As a Reading Recovery teacher I live and breathe running records and view them as one of the most important and effective tools used in assessing students’ reading. Although I average more than six running records a day, this was the first opportunity I have had to administer one to a second language learner. It was a new and very insightful process.
Observations:
The two students I worked with this week were first graders; one primarily speaks Spanish at home and the other’s first language is Korean. Before taking the running record, I took some time to first just talk to each of kids to get an idea of what their oral language was like.
The Korean student had great oral language with only a few minor mispronunciations of words. Otherwise, she seemed to have some basic vocabulary and was able to communicate effectively. As for her running record, it did not show any errors that were a direct result of the language difference. In order to instruct this student, I would suggest giving her strong book orientations, specifically pointing out and discussing any unfamiliar vocabulary. With a well thought-out book orientation, I believe this student will be very successful in reading.
The Spanish-speaking student on the other hand seemed to have more barriers to overcome. His vocabulary was more limited and he had some difficulty with pronunciation. As he was reading, I noticed that many of his errors were either structural or meaning based. He stumbled on words like helicopter, simply because it was not in his vocabulary. In addition, he did not have a large bank of high frequency words and therefore had difficulty recalling many of them or confusing similar looking ones, such as come/came. One thing that I did find surprising was that many of his errors were due to the fact that he left off inflectional endings. Many beginning readers tend to leave of inflections, so I’m not sure whether this was a result of the language barrier or not. His reading was also word-by-word with little expression or intonation. This student would also benefit from a strong book orientation to help build on the meaning of the story and give him the vocabulary necessary to successfully read the story. I would also suggest doing some word work with him, teaching him about inflections and helping him learn some high frequency words. Both of these activities can be done using magnetic letters and white boards. Lastly, this student would benefit from some fluency instruction. I would have him read many familiar reads just practicing phrasing and intonation.
The articles I read this week, not only confirmed the importance of running records, but also brought some clarity on why and how to use them effectively. The first article I read was called Running Records Every Day. It talked about the importance of administering running records and it paints a clear picture of why we use them and what they teach us. According to the article, running records allow teachers to get into the head of the reader and gain insights into the reader’s processing skills and strategies. Running records reveal a student’s independent, instructional, and frustrational levels, but more importantly they reveal how the student is processing text, which can then be used to guide how you instruct that student.
The other text I read was called, Running Records for Classroom Teachers by Marie Clay. Clay states that running records provide evidence of how well children are using their knowledge of letters, sounds and words to understand the messages in the text. She also states that running records can serve several purposes. One is to assess the difficulty of the text and to find a student’s true reading level. The other main purpose is to serve as a guide for teaching. When teachers take a running record, they are able to review what happened immediately and provide the student with on-the-spot instruction. Teachers can also analyze a student’s running record and use that information to plan for future instruction and support.
References:
Clay, M. M., (2000). Running Records for Classroom Teachers. Auckland, New Zealand: Heinemann.
Hebert, C.R. (2004). RUNNING RECORDS Every Day. Instructor, 114(1), 30-71. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
No comments:
Post a Comment