Overview

Danny is an older 3rd grade student, but small for his age. He had two years in
Kindergarten. On his most recent Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), Danny scored a 48. Up
until this point, his scores have remained constant at a Beginning Reader (BR). He is being fast-
traced to receive Special Education services in addition to two separate hour-long pull-out
English Language Acquisition Program (ELAP) services daily. Danny just received glasses, but
only wears them for reading. In his mind, reading is just when he is reading a book. It does not
include times when writing or solving math questions on paper, because to him, it is not reading.
He is mostly willing to work, but because of his low reading level, has difficulty completing
tasks independently.
Danny is one of four children the eldest is in high school and acts as a translator for the
parents. His parents have extremely limited spoken English. Spanish is the language spoken at
home. He talks often of El Salvador, where his parents were born and raised, but all four
children were born in Alaska.
Danny does not like to independent read. Because of his low lexile level (SRI), Danny
views books in his range as little kid books. He is very interested in the highly popular Who
Would Win? collection (an informational series of books comparing two animals and determining
the victor between the two). However, these books have an average lexile of 700, making these
books well out of Dannys independent reading range. His oral comprehension of the book
demonstrated a solid understanding of the material (a reading quiz to accompany the book
yielded a score of 8 out of 10 correct).
Writing is laborious for Danny. He has to sound out most words. When writing, he looks
to the teacher to spell most words. However, on a Words Their Way Elementary Spelling
Inventory, he scored in the Late Within Words to Early Syllables and Affixes, more specifically,
inflected endings. He does not have any literacy skills in Spanish.
Lessons
Lessons for working with Danny were pulled from district-provided curriculum and
resources. Materials were pulled from the Lindamood-Bell Seeing Stars symbol imagery
program and from the district literacy consultant. Danny has experience with the symbol
imagery program and has been in the district since kindergarten, so he has been exposed to
grade-appropriate components of the literacy consultant. This consists of various thinking charts
(graphic organizers) for students to use. Third grade is when 2-column notes are introduced, so
some time was spent addressing this skill.
My district, along with the Lindamood-Bell program, view that students need to be able
to hold (visually) letters in their head and manipulate the letters within words. Symbol imagery
(SI) is the ability to create mental imagery for the sounds and letters within words. It develops
both phonological and orthographic processing, which helps develop word attack, word
recognition, spelling, and accurate, fluent contextual reading.
 Based on the adoptions made by the district as suggested by our literacy consultant,
students are exposed to various thinking charts and supports for a systematic approach to using
text-based evidence in reading comprehension. The consultant, Yolanda Westenberg, designed
the writing curriculum that my district uses. Grade levels are progressively shown thinking
charts most thinking charts build upon one another. In third grade, 2-column notes and
sentence mastery is introduced. This area was focused on in the lesson to serve as the writing
piece as well as preteaching Danny the skill of using 2-column notes.
Lessons consisted of a progression for both SI and the writing. I first tested Danny on a
sight word list of the most common high frequency list, as compiled by Lindamood-Bell. 10
sight words were collected at a time any word that was mispronounced was marked and
collected into the Slow section. Each time Danny and I met, we took out those cards and
practiced. Words that were pronounced correctly moved onto the next section (Medium, Fast,
and Graduated). Each time a word was mispronounced it went to the previous section.
because they no longer have to focus significant amounts of attention on word recognition, these
students are better able to consider phrasingallows readers to deal with the meaning of text
rather than simply concentrating on the surface features, (Helman p. 184).
Because of Dannys score on the Words Their Way spelling inventory, I pulled out the
corresponding card set from Lindamood-Bell, which was inflected endings. Most of our time on
this portion of the lesson plan was spent on ed and es words. This proved challenging for
Danny, as Spanish does not have these endings. This is where we focused for the SI piece.
After the sight words and SI, equal time was spent on reading, writing, and
speaking/listening. First, I pulled a high-interest article from ReadWorks to practice reading in
context. This article would be used in in latter sessions. We read through the article, then went
back and pulled important information for note taking. Then we turned the notes into a
paragraph. Later, the paragraph was read orally and recorded to help build fluency.
Reflections
Danny is familiar with the Lindamood-Bell Seeing Stars program. In isolation, he can
correctly identify the sounds and rules. However, in contextual reading, Danny does not apply
his skills. Danny also does not like airwriting. He is reluctant to airwrite, but there is a
noticeable difference in his imagery when he airwrites versus when he does not. If he airwrites,
he can hold words in his head longer and has more success in the manipulation of the word. If
he does not airwrite, he loses the letters he just said out loud and has trouble remembering what
he just read.
Because Danny has many hits daily with Seeing Stars, I also had Danny complete a word
sort. It was included to help visually recognize the different patterns in words. I did not want
him to get burned out on this stage, and Helman stated, engage students in learning and
practicing phonics skills through purposeful and active lessons, such as those in hands-on sorts
and games (p. 173).
Danny is inconsistent in his ability to correctly identify inflected endings. I attribute this
to the lack of these endings in Spanish. After the original introduction of inflected endings, I had
planned to also incorporate double consonant endings as well, as this was another area on the
Words Their Way inventory where Danny showed some gaps. However, after seeing his
difficulty with ed and es, I chose to wait to introduce those endings. It will serve as a starting
point for a later date.
The last lesson in particular caused great excitement with Danny. He did not complain
about using the same text again, as is his usual, which I surmised that it was reading his work,
not just rereading the text. He enjoyed using the iPad to record himself reading (adapted from Fu
text, Chapter 6). After coaching and practicing, Danny remarked (about his reading), Thats
me? I didnt know I could say it like that! He was extremely proud of his accomplishment and
eager to continue working even past the time for our lesson.
Learnings
In both Fu and Helmans texts, it was mentioned repeatedly to encourage students to use
their L1 in an academic setting, especially in writing. Students who do not have literacy skills in
L1 should be treated then in English, and allowed the same developmental opportunities that
native English speakers experienced. Danny does not have any literacy skills in his native
language of Spanish. It was more difficult to apply the text to Danny, because his education has
never been interrupted, but he has no L1 reading or writing ability.
Danny has been in an Alaska public school since his first day of school, five years ago.
Danny has been chronically low in academics, lower than other ELL peers in his grade level with
similar years of schooling. As such, Danny is at risk of becoming a long-term English Learner.
According to a chart in the Helman text, [Danny] is able to use English for everyday purposes,
but lacks vocabulary and/or syntactic knowledge to fully participate in academic tasks; is
struggling with English literacy; and may show signs of being disengaged in school may
default to one-word or short response when asked about or participating in academic tasks,
(Helman, p. 46).
With Dannys consistent struggles in reading and writing, the ELAP teacher, parents, and
myself pushed to have Danny screened for Special Education (SpEd) services. An older sibling
received SpEd services, and we as a team are concerned about the lack of progress that Danny
has shown, especially with some intensive interventions in place. One observation about the
texts was that there was no section to cover ELL students who might also be potentially dual-
identified as SpEd. While this is the minority to be sure, it would have been advantageous to
show some differences between Learning Disabilities (LD) and ELL.
His scores amongst various things are inconsistent and all over the place. The Words
Their Way spelling inventory administered placed Danny in the Late Within Words to Early
Syllables and Affixes stage. His most recent SRI score showed 48, after scoring repeatedly as a
BR, (too low to receive a score). After closer examination of the text, I noticed a scenario that
was very similar to Danny; the case of Isabel (Helman text, chapter 5). This case presented
many aspects that were comparable to Danny, and I feel confident in saying that Danny is a late
Beginning Reader to a very early Transitional Reader.
 Danny hates rereading texts, but it was cited multiple times in both texts that repeated
readings help increase fluency. Because we had spent so much time on one article in our lessons,
Danny became quite fluent at reading that article. With the focus of one lesson solely on
increasing fluency (the recording and listening on the ipad), it was quite clear that repeated
exposure to text increases fluency. When Danny recorded himself and then listened to his
recording, he was successful in demonstrating (closer to) correct fluency. His normal academic
speaking rate is disjointed and in short two-three word phrases, but in conversational speaking,
his phrasing is much more smooth and natural. At the end of the session, it was exciting for both
him and me to hear the difference. By becoming aware of what he sounded like, he was able to
adjust to create a more pleasing and effective reading rate.
Upon reflection, I did not spend enough instruction time on vocabulary. The only
vocabulary instruction occurred during our reading of the article. Chapter 10 of the Helman text
spoke of choosing text rich in vocabulary the article that was used was not as rich as it could
have been. Vocabulary words were chosen based on two criteria Is it central to understanding
the text, and is it used frequently in the text? (Helman, p. 238). This will be an area that I will
need to continue to develop.
Resources
Fu, D. (2009). Writing Between Languages: How English Language Learners Make the
Transition to Fluency, Grades 4-12. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Helman, L. (2016). Literacy development with English learners: research-based instruction in
grades K-6. New York: Guilford Press.