7—Running Record

As we worked on the running records, I realized how much additional information about the child adds to understanding and using the assessment.  Although Amani used visual clues, I am not sure how much he used meaning because I don’t know how much he understood of what he read.  I would love to hear his retell and hear him speak more so that I could get a better understanding of his accent and strengths in English. 

Some of the words that he missed may be because he has only partial understanding of the vocabulary.  My son (3 years old) often says a word close to the one he really wants to use or uses a different form of that word when he is learning new, longer words.  I wonder if Amani did the same thing with office for officer and farm for farmers.  He also said something like docducks for doctors and the way he repeated it made me think that he thought that was the right word or that he was trying to remember the right word.

            Since Amani did not use pictures very often, one teaching point would be to have him practice picture walks or creating pictures to call his attention to the pictures and teach him how to use the pictures to help him construct meaning.   He also seemed unsure of the vocabulary and would benefit from practice with occupation words, perhaps through flashcards or by acting the out the jobs.  He could also match the pictures or actions with the vocabulary words in the book.  Amani understands print concepts, follows the pattern of the story, applies some phonics skills, but needs lots of vocabulary and oral language practice to build up his English skills so that he can understand what he reads.  Maybe after practicing his retell, he then could try it with a peer or talk with peers about the topic of books before he reads them to build up his oral language skills.

Since Donna mentioned that Wendy has strong oral language skills, I wonder if she relied heavily on them while reading.  Some of her miscues such as substituting when I thought for even though, adding cents to $14.75, and her difficulty with put it on (and the text break) could be because she anticipated what might be in the text from the patterns she knows in spoken English.  I might explain that her strength in oral language helps her in reading and then brainstorm how reading and speaking are different as a precursor to teaching the skill of rereading for meaning and accuracy.  She could then chart her accuracy in reading and rereading stories.  I might model think alouds for her too so that she could then practice them with a partner and hopefully become more engaged in constructing meaning while she reads.

She struggled with the –ed ending, so could participate in a word study about –ed words.  Some of her vowels reflected Spanish pronunciation.  She said little with a long I, but seemed to pronounce other words with a short i sound correctly.  (I don’t remember because I marked all the words that I could understand as correct.)  If that is the case, I think that she would benefit more from learning other skills.  From my experiences learning a foreign language, focusing on minor pronunciation issues sometimes made me feel more self-conscious and hesitant to speak. 

I was also curious about the two times when Wendy reversed letters, was for saw in jigsaw and ur (turly) in truly.  I wonder how often she reverses letters and if that is something that significantly impacts her reading.