Blog #7

Running record on 2 ELL students, analyze miscues, features of errors, next teaching points, and possible strategies or assignments to address reading challenges.
   I was at the mercy of the ELL instructor as to which student I saw for the running record. I met with a Peruvian seventh grader in his second year of ELA. He has fluent literacy skills in his first language of Spanish. She wanted me to meet with him because he can read words or transfer knowledge from Spanish to English but has difficulty with comprehension. I also met with a seventh grader in his third year of ELA. He is from Taiwan and was fluent in Chinese. She wanted me to meet with him, because he can't pronounce a lot of words, but has very high comprehension of the meaning. She said both are excellent students.
   I found my running records matched her assessment of the students. The Spanish speaker read a page from a book that has a lexile range of 700. He only missed two words. He said gourd for guard and resume for resume. The first miscue was due to a visual cue. He read over it quickly and phonetically it is tricky to learn the double vowel blend rules. Resume (continue doing something) for resume (a paper application of your qualifications) is clearly understandable. He was following the typical English rule of the silent "e" at the end making the vowel say it's name. However, resume is a French word. For next steps, I would recommend doing a retell and analyzing where his comprehension is falling apart: predictions, sequence of events, characters and details, vocabulary, main idea or message, or events. From there I would isolate where exactly the intervention was needed. Finally, I would also analyze whether or not the comprehension had to do with a lack of cultural awareness.
   The Taiwanese student was reading the Hunger Games with a lexile range of 810. He had some phonetic miscues like "drugged" for "dragged" and trable for trouble. I think these more had to do with switching from Chinese to English and the sound differences that occur because the use of the tongue in pronunciation of sounds.  Another time he said, "weder" for "weather". This is a common phonetic mistake since the "d" and "th" sounds are produced in the same location in the mouth by the tongue. To correct this one could visually show and talk through the location of the tongue in the mouth and practice the difference.Other miscues were simple exchanging one participle for another like "a" for "the" which do not change the meaning of the text. One time, he completely missed the word "crevice" and said "crease." The sentence was, "It was in every crack and crevice." Therefore, crease still made contextual sense. I feel like with him that he was way more insecure about reading out loud, and if he just slowed down, he would not make those errors.