Week 4: Running Record/Miscue Analysis (Entry #7)

     In conducting the running records this week, I found that a child's first language plays a part but more due to vocabulary and the lack of background knowledge.  
     The first child I had read to me was a kindergartener.  This student speaks Turkish at home; however, he is pretty fluent in English and reads at a mid to end of year first grade reading level.   He read a book called Grasshopper's Gross Lunch (DRA 14).  He read this book with 94% accuracy at a 1:16 error rate and a 1:12 self-correction rate.  He had trouble with different tenses of the word "graze." In these instances, I saw the errors as "Meaning" and "Syntax."  He pronounced the "a" as a short vowel.  This seems to be a word he was not familiar with, so preteaching vocabulary would be a useful strategy.  
     Another, interesting error happened near the end of the story.  He had been reading the word "Grasshopper" just fine up until the end he said, "Grass-shopper."  To which he commented, "Ha, that's funny a grass-shopper."  Thus, he didn't realize it was the same "grasshopper" he had been reading all along.  In speaking with this young reader, I asked him how he learned to read.  He said he taught himself to read.  Verifying with the teacher, the parents expressed to her that in fact one day when they were looking at books he started to read.  This student has not yet been taught digraphs, and for him to read the "sh" is quite interesting.  A teaching point for this student would be to look at compound words and syllables.  I would also review digraphs.  Although he is reading at a first grade instructional level, he is missing some key foundational phonic principles. These concepts still need to be taught to him to give him a strong base for future reading.
     The second running record was on a Spanish speaking kindergarten girl.  She read two books to me from her "Book Bag."  The first she was pretty familiar with and read at a 90% accuracy rate.  The miscues made were on the proper name, "Mark" and she read "cars" for "carts" and "be/p/p" for "pass."  To help with this confusion, this student could still use practice with letter recognition, especially "b,p,d."  
      I had her read another story that she wasn't so familiar with that she read at a 77% accuracy rate.  This was a 1:4 error rate with zero self corrections.  Most of the miscues on this read were for "Meaning" and "Syntax."  She did well with getting the first sound of the words she missed but seemed to guess or wanted to give up on the rest of the word.  For example, she read: "time" for "team,"  "names" for "needs," "ch/ee" for "they," and "bi/bits/bit" for "boat." She would consistently go back and reread to try to help her figure out the word, but didn't seem to notice that it didn't make sense.  Her next teaching point would be to read through the word she doesn't know to see if by "leap frog" she can figure it out.  I would want to teach her to stop and ask herself, "Did that make sense?"  I would also continue to work with double vowels, as in the Spanish language this concept doesn't exist.  So, teaching her these rules would help as she seemed to get stuck every time two vowels were present.  Thus, I would count this as a "Visual" cue as well.  This would help as she clearly got stuck and wanted to give up after getting the first sound of these words. Knowing this about the Spanish language is definitely beneficial to the teacher as the "Visual" miscue may be overlooked.
     I think that it is important that the background knowledge is given for our ELL students and younger students.  Words that we take for granted may not be known words.  It is important to be constantly checking for understanding and helping our students build the vocabulary needed to comprehend the text.  I think an extra challenge for ELL students is also syntax, because if they are not used to speaking the language, they are unaware if something "sounds right" or not.  We cannot fix what we don't realize is wrong.  To help with this I think conversing and reading aloud are the best ways to combat this problem; thus, giving students as much exposure as possible.