M2:

Language and Literacy Exchange Student Interview

Kristin C.
University of Kansas
C&T 745
November 7, 2016

At the request of my students ELL teacher, I used my first session to partake in natural
conversation with my student and also began part I of a phonics, decoding, and reading
placement test. She wanted to see this data right away and thought it would be beneficial for
my classes and tutoring sessions with him. My plan is to determine more about his literacy
background in both his first and second languages during our next session, in addition to other
activities.

During our first session, it was reaffirmed that his language acquisition appears to be low for a
middle school student who has been in the country for 5 years.

Our conversation went all over the place, with my student asking a variety of random
questions. I am assuming that these random questions stem from topics that have been
talked about during his ELL classes, as he mentioned his ELL teacher sporadically throughout
the conversation. Hes a very inquisitive student and seems to be interested in learning. He told
me, I like school because I can learn.

When we first began our session, he asked me if I knew what a desert was. I told him that I had
once lived in the Arizona desert. We Googled pictures of deserts, and I showed him a picture of
the desert I used to live in. He was mostly interested in sandy deserts (like the Sahara) so I
showed him pictures of the White Sands Desert in New Mexico, which he was fascinated by.

After chatting for a few minutes about deserts and a few other topics, I began the directions for
the assessment. I chunked the assessment so that hed work for 10 minutes or so and then take
a break.

During his first break, I took him over to see the librarys fish. We counted the fish and he
shared with me how he likes to fish. All conversations are very basic and simplistic. When we
got back to our seats, he began asking me religion-related questions. This made me a bit
uncomfortable because of the restrictions on public school teachers, but I assume this is
something he was comfortable talking about because it was familiar to him and he knew how
to speak of it in English. I think he was also trying to determine the language to describe
relationships. He asked me questions like God is Jesuss father, right? What is Mary? Who
was the man swallowed by the whale? and Where was Jesus born? Was it a farm?

He worked on the assessment for another 15 or so minutes. After, we were talking and he saw
an adult in my building in a motorized wheelchair who had four amputated limbs. My student,
out loud, said What happened to him? I feel so bad for him. I feel so bad for him. What
happened to him? I am getting the impression that he hasnt become accustom to American
social norms.

He then made a comment about jumping from planes. I found that to be quite coincidental
because I had been skydiving twice, so I showed him some of my pictures and we discussed
tandem skydiving.

I wrapped up the session by explaining again what we would be doing for the next few weeks
and why I asked him to take the assessment today. He taught me how to say hello and then
goodbye in Marshallese.

I quickly scored the assessment after we parted ways. He scored a 30/45 on the phonics and
decoding session of the test. I accidentally left the data at work, but I recall that his strengths
were letters/sounds, short vowels, blends/diagraphs, long vowels, and inflections. Definite
weaknesses that I can remember are prefixes/suffixes, multisyllabic vowels, and I will have to
double check on the rest.

Overall, I believe that our first session proved me with valuable data. I was able to quickly
assess his phonics and decoding skills, engage in pleasant conversation, and observe some
social skills.

























M8: Language and Literacy Exchange: Summary Report
Kristin C.
University of Kansas
C&T 745
December 16, 2016

Student Background

About a week prior to starting this class, Student S was added to my tier III reading
intervention class. Student S is a Marshallese student who has been in the country
since he was about 7 years old he is now 12 going on 13. His language acquisition
has been much slower than his Marshallese peers. Our buildings ELL teacher has
taught at two of our districts middle schools simultaneously for many years and his slow
academic and social progress (when compared to Marshallese peers from similar
circumstances) cause her major concern. There are also significant concerns that were
held by my buildings instruction coaches. He was placed with me as a mandatory
intervention while the evaluation process was starting to take place. It is suspected that
Student S might have cognitive delays.

According to his ELL teacher, Student Ss language acquisition is significantly more

delayed when compared to students who have been in the year for much shorter
amounts of time. His ELL teacher also expressed concern regarding social skills. He
doesnt seem to be able to navigate many social cues and behaves inappropriately
according to both American and Marshallese social standards. Student S is therefore
being ostracized by his own Marshallese peers.

Student Assessment Overview

On Part I of the assessment, phonics and decoding, my student scored a 30/45. His
score placed him at the second lowest level, one step above Newcomer Level
Fundamentals 1. On Part II of the assessment, reading, my student scored a 10/40. His
score placed him at a Fundamentals Level with a Lexile of 140L.

The next assessment was useful in that it told me more about how he reads and
communicates outside of my class. I found that, when it comes to selecting a book, he
just randomly picks one. Once he picks a book, he doesnt really read it. If he is
assigned silent reading time in class, he will hold the book open but he wont look at the
pages instead, he zones out, finds something to fiddle with, or if a peer is nearby, he
will attempt to distract that peer. He also stated that he is good at following written
instructions versus verbal and believes that his reading has improved since last year.
The rest of the assessment pretty much supported my own prior assumptions. He said
that he finds reading in English to be very difficult but reading in Marshallese is easy. He
stated that he only reads books when they are assigned at school, would rather read an
article online than a book/magazine/newspaper. The rest of the assessment got into the
particularly valuable questions, such as What would you like to learn to do better as a
reader? and specific reading strategies, but he struggled to craft a response to those
questions other than to say that he wants to get better at reading.

After gathering assessment data, my focus turned to analyzing native language writing
abilities and focusing on English phonics.

Lesson Plans

Lesson 1 & Lesson 2

After Student S was first placed in my room and I shared with his ELL teacher that I
would be doing additional sessions, she urged me to begin with two assessments that
would give me valuable knowledge of his phonics and reading abilities. She believed
that these two reading assessments would provide me (and her) with beneficial data for
conducting both my after-school sessions and my regular intervention classes with this
student. This is what lessons 1 and 2 consisted of, in addition to get-to-know-you
conversations.

Lesson 3

After reading about the value in allowing students to write in their native language, I
decided that lesson 3 would be used to analyze Student Ss native language writing
abilities. I believed that the information would be valuable since I now had an
understanding of his English abilities. My plan was to have the student draw a picture
with brief captions in both Marshallese and English. The next writing task would have
the student free write in his native Marshallese language based on a couple of picture
prompts.

Lesson 4

I used suggestions for lesson 4 that were pulled from Helmans Chapter 7 Planning
Effective Phonics Instruction with Emergent Bilinguals to strive to make phonics
instruction clear and explicit. To make the best use of my instructional time, I used a
phonics strategy that I am trained to use and know well, and that is the Bridging
Strategy by Fusion Reading. First, we studied vowel sounds and then we worked with
closed syllables.

Reflective Summary

Student S was incredibly cheerful and compliant in working with me. I really appreciated
having the opportunity to get to know him better and he truly was enjoyable to work with
during these sessions.
Throughout our four sessions, it was reaffirmed that his language acquisition appears to
be low for a middle school student who has been in the country for 5 years. I observed
his limited conversational language skills when we spoke and saw further evidence
when analyzing his assessment data. Assessment data showed me that basic phonics
and reading were difficult for him. He scored at the Newcomer Level, in spite of having
lived in the States and going to American schools since he was 7.
During the Draw a picture with captions activity, Student S was able to draw basic
pictures with basic captions that reflected his drawing. He was able to do this in both
Marshallese and English fairly easily. He did require spelling assistance in English.

The next writing task proved to be more difficult. It appears that Student S has very
minimal writing skills in his native language. It was a struggle. As Ive mentioned before,
there is concern in my building that he may have some cognitive delays. While I dont
have enough information yet to say if I support that thought myself, I do think that his
struggles with this assignment is a step in that direction for me.

Student S and I went through the vowel sound chart, where I read the Sounds Like,
Sound Cue, and Written As examples. Student S was to repeat after me. We did this for
all of the Short Vowel, Long Vowel, and Silent E (VCE) sounds. We began working on
the Closed Syllable Stretch. I wanted to focus solely on closed syllables because I did
not want to confuse him by adding other types of syllables. He watched and coped me
during the I Do, and tried during the We Do. It was a struggle, but Ive seen L1
students face similar challenges with this lesson. I did have to help him significantly
during the first two You Do tasks, but he did the remaining three accurately on his
own.

I notice that a lot of his struggles seem to stem from a lack of confidence, which I can
relate to. When I was learning Spanish, I was not confident in my abilities and was
reluctant to try things for fear of being wrong. I think this is part of the reason why he
struggles to take educational risks during our sessions and in the classroom. I do see
him take more of these types of risks when we are 1-on-1, which is natural.

Although we were working one on one which limited me from observing his interactions
with peers, I saw instances of the social skills concerns that were held about Student S.
Conversations that were held during breaks and transitions were wildly sporadic,
bouncing from topic to topic. There were several times that socially inappropriate
comments were made, such as when he saw an adult in my building in a motorized
wheelchair who had four amputated limbs and said out loud, What happened to him? I
feel so bad for him. I feel so bad for him? and when he asked me if it was racist to tell a
black person You are black! You do not belong!

Im fortunate in that I still get to work with Student S in class and can continue with
valuable instruction now that I have a comprehensive understanding of his academic
and social abilities, struggles.
 Citations

Fu, D. (2009). Writing between languages: how English language learners make the
transition to fluency, grades 4-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Chapter 3: Role of first language in ELLs writing English writing development

Chapter 3: Composing piece of writing in a second language
Chapter 3: Relationship between content reading and writing
Chapter 3: Allowing ELLs to write in second language even if teachers cannot
understand it
Chapter 4: Understanding and allowing code-switching between languages
Chapter 5: Helping ELLs improve without correcting every writing error
Chapter 5: Importance for ESL and regular classroom teacher to collaborate in
teaching ELLs

Helman, L. (2009). Literacy development with English learners: research-based

instruction in grades K-6. New York: Guilford Press.

Chapter 1: Visual of factors influencing literacy development in a second

language
Chapter 1: Understanding my own cultural background, experiences, and how
that permeates my school environment
Chapter 3: Oral language is key to literacy development
Chapter 3: Table of English proficiency levels and objectives
Chapter 3: I do, we do, you do. Teaching the language, practicing the language,
and applying the language.
Chapter 4: Language proficiency assessments
Chapter 5: Analyzing emergent bilinguals spelling
Chapter 6: Essential literacy activities for the emergent stage
Chapter 7: Research on phonics with English learners
Chapter 7: Build on students home-language and literacy skills
Chapter 7: Make phonics instruction clear and explicit model activities and think
aloud