Hiding out Students

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Based on this reading activity, I was able to identify the Student G and Student Y’s reading level. While it was not an official reading test that gave me an exact grade level, it gave me insight into their capabilities as readers. Student G, had trouble reading aloud. She often mixed up letter sounds from Spanish with those from English such as pronouncing her ‘a’ as ‘e’ or ‘l’ as ‘y’, moreover without the support of her group she could not pick out the main idea in each paragraph or identify the supporting details. This was my first clue that not only was she an English Language Learner; but also, seemed to struggle with academic Spanish pointing to inconsistencies in her education. While, Student Y was able to fake being a capable reading in this exercise because she was in a group of strong readers who she could follow. While she was reading with her table group, she struggled with a few of the words, but not the text itself. However, when I cold called on her to give me one part of the Gilded Age economy she seemed confused as to what she read. Based upon Denti’s stages of reading this demonstrated to me that she was stuck between fluency and using reading to learn (Denti 117). Moreover, when I did the binder check for the unit, I found that Student Y had not followed the instructions for the activity.

The second activity, focuses on listening. This was a teacher think aloud of the background essay of the Andrew Carnegie Document Based Question. Students were given a packet of four documents plus a background essay, that was to inform their stance on whether Andrew Carnegie was a robber baron or captain of industry. We began by scanning the text and chunking it. Then I read the first paragraph and cold called on students to ask what they thought the main idea was, and then another student for supporting details. When I called upon Student Y, she was confused as to what I meant by main idea. After I broke it down, she was still confused as how to identify the main idea. Moreover, she was withdrawn during this activity and had a lot of trouble following the directions. This showed me that the directions needed to be simpler and we needed to spend more time going over what a main idea was in addition to using the same strategy each time we read a text. As for Student G, I noticed that she too had trouble following the directions for the activity, had more trouble following what me reading aloud and the text at the same time. Based upon this listening activity I observed that her English proficiency may not be where the CDELT and her language support classes placed her at, rather I have found that she is between Beginning and Intermediate levels of English Proficiency.

The third activity focuses on speaking, this was a Socratic Seminar in which students were to speak three times in a structured academic conversation about the Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War One. They were to answer the question if President Wilson was justified in suspending civil liberties and were to root their arguments in a text. This was an activity where Student G out performed Student Y. While, Student G is embarrassed about speaking because she has an accent and speaks broken English, she participated three times and posed intelligent and insightful arguments. From this I found that while, she may not speak the best English she is able to better express herself verbally than in writing. Moreover, her classmates encouraged her to speak up and keep going with her argument which was a product of productive group work. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Student Y was withdrawn from class that day. She sat in the circle on her phone, ignoring her classmates and opportunities to speak. Moreover, it appears that she is the opposite of Student G, she is better able to express herself in writing than verbally. It appears that she gets nervous speaking in front of her classmates and has days more often than not that she is withdrawn from the class activities.

The fourth activity focuses on writing, it was an exit ticket in which they were to summarize the lecture. The prompt asked the students to summarize two motivations to imperialize other countries and what they thought imperialism might lead to. They were provided with sentence frames on the PowerPoint slide to use and wrote their exit ticket on a half sheet of paper. Student G, simply filled in the blanks of the sentence frames from her notes. However, the information she filled in was correct, while she wrote “I don’t know” for what Imperialism led to. This simple writing activity showed me that she struggled in almost every area of the class and needed more supports than what I was giving the entire class. While, a handful student successfully predicted that Imperialism would lead to World War One; Student G struggled to just fill in the blanks of the sentence frames. Student Y’s response using the sentence frames met expectations, she correctly summarized two motivations to imperialize and predicted the United States would become less well liked by other countries. While, it was not exactly what I was looking for in a prediction, she made an effort to complete the exit ticket and demonstrated that she was capable of expressing herself well in writing when given sentence frames to assist her in writing.

Section Three

At the beginning of October, we did a lesson on Imperialism that was especially hard for not only Student G and Student Y; but also, the other struggling students in the class. Both students did not fully complete the assignment because while it was at their level, there were no scaffolds to assist them. Additionally, while they were placed into strategic groups, those groups were too large for them to gain understanding from the assignment. And, lastly upon closer observation and utilizing Chall’s stages of reading I found that these two girls were between Learning to Read and Reading to Learn; moreover, they also needed to be provided with a context or background information for what they were going to read.

Another assignment that informed my teaching was a writing assignment on Andrew Carnegie based upon a series of documents they read in their small groups. They were to write a paragraph with a clear claim at the beginning and cite two pieces of evidence to support their claim. Student Y completed the assignment; however, it was three weeks late. Upon examining her writing, it lacked academic vocabulary, proper grammar, and analysis. Her writing did not go below the surface, she simply cited evidence and did not explain how it supported her claim. Rather, she reworded the quote. As for Student G, she did not complete the assignment because it was too difficult and she got frustrated with herself and the topic which looking back

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