there is considerable evidence that learners who have more opportunities to reflect on and improve their own communication receive long-term benefits for language learning than those who constantly have communication problems solved for them by the teacher," (Gibbons, 38.)

Source: Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: Teaching second language learners in the mainstream classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Writing Instruction: How does it work?

Looking back I never realized their was many ways to teach the writing process. In my experience of schooling, I never remember being given options on how to write a paper… there was one way and it was repeated indefinitely. As a teacher, I have found that to be the absolute opposite. There are so many theories on how writing should be taught; based on the learner, based on the content area and purpose that I have often felt overwhelmed. Preparing to be a social studies teacher, I never felt as a teacher or professor said these are the strategies you should use in your classroom, so entering into a classroom full of diverse learners I often felt helpless on how to help them be successful. What was most often presented to me as a way to teach kids to write was the formulaic answer of plugging information into this generic structure. While I was relieved, to have found some strategy to scaffold my students' writing needs, I never felt like that was the answer I was looking for. I often felt that being teaching them such a formulaic structure might even be hurting their writing more. 

After much trial and error and research, I found that the simplest answer was right in front of me. I had to take literacy into my own hands and teach in my social studies classroom. This is still such a revolutionary idea to teachers when it is brought up to them! They claim they are not reading and writing teachers, it is not our job as content area teachers to be in charge of this work. I have found very different results. By picking a narrow topic in content and explicitly teaching each step of the writing process my students' growth has significantly improved, and my practice as a teacher has improved. By slowing down myself, and thinking how I achieve every step of the writing process and then modeling and teaching my students how to complete this, it has changed the way I see writing instruction.  I have had to create a significant amount of my own materials but I see the reward in the product of my students. They have exceeded my expectations time and time again with the products each of my students are able to create through this in- depth process. I have even had my ELL students tell me afterwards that they never thought they would be able to read and analyze the documents that they did before this unit.

The type of writing instruction I would say I use is a collaborative form but also teaching the skills directly through content. Direct instruction of writing skills is going to be the surest way to move students' in writing achievement. This thought is reinforced by the text, "From a learning point of view, writing, like reading, must be taught directly. From an acquisition perspective, writing, like speaking, is a form of output that reflects the language competence an individual has acquired. Teachers from both points of view include writing in their language arts curriculum, but several aspects of their instruction are different," (Freeman & Freeman, 29.)  The aspects of instruction that I incorporate differently is what is unique to my content and the project that they are completing. 

Source: Freeman, D., & Freeman, Y. (2004). Written and Second Language Acquisition. In Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Conversations about Literacy

When I spoke to another teacher around his philosophies about teaching literacy to ELL's he felt that the most important aspect was that if a student could not speak a language then they could not write a language. This teacher, who teaches middle school social studies felt that for English Language Learners an important piece of learning was being able to verbalize their thoughts and opinions around a subject matter. In his classroom he operated around the modes of collaboration through think-pair-shares, partner activities, and collaborative strategic reading. He felt once they were able to speak the language the students when then be able to translate this into writing. Although, this teacher did not verbalize this I know that he does provide scaffolds in the classroom to help students such as accountable talk stems to guide conversations. Questions that I would like to further discuss with this teacher would be if he believes that language develops simultaneously, if he deems it beneficial to teach literacy skills concurrently or keep them completely separate. Another question I would love to inquire about is the type of systems and scaffolds he puts into place to help his English Language students take their spoken thoughts and put them into words. Another teacher I spoke to had a very complete understanding of the implications of having diverse learners in her middle school science classroom, "Teaching literacy to ELL students is a responsibility of every content area teacher. This is something that should be seen not only in language arts classrooms, but in science, social studies, math, etc. In addition to teaching skills in other contents, all teachers should consider the implications around content delivery when having ELL students in their classrooms. Curriculum should never be dumbed down for those students who are mastering a new language, but rather, should be scaffolded enough that the students can access the content. Lastly, teachers should consider making lessons relevant to students who are coming in from a different culture. Knowing a student's background and utilizing that knowledge when teaching not only empowers the student, but increases the likelihood that they will retain the content as well."

Mic Check

Blogging is a very new to me. I have read other people's blogs and always have thought to myself "that is someone who has their life together," but it never occurred to me that I myself would be one of those people. I have done other forms of technology including google classroom, and for my undergrad we made E- portfolios which were cutting edge technology at the time. Side note: I always thought that would have come up more at job interviews, but alas, it did not. I found this format of blogging to be very user friendly and detailed with any possible question I could have. I am sure when I enter the realm of ads and links and all of the fancy add-ons I might have more questions. 

I think this activity will be very beneficial, it seems like a modern day journal of sorts, that can include reflection of practice and research as well as a place to pose thought provoking questions either to ourselves or to others in our cohort. Often, over this grad school journey I have felt that I have wrote many meaningful ideas or had an insightful conversation with another, that after the course has ended has been lost into a black hole of cyber space. I am excited at the aspect that I will be able to control the destiny of my thoughts once this course has ended.