The two students that I gave running records were a second grade Spanish speaking student and a first grade Vietnamese speaking student. Both students have been in English speaking schools since ECE and would be considered to be in the intermediate to advanced fluency stages of language development.
Cassandra is a second grade student reading at approximately a DRA-14. While analyzing her miscues, none of them seemed to be particularly tied to her second language development. Cassandra seemed to rely on the visual cueing system which led to some of her mistakes. For example, in the sentence “Amy wanted to paint a picture,” Cassandra substituted went for wanted based on the w, n, and t of the original word. If she had been using the meaning cueing system, I believe she would have been able to go back and correct her mistake. Cassandra also seemed to use the structure cueing system pretty often during the running record. She substituted words that sounded right in the context of the sentence. The cueing system that Cassandra seemed to use the least was the meaning cueing system. She rarely went back and asked if what she was saying made sense. A next step for Cassandra’s reading instruction would be to prompt her to ask herself if what she is reading makes sense. Modeling for her how to tell if the words in the sentence make sense will help her as well.
Chiyah is a first grade student reading at approximately a DRA-6. While analyzing his miscues, none of them seemed to be particularly tied to his second language development either. The cueing system that Chiyah seemed to rely on most heavily was the visual cueing system. He relied heavily on picture support and on initial letter sound. For example, in the sentence, “This is a tortoise,” he substituted the word turtle for tortoise. In this miscue he used the initial letter sound and the picture to come up with the word. A next step in instruction for Chiyah would be to start sounding out words without the picture support. Modeling for him how to sound out words and then check them against a picture for correctness can help him effectively use the visual cueing system while reading.
Jonell-
ReplyDeleteI found similar results when I analyzed the running records I had given as well. Both of my students also relied heavily on visual cues and paid little attention to meaning.
I think your suggestions for next steps make a lot of sense. Students need to listen to themselves read and ask themselves if what they are reading makes sense. I find that especially with my ELLs, the students frequently just want to decode quickly and ignore the meaning. Without meaning, their reading cannot adequately progress.
Jonell
ReplyDeleteI thought your observations were very interesting. I agree with both of the students I conducted running records with were about the same level of fluency as your students, and neither appeared to make mistakes tied to his/her first language. Both of my students made a large about of visual miscues as well. I think that your idea of modeling for the student is a great suggestion. I also think that eliminating pictures cues is an important step in the students skills as well. I think for younger students these visual cues are helpful but as a student advances these cues are not as frequent, so students must have a toolbox of techniques to rely on.
Jonell- I definitely noticed the same things that you did when conducting my running records with two students. Both of my students relied heavily on visual cues, which impacted the meaning of the stories often times. I really like your suggestions for ways that you could continue to work with these students so that they really do understand what they read, since comprehension is the ultimate goal. Students should be using a combination of visual strategies, syntactical strategies, and strategies that help with meaning when they read instead of relying heavily on just one. It is a combination of the three that will make readers most successful.
ReplyDelete