Entry #8 Running Record/Miscue Analysis

A running record was conducted on a second grade ELL with Spanish as her native language. Of 37 total words, she made 2 errors related to meaning, 2 errors related to syntax, and 2 errors related to visual cues.  I found it interesting that she made the same amount of miscues in all three areas. Although I could hear her Spanish accent in the intonation of her voice at times appropriate to Spanish and not necessarily English, her errors were not necessarily related to Spanish being her native language.

The two errors in meaning were corrected when the student was asked to sound out the first letters of the word; she was able to produce both beginning sounds correctly.

The two errors in syntax came at the end of the sentence, next to the end punctuation.

The two errors in visual cues were words next to each other that were mixed up, but not in the usual way of her first language, Spanish.

The next teaching points should involve practicing fluency. She used correct inflection on 1 of 2 question marks and it sounded like a couple of sentences with periods were left out. One of the problems might have been that the passage was set up like a 7 lined poem. Next lessons could involve poetry and fluency and what the beginning and end of lines sound like. Because her reading was slow, it might have influenced her comprehension.

Strategies for next steps might include modeling fluency and perhaps audio versions of the reading. She could read along as the audio read aloud. Activities before, during and after reading would be helpful. Activities such as predicting from the title, sequencing illustrations, and summarizing (Gibbons, 2002) in order to activate prior knowledge and gain comprehension. She would also benefit from learning text structure and the nature of poetry. She could use an advanced organizer with a non-linguistic representations for the vocabulary in the passage (Hill & Flynn, 2006).

References

Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Hill, J., & Flynn, K.M. (2006). Classroom instruction that works with English language learners. Alexandria, VI: ASCD.