Observation Update

I have found placement for my observation just in the nick of time. I met with the ESL teacher at an elementary school in the Syosset school district and she helped to identify a student for my case study. The student I will conduct my case study on is a 4th grade student from Japan who is considered a fairly advanced ESL student. My case study (I will call her Jane) is a quiet girl who arrived in the U.S. when she was in the second grade. Jane had no English language skills at this time, and the school did not receive any prior academic history from Jane's previous school in Japan. Jane plays the violin and is a good student. She has strong skills in reading and comprehension, especially with the aid of look-backs. However, the student needs to improve on her writing skills. For example, Jane has trouble with articles such as a, is/are, has/have. A language difference between English and Japanese is that in Japanese, they do not add an "s" onto words. This is one main language difference between the cultures that should be addressed.

I have arranged to get copies of Jane's work and observe Jane in the classroom as well as in the ESL setting. For the most part, the ESL teacher provides a pull-out method of instruction, collaborating with the classroom teacher on specific curriculum.

While the school does not specifically use the QRI 5 to conduct assessments, the ESL teacher did have a folder on each of the ESL students which contained a variety of assessments and writing samples. There were assessments for vocabulary, comprehension and so on. So, they had a folder containing various samples of the student's work, used as an informal way of measuring the student's literacy (informal reading inventory). Once I opened the QRI book and showed the ESL teacher some of the reading passages and comprehension questions, she was interested to learn more about the QRI-5 and the types of reading selections available.