Sunday, November 27, 2011

#8 Running Records

A running record is a great tool to help teachers track reading progress.  It gives information on reading behavior and helps to guide instruction and identify next steps that are needed for that reader. I have used many reading assessments through the years, yet I have never been trained to do a running record.

The running record looks at 3 different types of cuing systems.  Meaning (M) is part of the cuing system in which the child takes his or her cue to make sense of text by thinking about the meaning of the sentence. These cues assist in the reading of a word or phrase. Structure (S) refers to the structure of language and is often referred to as syntax. Knowledge of structure helps the reader know if what she or he reads sounds correct. This is where they possibly replace a verb for another verb or a noun for another noun. Visual (V) information is related to the look of the letters in a word and the word itself. A reader uses visual information when she or he studies the beginning sound, ending sound, word length, and familiar word chunks.
I chose 2 students that have learned English as their second language. Jal is in fourth grade and currently reading at a second grade level. His parents were born and raised in Africa, and they moved to the United States when Jal was 5 years old. His native language is Kanuri which is an African dialect that very few people speak. This is the language that is spoken at home. His mother is now taking English lessons from some of our teachers at Greenwood. The second child is Mahika. Mahika’s family is from India, and at home she speaks both English and Hindi. Mahika is in Kindergarten and just learning how to read. Both of her parents speak fluent English.






Jal read from the story The Wonderful Day . He read 172 words. There were no pictures to support the reading.  Jal has good command over phrasing, and he reads punctuation. Jal relies on visual cues more than any other. He also tends to ignore mistakes that interrupt the meaning of the text ; he just continues reading. For example, he says “started” for “stared”…yet “started” did not make sense. He substitutes “sometimes” for “something” which leaves the sentence not making sense. This tells me that he is not reading for meaning. He is clearly using a visual cue to figure out the word, but when it doesn’t make sense he does not self-correct, or even pause to think about it. Jal understands the structure of sentences because there are times when he substitutes a noun for a noun. For example, he said the word” guy” instead of “giant.” Jal had one self-correction out of 19 errors. He used meaning to make this correction. He knew that the phrase “sitting there his the road” did not make sense, so he self -corrected the “his” with “in.”  The word cabbage gave Jal the most trouble. He said “cab-e” for it each time it appeared in the story. It appeared nine times, so this accounted for nine of his 19 errors. **I have since learned that this should have only counted as one error.

Next steps for Jal:
Right away I taught Jal the word “cabbage.” He did not know what the word was, but he had heard of it before. I showed him a picture on the computer. We then read the story again with the word cabbage, and it made sense to him. This clearly shows how important it is to teach vocabulary to our ELL students. I did talk with Jal’s teacher and recommended working on reading for meaning. I am concerned that he didn’t stop when meaning broke down. I would make it a goal for him to monitor his comprehension, and make more self-corrections. I do not know anything about Jal’s native language, so I am not sure as to whether any of these errors have anything to do with a transfer from Kanuri to English.



Mahika was very shy about coming with me to read. Our 3rd graders are big buddies to the kindergarten children, so I invited her big buddy to come out and sit with us so that she would be more comfortable. Mahika is just learning to read, so her reading was very choppy and word by word. She was very strong with all of her sight words. The reading at a level 3 is very predictable and repetitive. Mahika had a total of 9 errors, with a result of 80% accuracy. When she did come to a word that she didn’t know she would try sounding the word out and then appeal for help. Mahika substituted the word “dog” each time for the word “boy.” Without the help of pictures, this could make sense. She asked for help on the words “slide” and “swing.” She also said “rop” for “rope.” The only error that really concerned me was for the phrase, “said the girl” she read, “did the girl” which has no meaning. Most of her other mistakes still made sense.

Next steps for Mahika:
Mahika has been good at getting to know some of the sight words. I would continue to give her more sight words. She may have a b and d reversal to work on. I believe she thought the word “boy” started with a d and that is why she said “dog.” I would teach her the silent e rule. This would help her in recognizing words like rope and saying the long vowel sound. I would encourage her to continue to read for meaning, and sounding out words she does not know. Overall, I was very impressed with where she is at this early in the year.

No comments:

Post a Comment