Assessment+Cases

__INED 7731 -- Assessment Cases__ Assessment is pervasive in our classrooms and is a necessary component for evaluating instruction, curriculum and student progress. However, if not administered thoughtfully and interpreted mindfully, common assessments can be problematic for English learners and their teachers. We have created a collection of assessment scenarios or cases that might typically occur in a classroom, and have added both an analysis/critique of what occurred in the scenario as well as recommendations for a classroom or ESOL teacher who may be faced with a similar situation. The cases are titled with a pseudonym for the student and/or a pseudonym for the location in which the scenario occurred, and are arranged by grade level.

by Suzanne Balint
 * __Cecilia, Kindergarten__**

Cecilia was a 5 year old student in my Kindergarten class. Her family was from Mexico, but she had spent most, if not all, of her life in the United States. She was one of four children in her family. Cecilia was the second oldest. Both Cecilia and her older sister Juliana attended our schoo__l. A__nd both girls were painfully shy. For the first month of school, Cecilia barely spoke at all in class. She obviously understood quite a bit. But she did not like to speak in front of the class. She would sometimes speak in single words to me if I took her aside.

It was hard to gauge at first exactly what knowledge Cecilia had when she arrived in Kindergarten. It was a challenge to distinguish between her lack of responses on pre-assessments because of her shyness and lack of language, and her lack of responses on pre-assessments because of lack of background knowledge. Eventually I was able to determine that Cecilia was starting Kindergarten without some of the most basic skills needed when entering school. She knew no letters, numbers, shapes, colors, etc… Additionally, she had had little exposure to English before starting school, so her language level was very low.

In my school, we had to perform progress monitoring using DIBELS. This entailed using a pda with scripted, timed tests that tested basic literacy skills in phonemic awareness (blending and segmenting) and letter naming. Later in the year, segmenting individual sounds and nonsense word reading were also tested. Progress monitoring was performed weekly. Students were benchmarked at the beginning of the year, then again in January, then again at the middle of the year. Students were placed in tiered reading groups based on these test scores. Students who scored in the intensive category were placed in a scripted direct instruction program. Students also received EIP services based on their DIBELS scores.

Cecilia scored in the red (the intensive group) at the beginning of the year. When progress monitoring her, it was very challenging because her shyness slowed her response time on every question. This was especially detrimental because the test was timed and so much of the score depended on the rate of correct answers. An additional challenge was that the progress monitoring on the first sound skill involved showing the student four pictures, telling them the names of couple of times, and then asking the student which picture began with a certain sound. This assessment was very challenging for Cecilia because she had to remember the words and then do the extra step of figuring out which had a certain first sound. Sometimes she would point randomly. Other times she would really try, but would be very slow. For this reason her scores were often inconsistent. She struggled with progress monitoring throughout the year. At the end of the year, she scored strategic (the next step up from intensive, but still one step below the end goal of benchmark).

Cecilia wanted to be successful and tried very hard. But even once she overcame her shyness to some extent in class, when the assessment was too difficult she would shut down by smiling and not answering any additional questions. She responded very well to positive feedback.

The DIBELS progress monitoring which I was required to perform weekly was as much a vocabulary test for Cecilia as it was a test of her ability to segment the first sound. The results were not an accurate indicator of her ability to segment the first sound of a word. The assessments caused a lot of stress for this student which was even more challenging for Cecilia. For this reason, the progress that the student was making was not reflecting in the results and her scores were sporadic.
 * Analysis/Critique of Situation**


 * Recommendations**


 * Because this test was a county mandated test, I could not change or do away with the progress monitoring. However, I was able to perform alternate assessments that could more appropriately gauge the student’s knowledge of the five dimensions of reading.
 * Additionally, because the test carried such weight with the county, and determined class placement and services received, I spent some time throughout the week helping the student practice for the format of the DIBELS test. For example, I used picture cards and placed them in the same configuration as that on the DIBELS assessment then helped the student identify the first sounds of the pictures.
 * We also practiced the skills that were progress monitored in various ways throughout the week.
 * Over the course of the year her confidence grew, which helped her to improve her abilities. However, the pressure of the progress monitoring and the stress of being timed continued to be reflected in the score.

**__Ana, 1st Grade__**
//by Linda Evans//

Ana was a 6-year-old student from Honduras who had just entered Mrs. L’s first grade classroom. Ana had been to kindergarten in Honduras before coming to the U.S. with her mother. Ana’s mother was divorced from Ana’s father, had remarried, and the family had moved to the U.S. Ana’s older sister stayed behind with their father. Ana’s grandparents were still in Honduras and were very active in Ana’s life.

Mrs. L used a phonics program called Spalding as part of her language arts block. Children learned to sound out letter clusters and then were quizzed on their ability to recognize them. Ana had never been exposed to English before coming to the U.S. one month ago, but was a bright child with some idea about concepts of print and an emerging sense of phonemic awareness. She sat in a cluster of three tables about in the middle of the classroom with Maria and Jacqui.

After Mrs. L taught a lesson on the b/d difference, she gave a short quiz as a summative assessment. She would call out a word, use it in a sentence, then say the word again. The students were to write the letter representing the phoneme that they heard, either the **b** or **d** sound.

Ana listened intently to Mrs. L, fidgeted with her pencil, made a mark on her paper, then took time to erase it before glancing at the paper of her friend Maria. Finally, Ana would write down whatever Maria had on her paper, finishing just in time to hear Mrs. L say the next word. When Mrs. L picked up the papers, she could see that not only had Ana finished but that she had gotten many of the responses correct.

Ana seems to be only imitating what her classmate is writing, and is not showing her knowledge during this assessment. She has only been in the country for a month and is clearly not ready for this type of assessment. Being assessed in such a discrete manner could trigger her affective filter unnecessarily. The manner in which the teacher is presenting the words--word, sentence, then word again--could easily cause a linguistic overload for Ana, who may not really understand any of the words in the sentence and would, therefore, not know which word she should be attending to. In addition, her placement in the room might be causing a disconnect or distraction from what the teacher is doing.
 * Analysis/Critique of Situation**

This type of assessment at this time in Ana's learning is not beneficial for her nor for the teacher.


 * Recommendations**


 * Conduct the assessment orally and individually with Ana.
 * Keep the assessment short and simple, doing only enough to determine if she can distinguish the two sounds.
 * Tie the language of the assessment to the use of the phoneme through pictures or usage in the preceding lesson. This will support vocabulary development and help Ana to build associations.
 * Move Ana to the front of the room or have the teacher circulate closer to her as she is saying the words.
 * Utilize this as a formative rather than a summative assessment.
 * Consider whether this assessment is beneficial or necessary for Ana.
 * Collaborate with the ESOL teacher in the decision-making process.

__**Ruby, Kindergarten**__ By: Ansley Mendenhall

I am working in an intensive English classroom where the majority of the students are Kindergarten age. All other students served in this classroom have been in the country for less than a year. Ruby is a female Kindergarten student whose native language is Spanish. Ruby speaks Spanish at home and in casual conversation; however, it is apparent that she is capable of conversation in English. Ruby is being served through ESOL services; she has been placed in intensive English because of her score on the WAPT assessment.

The teacher, Mrs. W, assesses English language proficiency by giving students an exam each quarter. The exam, composed of letter recognition, phonemic awareness, rhyming, and sight words, allows the teacher to monitor progress throughout the school year. Mrs. W uses the same exam each quarter, but uses a different color pen so that she knows in which quarter the she documented the progress. Because the end of the school year is weeks away, Mrs. W. decided to retest each student to see how he or she has improved.

Ruby recognizes all of her letters and has intermediate phonemic awareness. She is able to identify the differences in letters, numbers, and shapes- all of which are skills required by Kindergarten standards. Ruby progressed at a rapid pace in the early months of the year but in recent months has begun to remain at an equilibrium.

In assessing Ruby I found that she confuses letter combination sounds, particularly "sh" for "th". Looking through a phonics transfer PDF file I found that the sound "sh" is not commonly found in the Spanish language; the sound "th" has an approximate match, but is also uncommon.

In identifying sight words, Ruby orally expresses the "t" sound with almost every word. I cannot explain why this would be other than that Ruby has noticed a pattern in that many of the sign words have the "t" sound in them. Because of these mix-ups she is unable to produce sight words quickly; however, if she is given ample time she can produce 70/100 words. By April, it is expected that Kindergarten students produce 30 sight words in a minute. Ruby would not meet this expectation, and would be able to produce none more than 15 in a minute.

__Analysis:__ After collaboration with the teacher I found that Ruby has a newborn baby brother at home. This might explain her progression at the beginning of the semester, and the reason for the plateau in her learning. She was used to being the only child and now her home setting has been drastically changed. Because Ruby is not receiving the attention at home it could be a useful tool to positively reinforce Ruby's learning. Building motivation should help attract Ruby's attention back to her school work.

__Recommendations:__ Ruby is placed in the intensive English classroom, but is not receiving the specialized attention that she needs to improve. Recommendations for Ruby include:
 * Positive reinforcement for her achievements
 * Have Ruby read to a friend, or read to the teacher
 * Spend time with Ruby working on the different combination sounds in English, particularly the "th", "sh", and "t" sounds
 * Set goals with Ruby, make her learning more personal
 * Do not let Ruby know that you are timing her while she produces sight words
 * Use different forms of assessment- oral & written
 * Use videos and other recordings that single out phonemes, then record her so that she can hear the difference between sounds

by: Brandon Davis
 * I---**
 * __Ruben, 2nd grade:__**

Ruben is a 8 year old student who has been in the United States since he started school. He has stayed at the same school since he started Kindergarten. Teachers love the way he interacts with the other students and teachers but have some concerns about his ability to keep his attention on his school work as well as the support he gets from home.

Ruben has been diagnosed with ADHD. Along with being an English __L__anguage __L__earner, the fact that he has ADHD has seemed to continuously get worse when it comes __t__ his performance in the classroom, particularly on assessments. Although Ruben has been diagnosed with ADHD, his parents have started not giving him the medication that his doctor has prescribed to help with his ADHD. Therefore, Ruben does a great job for short periods in the classroom but struggles considerably when it comes to sitting down for extended period of times. His teacher feels like he misses out on a considerable amount of instruction because he has “zoned out” and becomes focused on doing something else.

The teacher’s main concern is when it comes to assessment. She has noticed that Ruben not only does not perform that well on assessments because he doesn’t focus on instruction the entire time but he tends to not even finish his assessment because he becomes preoccupied with something else. With the CRCT coming up, the teacher is really concerned with how Ruben will perform on the standardized test which requires an enormous amount of attention and a long period of sitting still, something Ruben considerably struggles with.


 * Analysis**

The real problem with this comes with the fact that the parents have just started not giving him the medication for his ADHD. It is now almost like he is a different person. Not only is he trying to figure out how to deal with his ADHD without the medication, but the teacher and other students have to figure out how to deal with him when he is not on his medication. It is clear that he is a likeable student and very charming, but his lack of focus has definitely hurt his chances of succeeding on most assessments. It is not written in his IEP that he needs special assitance (parapro/Special Education teacher), therefore it puts more stress on the teacher as the only avenue for success for this student.
 * Recommendation**

I would first go back and look at his IEP (if he is diagnosed he should have one) and see if there is anything about testing accommodations. Since there seems to be none, it worries me because the law states that he is not supposed to receive special accommodations that he has not received in class for a standardized test. The first thing that I, as a teacher, can control is my instruction. I would try using instruction that requires more movement and less down time, as well as incorporate more breaks into my everyday schedule. This may help with his attention span. I also would talk to the principal and see how they could maybe communicate with the parents to see if there is a certain reason he has not been taking his medicine. I would first talk to the principal to avoid any legal trouble that might occur by directly contacting parents on that issue. I would also ask the principal for guidance on possible ways to get extra accommodations on the CRCT that is coming up.

by Leyda Martinez
 * __Rai - 3rd Grade__**

Rai is an 8 year old boy from Nepal. He has been in the US for about one year. He and his family (parents, grandparents and an older sister who is in 5th grade) came from a refugee camp where he had no formal schooling. He has had a difficult time adjusting to school life and learning norms and appropriate behavior. He calls out, gets out from his seat and often shouts "I need help!" whether it is in the middle of teacher direction/instruction or in the middle of taking a test. He likes to sit by himself away from other students. He relies heavily on the teacher to read to him and work with him one-on-one to get any work done. Continual prompting is often needed to get him to start any task. He often gets out of his seat to sharpen pencils without permission. He also likes to play with the school supplies in the basket at the center of the large table where he sits. This behavior disrupts the class and takes time away from instruction.

Mrs. H__,__ gave an assessment on declarative, imperative, interrogatory, and exclamatory sentences after teaching and practicing it for 3 class periods. The test consisted of a list of 12 sentences written without punctuation on a piece of paper. At the end of each sentence was a blank line with the names of two types of sentences (50/50 chance of getting the answer right). The teacher read the sentence. Students were to place proper punctuation at the end of the sentence and circle the type of sentence that corresponded with the punctuation chosen. Ample time was given for students to respond. Each sentence was repeated before moving to the next. Mrs. H__,__ hovered around the classroom checking in on the students performance as she went.

Rai, sat behind his privacy folder and played with his pencil, got up to sharpen it, when he returned to his seat he shouted, "I need help, I don't know." A couple of times Mrs. H__,__ directed Rai to the appropriate number sentence she had just read and asked him a few questions to help him think through the answer. This made the other students have to sit and wait for Rai to get caught up before the entire class could continue.

When testing was completed, Rai only had 1/2 of the questions answered. Mrs. H, asked the classroom assistant to take Rai out into the hall and help administer the test for Rai to complete. She needed to have the grade.

While out in the hall, the assistant reviewed the 4 types of sentences, read the directions, asked if Rai had any questions, and proceeded to read the sentences that needed responses. Rai squirmed, whined the infamous "I don't know", and put on a very defeated face.

The assistant encouraged Rai to try his best and asked him a few questions that would build his confidence..."which of these 4 sentence types means to ask a question? If I am just saying something for you to know about it, I am what?...declaring or exclaiming?", "If there was a real fire in the school and your were the first to see it, how would you tell other people? Would you be calm and just say, oh...there is a fire, we have to go outside or would you be worried and want to make sure everyone knew it was for real and you would show this in your voice, how? That is exclamatory." "If something is important and you want to make sure other people know it is important and needs special attention like, "Put on your seat belt, I am moving the car" that is imperative. It is more serious than declarative.

Rai was hard to motivate and engage, but he finally got on task. The teacher read the last 6 sentences he needed to complete and Rai responded, getting 4 out of 6 right. His final grade was a 66, got 8 out of 12 right. He had trouble distinguishing between imperative and declarative.

Rai often seems daunted, overwhelmed and apathetic. He has very few interactions with other students in the class and seems to be somewhere else. He loves to play with pencils, scissors and glue sticks.

Rai has been allowed to ignore classroom rules without consequence. I believe given his schooling history the teacher just does not know what to do and therefore does nothing. His disruption to the class is impacting instruction time and the teacher has not taken steps to correct it. This affects all the students and impacts classroom decorum negatively. One year is a long time. By now, with the help of the teacher, Rai should understand what is expected of him in behavior and should be held accountable for such. His playing with school supplies is a form of task avoidance and alternate ways of engagement need to be found for Rai. If he is allowed to remain aloof and not engage learning can not take place. Rai's language proficiency is at the beginner level. His frustration could be leading to behavior issues and lack of motivation. It is also possible that his behavior issues may be linked to lack of experience in a school setting and school routines.
 * Analysis/Critique**


 * Recommendations**
 * ** Do not allow Rai to sit on his own. Place him in a group, close to the teacher where he can be closely monitored. **
 * ** Find out what his interests are and look for ways to incorporate them in the lessons/assessments to get him to engage. **
 * Institute a discipline program (reward for good behavior - checks, stamps, time on computer etc... or flipping cards, moving a clip, green, yellow, red...miss recess...walk laps...etc) to minimize classroom disruption and make Rai accountable for behavior. Give him jobs in the class to get him to be involved...pass out paper, collect homework, sharpen pencils. His self imposed isolation is detrimental to his learning.
 * Find an alternate means of communicating when he needs help so as to not disrupt the entire class. Or when appropriate have him ask an elbow buddy, specifically what he needs help with.
 * Utilize the teacher's assistant to work one-on-one or in small group with Rai. Test him orally.
 * Use hands-on activities and alternate ways of assessment.
 * Look into the possibility of including Rai in a social skills group at school.

__**Loren-3rd Grade**__

By: Andrew Salsberry

Loren is a 10-year-old boy from El Salvador who recently entered the United States and Mrs. J’s 3rd grade classroom. He has been attending Mrs. J’s class and the school’s intensive English program since he arrived into the US one month ago. Loren experienced little to no formal education before coming to the United States. In El Salvador, he lived with his grandparents and an aunt and uncle, while his parents and siblings have lived in the United States for more than 5 years. He has one brother in first grade at the school that displays solid social and academic English (3.6 composite WIDA level) but also still attends ESOL classes.

Loren has an extremely difficult time in school as he has trouble identifying basic letters and numbers in Spanish as well as English. It appears as though he was never taught how to read or count past 20 in Spanish. He is however, able to identify most colors/shapes and has an age-appropriate vocabulary in Spanish. While physically and emotionally he appears to be a 3rd grader, academically he lacks some very basic skills.

In addition to his academic struggles, Loren has a very difficult time in relationships as well. Loren is angry with his parents, his grandparents and the school for their interruption in his life. He does not trust teachers, siblings or parents and has few friends. He appears to feel abandoned by his family. Because he is easily frustrated and unresponsive to a 3rd grade teacher who does not speak Spanish, both the content teacher and the ESOL teacher are easily frustrated with him. When they are unsure what else to do with him, he works on a computer with a headset, some days for hours in a row. He is difficult to motivate and shuts down often during class.

His teachers struggle not only with how to work with him, but also how to determine what to teach him and how to assess his performance. His ESL teacher has a hard time with how his mixed Spanish academic knowledge should factor with his lack or reading and writing skills. They also struggle to understand where to begin and where the gaps of knowledge exist for Loren. They also note, he appears to be quite a few years away from even being capable of testing with his peers. At the end of this year he will be exempt from CRCT testing, but by the end of next year he will be scheduled to take the 4th grade CRCT. His teachers believe, barring unnaturally fast maturation and progress, he still may not be able to read a full sentence in English at that time.

Loren's difficulties appear to be related to be his social/relational issues and his lack of previous __formal__ education. According to his teachers, the school counselor and my limited experience with the student, Loren does not appear to have any sort of behavioral, emotional or learning disorder. He has reason to have some emotional difficulties, as his life experience up to this point would naturally produce such in most people.
 * Analysis**


 * Recommendations**

-First the teachers need to develop a relationship and a rapport with the Loren. They can represent someone consistent and trustworthy. -If the school is able to provide a Spanish-speaking counselor, the student will likely have greater success. -Teachers need to be patient with him as he is assimilating to a completely new life. -His primary ESL teacher should orally administer content tests in Spanish beginning with kindergarten content to determine his academic level. -Other assessments should be administered orally until he has reading/writing skills approaching his academic level. - Loren would benefit from 1-1 intensive English instruction/assessment tailored specifically to his needs/skills as he represents a very unique case.

-Should his ESOL teacher begin teaching him to read in Spanish?
From class we learned that students only learn how to read one time. This is a vital understanding because his English language ability is years from developing. I personally believe he would benefit in the long-term in ENGLISH by being taught how to read in Spanish. He would then be able to use his Spanish reading skills to scaffold learning English phonetics and vocabulary. He would also be able to begin with this immediately. This plan would obviously present some issues such as a massive increase in the amount of knowledge he would need to learn over time, but it could very possibly be the best way the student can learn moving forward. Andrew

__From Leyda__: Oh, Andrew, my heart goes out to this boy. How traumatic! Is his classroom teacher or his ESL teacher fluent in Spanish? I agree that if he does not know how to read at all, Spanish would provide a shortcut. Who ever teaches him in Spanish needs to have a good command of the language. Are there any school volunteers who are fluent in Spanish who could teach him to read? What is the home support look like? What does he do after school? Are there any churches or other agencies in the community who could assist?

Computer time may be a positive for him if he is being monitored and given productive tasks to perform and held accountable if not, it becomes an escape and later he will be very difficult to motivate. One great site we use for our lower grades is [|www.starfall.com]. I developed a checklist that goes with some of the sections on Starfall which holds the student accountable for the time on the computer and is able to show what was covered. The great thing about this program is that it goes from initial letter sounds all the way to chapter books also, and it is also free.

Other responses?

__**Juan, 4th Grade**__
//by Christina Catinella //

Juan is a 4th grade student whose BICS are very high. He seems to be fluent in the English language until you get to reading and writing tasks. Juan's parents speak Spanish at home. I do not know his WIDA ELP level. In this fourth grade class that I push into with my collaborative teacher, they have been practicing for the CRCT for two weeks. When I and my collaborative teacher come for our segment there is also another parapro in the room. The class is a centers-based classroom with much of the class broken into small groups. The general education teacher uses myself, my collaborative teacher, the parapro, and herself to work with the small groups. The group that I work with is usually 3 students, all ELs. The students are given a practice test limited to one content area and I am given no instruction as to how to work with them on that test. I have tried several methods with them: allowing them to do 3 or 4 questions, then review with everyone in our group once they have all completed those questions, let them work individually until they finish the whole test and then review with everyone in the group, and working on each question together as a group. Unless__,__ I am working with the students on the questions as a group, very little direct instruction is taking place. There are no modifications to the tests for the EL students. I do not know if Juan receives __accomodations__ for testing.

Juan seems to have the most problems with questions that assess his comprehension. When Juan reads aloud, he demonstrates low fluency skills as well. Juan's Fountas & Pinnell reading level is an N, which is a third grade level. Juan's interest level in the class seems to drastically drop when the teacher states that they will be working on a practice test for the CRCT.

The teacher simply uses these practice tests to allow the students to practice their skills for the upcoming CRCTs. Once the students have completed their practice test in one content area, they are to work on another in a different content area. The ESOL teacher that I am working with does not formally/summatively assess the students she works with other than ACCESS testing. I have only witnessed one other formal assessment take place during my entire field experience (persuasive writing pre-test, 1st grade, given by the general ed teacher).

**Analysis** Juan is not receiving the direct instruction that he needs to develop his fluency and comprehension skills. From conversation with my ESOL collaborative teacher, I have learned that the school does not test in a student's L1, so we do not know if Juan's low comprehension and fluency skills are due to the language or a learning disability. Working on practice tests for the CRCT is not providing the instruction that Juan needs before he can practice those skills, and is simply causing Juan to be unmotivated.

**Recommendations**
 * Currently the general ed teacher does not use these practice tests as an assessment, but I think that she should. If you are going to cause anxiety and lose student motivation, there should be a good reason for it. She should consider providing her helpers (me, my collaborative teacher, & the parapro) with a sheet to track which questions are most commonly missed on the practice tests. The general ed teacher could then use that data to determine what items to reteach and allow for more scaffolded practice.
 * When giving a student teacher a small group to work with, she should be specific in how she would like the student teacher to work with the students. For example, I would recommend at the very least that the person working with the group provide direct instruction on how to come to the correct answer, especially if it is a question that most of the students answered incorrectly.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If the purpose of these tests is to allow the student to practice, the questions should be modified for Juan to allow for a lower linguistic load.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The ESOL teacher should play a bigger role in assessing Juan and all EL students at the school. Currently, the only time she tests Juan is for the ACCESS. During the classes I have also observed that there is no differentiation for EL students other than the small groups that they are placed in. I would recommend that the ESOL teacher be given more freedom in her instruction with her ELs, allowing for further differentiation.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Juan should be tested in Spanish for fluency & comprehension.

//By: W. Wesley Anderson// Please edit the spacing. Looks as if you cut & pasted from a Word document, which is fine, but often some of the formatting is lost. Mohammed is a fifth grader at Ford Elementary. His mother is white and his father is Arab. He grew up with his grandmother on his mother’s side until the age of seven when he was placed in an all boy’s orphanage. Mohammed’s speaking voice is very loud because his grandmother was hard of hearing and he can be very blunt in conversations due to the rough nature of his all boy’s orphanage. Three years ago Mohammed was adopted by a loving and supportive family. Upon entering Big Shanty, Mohammed was accompanied by his father for the first two weeks of class due to his harsh nature and lack of classroom etiquette. Mohammed is now active in his personal learning and works well with others. Mrs. Tritt taught a lesson on how to read a text for information. The story about Tony Hawk included four main sections and six questions at the end of the text. Mohammed took a turn reading from the text and when the story was finished answered the six questions in his workbook. As an added learning tool, Mohammed was asked to not only answer the questions, but to underline where he found his answer and put the coordinating number of the question. Mohammed worked intensely and __quick__ to find answers. Many times he was so worried about finding the answer quickly, that he would not read what the question was truly asking and would become frustrated when he could not find the answer in the text. When asked to read the questions out loud he was able to slow down and comprehend what information to look for. His answers were spelled wrong due to rushing through and wanting to be first.
 * __Mohammed 5th Grade__**

Mohammed’s English comprehension is very good in speaking and listening. He struggles with reading and pronouncing words correctly which leads to errors in comprehension. When a text is read to him, he understands the vocabulary, but if he is on his own, he will make errors in defining the meaning. His spelling errors are due to two factors. The first factor is that he cannot pronounce a number of words and he will spell them like he thinks they sound. The other factor is that he rushes through his work. When answering the Tony Hawk questions, the answers were in front of him but he would rush through the spelling. He was too worried looking at the other students’ papers, wanting to finish first. The assessment at the end of this assignment worked well for Mohammed. The teacher added the part of underlining where they found the answers to gain critical reading skills. Mohammed needed to do this so that he would slow down his pace. He is very bright but lacks the skills necessary to gathering information from reading on his own.
 * Analysis/Critique of Situation**
 * Recommendations**

-Mohammed needs texts __in which__ he can manipulate with a pencil and highlighter. Through this activity he started understanding the text more and how to find the information he needed.

- Activities like this need to be daily so Mohammed can practice these skills that will be necessary in all his other classrooms.

-He should be given a text to interpret with either fill in the blank questions at the end or multiple choice answers in order to scaffold his learning.

-A portfolio would be best to track progress of his daily reading comprehension.

//By Deborah Smith Hernandez// // Check spacing between words. // Peter is a 16 year old high school student __fromShanghai,China__. He is currently living in __theUnited Stateswith__ a woman and her daughter who are also __fromShanghai__. The woman, Linda, is here working for a Chinese company who is looking for foreclosures in theAtlantaarea to buy, renovate and rent. The owner of this company is a friend of Peter’s family and offered to let him live with their employee, Linda, so that he could attend school here to learn English. Peter’s goal is to improve his English to the point that he will be accepted to Georgia Tech. Peter is basically here on his own and has told me he misses his family very much. Peter has been attending a prestigious high school inCobbCountyand excels in his advanced mathematics classes but is struggling a bit with language arts and history. He attends ESOL classes and is also in the TARGET program which is an accelerated academic program for high achievers.
 * __Peter, 11th Grade__**

Linda asked me to help Peter with his English because he has a lot of problems actually speaking with his teachers or peers at school. When I met him, I could barely understand him because he talks in almost a whisper. He is very shy and only goes out with friends that speak Mandarin. He does not have friends whose native language is English. He goes out for dinner once or twice a week and the rest of the time he is either in school or in his room at the house according to Linda. I asked him for samples of his writing and there are almost no grammatical errors. The biggest roadblock in his acquisition of English is listening and speaking.

Peter is very isolated from his English speaking peers. He does not have any social interaction with anyone other than people who speak to him in his native language. He does not attend any extracurricular events at school, nor does he initiate conversations with native English speakers. I think this is due partly because he is shy and partly because he is not confident about speaking English.
 * Analysis / Critique of the situation**

Peter is not advancing with his English because he is not acclimating to U.S. society.


 * Recommendations:**
 * I have been working with Peter by having conversations in English about himself and what he likes to do. We have gone to the park and observed people playing and enjoying the weather. Peter needs to continue to go to different places such as restaurants, malls and events and observe the interaction and conversation.
 * Peter should become involved with some type of afterschool activity in which he can practice conversing with other students outside the classroom environment.
 * One of Peter’s interests is watching and playing soccer. There are many amateur teams that meet one or twice a week to practice and play games. I think this type of activity would be greatly beneficial.
 * _**

//by Sterling Lee//
 * __Reading logs at the World Community School__**

The World Community School is a private school that serves 30 refugee girls from various countries. The girls are broken into 3 levels according to their English language proficiency and reading skills: Form 1, Form 2 and Form 3. Form 1 students spend most of the day working with private tutors to learn decoding skills while also spending time learning mathematics and basic geography. The main goal of Form 1 girls is to have a solid foundation in reading skills and basic math skills in the English language. Form 2 students learn all of the basic content areas (language arts, social studies, science, math), with a focus on mastering the English language through those content areas. Form 3 students also learn all of the content areas in English, with a goal of being able to have the language skills and academic content knowledge to pass the GED.

Every girl in the World Community School is required to keep a reading log. In this log, Form 1 and Form 2 students are asked to read and summarize a book on a daily basis. The school has a library of books that are marked by level, and girls are allowed to check out a certain number of books at their reading level for each week. Form 3 students are asked to read one chapter book a week and write a 5 paragraph essay on that book at the by the end of the week.

The journals are collect__ing__ each morning (or every week for Form 3 students) and reviewed by volunteers. The volunteers are given a strict set of written guidelines to follow. These guidelines stipulate that the entry must first be fully read, with no corrections made. The volunteer is then to decide on only one category of errors to mark, based on which category the students makes the most mistakes in. Example categories are: verb tense, noun-verb agreement, possession, missing words, wrong words, pronoun agreement,quotation marks, or run-on sentences. The volunteer will then go back and circle those mistakes, //without correcting them.// The volunteer will also underline every misspelled word.

For every corrected entry, the student is asked to fix the circled mistakes on the page and to keep a list of corrected spelling words at the front of the journal. The students are given a study time at the beginning of the school day, during which they can make these corrections by consulting classroom dictionaries, other students, teachers or volunteers. The students receive two scores of either 100 or 0 for both the spelling corrections and the corrections made on the circled mistakes. Students receive a 100 if corrections are made and a 0 if corrections are not completed.

Creating comprehensible output such as reading is a great way to increase learning. While they are in school, many of the students at the World Community School are focused on oral language and decoding skills in order to build a solid foundation in this basic skills. While they do have opportunities to write within the classroom setting, these opportunities are more limited. Having reading journals is a great way for the students to get writing practice on a daily basis. The fact that the students receive continual feedback on these assignments and are asked to correct mistakes also seems to motivate the students to complete the journals.
 * Analysis/Critique of Situation**

The World Community School relies heavily on volunteers because of limited funding. While in some situations this may cause a lack of communication in instruction (for example when a volunteer forgets to write down what was previously taught in a tutoring session), this is not the case in the reading journals. The written instructions for grading are very clear and easy to follow. Limiting the “red marks” to only one category of mistakes also seems to be a great way to not overwhelm students with what they “don’t know” while still giving them constructive feedback so that they can improve.

Form 3 students are differentiated for in their reading journal assignments by being asked to write complete essays. This is in alignment with the goal of Form 3 students to be prepared to take the GED.


 * Recommendation:**
 * Use reading logs for more varied writing activities. (Ex: Mondays - write about a personal interest, Fridays – write about one thing they learned).
 * Show students examples of what a successful entry on different topics look like at each Form.
 * Differentiate for Form 3 students by giving additional prompts from writing that are content specific. (Ex: write on at least one book per week that is content area specific). Students could either read these books on their own or in their tutoring sessions.

__**Pablo, 2nd Grade**__ //by Melanie Kimura//

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Pablo is a 2nd grade student who was born in the U.S. His family speaks Spanish at home so from the time Pablo was born until he entered kindergarten his primary language was Spanish. Toward the middle to end of his kindergarten year Pablo was assessed and placed in ESOL and began to progress in his conversational English (BICS). However, Pablo had trouble recognizing letter sounds and remembering letter-sound connections. In first grade Pablo was not progressing at the same rate as the other students, had difficulty learning to read but he could remember most of the sight words he was given.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Pablo’s primary source of anxiety seems to be with reading. He can recall some of the easier words and sight words he encounters but has trouble pronouncing new or more difficult words. The teacher, Mrs. W, assesses students’ reading comprehension by having them complete AR reading quizzes on the computer, but Pablo rarely completes any of the quizzes. Pablo is a quiet child and seems easily disrupted by the rowdier boys in the class.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When Mrs. W asks students to do independent reading Pablo seems to drift off and starts to fidget and play with this pencils and supplies. He gets frustrated and says that he does not like to read and just wants to go play outside.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Analysis/ Critique of Situation**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It seems that Pablo is having trouble with decoding which is affecting his reading fluency and comprehension. His confidence in his reading ability is very low. He can recall many sight words he encounters but has difficulty with phonics and remembering letter-sound relationships and letter patterns. He gets stuck and uses so much energy trying to pronounce new words that it affects his fluency and he loses the meaning all together. When he feels like he cannot read the majority of the words on the page he loses the meaning of the entire story. He gets frustrated and gives up, feeling like he is failing as a reader.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Recommendations **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs. W can incorporate some decoding strategies to help Pablo improve in reading such as sorting pictures and objects based on letter sounds where he repeats the sounds over and over.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs. W can also collaborate with the ESOL teacher to teach phonics in a systematic way that will make sense to Pablo.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs. W can have Pablo participate in buddy reading with a stronger reader who is willing to help. The two students can read together in a quiet place in the room where Pablo will not get distracted.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs. W can provide positive feedback so that Pablo can begin to gain confidence in his reading ability.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs. W can encourage Pablo to read at home in Spanish and English and send a letter home to his parents, in Spanish, encouraging them to read with him in both languages.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">For the assessments Mrs. W can hold one-on-one sessions with Pablo to see if his reading comprehension is improving as a result of his additional ESOL instruction with phonics and decoding.