Entry #7

The first running record I did was on a Spanish speaking student.  She was in first grade.  She read word by word for most of the reading.  She was very careful to make sure she used her strategies to figure out the words, although she did have a few miscues.  One miscue she made was she said childs instead of children.  She was using meaning, syntax, and visual cues to figure out this word.  This would be an error that relates to language because in Spanish a word that is plural just adds an s.  There are not words in Spanish that represent more than one like there are in English.  Another word she struggled with throughout the reading was wind.  She came across the word three times during the passage.  The first time she paused and then skipped right over it.  The second time she came across the word she said wide.  In this case she was using visual only.  Wide had nothing to do with meaning of the story and did not make sense in the sentence.  The last time she came across the word she said winde and then self corrected to say wind.  In this case she used all of the cuing systems to figure out that word.  A few times she left off endings.  For example she said mark instead of markers, and lift instead of lifted. In both cases she was only using visual because leaving off the endings did not made sense with meaning or sound right. Overall her accuracy was 95%.  For the most part I think she is developing a good understanding of the English language.   The next teaching points for her will be to talk about words that represent more than one like children, people, and mice compared to adding -s to the end of most words for plural.  Two other teaching points would be to look all of the way through a word, making sure to not leave off endings, (some lessons on different types of endings will be beneficial as well) and monitoring the sentence for meaning.

The second student I progress monitored was a student from Africa.  He is also a first grader.  He struggles with phonics  but is improving considering the amount of time he has lived in our country.  He does speak some English, but they also speak a tribal language as well.  This affects his pronunciation of certain sounds like th together and v.  When he says "the", it sounds like da, and a word like van sounds like ban.  This is something to  consider when doing a running record because it may sound like he is saying the wrong word, but it is actually how he says it with his accent.  As he read, he did struggle with some words and often would look at me to give the word.  My first teaching point from this running record would be to really hit a combination of phonics skills as well as reading strategies like looking for parts in unknown words, etc.   He relies mainly on sight word vocabulary and so if it was a word he knew, he read right through it.  He also did this when the words and pictures matched.  When he came across words like anyone, walked, alone, and boots he looked at me and waited. I noticed that there were not pictures to represent these words exactly so he did not know what to do.   I said what can you do to figure it out?  He wasn't sure.  A few times he attempted to figure out a word.  For example, he got to the word wrong and said wr...ng, but for some reason had a hard time putting the vowel in there.  He does know  o" though.  Here he was using visual.  One thing that he may still be developing is comprehension of the language, which would affect his ability to use meaning and syntax.  A word I thought he would for sure struggle with was"thought".  Although he did not get the word correct, he said the ou with the "ouch" brother sounds.  He was using visual only again, because "thought" is not a word. I do think that he has some language/background experience issues that may impede his ability at this time to use meaning and syntax.  If the picture matches what he is reading he is able to read the sentence quite well.  Another teaching point I would work on with him is building background knowledge.  I think this would help him to be able to use meaning.  As his understanding of English improves, he will be able to develop his skill for using syntax.  I can help this along by modeling,  making sure words we choose sound right.