Lauren Bowman Professor Nottis EDUC 342 16 April 2013 Paper #2 This semester I have been working with

an ELL third-grade student named Kailey. Her main struggle is reading comprehension because of the missing words in her English vocabulary. I decided to give her two passages from the California English-Language Arts Standards Test to evaluate what area of reading comprehension she is having the most difficulty with. Both passages were set in foreign countries, one of them being Kaileys native country. Each passage is followed by 5 multiple choice questions of similar form and difficulty. I decided to use these two passages to see if the context of Kaileys native country would help her comprehension in any way. The teacher told me to administer the assessment while she was reviewing the morning worksheet with the class. She started reviewing the worksheet with the class after math centers around 10:15 in the morning. She told me to ask Kailey to come to the back of the classroom to work with me because I was going to be working with different students on their reading. When Kailey was seated at the back table with me, I gave her the passages and questions and asked her to read each passage and then answer the questions that followed it. I gave her a highlighter because the teacher has taught her students to highlight important information in passages as they read. I told Kailey that she could highlight if she wanted to but she did not need to. She clarified with me that she was supposed to read all of the passage and then answer the questions and I gave her affirmation. She also asked if she needed to read the passage out loud to me. I told her she could read it silently. She then read the passage, read the first question, and went back to the

text and highlighted the answer. She highlighted all the answers that could be found in context. The only question Kailey asked me while she was taking the assessment was Do biographies have people in them? to which I responded yes. I did not provide any other assistance to her during the assessment. Kailey answered all the questions to both passages and then handed the packet to me. I thanked her and asked her what she thought of the assessment. Her response was that It was okay; it was like normal. Then she rejoined the class. The assessment took her around 20 minutes to complete. While Kailey took the assessment, I sat at the back table with her and read an article to try to minimize any pressure she may have felt if I had watched her instead. Kailey concentrated on the assessment for the most part, although a few times she listened to what the teacher was telling the class. She did not seem to be upset or anxious or concerned about the assessment which is good. I also thought it was interesting that she felt that the passages were similar to what she has been experiencing with the PSSA testing. It may be a sign that California and Pennsylvania test for the same competency in similar ways and levels. Kailey missed one question from each passage, so the setting of her native country had no measurable impact, in this small assessment. From the first passage she missed the question This story is BEST described as a to which possible answer choices were biography, folktale, poem, and riddle. The correct answer is folktale and Kailey chose biography. Kailey missed the question from the second passage that read In America, I think life is as good as a clever girl can make it. Which word is a SYNONYM for clever? The answer choices were smart, tired, young, or strong, and Kailey chose young. Both biography and young were the second best answer choices for the question. She missed both because of vocabulary issues. She was not sure of the definition of biography and perhaps also didnt know the

definition of folktale. She does not know the word clever either and the girl in the story was young so that answer does make sense in that context. Overall, out of the ten questions presented, Kailey got eight correct. There was a question asking what the message was of one of the passages which she answered correctly. This shows she has the ability to think critically about the passage overall and come up with what it was trying to convey. That is a higher-order thinking than finding an answer to the question paraphrased in the passage. She also correctly answered a question about what part of speech assisted is. She demonstrated that she had reading comprehension; she just didnt understand some of the vocabulary presented. After discussing with the cooperating teacher the results of my assessment, I plan to create an intervention lesson to help Kailey with her vocabulary. One issue is that she has mastered much of the English language and it is just certain words that she does not know. There also does not seem to be a specific area or pattern to the words she does not know so that seems like the biggest challenge when trying to help her build her vocabulary. The teacher suggested working with Kailey on vocabulary in context, trying to build her context clues usage and skills. The questions about the passages that required her to use context clues, she got correct most of the time. The only context clues question she missed was the one in which she was supposed to define clever. However, she did use context clues to come up with the answer young. In the similarly posed question in the first passage, which asked what skittering meant, she answered correctly. This question did not specifically ask for a synonym as the clever question did. Perhaps Kailey is unsure of the word synonym as well. I believe that Kailey is proficient at using context clues to help her answer questions and understand the stories

she reads. I hope to be able to work on building her English vocabulary so that she has a better understanding when she reads.