Running Records, Spelling and English Language Learners

Blog Entry #7

This week I worked with Jake, a 6th grader (he picked his own pseudonym). Jake speaks Spanish at home and is in my homeroom class. He is fluent in conversational English and his a B/C student in my class.  I also worked with Derek, an 8th grader. I chose Derek's pseudonym and he has spoken both English and German from birth. I work in a small charter school in Colorado and it was a challenge to locate a native speaker of a language other than Spanish.

I gave both students a passage from Anne of Avonlea,  Derek had 2 slight errors. Jake had 6.

Neither student made miscues in syntax.  Jake pronounced "Anne" as "Annie throughout."  His other errors were minor, and would be found in readers of any reader, including native English speakers.

Some of the teaching points with this data: Both students are fluent readers in English I would not foresee reading instruction needed with either student. Jake was a reluctant participant in this exercise, but was willing to be "drafted."  Derek was an eager participant.

Jake has had some issues with comprehension in Shakespeare and some minor vocab issues when working with text, but so have some of my native English speakers. I would account for this by attributing it to vocabulary heard at home/in his day to day environment. His academic English is good. However, some of his vocabulary that a Native Speaker may pick up at home seems to be lacking from time to time.

Derek, in my time with him and according to his teachers is fluent in both conversational and academic English and German. No remediation with him is necessary.

#6 - Word Recognition v. Sociopsycholinguistic View

Researchers have studied how children learn to speak. Researchers also study how children learn to write. Is this skill acquired naturally? In what ways do children learn to read and write?

Two views are Learning View (Traditional Writing Classroom) and Acquisition View (Process Writing Classroom).

There are activities are associated with each view.

Activities which are within the framework of Learning View  involving the teacher deciding which components of reading/writing on which to focus and then teaches those discrete parts separately, assessing for comprehension on each segment of reading/writing along the way. Errors are specifically corrected.

Learning View/Word Recognition activities include:

Students:

• look up words in the dictionary to write definitions
• practice sounding out words
• reading in round-robin fashion
• correct peers when they make a mistake during reading
• group cards with classmates' names by a criterion such as first or last letter
• ask the teacher how to spell any word they don't know
• divide words into syllables
• on a worksheet, draw a line from each word to the picture that starts with the same sound

The Teacher:

• preteach vocabulary
• makes sure that students read only books that fit their level
• has students segment words into phonemes
• asks students to look around the room and find words starting with a certain letter
• uses decodeable texts
• conducts phonics drills
• chooses predictable texts
• uses a variety of worksheets to teach different skills

Activities which fit the Acquisition/Sociopsycholiguistic View activities have students involved as as partners in learning, where the students do discovering of ideas and construct meaning from ideas/content of the material.  Errors are part of the process and the focus is on constructing meaning, not necessarily on getting everything "right."


These activities include:

Students:

• make a Venn diagram to compare two stories
• identify words on a big book page that start with the same sound
• write rhyming poetry and then discuss different spellings for the same sound
• read a language experience story they have created with the teacher
• work in pairs to arrange words from a familiar chant into sentences
• make alphabet books on different topics

The Teacher:

• shared reading with a big book
• writes words the students dictate for a story and has students help with the spelling of difficult words
• sets time aside for SSR (sustained silent reading) each day
• teaches Greek and Latin roots
• has students meet in literature circles
• teaches students different comprehension strategies
• does a picture walk of a new book

Blog Post 5 - Children's texts

Blog Entry #5

Context: In addition to having to decode unfamiliar text, students are often faced with challenges because the setting of the book, vocabulary, and/or types of speech that may be new to them.

Task Description: Review 2 children’s books and determine what components in the book might affect comprehension because of cultural aspects. List 4 per book and tell how this schema could be taught or introduced to an ELL learner.

Delivery: Post blog entry by Wednesday.

Assessment: See Blog Rubric.

Forum Discussions: Now join your classmates in the Forum Discussion for this topi

The children's texts I chose were:

 It's raining Pigs and Noodles by Jack Prelutsky, the excerpt, as on Amazon.com is:

 It's raining pigs and noodles,
it's pouring frogs and hats,
chrysanthemums and poodles,
bananas, brooms, and cats.
Assorted prunes and parrots

are dropping from the sky,

Imagery is important in much poetry and Jack Prelutsky's is no exception.  Unless one knows It's raining cats and dogs" as an idiom as well as the meaning of the words in the poem, the humor in the poems is lost.  Humor is poetry is very context based. ELL students would have a challenging time understand why the other students were giggling at the poetry.  Strategies to understand would be to show the pictures in the book, ask students about idioms in their own language and preteach vocabulary when possible.

The other book I chose for this assignment is Johnny Tremain

the historical fiction classic of a boy in Revolutionary War time who befriends some of the framers of the Declaration of Independence and which gives a plethora of information about the times.  The book was written in the 40s and has some pretty complex voabulary words, long chapters and presumes a familiarity of the reasons behind the Revolutionary War. While the story goes into great detail and is a marvelous book, ELL students would find the language challenging and perhaps find the history confusion if they had not been exposed to it before.

I would suggest this book alongside a US History unit to flesh out the (often) dry history texts and to make connections between young boys of that time and young children of today.  Pre-teaching of some vocabulary would be imperative as well as perhaps some pictures and explanations of the household items used in the time period.

Blog Post 4 - Deciphering text in another language

Blog Entry #4

Context: This activity will encourage you to take a metacognitive look at how you decode unfamiliar text. It is important for you to understand your own strategies as you attempt to help your learners build their own decoding skills.

Task Description: Choose a text in a language that you are not familiar with, at a level at which you should be proficient (an adult publication). Read it. Find a way to make meaning. Do whatever you have to do to make this text comprehensible. Now scale back the difficulty of the text. How far back to you have to go until you understand what you are reading? What did you do to make meaning? What are the implications to teacher? Make a list of the strategies that you used and post findings/thoughts on your blog.

Delivery: Post blog entry by Wednesday.

Assessment: See Blog Rubric.

Adult Text - People Magazine online in Spanish

http://www.peopleenespanol.com/

When working with the text, I relied a lot on pictures and on the spanish words I knew. I looked at a picture of Michele Obama riding a bike and I knew the word anos, and the number 50.  I was able to deduce that the article was about Michele turning 50. I also was able to read that she is the president's wife.  I could, based on my knowledge of grammar, figure out which words (mostly) were verbs, nouns and adjectives. I could eke out the very very basics of articles, but not more than that.  I could extract very little meaning from text.




Children's Text:

I borrowed this children's book in Spanish on my iPad with my Kindle app. http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-books-spanish-grillo-Libros-ebook/dp/B00H2DZHTW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1389850456&sr=1-1&keywords=children%27s+book+in+spanish

This book I showed my students and my students who speak Spanish were laughing with me at my silly questions.about the meaning. Here too I worked with the pictures.

The first book I was going to work with was Green Eggs and Ham in French and then I would have worked with people magazine in French. However, Green Eggs and Ham in French isn't available on a kindle version.

I realized, that even in a children's book I had trouble getting meaning from text.

I was frustrated as usually I read with ease and I understand some spoken Spanish, but not much.  I have very  basic Spanish words, counting, a few colors, and a dozen or so nouns.  This does not reading fluency make.

If someone had "tested" me on my knowledge of the text I'd have failed for sure.

Strategies I'll use in my classroom from what I learned:

1. Use of pictures.
2. Use of other students who have more fluency with the language. My students were having fun having me sound out words and giggling at my ineptness (in fun).  Pairing a fluent reader with a non-fluent reader makes it more fun.
3. I realized how very very basic is the information gleaned with very minimal language skills and a couple of pictures, even with people/places I recognized.

Oral Language and the Reading Process

• Entry #3: Comment on the relationship between oral language and the reading process.

Oral language and the reading process are linked.  Children learn to talk before they the can read. We start with phonemic awareness, what words sound like and move into making meaning from shapes (letters) which represent the sounds we hear. From there we can start to sound out words and construct meaning from them.  Vocabulary and comprehension and meaning follow.  The 5 Big Ideas of Reading are well researched and have well founded structure.  When "reading" in foreign language, someone will default to the phonics they know, unless and until they know the second (or subsequent languages).

For example, I've told my students I can "read" Spanish, which is true to some extent. I grew up in California and know a small amount.  I have heard enough of it that I can "read" a page of it. i can decode some/most of the words into "reading" but I have little to no understanding of it.  Therefore, I'm not actually "reading" at all, I'm decoding and vocalizing words, but without constructing meaning, I'm not reading.

References

Freeman, D. E., & Freeman, Y. S. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Writing Instruction I have Received

• Entry #2: Reflect on the writing instruction you have received. Which view of writing described in this chapter corresponds most closely to your experiences?

The writing instruction I received most closely align with Traditional Writing classroom (Freeman).  I graduated from high school in 1978 and thus was in elementary school in the mid-60's and early-70's. We learned to write through modeling and grammar.  We learned to write sentences and from there to paragraphs and from there to essays. However, we also learned to write by writing.  Rubrics hadn't been "invented" yet, at least in the educational setting and techniques such as "word choice" and "voice" weren't spoken of. We didn't have word processors and we learned to hyphenate, something that isn't even taught anymore, as far as I can tell. We memorized and diagrammed.

When I learned to write, school was very much a formal setting. Teachers taught and students learned.  We sat in rows, my gifted classes we did cooperative learning groups, but in my standard general education classes it was very "Leave it to Beaver" style of classroom learning. Speak when spoken to. Sit still and follow instructions.

We wrote on formal topics, wrote stories, book reports and topic reports.  Everything was handwritten and subjects were researched with paper books and encyclopedia.  I very much enjoyed learning that way. It was very structured.  However, I also enjoy teaching written in a more modern way. The writing curriculum I use is very structured but also modern in content.

References

Freeman, D. E., & Freeman, Y. S. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Philosophy of Teaching Literacy Discussion

• Entry #1: Discuss with another teacher, his/her philosophies about teaching literacy. (This can be a casual, short conversation with the purpose of gathering another teacher’s philosophies on his/her practices of teaching literacy.)
  
  I spoke with Janni Roberts, a 3rd/4th grade teacher at a charter school in Calhan, Colorado.  Janni is also getting a M.Ed. She's getting hers from Adams State.
  
  Her philosophy of teaching literacy is that differentiation is vital.  Meeting the students where they are and going forward from that point is of primary importance.  I agree with Janni.  Janni uses a variety of materials to teach.  As I do, she teaches in a Charter Schools. Charters offer a fair amount of freedom in teaching styles, but often have fewer resources than public schools, including lack of a school library.
  
  Janni says her goal is to offer children a chance to learn to their potential but working with them at their level to increase literacy.
  

Hi, welcome to my blog

This is my blog for EDRG604, Learning for the Diverse Learner.  This week I'll be speaking to intro posts on the following topics:

In your blog, respond to the following three questions. Please be sure to separate the different entries so they are obvious to the reader.

• Entry #1: Discuss with another teacher, his/her philosophies about teaching literacy. (This can be a casual, short conversation with the purpose of gathering another teacher’s philosophies on his/her practices of teaching literacy.)
• Entry #2: Reflect on the writing instruction you have received. Which view of writing described in this chapter corresponds most closely to your experiences?
• Entry #3: Comment on the relationship between oral language and the reading process.

As school doesn't start back till Monday (training/professional development) and Tuesday (with kids) I will complete the discussion for Entry 1 on Monday and have the other entries in later in the week.