Week 4 Assignment #2 - Interview Transcript

FYI - I just secured my observation on Thursday before the winter break and was focused more on identifying my case study student. I will complete this interview assignment next week when schools are back in session.

Reflection on Podcast

Reflection on podcast:

Understanding the big idea
- Thinking about the important ideas in texts can help reading comprehension

            This podcast was about identifying and understanding the big idea or theme of a reading selection.  Choosing the right reading material for the classroom is important. You want to make sure that when students read, they become fully engaged with the text and get something more out of it.

            It is important for students in the lower grades to develop their skills at identifying the big idea of a reading selection, as this will help them in the upper grades when the reading material becomes more complex. When students can identify the bigger picture, it helps them to make more connections with the text. If the big idea is discussed before reading, it may help readers make connections and become fully engaged with what they read, aiding in comprehension. As students read the passage, they will have a deeper connection to smaller details that point to the main theme. Developing the ability to identify the big idea helps us to identify ‘the moral of the story’ of a movie, book, newspaper article, etc. Instead of interpreting the literal meaning, the reader/viewer has a better understanding of the deeper meaning intended by the author/director, etc.

            Discussing themes and big ideas with students can help them make connections to their own lives. For example, a teacher may prompt students to discuss an event in their lives when they or someone they know was persistent or ‘never gave up’.

            Perhaps one classroom strategy could be to have a ‘theme week’, wherein the reading selections, video presentations, and other curriculum-based activities are consistent with the theme. Themes: persistence, don’t judge a book by it’s cover, anti-bullying.  Teachers can find a number of different books with the same theme or big idea. After reading, students can be prompted to compare and contrast the different reading selections.

            I liked this podcast because provided specific strategies I can employ in the classroom using ‘research-based classroom tested strategies for reading and writing’. The podcast also provided names of specific authors, guiding teachers to literature that will help engage their students with texts containing big ideas, and help develop higher order thinking skills.

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.

Reflection on Two articles

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know

The Assessment of Thoughtful Literacy in NAEP: Why the States Aren’t Measuring Up

            The articles indicate to me that the state tests do not adequately accurately measure student’s academic achievement. While the state has the burden of creating standardized tests across the state, teachers in the classroom have individual students each with their own set of intellectual abilities and learning preferences. So, in order to get a full understanding of each student’s strengths and weaknesses, various assessments must be administered. Data must be collected on the student using various forms of assessment that can inform the teacher of the student’s fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and language skills. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) created tests that showed to ask more critical thinking skills in contrast to the state test. Some of the skills highlighted in the NAEP assessment include the ability to interpret make inferences to ideas not explicitly mentioned in the text. Some of the questions on the state test do not allow the reader to fully interact with a reading selection, which has shown to improve comprehension. Items within a given reading selection may provide teachers with insight as to how students decode and comprehend text. Some of these items that aid in comprehension include: vocabulary knowledge, familiarity with genre, the organization of the text, characterization and details. From these, text organization and characterization types of questions have “the greatest potential to elicit thoughtful responses from readers” (Applegate, 2009). Open ended questions and those questions that require students compare/contrast characters, situations, conclusions and relate the reading material to their own experiences encourage students to engage in higher order thinking skills. Standardized state assessments contain a small percentage of open-ended questions in comparison to multiple-choice questions.

            In “Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know”, the authors describe the differences between the standardized state tests and intervention strategies employed by classroom teachers. State tests can be effective assessments but classroom teachers need to employ strategies on a daily basis that will accurately measure students’ strengths and weaknesses. This data can help the classroom teacher to create an intervention strategy with set goals, tiered lesson plans and learning activities that can help with student’s individual needs. Monitoring progress is important as the strategy for each child will be different and ever changing, based upon the student’s response to the intervention strategies. Through shared information and collaboration with other teachers, intervention strategies are examined for effectiveness and revised if needed. Students who continue to struggle after receiving intervention strategies will receive additional instruction.

            These articles both highlight the need to offer various learning activities and assessments in the classroom. A standardized, one-size-fits-all approach in terms of assessment will not provide an accurate representation of each student’s strengths and weaknesses because it does not provide educators with details about the strategies students employ to acquire knowledge. One idea for classroom teachers is to create a file with various assessments that can be used to provide teachers with a comprehensive set of data to help with the creation of lesson plans. One question is: exactly what types of assessments should be included in such a profile?

Response to Video: Using Assessment to Guide Instruction

            The video clip was informative for me in how a classroom teacher can gather evidence of students’ word knowledge, fluency, language, comprehension, writing and motivation and interests. While formal assessment remains important to gain insight into each student’s reading level, it is recommended that teachers use a wide variety of assessments as well as classroom activities and observations that can help the instructor understand the strategies students use for comprehension and understanding. The teacher must consider how each of their students performs in different contexts with the class: independently, paired, or group activities. The teacher must also consider the types of scaffolds and differentiation to employ in learning activities so that all students can use their strengths and abilities, and what are the best strategies to employ so that all students in the classroom learn. For example, what is the student’s reading level for a book that is assigned to him/her versus a book he/she chooses to read independently? Also, how does the student perform academically when he/she reads independently compared to a small group setting or with a reading partner? Answers to these questions can help an educator with creating and implementing scaffolded lesson plans which cater to a wide variety of learning styles and abilities.

            Teachers should keep a file on each of their students as a portfolio of the students’ work. For example, writing assignments highlighting the main ideas of a reading selection are good data to collect as evidence of a students writing and comprehension skills. Informal reading inventory such as the QRI-5 helps to identify students’ word knowledge and comprehension. A profile on each student with various forms of assessment can help the teacher understand the strategies individual students use to build knowledge and can help educators identify individual strengths and weaknesses in terms of their word knowledge, fluency, language, comprehension, writing and motivation and interest. This data will help teacher to create lesson activities that will be engaging (to help with interest and motivation) and will cater to students varied abilities and interests.

Observation Update

Nothing new to report on observations unfortunately. I have been in steady touch with Dr. Sawyer, and she has someone in the Syosset school district that is looking for placement for me. So, we are kind of waiting for the invitation from a school. I understand there would be lots of diplomacy needed in her position. Last semester I observed in Rockville Center and while the teaching staff was incredible, it was a bit of a commute. I realize there is going to be a lot of going back and forth to the school this semester so I was trying to find school districts closer to my home.

Week 2 - Reader Response

This is a reflection on 2 readings for the class:

Organizing instruction for struggling readers in tutorial settings & Linguistically responsive teacher education
What jumped off the page the most for me in this article was the adaptive use of Roller's (1998) tutoring framework to help struggling learners, consisting of 1). reading easy books to help build confidence, 2). reading new books, 3). writing activity,4). incorporating a mini-lesson, and 5). introducing a new, more challenging book.

My five-year-old is just learning how to read and write, but is considered a struggling reader compared to her twin and peers. She also has lots of energy and a difficult time staying on task. After reading this article, I was inspired to give her a tutoring lesson of my own. I pulled her aside and got her interested in reading books about Snow White, Cinderella and other princesses. (She is quite a fan of royalty). I noticed that I had chosen books with varying degrees of difficulty. Even though some of the text was a grade or two above her own, she was interested in the content material which kept her interest. She tried sounding out words, but became frustrated. When it was clear the text was too difficult for her, she asked me to read it to her, but she pointed out the experts words she already knows from prior knowledge.

Each week our girls have library, and let's face it, at five years old, that is a big deal. This emerging reader of mine also seeks out new books featuring the character "Fancy Nancy". The main character is a precocious 1st grader who is always dressing up and using fancy words. (i.e. Precocious is a fancy word for cute). Reading these books with my five-year-old girls is one of the great pleasures in my life. Afterwards, they like to dress up themselves and will be seen leafing through the book on their own trying to read it (including the fancy words) while dressed up like movie stars or princesses.

Having emerging readers at home while taking this class is a wonderful real-life teaching tool that will help me when I am faced with students in the classroom. In order to help my own children in their academics and learning, I myself have to implement some of the at-home strategies parents may choose to employ to help their own children.

Preparing classroom teachers to teach English Language Learners


Both articles mentioned the idea of students using informal, social interaction and new forms of media such as computers and cell phones to foster communication. These types of social interaction and communication help students develop language outside of the classroom setting. Student engagement is another important aspect of helping struggling readers and ELL students. Helping students to identify interests, using grade appropriate curriculum and adequate scaffolding of activities are effective strategies to help struggling learners. Teachers must identify each student's academic ability whether the student is a native English speaker or not. If the student is an ELL learner, the instructor should be aware of the student's academic ability in their native language as well as in English. Having an in-depth profile of each student in the classroom can help the teacher scaffold learning activities.

While I am not certified in any foreign language, I did take Spanish throughout high school and have 12 college credits in total. Mind you my undergrad was a long time ago, but children's media today has many Spanish speaking characters. I have been Mr. Mom for 2 years now and have been exposed to A LOT of children's media. The fact that I was exposed to a foreign language myself, I understand things about that English that maybe another teacher who was not exposed to a 2nd foreign language. For example, English and Spanish have many common roots.

Spanish and English share many of the same root words due to the fact that Spanish is a Latin based language and English borrowed heavily from Latin and French in its earlier days. Words that are the same in two languages or very similar are called cognates. See if you can guess the meanings of the following Spanish/English cognates. Cognates are a good way to learn a lot of words fast. Note that these words are not pronounced the same in English and Spanish. 

aburrido	la música	la idea	el piano
contento	la guitarra	el elefante	la computadora
desordenado	el/la radio	público	el estereo
enfermo (hint: infirmary)	la televisión	el apartamento	el teatro
furioso	el beisbol	el departamento	el basquetbol
nervioso	el evento	permitir	la historia
ocupado	el tenis	observar	rápido
ordenado	la universidad	la cultura	el boxeo
preocupado	el autobús	la dieta	el aeropuerto
inteligente	el tigre	misterioso	la dirección
independiente	las matemáticas	el auto	la biología
paciente	el taxi	el doctor	la ciencia
responsable	el chocolate	el/la turista	la vitamina
terrible	el carro	la novela	la economía
horrible	el arte	la práctica	el volibol
importante	el problema	ideal	el esquí
necesario	la opinión	el león	la bicicleta
flexible	el animal	privado	decidir
eficiente	el golf	el plan	el banco
generoso	la oficina	curioso	robar
la montaña	el desierto	el océano	el actor
la fruta	el café	la actriz	las vacaciones
religioso	romántico	el ingrediente	la gasolina
serio	tropical	el hospital	la diferencia
tímido	el cassette	el supermercado	típico

Source: http://www.palomar.edu/etv/courseinfo/summer2002/span50handouts.pdf