ELL Case Study

Conversation with the teacher:

The teacher that I worked with was very eager to share her teaching experience with me. She works with many ELLs and she is very sensitive to their needs. She believes that a teacher needs to use very practical, and useful material when teaching ELLs. They need the chance to see for themselves how the new language (English) is used. They like to see it acted out and need to practice it themselves. It speaks to them more when they are reading high interest material. This teacher is able to get her students motivated and eager to do their work because of her attitude toward these students.

She believes that a student's family can help the child to learn English by encouraging him/her to read English books and speak in the English when possible. Having appropriate reading material available is important. Books on tapes is good for these students too, as well as going to English plays and other performances in English.

She believes that the difficulties that ELLs have in school is their spelling and grammar errors which can occur frequently. They don't usually like to read orally and they often have poor writing skills. These students need strong motivation to to keep putting effort into learning the language.

The teacher finds that many of the books that she uses for students to read from have stories and pictures of all types of backgrounds and cultures. This helps students to understand cultures different from their own and students from different cultures enjoy reading the stories about people similar to themselves. She believes that it is important to do research and find out about the different cultures of the students in the class. Find out what is interesting to them and give them what they appreciate. An effective teacher shows the students that she is interested in what the students are interested in. Teachers don't need to get involved in the religion and cultures of their students but it is important for them not to expose the students to something if the family does not want. If there is a special holiday, teachers can do something special to show the importance of and to support the students' culture.

The teacher believes in real language experiences - activities such as reader's theater, songs, visual aids, and all kinds of hands-on activities to get ELLs really motivated and excited about their learning.

The student's writing:

Tiffany is in second grade and she is learning how to read and write in English. She she reads on a first grade level and writes on a kindergarten level. I observed her practicing her long vowel sounds, consonant blends, reading many stories and doing some writing activities. She understand the stories that she reads because her comprehension level is very good compared to her reading level. Her handwriting is very nice because she puts in the effort to make her teacher proud. She likes reading stories but especially when she finds them relevant and meaningful.

Tiffany was not able/willing to come up with an idea of her own to write about. Even the topics that were given were not enough to create a story in her mind. What we did instead was gave her a visual story (picture cards) to put into sequence, guess what the ending would be, and then to write the story. She started off with discussing what she saw in the pictures and deciding the order of the story (prewriting). Then she wrote a first draft. It was the basics. No fancy words or extra explanations. The words were there, but they were not spelled correctly. In order to know what she wrote, I needed to have seen the story myself. It was a good first draft for an ELL on her level. Then the teacher would read it over with her. The teacher could read it first and then the student could read it. When the student reads it, she realizes her mistakes and think about what needs to be improved. Then she writes it again with correct spelling and better grammar usage looking up correct spelling and asking herself/peers/teacher about better grammar. She doesn't necessarily hear anything wrong with the grammar that she used so the teacher can point out the problem. Then the teacher would work with her to embellish it with adjectives, better verbs, etc. And then she would write her final draft.

The teacher used this kind of visual story for the ELL because the student didn't have to think of an idea on her own. She was able to see the story in front of her yet she still wrote the story on her own. She enjoyed the sequencing activity and it wasn't too difficult either. This was an excellent writing prompt for her.

Evaluation of writing (based on Solom and NYS Standards writing matrix):

Tiffany is in the high level for beginning-level in reading and writing. She can read common words and sound out some words that are not familiar. She can figure out what some words mean based on context clues. She can look back in the story to find information to answer questions and to make clarifications. When prompted, she can make references to previous knowledge and make connections.

When she writes, she has limited self expression. It is much easier for her to write about something that she read or was told about. She can make sentences, yet her vocabulary is very simple and there are many spelling and grammatical errors. She writes a sentence first by thinking out loud what she will write and then she writes it in the way that she thinks is correct.

According to the SOLOM matrix, Tiffany can comprehend at level 4 – she understands almost everything that is said at normal speed, although sometimes repetition is necessary. Her fluency is level 4 also – she can can speak fluently although she does occasionally think of the correct word or expression to use. Her vocabulary is also at level 4 – she sometimes needs to rephrase what she said because she realizes that it wasn't said correctly. Her pronunciation is at level four too – she can always be understood, but sometimes she mispronounces words as she reads or talks. Lastly, her grammar is at level 4 – on occasion, she makes grammar mistakes, but they don't change the meaning of what she wants to say.

Culturally responsive strategies:

The student preferred not to write about specific topics because of what she is taught at home. She was not comfortable to write about some experiences because she felt they were not fit to be shared or brought back bad or sad memories. The teacher accommodated her wishes and we respected her preferences and gave her material that she knew that she would enjoy more and not become offended and she was able to write about a different topic that she did enjoy.

Reflections:

It was amazing to see how much effort Tiffany puts into her learning. She liked working on the stories and other activities that were fun, but she didn't enjoy the assignment that seemed too daunting. Watching her reading skills slowly improve was a big learning experience for me. Reading assignments and other work that she had originally complained about, she had begun to do with enthusiasm.

I enjoyed this school-university partnership. I think that it was beneficial for both sides. I learned a lot about teaching ELLs and the student gained by having a personal coach at her side, cheering her on. I think she was more motivated while I was there because she wanted to impress me. I'm glad I had this opportunity to work with this ELL and I look forward to helping many of my own ELLs in my own classroom.

DIBELS Assessment Report

There are many assessment tools that can be used to identify students at risk and give teachers an idea of what they can do to help each student become better readers. We have recently learned about two such tests, the QRI-5 and DIBELS.

QRI-5

The first exercise of the QRI-5 is a word list to consider at which grade level the student can read. Then the student is assigned a passage at that grade level. The student will answer some concept questions, predict what the story will be about, read the passage, retell the story, and then answer recall questions.

DIBELS

The DIBELS assessment determines if the student has mastered the basic skills needed for reading. The student takes a series of tests to evaluate if he/she has good phoneme skills, alphabetic awareness, ans oral fluency. For the first test, the student says which letter sound the pictures shown start with. In the second test, the student breaks apart a word into its phonemes. The next test has the student orally read a passage and the last test has the student retell about what they have read.

Compare/Contrast

These two assessment differ in the way that they are presented to the students. The QRI-5 is a sequence test in which the student is focused on one topic throughout the assessment. DIBELS has different parts to it and the student uses different examples for each part of the assessment. Both of these tests, though, are informal ways of testing students to determine the level of reading skills of each student.

Instructional Planning

A teacher can use these assessments to ascertain the level that the class can read and understand what they are reading. In a any given class, there will be students at different reading levels. Using these assessments, teachers can give slightly different assignments to the students to help them with exactly what they need to succeed. Sometimes a student could pretend to be a better reader than he/she actually is. These assessments will clarify many misconceptions that teachers may have about the level of the students. These assessments can benefit students by making sure that they get the help they may need and making sure that they are progressing throughout the school year.

QRI-5 Assessment Report

I administered the QRI-5 to a second grade student living in Israel. She speaks English as her first language yet she is learning how to read and write English through private lessons. I first gave her the primer word list to read, but I saw that it was too difficult for her. She read the pre-primer 3 word list with 3 miscues. I did a practice assessment using a pre-primer 3 story and it was clearly on her independent level for reading and comprehension. The next time I saw her (2 days later) I gave her the primer word list again and she read many words that she had not gotten correct the first time. Although she scored below the accepted level, I gave her a primer story to read and she did well enough to be on the instructional level for primer.

The story we read was “A Trip”. She scored a 66% on the concept questions so I knew that she would not have too much trouble understanding the story. She included 2 ideas in the prediction of the story. She made 10 miscues but only 5 were meaning-change or non corrected. Her rate was 82 WPM and her correct WPM was 75. She was able to retell 11/22 ideas. She retold most of the important information leaving out only the details, so it could be that she thought she was supposed to summarize the passage, which she did well. She retold the story in the correct order. She answered all of the retelling questions correctly, so I knew that she understood what she read. I was proud of her success. Although she has trouble reading some sights words, I think that she is on the primer instructional level.

I would give her a lesson about irregularly spelled words. She will practice reading and writing “sight words”. These are words that are too hard to pronounce but they are used frequently so it is important for students to know how to read them just by looking at them. The students will practice the sight words that are appropriate for their grade level to know. This lesson will incorporate technology and teach sight words in a fun, engaging way. This lesson can be used regularly to help students practice their sight word vocabulary. Students will engage in this lesson specifically before they will be reading texts that will use such sight words.

Lesson Plan:

1. Students will learn knew words that are irregularly spelled (sight words)

2. Students will write the words and put them up on the word wall so they can be easily accessible at all times

3. Students will practice using these new words by writing sentences with them and reading them out loud

4. Students will do activity using the Sight Words with Samson Web site. The students can play this game in teams. Teams of four might be the ideal size for this activity. Try to blend ability levels within the teams. Students from each team will take turns spelling the given word. The team scores a point if the word is spelled correctly. The team with the most points at the end of the time period is the winning team.

NY- New York State Standards

- Subject: English Language Arts

- Learning Standard 1 : Language for Information and Understanding

Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and understanding.

As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information.

- Level: Elementary

- Key Idea: Listening and Reading

Performance Indicator:

make appropriate and effective use of strategies to construct meaning from print, such as prior knowledge about a subject, structural and context clues, and an understanding of letter-sound relationships to decode difficult words

The second student that I administered the QRI-5 to was a 9^th grader living in Israel. English is her first language, but I thought that she would be below grade level in writing and reading English because the English language is not a focus in her school. They learn English as a second language starting from 4^th grade. I was wrong; this 9^th grader read like a high school student who lives in an English-speaking country. I was really impressed with her reading skills.

I began with the upper middle school reading list. When she got 18 out of twenty words correct, I gave her the high school word list to read. She was able to read all of the words but she mispronounced three of them, putting her in the instructional level for high school reading. She read the first part of “Where are the Ashes”. She was only 40% familiar with the concepts that I asked her, so I thought she might have a little trouble understanding the story. She read the story really well with only 4 miscues out of 707 words. She read about 170 WPM. She only recalled about 7 out of 45 ideas. She knew 6 out of 10 retelling questions. She knew part of the details of two more questions.

I think that if we would have stopped to talk about it as we went along then she would have remembered more details after she finished reading the story. She didn't look back to answer any questions but I'm sure that if she did she would have scored much higher. I would still put her on the instructional level for high school reading. If I were her teacher, I would have her research the topic before reading a story like this. When students know about what happened during a specific period of time in a given place, then they'll have an easier time understanding this kind of story.

I planned a lesson on vocabulary because although she was able to read all of the words from the word list, she mispronounced them because she didn't know what they meant. Knowing the meanings of key words in a story could make a big difference in how well the student understands what she is reading.

Lesson Plan:

1. Students receive word list of new vocabulary words
2. Students are assigned two words to create “posters” on the computer
3. Posters must include the word, definition, picture/symbol clearly showing an understanding of the word's meaning, sentence to explain the word and they must look neat and attractive
4. Students will share their presentations with the class and hang them up to decorate the classroom
5. After students have reviewed each others work, they will take a quiz on the new vocabulary words

Standards:

NY- New York State Standards

Subject: English Language Arts

Learning Standard 1 : Language for Information and Understanding

Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and understanding.

As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information.

Level: Intermediate

Key Idea: Listening and Reading

produce a summary of the information about a famous person found in a biography, encyclopedia, and textbook
- use facts and data from news articles and television reports in an oral report on a current event
- compile a bibliography of sources that are used in a research project
- take notes that record the main ideas and most significant supporting details of a lecture or speech.

Performance Indicator:

Interpret and analyze information from textbooks and nonfiction books for young adults, as well as reference materials, audio and media presentations, oral interviews, graphs, charts, diagrams, and electronic data bases intended for a general audience.

Performance Indicator:

Relate new information to prior knowledge and experience.

Performance Indicator:

Understand and use the text features that make information accessible and usable, such as format, sequence, level of diction, and relevance of details

Week 7

Assignment 1:

• How did the kindergarten teachers, Sheila Owens and John Sinnett, incorporate elements of emergent literacy in their lessons? Which elements were the primary focus of the lessons? 

They used their classroom as a resource so that students could see and make use of all of the letters and words around them. Sinnett told his students to use their eyes, ears and mouth and get ready to listen. He used fill in blanks to get the students to think about the reading.

• What part did oral language play in both classrooms? 

The students shared their thoughts, answers, and sentences aloud. The students applauded each other for their work.

• How did each teacher use the Word Wall to support word study? 

Owens used the word wall for the students to create sentences. Sinnett used the word wall to fill in blanks in a shared reading passage.

• What were examples of planned, explicit instruction in these excerpts? What were examples of opportunistic instruction? 

The directions were clear. The students knew what was expected of them. The teacher asked what can we write here, or think about what would fit best here. The teachers gave appropriate instruction for all students to benefit on their level.

• Both kindergarten teachers used whole-class instruction for their word study lessons. How did it meet the needs of all students? 

Students were given time to think about the answer. The teacher didn't call on any student right away, rather all of the students had the opportunity to think and come up with an answer on their own. Students were given encouragement to succeed and encouraged each other too.

Assignment#2 After viewing the first-grade and first- and second-grade classes, answer these questions:

• How did Charmon Evans and Shari Frost differ in their phonics instruction? Why do you think they used different approaches? 

Evans gave her students the words and they read it. Frost gave her students the opportunity to share words that they had in mind. The reason for this difference is probably because Evans had a special group that needed additional assistance, while Frost's class was able to preform higher level tasks.

• Which principles of phonics instruction were illustrated in these classroom lessons? 

The teacher introduced the 'a' consonant 'e' before reading the story so the students would be familiar with the words when they would come across them. The teachers wrote or let the students think of all the rhyming words, changing the first letter to make a new word.

• Which lessons seemed to promote more student engagement and motivation? 

I enjoyed Frost's lesson better because she used a visual aid that all of the students were familiar as the example word. The students were more engaged because they needed to come up with the words by themselves which made them think more.

• Shari Frost used her "Poem of the Week" and Becky Pursley used her "Readers Theater activities" to practice reading accuracy and fluency. How did student performance in the two activities differ? How would you assess the reading fluency of students performing Readers Theater based on the three stages of fluency? 

The class that read the poem of the week read it as a class while the group that performed the readers theater read their parts individually and everyone else listened. Assessing students could be done by evaluating how well they can read the sight words, how fast they can reading, and whether or not they know when it's their turn to read.

• What other activities have you planned to promote reading fluency?

Students can read and reread a selection to practice familiar texts until they can read it quickly and accurately. Then they can draw a picture about what they read.

Assignment#3 Practice QRI-5 with a child. Briefly summarize your experience and analyze the data you collected.

I practiced the QRI5 on a second grade student. I started with a primer word list. I let her go through the entire list although she missed many words. Then I gave her the pre-primer 3 word list and she got 16 out of 20 words correct. I realized that this was her instructional level, so I gave her a pre-primer passage to read. She read it very well. She only missed a few words that she was able to self correct based on the meaning of the passage. She answered all of the questions correctly. When I spoke to her teacher afterword and I told her that it seems like she is on a higher level than I was able to see based on the word list, she told me that reading sight words is not a strong point for her, and I agree with her. So although her comprehension skills are strong, she can't go to a higher level of reading because she will probably get stuck on too many words.

Week 6

Task 1:

-print awareness

It was fun to take the tests to see how much a understood about print awareness. Thankfully, I did better on the post test than I dis on the pretest. It was amazing to watch Mera spell her own name and to go shopping with her mother. It really looked like she understand the connection between the items on the list and the things that they were buying. This was especially interesting for me because I have a daughter about this age and if I would focus on showing her printed things and the parts of a book, she could be that much more prepared for reading. There are many opportunities that can arise during the day to show my daughter about print and it will be to her benefit if I take advantage of these opportunities.

-the sounds of speech

Once we know how to read, write, and spell, we take for granted the fact that each speech sound must be heard and identified in order to properly understand what is being spoken. Students who don't speak English as their first language or who have slight hearing problems may not hear the difference between spoken sounds. Some students can hear the difference but are not able to articulate it. Phonemes are speech sounds. Students need to know the difference between phonemes and letters in order to read successfully and they need to recognize the connection between the letters and phonemes.

-phonemic awareness

The ability to pick out sounds in spoken language is directly related to understanding how to read. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and identify different sounds in particular words. When a child knows that sounds make up words and when you change the sound, a new word will emerge, then he is ready to read. There are many activities that teachers can do with students to develop their phonemic awareness. Some activities include changing letters to form new words, isolating sounds in a given word, and blending a few sounds to make a word. Students usually enjoy these activities and at the same time they are learning vital skills. I enjoyed taking the tests; I found them informative, while challenging myself to think.

-phonics

Students must understand the relationship between sounds and the written letters that make these sounds. Phonics is the understanding that there is a clear, logical and predictable way to know which specific written letters make their specific sounds. This is generally taught in Kindergarten or first grade with explicit and systematic instruction. Explicit instruction is precise instruction for learning letter-sound relationships and systematic instruction is teaching about this in a logical and organized sequence.

Task 2: Mary read the first reading list with 90% accuracy, resulting in independent reading level. She read the level two word list with 80% accuracy which is on the instructional reading level. Examining students' reading levels by using these word lists, helps the examiner understand the level that which the students should begin. We were able to see that Mary needed to begin with level two because that is where she can read on the instructional level.

Week 5

Assignment 1: The student was able to correctly read 18 out of 20 words from the word list. This means that level 1 word list was on the independent level.

Assignment 2: For this word list, the student knew 16 out of 20 words correctly. This means that level 2 word list was on the instructional level for her.

Assignment 3: The student read about 4 words from the level 3 word list. This word list is on the frustration level. The examiner did not make her continue to try to read the rest of the words on the list because it was obvious that it was too difficult.

Week Four: Assignment Three

      The QRI5 is an informal assessment given to students to determine the level of a student and to assess the different types of texts that a student can read and the different ways a student can read and understand. The assessment includes reading (orally or silently), retelling the story and answering questions. The passages that are selected to be read are specifically chosen for each student at their grade level. The assessment will determine if the text is at the independent, instructional, or frustration level in comprehension and word recognition for the student.