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Instructional Context The student featured is a 9-year old in 3rd grade. 1.2 Wadrick is an English language learner (ELL) with limited English proficiency (LEP), who speaks primarily fluent? Marshallese outside of school and English in school. She did not start formal schooling until she was at an age for 2nd grade. Because of English needs, she was placed in Gr. 1, a year behind. She entered the school and became my student at the beginning of this school year in 3rd grade. I selected her because she knows how to read, but as an ELL has difficulty understanding texts. She can write about what she reads also, but does not organize her writing well yet. I think helping her comprehension and writing could help me service all ELLs. 1.3 Watdrik is approaching achievement in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts (ELA); she reads close to grade level texts and can respond to literature in simple sentences. Multiple activities going on in class can distract her, but there are no major problems that inhibit her from improving her literacy development in reading and writing. Watdrik is in the developing to expanding levels of English language proficiency, as measured by the World-Class Instructional Design Assessment (WIDA.org)- Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State for ELLs test. She understands and speaks conversational and academic English with decreasing difficulty and is developing reading comprehension of texts and writing skills in English with assistance. 1.4 I teach in a shared classroom, which is physically divided by rolling bulletin boards that do not eliminate extraneous noises from the adjoining class. I strategically met with her in a small group for more differentiated instruction in responding to reading through writing, as well as partnered with our ELL teacher for weekly pull-out services for writing. Our focus in writing is responding to texts, organization, conventions and skills. Watdrik has access to grade level and differentiated printed material, as well as online supplementary resources to improve her literacy development.
II. Assessment and Analysis Watdrik can read a literary text and form an opinion and identify details. She enjoys reading beginning chapter books, like Cam Jansen. I have her respond to the text by writing about the author’s message, main idea and key details from each chapter, and story elements, like main characters, setting, as well as problem and solution with assistance. Watdrik needs help identifying key elements of informational texts and citing text evidence to support her thinking or to answer text-dependent questions. Watdrik chooses to read literary texts and writes with guided support or help from a peer or the teacher. Many of the written activities that she has done are after book or passage readings of both literary and informational texts. Besides whole class and small group discussions, I arrange Collaborative Conversations among students to facilitate her understanding of the text. Vocabulary building and sentence starters are also used to aide her in writing responses. To deepen her learning and allow her opportunities to supplement her English with illustrating the text, I incorporate arts and use graphic organizers to stimulate her engagement in activities. 2.2 Watdrik reads text at 95-99% accuracy; she decodes new words and is persistent in reading a text. She is developing proficiency in fluency, as she is 1 reading level behind grade expectations. Her listening comprehension is better than her reading comprehension, especially when in a small group setting. When a text is read aloud, she accesses it more easily and can answer text-dependent questions with teacher guidance. Before, during, and after reading, she makes personal, text, or world connections to the text. Watdrik’s limited vocabulary makes it difficult for her to understand or comprehend literary or informational text, particularly when a passage or book uses Tier 2 words to which she’s not exposed in everyday contexts. For example, when glum and shriveled were used in the text, she understood the words in small group instruction using context clues to discover their meaning. Watdrik’s strengths are using graphic organizers to write simple sentences that express her ideas about a text. She uses graphic organizers appropriately when first modeled, then as guided practice with the teacher. Without a graphic organizer, her writing isn’t connected with clear transitions nor purpose for the reader to follow. She does not always identify key details or text evidence that best supports the text-dependent questions asked. Even after talking about those during discussions, her writing lacks connection to her discussion conversation. Her spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar are not always precise, but don’t impede understanding. 2.3 I used Running records to determine her reading fluency, Constructed Responses to evaluate reading comprehension, and a developmental reading assessment (DRA) for both reading fluency and comprehension. I use daily written literacy-related activities (e.g. responses to reading, reflection journal) and writing performance tasks emphasizing process to determine her ability to organize the content and writing conventions. 2.4 Watdrik can read fluently, but doesn’t always understand what she’s reading, so I modeled and gave frequent opportunities to use the close reading instructional routine with shorter complex texts. Close reading helped her to pay close attention to the text, like word choice, author’s purpose, and key details that support the main idea. Close reading helped her writing because she used graphic organizers to sort and record her understanding of the text. She uses these graphic organizers to organizer her writing more effectively and use proper grammar and spelling. 2.5 I ensured fairness, equity, and access by using small group instruction to model conventions and skills in writing and speaking, as well as a close reading instructional routine to preview the shared reading text, and pre-teach some essential vocabulary before whole group discussion of the shared reading text, which provided an opportunity for Watdrik to confidently participate in the whole group discussion. I adjusted instruction by doing more guided practice in identifying the main idea and key details. As we read about Olympian John Orozco, I modeled how to identify the main idea based on key details and informational text structure(sequence, cause and effect, etc). She completed a graphic organizer with sentence starters and used text evidence to support her thinking and answer text-dependent questions.
III. Planning and Instruction 1 The specific long-term writing goals for Watdrik were to respond to reading through writing opinion pieces and summaries. This reflects her developmental needs because she reads shorter passages and picture books that she accesses with guided practice from her peers and myself, connects to prior knowledge, and engages within a small group setting.
These were appropriate writing goals for Watdrik because she can make connections to text in discussions and read with fluency; this writing goal would help her to look more deeply in the text and respond to more text-dependent questions through writing, rather than just orally. These aligned goals (see CCSS Literacy.W.3.1a-d, RI.3.1 and RL.3.1) are appropriate to address Wadrick’s writing needs of organizing, using text evidence, and improving conventions and skills using her strengths, which are using graphic organizers and identifying key details.
3.2 The short-term goal of the instruction that generated student work sample #1 was to identify the main idea of the text, recount key details, and explain how they support the main idea. This was an appropriate writing goal because she developed her reading comprehension of a variety of literary and informational texts. Identifying the main idea and key details are comprehension skills that help her understand texts, structure writing, and convey her ideas better through the use of a graphic organizer. 3.3 I designed instruction to ensure new vocabulary were discussed briefly before reading text. Then I modeled through a close reading instructional routine how to find the main idea of a text by chunking information, usually a paragraph at a time, reading the text aloud, and highlighting key details from the chunked text.
Discussing new vocabulary meets her needs as an ELL with limited word knowledge. We read aloud the text and used her listening comprehension, which helped develop her word knowledge. I chunked informational text to help her focus on shorter sections of the passage at a time and had her work in a small group ensure engagement in the activity of identifying the main idea. The instructional strategies I used were whole group modeling and small group guided practice. I used a close reading instructional routine by asking text-dependent questions that encouraged Watdrik to find key details or text evidence to support her thinking and the main idea of the text. The instructional resources I used were a graphic organizer, on grade-level text, and rubric.
3.4 The specific assignment that generated student work sample #1 was a short 3rd grade passage about edamame or soybeans. Watdrik needed to read the 2-paragraph passage, identify the main idea, recount key details, and explain how they support or connect to the main idea. Watdrik preferred reading literary text so this could expand her genre of reading in an encouraging and non-threatening way. She had background knowledge of the text topic, and selected as an IM a graphic organizer she used confidently to determine, explain, and support the textual main idea. This assignment reflects Watdrik’s short- term goals because she was prompted to read the passage, identify the main idea, recount key details, and explain how they support the main idea. This assignment reflects Watdrik’s long-term goals because she responds to a reading or text in a graphic organizer that reflects her opinion of the key details and prepares her sequentially for summary writing. I hoped to learn from this if she was ready to write a text summary next.
IV. Student Work Sample #1 Watdrik’s reading comprehension and use of text evidence were strengthened because in student work sample #1 she answers the prompt of what is the main idea of the text and recounts 3 key details in the graphic organizer. Because the boxes in the graphic organizer define the main idea clearly and 3 key details which support it, this helped Watdrik strengthen use of text evidence and prepared her for organizing her writing. Teaching Watdrik the structure and organization of informational text and how the first or last sentence is usually the main idea of each paragraph helped her improve understanding. The highlighted 1st sentence in the initial paragraph showed that she identified the main idea, “Edamame is the new, healthy snack.” Modeling how to highlight key details to connect to the main idea helped her use text evidence to support her thinking and the main idea. The highlighted sentences show she recounts 3 key details of text evidence: 1) How edamame is a green vegetable, 2) how it’s rich in nutrients, and 3) that edamame is a tasty and very healthy snack. She chose to mention in the first two key details that edamame was a “healthy vegetable.” All 3 key details, although not referring explicitly back to the main idea, connect to where edamame was referred to as a healthy snack.
4.2 The feedback I provided Watdrik regarding her writing in this assignment was using the key details to enhance her opinion of what she thought the main idea to be. I explained the importance of referring back to the text and how to analyze the text for key details, but more importantly to write in her own words what she gathered from the key details. I helped her to see that she was just rewriting what was stated in the passage as her key details. The feedback I provided to Watdrik regarding her ability to construct meaning was from the rubric for the assignment. I showed her she determined the main idea of the text and recounted 3 key details that support the main idea, but lacked a clear explanation of how the key details supported the main idea. I used this opportunity to not only show how she identified the main idea and key details, but provided her sentence starters (this detail supports that edamame is a new, healthy snack because…) she could use to structure and strengthen her writing by clearly connecting the key details to the main idea. 4.3 Watdrik can highlight details, use a graphic organizer, identify the main idea of a text, and identify key details. Out of the 2-paragraph passage, she highlighted 5 sentences as details of the text. She then chose 3 out of the 5 details as the key details and wrote them into her graphic organizer. At the top of the graphic organizer is her main idea, “Edamamae is the new, healthy snack”. Her 3 key details support the main idea because “Edamame is a green vegetable, also known as a soybean, that are picked before they ripen”, “…edamame has been used since 1275 and is rich in carbohydrates, protein, dietary fiber, and other nutrients”, and “Edamame is quickly becoming a favorite tasty and very healthy snack” all of which shows that she’s trying to link the key details with the main idea of the text. She is also beginning to explain how the key details support her main idea by writing in the first key detail box of the graphic organizer, at the end of the sentence that edamame is a “healthy vegetable” and in the second, “healthy vegetable and healthy snack”. Some aspects of her writing were incorrect, for example, the main idea, “Edamame is the new, healthy snack!” is an exclamatory sentence, but she writes it as a declarative statement, “Edamame is the new, healthy snack”. In the first key detail she misspells before as “befor” and attempts to explain how the key detail supports the main idea by continuing the sentence “Edamame is a green vegetable, also known as a soybean, that are picked before they ripen” with “and there healthy vegetable” a misuse of grammar and spelling. In the second key detail, she uses “Edamame” instead of “Evidence” and again tries to explain how the key detail supports the main idea by finishing the text evidence with “and it is healthy vegetable (which is misspelled as “vegtable”) and healthy snack (which is misspelled as “snak”). In the third key detail, she misspelled healthy as “healty”.