Running record/miscue analysis for ELLs Blog #7

            I did a running record/miscue analysis on two different ELL students.  The first student was a Russian speaking Kindergartener who revealed that she relies on syntax while she is reading. Using the picture clues, and the first word of the sentence which was ‘I’ she made the sentences make sense. Her miscues affected the meaning of the patterned text she was reading but not only did she not realize that she was changing the meaning, she wasn’t getting enough from what she was reading to know she needed to correct it.  With every error she made she not once used a visual clue in the text to help her decode. 

            This student understands that print carries a message, and that she can use the pictures on the pages as clues for what she is reading.  She did not demonstrate voice print match while she was reading, and after watching her read, I am not sure she completely understands that letters make up words and those words make up a sentence.  I also wonder about this student’s phonemic awareness and phonics understanding.  She did not attend to the print and it makes me wonder if she knows to look at the beginning sounds of unknown words to help her decode. 

            My next teaching points will be to work on voice print match until this young reader is able to use it effectively.  One way to help students understand this concept is to read a simple sentence (three words long) to the student and ask the student to count the words as you read.  Next, I like to read the sentence again, and hold up a finger with each word I read, confirming or helping to correct the students answer.  Then I go back for a third time and we point to each of the words as we read them.  I have used transparent colored book tape (the removable kind) and covered each word in a sentence with a different color to help students see where one word stops and the next one starts.  We also talk about and find the spaces between words.  The other teaching point would be to make sure this student knows all of her letters and letter sounds and that she can isolate the beginning sounds in words.  She would benefit from instruction on using the first letter and letter sound with the picture to decode an unknown word. 

            The second student was a Spanish-speaking student who is also in Kindergarten.  This student had much more control over the print in the text.  He had voice print match and an understanding that words made up the sentences he was reading.  He used meaning and syntax and while he was reading as none of his errors fell into either of these categories.  All of the errors in his reading were visual ones, where he was able to use the pictures on the page as clues to the one word that was changing in the sentence.  The sentences all read ‘A (one word change) is big.’  The only words he got correct were the ones where he asked what the picture was.  Some of the errors were close to the picture clues for example he said boat for ship and fire truck for fire engine. In another of the sentences he read he said, “A ambulancia” is big.

            There are two different things that I see needing addressed here.  The first one is that I do not think this student had the vocabulary and background knowledge to know that boat can also be called a ship, or when he read ‘tractor’ for ‘bulldozer’, is bulldozer a word he knows?  If this is the cause for the errors, and I have a feeling that it was this student will need vocabulary enrichment before he can begin to decode these words.  The second teaching point, after making sure that this student has the necessary vocabulary and an understanding of letters and letter sounds, is to help him to use the first and even last sounds with the picture clues to help him decode the unknown words in the text.  There is no retell associated with a running record, and I wonder if this student understood that the items he was reading about in the book were ‘big’ and if he understood what the word big meant.