Entry #8: ELA Running Record & Analysis

MAZIN-
Mazin Z. came to the U.S. from Egypt when he was ten.  He’s been here for nearly five years, and Arabic is his first language.  His family still uses Arabic at home to communicate with his live-in grandparents.  Mazin’s parents have been learning English along with him for their family’s business.  In fact, he has been teaching his parents with what he has learned at school.  Mazin loves to read and write—Language Arts is his favorite subject.

     
Based on Mazin’s running record (a 111-word paragraph from Pearson’s United States History), it is clear to see that he has developed a strong command of the English language.  Of his seven errors, he was able to self-correct four, and he had an accuracy rate of 94%, placing him atop the instructional tier.  Most of his mistakes were visual, and his comprehension was strong because he self-corrected when the word he said didn’t make sense.  His pronunciation of “Ellington” as “Ellinjton” didn’t detract from the overall meaning of the reading, and he didn’t recognize any mispronunciation here because of words like “orange” or “strange,” which change the sound of the letter “g” to “j.”  He just missed the connection that a consonant following the "g" would lead to a "hard g" pronunciation.  The awkward spelling of the word “renaissance” was difficult for him, and he gave a great effort to visually break the word into appropriate letter-sound relationships.  Once I corrected him on pronunciation, he stumbled into the word again, and very quickly he was able to self-correct. 

      
Since Mazin’s first language is Arabic, there aren’t really any true relationships with English.  He has mastered a different alphabet and a new directionality when reading.  I can assume  Mazin was a very strong reader in Arabic as well since he’s become such a strong English learner and that he loves reading and writing on his own.

     
Instructionally, if Mazin were my student, I would approach subject matter like the Harlem Renaissance through direct teaching before exposing the students to a reading.  This audio reinforcement would have prevented the mispronunciation of “Ellington” and the explicit teaching would help him recognize the word “renaissance” as it is encountered.  Having a student approach new subject matter cold without any introduction or activation of prior knowledge would never be a strategy that I’d utilize with an English language learner. 

ANDRES -

Andres R. moved to the U.S. three years ago from Mexico.  He is the only member of his immediate family who speaks English, and he is not as academically motivated as Mazin, in part because he is not utilizing English much beyond the classroom.  In talking with his ELA teacher, Andres has the same problem there that he does in U.S. History: he doesn’t do homework assignments that extend and enrich his classroom learning experiences.  She said most of his friends are native Spanish speakers, and they jump into Spanish when they are out of class.  Learning English has been challenging for Andres, and this year, he is the only ELL student in my section of Teamed U.S. History. 

      
Andres read the same passage, 111 words from the tenth grade reading level history book.  He scored 89% accuracy (making this a hard reading for Andres), but his self-correction rate was very poor; of the twelve errors Andres made, he only corrected one on his own.  Andres’ mistakes were predominantly visual and meaning errors, and his rush to get through the reading didn’t demonstrate a personal reading priority of comprehension.  Being a difficult reading for Andres, I noticed that he was pushing to finish quickly and did not utilize his own decoding skills as often as he could in attempting a word.  He would begin, get frustrated, and wait for assistance on “experience,” the “1920s,” and “renaissance.”  I did think it was interesting that Andres read the decade reference, “1920s” as a numerical unit (one thousand, nine hundred, and twenty) instead of a year.  Again, this raised alarm with me that his comprehension of the material was very unclear. 

     
Andres made two structural mistakes in his reading; he pronounced “heard” as “hear-d,” and “flowering” as “flowing.”  Both of these mistakes did not take away from the overall meaning of the reading passage.  He simply began the word and rushed through too quickly to correctly pronounce “heard” and to notice that “flowing,” while it made sense, was not the word presented to him in the passage. 

     
With regards to language, Andres still incorporates elements of Spanish into his approach as an English reader.  In Spanish, each letter of the word is pronounced, and Andres had trouble blending sounds when letters were pronounced differently in English (demonstrated with his mispronunciation of “heard” and “culture.”  As he’s been learning English, it’s clear that Andres relies very much on his visual skills as a reader to get him through a reading.  But, in reading aloud to me during his study period, I think he was very nervous, and he read at a much more rapid rate than would be comfortable for him when working alone.  I think his objective was to finish as quickly as possible.  If Andres were to hear me read the same passage to him with the same mistakes he made, I’m sure he would recognize the mistakes.  His conversational English is much stronger than what I heard from him with this passage on the Harlem Renaissance, which has probably led me to a false impression of his English language reading abilities.

      
Going into this reading with no background knowledge definitely made the reading more difficult for Andres.  With this group of teamed students, we always explicitly instruct the material before they read or work independently.  Andres would absolutely benefit from direct instruction to build background knowledge, realia, some jazz music and a text of a less challenging level, such as our school’s American Nation textbook, which incorporates pronunciation guides, definitions imbedded in the text (instead of the margins)and strong visual cues.