EDRL 521A: LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGES BIG CASE STUDY Sandi Mazza Sonoma State

University, Spring 2013 Professor: Dr. MaryAnn Nickel Students Background Rodrigo is an 8-year old second grader at Roseland Creek. He is the third child of Mexican Immigrant parents who speak only Spanish (he was born here). He has two older sisters, Nancy (at RAMS), and Monce (in sixth at Roseland Creek), and a younger brother Erberto, (a kindergartner). Rodrigo learned Spanish from his parents, and English from his sisters. He grew up hearing Spanish from his parents and English from his sisters. He does not read in Spanish. He was not read to as a child, prior to entering Apples and Bananas for preschool. He attended kindergarten and first grade in an English immersion class at Sheppard. Rodrigo enjoys books, but has none at home, and doesnt read over the summers or school breaks, (which is an all too common scenario for Roseland students). He says he does not see his parents read AT ALL; no books, newspapers, or magazines, and his sister Monce tells me that she does not like to read, nor does Nancy. The parents are literate in Spanish, and documentation from school is sent home in Spanish. He appears to have a nice, happy family life. His father is a landscaper, and his mother isnt working. His parents do things with the kids on the weekends; they go on outings and to restaurants, and he enjoys building stuff with his dad. Rodrigo loves basketball and was eager to share that his dad was building him a basketball court. He seems to be a happy, well adjusted and well cared for kid, with little emotional baggage (especially when compared to some of his peers). He speaks fondly of his family, and enjoys reading to his little brother, when he has books to read. Rodrigo was referred to Reading Intervention in February, which he attended for just over a month (somewhat irregularly). He was assessed by the Intervention teacher (a long term substitute- not a Reading Specialist or tenured teacher), and it was noted that his weak areas were sight words and comprehension. When I asked him what they did in Intervention, he said he mostly read stories on a computer and then took comprehension tests. He was exited from reading intervention when he tested out of second grade sight words. The words in that test were words from the HM anthologies, the majority of which had been covered by that time of year- (I question how accurate measure this was!). Additionally, sight words do not give many clues as to what reading strategies are being employed, nor are they indicative of comprehension. What is important is to involve students with meaningful language, not to present the parts of the language either directly or in context to be learned. (F&F, p. 85). He also tested out on the Rigby Running Record, Level 19, at a beginning second grade reading level (given in the end of March, so he is still below real time grade level standards). The Intervention teacher noted on the Rigby that he was still weak on the retell and comprehension, however, his slot was needed for students demonstrating higher need, and possibly, a higher prioritization on attendance. (Reading Intervention in the Roseland District is a bit of a triage-juggling act.) Reason for Selecting this Student I re-chose my Mini-Case Study student, Rodrigo, for the Big Case Study. My initial work with him left me both curious to see if I could learn more about his strengths and challenges, and to see if I could further his reading ability along. I learned in the Mini-Case study that he lacks a variety of reading strategies. He is very attentive in class, rarely misses school, is always the first boy in the room to come and sit at the carpet when called, and among the first students in class to get on task. Rodrigo is eager to please and always tries his best, checking in with the teacher to make sure he is on the right track.
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Seeing him put in such a solid effort in school, I was drawn to work with him to find out why he wasnt progressing more rapidly. Ive been subbing in his classroom since October, and I havent seen a lot of growth. He is completely engaged in school, enjoys reading, and has a great attitude and natural inquisitiveness towards learning. We have developed a wonderful and trusting relationship, and his eagerness and cooperation in the process were an inspiration to continue. Also, lacking my own students, I had free access to him, and trust from his teachers that my time spent pulling him would not be wasted. Classroom, Curriculum, & Instructional Model His curriculum (HM) is very phonics and Word Recognition View based, and Language Arts instruction revolves around Centers, focusing on isolated skills with a heavy concentration of worksheets and instruction directed to fill out the worksheets successfully. There is little emphasis on writing or reading. They dont keep a journal or do much free writing, nor is there much formally instructed writing. Writing is not seen as a priority because it is not tested. (What is being missed, in my opinion, are the many skills embedded in good writing that could be taught through authentic writing instead of practiced in isolation. Reading and writing are intertwined and feed each other for advancement of skills in both). UA (Universal Access) time consists of reading independently from a few books from the allotted leveled basket for each reading level, (which severely limits readers and choice, as noted in the article Lets Level About Leveling), or reading I Love Reading books or HM Phonics books, which are constructed around sound and spelling patterns, and hardly qualify as having any meaning or story sense. Difficulty in particular kinds of instruction doesnt mean that a child is not read to learn to read; it simply underlines that aspects of instruction can be inappropriate, confusing, and unnecessary. (Smith, Reading Without Nonsense, p. 18). Although the students do listen to read alouds, they are not doing much predicting, summarizing, sharing, or having mini-lessons or modeled or writing inspired by the reading. The District emphasis is clearly to teach to the test, though it is not explicitly stated. Based on my experience in the classroom, as a sub and as an observer, it is my opinion that this instructional model is not very effective, and is most certainly not authentic. With STAR testing going away, and the Common Core coming in, Mrs. Braia is looking forward to changing things up next year and wants my help in creating a more authentic Language Arts block. She is also going to begin Literature Circles with my guidance. Theories Having observed him for the Mini Case Study, I knew Rodrigo really only had one basic reading strategy: sounding it out, which according to Frank Smith, statistically only works 25% of the time. I also suspected that he was reading below grade level (which was confirmed by his teacher, the Intervention teacher, and his various test results), and I theorize that this stems from his lack of strategies coupled with his lack of access to books. To become a good reader, one must read! He only reads in the classroom environment where he has access to books, he doesnt read when school is not in session, does not have a library card, and until last week, Roseland Creek didnt even have books to check out at their new library(he now can check one out a week- at least his parents signed the permission slip!). I think with more reading practice guided by some additional strategies, that he could enter third grade at a grade reading level. As we learned in our readings, if students dont reach proficiency by the end of third grade, they likely never make up the gap, and it continues to grow. Goals My goals were to teach and advance his use of a variety of reading strategies, to teach to the gaps in his reading and writing, to encourage his family to get him a library card to continue reading over the summer, and to get him into the Summer Reading Academy. I hope to increase his reading level through the end of the school year (I plan to continue to visit him- we are both learning a lot, and enjoy our time spent together with books), and to increase his over-all confidence level. Even though I have met with him more than a dozen times for 30-45 minutes at a time, I still want to pull him some more. There are some
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assessments and revisits that I didnt get to, and I want to take as many next steps as I can with him. I plan to continue my work with him even after his Case Study concludes with a paper. Language and Literacy Data I observed Rodrigo in the classroom environment, and in one on one sessions in the hallway or the library. I was permitted by his teacher to pull him during Language Arts UA time, and additionally during ELD, in which he goes to another second grade classroom (he is in the middle CELDT group: Early Intermediates to Intermediate). His ELD teacher also gave me her blessing to pull him during this time. None of the teachers that I have had subbed for value this ELD program. They frankly hate it. It is an EDI model, and is completely grammar based (Painless Planless Grammar). Even Rodrigo asked me if ELD was supposed to help him learn English. What is important is to involve students with meaningful language, not to present the parts of the language either directly or in a context to be learned. (F&F, p. 85). I replied that it was supposed to, and asked him if he found it helpful. He said he did not, and was always happy to be rescued by me. Knowing the parts of speech doesnt turn a student into a better reader or writer. Weaver (1996) summarizes a number of studies, and all of them show that there is no transfer from the study of traditional grammar to improved literacy skills. (F&F, p. 173). I felt that our one on one time reading and writing was much more valuable to him on the whole, so my conscience was clear. Some days, depending on my schedule, I would pull him for UA or ELD, and sometimes I pulled him for both time slots, as he is a slow reader, and it was hard to get through a book and also have time to talk about it and check his comprehension, let alone get an on the spot mini-lesson in. Although he is shy, Rodrigo will ask for help or clarification when he doesnt understand something, and he eagerly participates in class discussions, though he is often out shouted by the blurters and left waiting politely with his hand raised. He is riveted by read alouds, and always sits near the front; quiet, still, and attentive (unlike most of the boys in the class, who sit towards the back and apparently find the faux wood floor to be greased as they slide all over the place!). He has a strong work ethic, is able to stay focused on what he is working on (which is a stand out in this classroom), though sometimes he complains about the noise level in the classroom making it hard for him to concentrate. Rodrigo comfortably collaborates with other classmates in groupings, and is well liked by his teachers and fellow students. He is comfortable in the school environment, and his favorite activity is playing basketball with his friends at recess. They speak English on the playground and in class. I have only heard him speak Spanish to his mother when she picks him up. His English is on par with better readers in his grade, and he is virtually equal in fluency in his bilingualism, according to my initial interview with him, and he proudly translates overheard Spanish conversations transpiring in the hallway. During UA, he reads independently (and he is reading the whole time, unlike several of his cohorts), and he is in the yellow group- the second lowest reading group by ability (though this grouping was initially based on common range of BPST scores, NOT necessarily on similar reading needs). Since phonemes, by definition, are sounds that make a meaning difference, it is difficult to perceive phonemes in situations in which meaning is not the concern, and that is precisely what children are being asked to do on tests of phonemic awareness. (F&F, p. 88) Once a week, the teacher pulls his reading group, and they read round robin or chorally. I also observed him during read alouds, where he is very attentive and appears to have very good comprehension of the stories, as he is eager to share his generally spot-on insights, sometimes in complete sentences, sometimes not. I assessed him with numerous formal miscues, where I made notations on a text that I typed, and recorded some of these and replayed them for deeper analysis. I also did informal, over the shoulder miscues, shared reading, and we read a wordless picture book, which led into a writing endeavor. During the Mini-Case Study, I had performed a BPST for phonic awareness. For this Case Study, I also tested him on Dolch
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second and third grade list, and the next level of the Rigby Running Record, and an additional Running Record from the book Informal Reading Inventory. I also collected testing data from his teacher and Intervention teacher, consisting of his ALS test, HM sight words, and the previous Rigby test. In writing, I collected five samples, which included one about the Wordless picture book, a journal entry in a journal I had given to him, and writing samples from classes I subbed, including a summary of a class party that I participated in. I also had him write a letter, inspired by the second grade letters to cartoon characters. Although I noted some gaps in his reading and writing, none appear to me to be second language related. In speaking and listening, he is a fluent English speaker, and communicates freely in oral English, unlike some of the other English learners that are his equivalent on the CELDT. There is no discernible accent in his speech. He is not at a loss for words, and he is not trying to translate in his head something he knows in Spanish that he doesnt in English. His miscues seem to be more of a nature of lacking reading strategies, and his writing errors are typical for his age with regard to spelling and grammar. The only gray area for me is vocabulary. It is difficult to discern at second grade, whether some vocabulary would or would not be established. Coming from Spanish speaking only parents, he probably hasnt had exposure to the richest of vocabulary, and I am frankly used to the Roseland population vocabulary level in this grade. He seems on par with his peers. It all comes down to what children are exposed to, and primarily at home. There is clearly a deficit for him at home in English. This may also influence some of his grammar errors, as he has less practice and correct modeling of spoken English at home, and is solely dependent on the English speaking older sisters, who find him to be a somewhat annoying younger brother. (I interviewed Monce.) One interesting observation is that his oral grammar is better than his written grammar. My observations and assessments led me to recognize and confirm that Rodrigo clearly lacks reading strategies, although he does love to read, and doesnt seem to get discouraged. He will stare down a word for 15-20 seconds or more, waiting for it to come to him and trying to sound it out, but clearly losing any train of thought he had regarding making meaning of what he is reading. He chooses books because he likes the pictures, but he doesnt refer to those for meaning or context clues. He also has trouble with his long vowel words, especially CVCe words and double vowel digraphs. His long vowel miscues arent always the expected, however. For pine, he might say pane, not pin. At other times he does substitute the short vowel for the long. His miscues have high graphic similarity, and alter meaning less than half the time. He struggles with multi-syllabic words, and unfamiliar names and titles. He tends to leave off the endings of words; not attending to plurals or present and past tense suffixes, and is confused about ough and augh pattern words. His sight word recognition surprised me, as I didnt expect him to get as many of them as he did, based on how regular sight words can trip him up when he reads. However, he read almost all on a second grade Dolch list, and most on the third grade list. In writing, Rodrigo doesnt generally employ a topic sentence. He jumps right in and starts writing, without sufficient introduction as to what he is writing about or attending to his reading audience. His sentences are generally complete, with the exception of his starting many of them with And. His sense of sequence is very good, and he is capable of including good detail, but often just keeps to the minimum. He could use more transitional words at the beginning of sentences, as he currently is limited to And and Then as mid-paragraph sentence starters. He does not self-edit, but if asked to read his writing back to me, he did catch errors or omissions. Rodrigo is not a strong speller, but works words out phonetically in his own invented spelling. (It is his preference to ask for help on words that he knows he doesnt know, but for this study, I generally didnt offer help in this way. The exception was for the class party writing, where I did post requested words on the board for the class, as they were excited to get their message across correctly). His spelling attempts generally made sense. He is confused about irregular plurals, confusing man and men and writing mens when he meant mans. He is unclear about apostrophe use, but likes to throw them in there anyway, at least on one writing sample provided by his teacher. I
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dont know what preceded that writing, but his effort was populated with inappropriate apostrophes. (This is a particular sore spot for me, as we used to teach possessive apostrophes and contractions in second grade, but then were directed to stop, as it wasnt a second grade standard and wouldnt be on the STAR test. It is, however, introduced in first grade, and picked up again in third as a standard. In subbing third grade this year, I could see the learning gap from it having been dropped in second grade.) What I most appreciated about watching him write, was that he did so willingly, enthusiastically, and how he expressly prefers the room to be quiet so he can concentrate. He enjoys writing about things that happen in the classroom, and at home he writes on the kitchen table, but it can be busy and distracting. His dream writing spot would be in a tree house, but he doesnt have one (Burke Interview, April 2013). Student Work Samples Attached: Assessment & Instruction Summary Data Drafts (Miscue Analyses & Writing) Miscues Analyses (Formal & Informal) Writing Samples & Analyses Class Observation Notes Running Records BPST, ALS, Sight Words Burke Reading Survey Instruction and Next Steps Reading Strategies First and foremost, I have been trying to help him understand that when we read, the goal is to make meaning from it. I am getting him in the habit of doing a book walk first, to get the gist of the story before reading it. Then, if something he reads doesnt make sense, that he should reread it, think about what has happened in the story thus far, and make predictions and guesses. He does naturally make predictions; he just needed a little encouragement to take the risk. Guessing what word could go there to make sense is a bit harder for him. I would continue practicing this strategy in a guided fashion. I have already begun working with Rodrigo on using reading strategies other than sound it out, because as he has learned, that strategy doesnt always work. I made him an index card ring with each strategy on it, which he lost. I am making him a new one to take home for the summer. However, what has been most helpful are the on the spot mini-lessons that we have done during or just after a miscue analysis. As we reviewed parts that he wanted help with, I would offer a new strategy for him to try out before telling him the word. He learned that it was okay to look at the pictures; I dont think he felt like he had permission to do this previously. I have already noted a difference as he employs this strategy more often. We have also worked on chunking the word (especially the multi-syllabic words), and looking for word parts that he knows, (like the tion ending in commotion, which he could read in fraction and dictionary). Ive also encouraged him to read on and bounce back, learning from my mistake in telling him to skip words, (which he wouldnt come back to). After a first read, I also had him reread selections, sometimes the whole book, and without additional instruction, he was getting more of the words. The rereads also gave time for additional mini-lessons on whatever proved challenging for him. We have reviewed long vowel spellings and pronunciations, and I found a worksheet to reinforce the long vowel sounds that I would give to him. He is now getting more of those long vowel words, but I think he requires more complete teaching and review. He also is recognizing more ough and augh words in context, and
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realizes that those just dont sound out well, nor are they consistent (I shared with him the Ricky Ricardo clip, so he wouldnt feel bad about getting them confused ). To expand his sight words, I am providing him a word book, where he can add words as he goes along, and frequently used words in writing can be recorded in the book for his future reference. We have already come up with a list of words that he would like to learn and have access to. I would also like to create some CLOZE exercises for him, either formally (create a passage with just the first or first few letters of missing words, or informally, by covering words or word parts with sticky notes). He has been using some intonation when he reads phrases in quotation marks. I would continue to acknowledge when he does this, and encourage him to find the voices of the characters in the story. Finally, I plan to write (and get translated) a letter home, recapping what weve worked on together, highlighting the progress that he has made, and plead with his parents to get him a library card, and to make that a regular family outing. I will include an invitation to the Summer Reading Academy. Writing Strategies In writing, I didnt get a chance to do much instruction, as I ended up working the last few weeks and wasnt able to finish what I intended, after I had evaluated his writing samples. His next step is to learn how to write a topic sentence, and I would start by reviewing his writing samples and reworking them with a solid introduction to the topic, and highlight the one sample where he did that. I also think it would be valuable to show him the work of other students who have demonstrated what a topic sentence is, and allow him to see how it helps the reader understand the writing. I would teach him about not beginning sentences with And, as those sentences were ready to stand on their own without it. He also could use more detail, and I would show him where he did include it so he could appreciate what a difference it makes in the quality of the writing. Reviewing the format of a friendly letter would also be a next step. I might have him try again first, as I think the cartoon letter may have been off because of the picture box. They do friendly letters at school, so Im not sure I got a good assessment with that exercise. I found a structured format that would make a good lesson for review of the letter conventions. Apostrophes would also be a good thing to go over, as he isnt clear on how and where they come into play. In second grade, we made rainbow books with strips showing the two words that then folded into what the contraction looked like. He would enjoy making one of those and could use it for reference He also seemed a bit confused on irregular plurals, so I would review those. I know they covered them in class, but I dont know how he did with it. Apparently he didnt get some of the basics, and it may be more vocabulary based (mens/mans). Lastly, I would review his writings to see what he thinks of them and if he can find the places for improvement. I would praise him for his phonetic attempts, and he could add missed words to his word list. I assessed his writing using the highlighter method, and would share with him his strengths. It is my goal to do as much of this as I can during the final month of school. I hope to get him into the Summer Reading Academy, as well, to continue his literacy support over the summer!
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