Kelly Gibbons

CI 475: Individual Child Assignment

Diversity in the classroom comes in many different forms: ability level, race, ethnicity,
social status, language, etc.—all of which are factors that play into the overall learning of a
classroom student. These factors must be recognized by the teacher, as they impact the
perspective and overall education experience of a child, specifically in reading and writing. In
order to create an effective language arts curriculum, a teacher must work to find the diverse
needs of students in his or her classroom, then use that knowledge to develop lessons and
assessments that can help each student grow in the subject of literacy.
In Mrs. Abbey-Smith’s fifth grade classroom there is a lot of diversity. Of 24 students,
13 come from families with low socio-economic status, 10 are African American, 2 are Middle
Eastern, 1 is Asian and 11 are Caucasian. There is 1 student who is an ELL. Moreover, 20% of
the fifth grade class is not meeting grade level expectations in literacy, causing the school to
have a very structured and pressured literacy block schedule. Reading and writing are very
prominent parts of Mrs. Abbey-Smith’s instruction, not only because reading AYP scores were
not met, but also because she believes this subject is essential to the learning of all other
subjects. Two and a half hours a day are dedicated to reading and writing comprehension
activities; this time is composed of many different types of lessons. Students are given a half
hour of independent reading after lunch, an hour of group reading (where basal reading books
are used based ability level) and read aloud time; a time when Mrs. Abbey-Smith asks the
students to practice their listening skills in order to answer simple comprehension questions
about a text. Writing is taught every other day for at least two hours. During this period of time,
students work on composing narratives, poems, short research papers and also have a free write
time. This period also allows Mrs. Abbey-Smith to focus on those students who need extra help
with written expression or are scoring below-grade level—a majority of this time she spends
working with Jessica.
My initial thoughts on Jessica were that she was a quiet, reserved child who did not have
much to say because she was that was her personality, upbringing or she simply did not know
anyone in the class at the beginning of the year. Though I know ethnic stereotyping is immoral,
unjust and most of the times incorrect, another first thought (because she is Chinese) was that
Jessica was student who was likely to be learning ahead of her grade level. However, after
looking further into her background I found my initial thoughts to be far from reality. Jessica is
a fifth grade ELL student whose reading and writing skills are significantly lower than grade
level expectations. Though Jessica does speak English fairly well, Chinese is spoken at home.
When talking with my teacher, I was informed that Jessica scored a 20 on the DRA with an 18
in the comprehension section. This means she is reading at a low second grade level and using
high first grade level comprehension skills. However, Jessica scored a 96% accuracy on her oral
reading test, meaning that her fluency and word calling skills are on par with the rest of her fifth
grade class. This behavior was confirmed in my interviews with Jessica, as she stated how much
she enjoys reading, but dislikes the questions and tests that come along with the subject. In a
self-assessment, she also stated the realization that she can “read fast and figure out big words,”
but that she needs to be able to use “her facts, the pictures” and other reading strategies to
understand the plot. Finally, when I conducted a reading conference and running record for
Jessica, she had a close to flawless score (missed an average of 4 things per 100 word passage),
but was not able to explain or answer many of the questions correctly after she read the passage.
This clearly shows that Jessica has great phonics skills, but struggles with semantics and syntax,
as well as recognizing the conventions of a story. Simply put, she cannot make meaning of the
text on a page, though she can read it well.
I believe that another reason for Jessica’s set back in comprehension comes from her set
back in vocabulary and sentence formation skills—also possible reasons for her lack of oral
participation in class, conversing with her peers, etc.—because she does not know how to
express what she is thinking. This idea is confirmed even more so in her written expression.
Looking over Jessica’s free write and narrative writing samples, I concluded that she struggles
to organize her thoughts, write them logically for a reader and utilize any sort of writing
convention format without a large amount of guidance from an adult. Analyzing and discussing
the results in many literacy areas during the reading conferences I conducted with her, helped to
compose three main areas of concentration for Jessica as a reader and writer.
As a way to set realistic and meaningful goals for Jessica, I took into consideration my
interview with the teacher, my interview with Jessica, Jessica’s interests, her performance in the
running record and the reading conference conversations. I believe that having an ELL student
set personal goals helps the student to take accountability for his or her learning, but also lets
the teacher see what reading elements and practices are important to the student. Both factors
help the teacher build lessons that are relevant and important to that specific student. Therefore,
in our goal-setting sessions, I made the process student-centered, as it allowed Jessica to
compose a strategy that that she knows will suit her needs as a reader and help her make sense
of the text. Jessica’s response to my first improvement question was, “I need to work on
predictions and thinking about the story. I want to predict and look at the pictures like Mrs.
Abbey-Smith said. I need to summarize.” While this response is still teacher-influenced, I
believe that such strategies are ones that she feels are the most tangible for her as a reader and
ones that she feels are most important to her. In the second goal setting session, her response to
the improvement question was, “I think I need to work on looking at the pictures and
summarize them. I also need predictions again.” After these conferences, I took her self-
composed goals and thought about different comprehension strategies and goals that I could use
and make for myself, as a teacher, in order to help her achieve them.
As a reader Jessica feels she needs to focus on making predictions to help her stay
focused on the text. For this personal goal, I decided to set my own goal to help her effectively
use prediction maps and questioning strategies. I believe that this goal is both attainable and
realistic because it will build her self-assessment skills, develop her semantic knowledge and
help her realize that the text is a source of information, not just words on a page. As an ELL
student, these goals can be initially accomplished by using chunking strategies to think about
small portions of writing rather than an entire chapter or book. When asked previously to
predict the answer to the question “who do you think travels on the big ocean liners?” Jessica
stated, “Titanic.” This question ranged from 2 pages of text, so I concluded that questions over
large portions of material were too long and hard for her. To help her make accurate predictions,
I chunked the book into paragraphs. As an ELL student, modeling is important, so I used a
teacher-based lesson to show her how to form questions and answer questions using things that
are learned from the text.
After each paragraph, I instructed Jessica to stop reading and ask herself a question
about the text. I gave her examples of questions, such as, “What is going to happen next? Why
do I think that ocean liners were built like that? Why did the author tell me there were so many
people aboard the ship?, etc.” Finding and thinking about the answers to such questions help to
develop question-answer relationships and use the DRTA (directed reading and thinking
activity) concept. This ELL strategy encourages Jessica to think about the meaning of words,
how those words fit together and can help her think about what she needs to know from a small
passage, what the author has told her, and how such information fits together. Working on the
making predictions is great for Jessica to become actively engaged in literacy and connects her
to the text, encouraging her to think about the meaning of each word and how make the material
memorable.
Jessica also stated that she needs to make a goal to look at the pictures more within the
story to help give her a clue as to what the passage is about and the information that can be
found in the text. For this personal goal, I decided to focus on helping her pre-read the text by
looking at the pictures. This strategy can help her pick out what the author believes is important
and help her to understand what elements are going to be important in the chapter or story. This
strategy can also help set a framework for the text, so that she knows what to expect during her
reading. When I conducted her second running record, Jessica misread the name “Thomas
Andrews” for “Thomas Edison.” However, there was a picture labeled “Thomas Andrews”
directly next to the passage. Using the pictures in this instance would help her to avoid
confusing the name of the man and decode specific words such as “lines/liners, Cunard, etc.”
that she misread, as there are pictures and captions by the words. Using the “picture walk”
strategy can help Jessica— as an ELL student struggling with word meaning—to gather
information to support the meaning of a story and provide a context to help guide her through
the information on a specific page, as she is beginning to try and make meaning of words and
sentences. Finally, having Jessica look at each picture before reading the story can also help her
to identify details that go into the "bigger picture.” When initially asked the question, “do you
think people enjoyed riding on the ocean liners?” Jessica said, “I do not know.” However, there
was a detailed picture of the comfortable and home-like rooms on the ships directly underneath
the passage. After going back and looking at this picture, she realized that the answer to the
question was that they enjoyed riding on ships because they were comfortable and nice looking.
Pictures in this case, helped her to put a meaning with the text without having to read the words.
Finally, using the pictures gives a reminder of what is going on in the passage and how she can
find the answers to any questions that she may as a reader about what something looked like,
who a person is, what the setting looked like, etc. Mastering this picture strategy will
undoubtedly help make abstract text concepts more explicit and help facilitate the
comprehension process that Jessica struggles with as a reader.
Finally, as a reader Jessica wants to focus on summarizing as a way to show that she
understands the key elements and parts of a story. To help her reach this personal goal, I
decided to set my own goal of helping her effectively create a story map or graphic organizer. I
feel that mastering this strategy is essential to Jessica’s ability to comprehend the elements of a
story because it is text-driven, rather than allowing for personal inference and use of prior
knowledge. While professionals have stated, “providing reading material on content familiar to
your EL students and building background knowledge prior to reading a text can help offset
reading comprehension difficulties,” for Jessica, prior knowledge is a hindrance (Peregoy &
Boyle, 2001). When I asked her to summarize the book, Titanic, she stated, “There are people
on a ship and the ship is moving. Only two of people survive on the ship---a boy and a girl.”
After much confusion (because none of these details were mentioned in the text), I realized she
had given me a summary of the movie, Titanic, not the book. Therefore, her prior knowledge
had replaced any textual knowledge. Mastering story mapping will undoubtedly help her to
make sense of the details in the text and separate them from any previous knowledge she may
have, such as a movie. Using a graphic organizer can help her to write words directly from the
text and pick out tiny pieces of the whole (sticking to the chunking method) to make a story
comprehensible. After reading each chunk—each paragraph—I modeled for Jessica how to pick
out the events and key concepts of the story (using textual cues, picture clues, headings, etc.)
and write them down. For instance, in the paragraph about the ocean liners and travel, I told her
that a key element was when text said ocean liners “were getting bigger and holding more
people.” I told her I believe this is essential because the author wants the reader to realize that a
lot of people were on the Titanic. After doing this for each paragraph, I had her put her written
details together and create a summary over multiple pages. Moreover, practicing
summarization develops her language and writing development, as she must practice putting
words together in a way that is logical, concise way for the listener/reader. Mastering the skills
of summarization can help Jessica focus being a good reader because she is taking the time to
assess what she has learned in a piece of text and think about what the author wanted her to
learn, both factors essential to effective literacy comprehension.
As I have worked with Jessica over the past several weeks, I have developed a new
understanding of her as a student which helps me decide how and when to take the next step to
help her grow in her reading and writing ability. I no longer see her as a quiet student because of
her “upbringing or lack of friends,” instead I know that she is may be quiet because she is a
student who needs to develop vocabulary and confidence in expressing herself. I have come to
realize that Jessica may not solely have low comprehension skills because she cannot read, but
rather because she may not have knowledge of word function, which makes it hard to express
her thoughts on the reading material. I have learned (for the thousandth time over) how initial
judgment and stereotyping can only lead to invalid assumptions. Jessica is a student, like any
other, who needs assistance through modeling and who is knowledgeable about what types of
learning strategies can help her succeed. I feel that the best way to continue the developmental
goals that I have established for Jessica is to continue with weekly assessments of her progress.
However, based on previous data and now knowledge of the student, I know that conducing
running records are not most effective way to assess Jessica, as fluency and reading aloud are
not her main problem. I believe that I should assess Jessica based on her ability to read a
paragraph, a couple of pages or a chapter and summarize what the text has stated. Though I
realize that may seem to address only a single goal, mastering this skill requires her to use all of
the literacy comprehension strategies, as an effective summary comes from looking at the
pictures and making predictions in order to pull out the essential concepts and key elements out
of a piece of writing. I believe that it is my responsibility to set weekly meetings with Jessica in
order to assess whether or not she is growing as a reader, and if not, set up a more frequent
meeting schedule. It is through these assessments that I can modify my teaching in order to
adapt to her needs.
Overall, I feel that taking an intimate look at one student’s learning was extremely
important in helping me to realize how important my job as a teacher is. In order to create an
effective language arts curriculum, I must recognize the needs of students in order to develop
lessons and assessments that can help each student grow in the subject of literacy. I understand
that my work as a teacher is plentiful, but such differentiation is necessary in order to provide an
environment and experience that helps each child become the best student possible and reach
his or her full potential. With teaching comes diversity, but from diversity comes the
opportunity for enrichment and impact that can only been seen if a teacher is willing to make
the effort for each and every individual child.
Appendix
Teacher Interview

I noticed that Jessica struggles with reading and gets pulled out for reading group. Do they think
that she should be pulled out for ELL reasons?
I think that Jessica does have ELL needs because her family is from China. I know her mother
and father do not speak English well, so I think that this makes it harder for her to practice
English all of the time because I do not think she speaks much English at home. I do know that
she began speaking at a late age—she did not really start to talk until she was in Kindergarten.
Her mother said that she was late in developing speech and learning English words. However,
while she has some ELL needs, I think she might also have a learning disability, which is what
her group leaders are investigating right now. She really struggles with comprehension.

What does the reading comprehension background of Jessica look like?

Jessica scored at 20 on the DRA when I gave it at the beginning of the year. She had an 18 in
comprehension. That means she is reading at a low second grade level and using the
comprehension skills at a high first grade level. However, on her oral reading, she scored a
96% for accuracy. Its good to note, though, that at the end of last year she had tested at a 24,
which means that she did drop down over the summer.

On the San Diego sight words test given to her last year, she scored at a 3rd grade level. I am
not able to assess that this year because I do not give that test to my students.

When I gave the Benchmark reading test last week, she scored a 59%, which means that she is
scoring below standards. 69% of her classmates are meeting standards according to that test,
so it is very apparent that she is behind her students in reading comprehension.

Does Jessica get any help to try and raise her scores and learn reading strategies?
Yes, she gets pulled for literacy and reading help by our reading specialist in the building.
Jessica also is supposed to read with me daily for guidance and support in her reading
development. It is hard, though, because I do not always have the time to read with her
everyday, so I aim for 3-4 days a week to work with her. During ISAT time Jessica also gets
pulled by an specialist to work on ISAT testing strategies and work on examples of problems
that may appear on the test when she takes it in the spring.

How does it seem like Jessica is doing in other subjects?

Jessica seems to be a very bipolar student. In some subject areas, she does extremely well and
really understands the material, but in other subjects she really seems to struggle. For example,
in math, she really understands multiplication and division strategies, but she cannot seem to
grasp fractions. She also seems to do fairly well on her spelling tests each week, but is not so
great at spelling on everyday worksheets. One subject that is extremely hard for her is writing.
She does not have organizational strategies and her vocabulary is limited which makes it hard
for her to express her thoughts. Finally, I know that she struggles with critical thinking and
finding links among topics in all subject areas.

Does she seem to participate in class as much as you would like her to?
There are some times that Jessica participates, but she does not raise her hand as much as I
would like her to. I do call on students randomly in the class to check for understanding, but
she is not a student that I would do that to because I know sometimes that she has little
understanding of a subject matter. When she raises her hand, though, I make sure to call on her
so that she can share her correct answer.

What are Jessica’s areas of growth in reading, writing, listening and speaking that you have seen
this year and compared to other years?
Jessica’s listening skills are very good. She can follow directions in class and knows what she is
supposed to do on a worksheet or activity most of the time. She is independent (for the most
part) in this are. I feel that she has shown even more improvement in these area this year
because she is almost always the first one to complete the assigned direction in class (things
such as clean off your desk, get out a pencil, etc.) She also seems to enjoy read aloud books, so
I feel that listening is definitely an area easy for her to grow in.

Jessica is a very good reader. She can read fluently and pick out various forms of expression.
She can use her decoding skills to figure out words that she does not know, and will ask for help
pronouncing a word if she cannot figure it out. This definitely shows progress over the years.
Sometimes she reads too fast, which causes her to make careless errors, but I do not believe this
to be a huge problem, it is a normal fifth grade behavior. She really needs to work on reading
comprehension, though. She can read anything, but her recall and comprehension tests are
such a struggle. She performs very poorly on these type of assessments.

Speaking is also a struggle for Jessica. She talks very quietly, as I am sure you can tell. She
also does not have an extremely large vocabulary so she uses the same type of sentence
structure much of the time. I know that she does speak with some classmates, but overall I
would say that she is not really growing in this area because she is not practicing this skill.

Writing skills have improved since fourth grade, but they are still very much below average. If
you look at this, you would not think that this is a fifth grader’s work. (referring to the interview
writing assignment) I had to work with her a lot on the piece of writing and you did too, and
you noticed that she was still struggling to try and put her thoughts down on paper. I know that
she has grown in this area, and will continue to do so because we have a lot of writing planned
for this year, but I think it will just be a slow process for her.

Finally, what reading goals do you have for her this year?
I really want to help Jessica with her comprehension. My biggest goal for her is to learn to
effectively summarize things that she has read. This will help her with understanding various
texts and also help her with testing scores. I also want to help her feel comfortable with writing
her thoughts down. I want her to be able to think about a text and write down answers to
questions based on the details and words provided in the passage. I feel that both of these
things will help her to become a better reader and get closer to her expected reading level.
Student Reading Conference 1 (11/9/2010)

Title of the Book: Titanic (Magic Treehouse Non-Fiction Version)

Genre: Non-fiction/Historical

Why did you choose this book: “I like to read about the Titanic and the people on the Titanic.
It is a good movie.”

What is the reading level of this book for you: Just Right

Tell me what the book is about so far: “There are people on a ship and the ship is moving. Only
two of people survive on the ship---a boy and a girl.”

Read this part of the book: running record attached

-the child can read very fluently and is able to pronounce and decode most of the words in the
sample passage
-the student is fluent with the exception of reading and noting each punctuation mark (there
were some sentences were punctuation was ignored because the student was reading too fast)
-when asked a comprehension question whose answer is directly stated in the text, the student
has trouble answering the question correctly. There is a lot of hesitation and struggle, but with
a lot of prompting and guidance the student is eventually able to come up with the correct
answer
-when asked a comprehension question that has a abstract answer or requires critical
thinking/inference/predictions/etc. the student has a lot of trouble answering the question and
often times does not come up with the right answer without the teacher stating an idea or
giving the student a part of a possible answer. The student has much hesitation and struggle
with abstract and critical thinking questions
-the student often times confuses the details from the book with details from the movie. She has
stated that she has seen the movie Titanic. It is obvious that that source of prior knowledge is
interfering with the details that are stated in the book

Tell me what you remember about what you just read: “There are big ships that are designed to
hold a lot of people and carry them in the ocean.”

Let’s discuss your strengths and what you need to work on.
Strengths: “I am good at reading fast and I am good at finding out long words. I am good at
knowing about the characters. I am also really good at reading a lot because I read everyday at
home to my mom and to my brother” After explaining to the student that she is very good and
reading fast, I reminded her that reading fast is not always the best way to read because
sometimes it makes it harder to remember what the passage is about. I also told her that she is
very good at knowing about the characters, but needs to focus on the character details that the
author presents, not the details that she already knows from the movie.
Goals: “I need to work on better predictions and thinking about my story. I want to predict and
look at the pictures like Mrs. Abbey-Smith said in class. I need to summarize more too.” The
goal was set to concentrate on the pictures as a way to help the student remember what the text
is about and give the student a clue about what information is going to be in the passage. We
thought that would be a good way to help the student summarize effectively. We also set a goal
to read a little bit slower so that the student can try and focus on the words and meaning behind
the passage.

How long do you think it will take to complete this book: Two weeks

What is your favorite thing about reading? “I like to read at nighttime because I get to sit in my
bed and stay up late. I like all of the books at my house. I like to pick out new books at the
library when my mom and I go.”

What is your least favorite thing about reading? “I do not like to answer a lot of questions. I do
not like to read about science things or things that are boring. I do not like to take reading tests
at all because they are too hard and long.”
Student Reading Conference 2 (11/10/2010)

Title of the Book: Titanic (Magic Treehouse Non-Fiction Version)

Genre: Non-fiction/Historical

Why did you choose this book: “I like to read about the Titanic and the people on the Titanic.
It is a good movie.”

What is the reading level of this book for you: Just Right

Tell me what the book is about so far: “The book is about two people that are on the ship and
they fall off and then they are surviving in the ocean. They are a boy and a girl and the ship is
broken so they have to stay on the iceberg.”

Read this part of the book: running record attached

-the child can read very fluently and is able to pronounce and decode most of the words in the
sample passage
-the student is fluent with the exception of reading and noting each punctuation mark (there
were some sentences were punctuation was ignored because the student was reading too fast)
-when asked a comprehension question whose answer is directly stated in the text, the student
has trouble answering the question correctly. There is a lot of hesitation and struggle, but with
a lot of prompting and guidance the student is eventually able to come up with the correct
answer
-when asked a comprehension question that has a abstract answer or requires critical
thinking/inference/predictions/etc. the student has a lot of trouble answering the question and
often times does not come up with the right answer without the teacher stating an idea or
giving the student a part of a possible answer. The student has much hesitation and struggle
with abstract and critical thinking questions
-the student often times confuses the details from the book with details from the movie. She has
stated that she has seen the movie Titanic. It is obvious that that source of prior knowledge is
interfering with the details that are stated in the book

Tell me what you remember about what you just read: “I know that the ship is the biggest one
that there is. I know that it had a lot of people who were on the ship and are dead now.”

Let’s discuss your strengths and what you need to work on.
Strengths: “When I read that I think that I read it just right. I tried not to read fast because we
said that that is not good. I also think that I did really good at figuring out the hard words and
reading all of the long numbers. I know that I also did good at figuring out that it was not
Thomas Edison, it is Thomas Andrews at the end.” I told the student that she did a great job
and focusing on the goal we had set the day before and that she did a lot better with working on
looking at the punctuation and pictures.
Goals: “I think I need to work on looking at the pictures and summarizing again. I also need to
predict when I read the story. Mrs. Abbey-Smith said I need to think of pictures in my head, so I
have to do that too.” The student and I set a goal of looking at the pictures before she reads
anything. I also told her to stop at each paragraph and think about what the story might look
like in her head. We made a goal to do this at the end of each page as a way to keep her focused
on the reading and meaning behind the text.

How long do you think it will take to complete this book: Two weeks

What is your favorite thing about reading? “I like to read at nighttime because I get to sit in my
bed and stay up late. I like all of the books at my house. I like to pick out new books at the
library when my mom and I go.”

What is your least favorite thing about reading? “I do not like to answer a lot of questions. I do
not like to read about science things or things that are boring. I do not like to take reading tests
at all because they are too hard and long.”