ELL Information

names have been changed

ELL Case Study 4-Information

*Maria is a 9-year-old 3^rd grader whose first language is Spanish.  She moved to the United States from Mexico as a toddler.  She has one sister (age 16) and one brother (age 13) who are still living in Mexico.  Maria is average height, slightly pudgy, with brown straight shoulder length hair, and brown eyes.  She projects a shy image but she is very eager to be accommodating and helpful.

Maria lives in a house with her parents, her grandmother, an aunt, and several other relatives in Riverview.  There are a total of 12 people in her household, this also includes other children.  At home she speaks Spanish with her family.  Her father speaks a little English while her mother’s English is limited to simple words and phrases.  Maria acts as a translator for her parents when out in public as needed.  Her father works for a company building houses while her mother works days at Wendy’s fast food restaurant.  Her grandmother does not work and is home all day.  Maria’s favorite books are The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  She also enjoys the Junie B. Jones series and Cat in the Hat books.

Maria has been in the U.S. school system since kindergarten.  She was pulled out for separate ESOL instruction previously but not currently.  Her family moves around frequently and she has been to many different schools.  She has been able to attend her current school, Boyette Springs Elementary, for the entire year.  She often does not do homework nor has papers signed.  She has told her teachers that she wasn’t able to do her homework because she was busy cooking dinner with her mother.  Her teachers have seen great improvement with her reading skills within the past school year.  Her teachers also agree that they would like to see more of an improvement in her writing skills as it tends to be very basic and without any elaboration.

Problems and Perspectives

Maria has made big gains this school year in her reading abilities.  Her teachers are very impressed with the strides she has made and also emphasized the fact that she was in the class all year.  Maria has stated she has been to many schools because her family moves a lot.  This movement has been detrimental to her success in the past.  She is a bright girl and this past year shows what she is capable of when she is able to stay in a stable learning environment.

School work is not a major emphasis at home either.  An example of this is the fact that homework is not done and papers are not signed when sent home.  Another reason for lack of emphasis is that the family has moved around frequently.  Maria has not ever been anywhere long enough to know what is expected.  Also, different routines have been expected at each school she has attended.  She may have learned to ignore them instead of trying to adapt to them.  Either way, bringing work home and having it signed should help to emphasize the school works importance and, with hope, it may get her family interested in what she is doing at school.   If Maria does not see any personal need to combine her school and home lives it could greatly affect her future academics.  This will really begin to show as she reaches higher grades where much of the work is done at home.

Stakeholder Perspectives

Stakeholder Perspectives

Maria- When I get home I don’t have time to do homework.  I need to help my family with household chores and sometimes I get to help my mom and grandmother cook.  I forget to have my work signed because I get too busy.  I don’t like to write either.  My teachers try to get me to write big sentences and I don’t understand what they want.  It’s hard.  I’ll just keep doing what I know how to do.

Language Arts Teacher- Maria is such a sweet and bright girl.  I’m ecstatic over the gains she has made in reading this year.  I wish we had seen the same improvement in her writing.  She doesn’t seem to want to write.  She shows little interest in it.  I also would like to see her doing her homework and having her parents sign her papers.  Her parents have come to school a couple times but I haven’t been able to have them in for a conference-they don’t respond to my letters home.  I don’t know if they are receiving them.

Parents- Maria is such a smart and helpful girl.  We are very proud that she is able to speak and read in English.  She is also very helpful around the house.  We wish we could go to school more but we have to work to support our family.  Maria seems to be doing well anyway and that is good.  When we do go to school it is a little uncomfortable because it is hard to understand what they are saying.

Principal-  Maria has done a wonderful job in her reading this year. We need to make the same improvements with her writing.  I am willing to have a translator come in to help her teacher and her parents communicate better.  I encourage having the translator translate a letter home from her teacher I order to set up a meeting.

SOLOM & SOLOM Analysis

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SOLOM

After completing the SOLOM for Maria she scored a 21.  This placed her as a Phase III- English Proficient student.  The scoring was as follows:

Comprehension- 4

In comprehension Maria’s score was a 4.  While she understood nearly everything at normal speed I needed to repeat or rephrase a couple of my questions.  An example of this was seen when I asked her about speaking English for her family out in public.  I had to give her an example and even then I could tell she wasn’t sure if she understood the question.  To be honest it wasn’t the best way to ask the question but I feel once it was explained it was comprehensible.

Fluency- 4

Maria is generally fluent.  When she didn’t know how to complete an answer she would simplify the answer.  This can be seen when I asked her who lived in her house besides herself and her parents.  She began to list her aunt and her grandmother, but instead of continuing the list she said “I have more people at my house.”  Several times she also stopped herself mid-sentence to search for the correct manner of expression and then she would self-correct herself.  You can see her doing this when I asked if there were other kids living in her house.  Her response was “Yes, there are some who go to my…who go to this school.” 

 

Vocabulary- 4

Maria occasionally uses inappropriate terms and has to rephrase ideas because of lexical inadequacies.  When explaining what she found hard about speaking English she stated it was “when you have to write big….when you have to write great sentences with words that you don’t even like don’t know too much.”  Here is an example of using both an inadequate term and having to rephrase her idea.  When she chose to use great it was an induced error.  While great and big can mean the same thing in this circumstance it does not.  The end of this sentence, with the use of don’t, also shows that she has tendencies to use stage 2 negations.

Pronunciation- 5

When Maria pronounces her words she is close to that of a native speaker.  I was uncertain about whether to score her a 4 or a 5 in this area because on a couple of words I could hear a slight accent.  However her pronunciation was more approximate to that of a native speaker than it was to a definite accent.  Her intonation was that of a native speaker.

Grammar- 4 

Occasional grammatical errors and word order errors were made by Maria.  She had errors in negation as in the example given previously, “when you have to write big….when you have to write great sentences with words that you don’t even like don’t know too much.”, with the use of the word don’t.  The use of don’t places her in the second stage of negation acquisition developed from the study of six Spanish learners (adapted by Cancina et al, 1978).  When she was asked what her teachers do to help her with her reading.  She answered “They telling me questions about how I..um..if I understand or not.”  This answer shows a couple of errors, the first one being she used the word tell instead of ask.  This is a simple vocabulary error.  However if you look at the word she used “telling” it shows that she has yet mastered how to use an irregular verb.  She placed an –ing onto the end of tell instead of using tell.  A gender error is shown when she is speaking of Ms. Jimenez and she uses he to describe her.

Miscue Analysis, Reading Audio, & Written Analysis

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Link to Reading Passage Audio

Miscue Analysis

The reading passage Maria read was one from a book she was currently reading.  The book was The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney.  During the reading passage the most prominent error was omission.  This was seen 6 times however it did not appear to interfere with her comprehension.  She did have a couple of problems with vocabulary-the words standardized and chaos specifically.  While those were errors those are both words above her grade level and I didn’t feel that other 3^rd graders would know the meaning of them either. The name Mrs. Mackelroy was also pronounced wrong but again it did not hinder her comprehension.

Writing Analysis & Writing Sample

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Writing Analysis

When Maria wrote her passage I asked her to write about what she liked about the Wimpy Kid books.  Her writing was well organized in that all three sentences were on topic.  She also has a main idea.  However there were no supporting details or transitions with in the writing. 

There were errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  The frequently used words in the sentences are spelled correctly.  She forgot the “p” in Wimpy and miss spelled funny, surprises, and characters.  While funny is easily recognized, surprises and characters are not.  It looks like she recognized some of the letters that should be in the word and just wrote those down. 

Maria’s writing traits are a combination between a beginning level writer and an immediate level writer according to the writing traits matrix.  Her fluency, organization, and genre are at intermediate levels while her grammar, vocabulary, and sentence variety is at the beginner level.

Interview Audio File & Written Transcription

Link to Full Audio Interview



Me:  Actually what I’m doing is I am going back to school to be a teacher.  When you go to school to be a teacher you need to teach kids who don’t have English as their first language how to learn and that is what they are helping you learn to do here.  What I am going to do is ask questions of you, being a student, what it’s like to be a student and trying to learn.

Obviously you speak two languages.

Maria: Yes

You speak English and what else?

Spanish

Have you always lived in Brandon or in Florida?

Mexico

Do you live with your mom and dad?  Shakes her head yes

Do you have brother and sisters?  Shakes head no

No? It’s just only you?

Oh I do have brothers and sisters that live in Mexico.

Oh they live in Mexico, how old are they?  Do you know?

My sister is 16 my brother is 13

And what are their names?

Dulce and Daniel

Do your mom and dad work?

Yes

Do just the three of you live together or do you live with other people?

I live with my grandmother, my aunt, umm I have more people at my house

Really?  How many people do you have at your house?

Twelve

Wow, 12?  Are they all family or are some of them friends?

Family

You probably don’t get much alone time do you?  Shakes her head no

Are there other kids living in your house?

Yes there are some who go to my…. who go to this school.

Oh really?  Are you the only one in 3^rd grade?

Yes

So do you like Wimpy Kid?  Shakes her head yes

My son is in 4^th grade he loves The Wimpy Kid, he’s read all of them.  Ok why don’t you pick what you want to read and read me a page or two.

OK

Reads passage

Very good.  What pages are those?

66 and 67

And which Wimpy Kid is this?

Um the Ugly Truth

The Ugly Truth is that the first one? Do you know?

No

Did you put those stickers on there (the cover of the book)?  Shakes head yes.

That’s pretty cool.

OK I’m going to ask you a couple questions and then I have something for you for helping me.

How old are you?

9

When’s your birthday?

January 7^th.

Oh mine is January 1^st, so mine is not that far from yours.

So your first language is Spanish right?

UmmHmm

Do you speak any other languages besides English or Spanish?  Shakes head no

Let’s see.  Who is your favorite teacher?

Ms. Hertz

What does she teach?

Science, Math, and Social studies

Can you read in Spanish?

Little

Can you read more in English than you can in Spanish?

Yes

Did you go to school when you lived in Mexico? Or have you ever lived in Mexico?

I…I didn’t go to school in Mexico cause I was like one or two.

What is it like to learn English?

It’s a awesome cause then you can learn more languages that you never even learned.

Did you start to learn English when you came to school?

Yes

And have you been at Boyette Springs since kindergarten?

Hesitant “yes”

Have you been to any other schools?

I have been to lots of schools

OK because you parents move around?  Shakes head yes

What is the hardest part about speaking English?

You have to like spell out big words

That is hard, what has been fun about learning English?

Sometimes you get to draw pictures of it.

Instead of spelling the words you can draw pictures?  Shakes head yes.

How long have you been learning English?

More than..I’ve been here (then counts out the years she’s been in school under her breath…4 years.

So you started when you began kindergarten.

How did you learn how to read?  What was the best thing that worked for you?

When I went with Mrs. Jimenez who taught, he taught me how to read books in English.

Did she? And did she speak Spanish to you?

Yes

And would she speak Spanish to help you or did she just speak English?

Both

And did you like it when she spoke both?

Yes

Did it make it easier for you to understand when she spoke to you in English, because she could speak to you in Spanish also if you didn’t understand?

Yes

What did you find hard about speaking English?

The hardest part is when you have to write big…when you have to write great sentences with words that you don’t even like don’t know too much.

Do you speak English at home or do you speak Spanish at home?

Spanish at home

Do you teach anyone that you live with how to speak English?

Hmm…Yes

Like when you go to the store do you speak or do they?  Say you had to go to Walgreens to get candy and you had a question-like where it was..

I speak to them…(hesitantly like she doesn’t understand what I’m asking)

If you have your mom or dad with you.  Does your Mom or Dad speak English?

My dad speaks some and my mom already know like Hello.

So she knows a little but you know more than her.

What does your dad do for work?

He works at this place where they build houses.

And does your mom work?

Yes, she works at Wendy’s.

Oh, which one? Do you know?

I don’t know

Does she work during the day? Or at night?

During the day

So she’s home at night when your home. Does your Grandma work?

No

What does your teachers do to help you with your reading?

They telling me questions about how I… um… if I understand or not.

What was the one thing your teachers did to help you learn English?

Umm they let me spell out the words phnoem. (Phonetically)

Do you find any sounds that are harder for you?

No

What are you favorite books to read?

The Wimpy Kid

That’s it?  Did you ever read Captain Underpants?

Only once, but I didn’t like it.

No?  You didn’t?  Was it too silly? What about Junie B. Jones?

I like Junie B. Jones

What other books do you like?

Ummm… I like Cat in the Hat books.

Well it looks like you are getting ready to leave for lunch.  Thank you for being so great and helping me out.

Solutions/Suggested Plan of Action

 

Solutions/Suggested Plan of Action

Maria’s comprehension when reading does not seem to be hindered.  The book she read from was an upper 4^th grade level book.  I would recommend that she continue to read higher level chapter books to increase comprehension and vocabulary.  She also enjoys The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  I would recommend the other books in this series but also expand into graphic novels which also come in chapter books.  The graphic novel genre is very popular and there are many that would appeal to her interests.  I would also recommend reading at home with her parents.  While they may not be able to help her, it will help improve her fluency and build her confidence.  She may even read to the younger kids in her household.

The first plan of action in the classroom is to set up a system for Maria to self-monitor her homework.  She needs to be responsible for doing it and bring it back to school.  The teacher will make a chart to place in her cubby where she can check off if she brought her homework or any papers that need to be signed back to school.  Since her cubby is the first thing she sees in the morning it will remind her to check off on her chart.  Her cubby is also the last thing she sees when she leaves for the day so it will help serve as a reminder to get her homework done when she gets home.  She will receive rewards to be determined by herself and her teacher. Possible rewards include more free reading time, more library time, or even a book.  At the end of each week she will meet with her teacher and they will review her homework chart/goal together.

The teacher will also send a translated letter home to Maria’s parents asking for a teacher conference.  She will explain in the letter Maria could use their help to improve her school work and that she would like to discuss some ways they could do to help.  It would also be explain that a translator would be present and it would be held at a time convenient to them.  Maria would also need to get this letter signed and returned.  The point of the conference will be for Maria’s parents to help hold her accountable for doing and returning her homework.  This seems insignificant but if Maria’s parents see school work as significant enough to complete at home Maria will also see that school work is important.  This will also serve as a link to connect her school life and her home life.

Maria’s writing is between a beginning and intermediate level writer.  In order to instill a fondness of writing I would recommend a buddy journal between Maria and one of her friends.  The students could brainstorm about what topics they want to write about in their journal.  They would then keep the final list on the front page of the journal so they could choose one when they are ready to move on to a new topic.  Their responses will be to the content and not form of the message.

For writing in the classroom Maria needs to practice her process writing skills.  To begin her writing she should discuss her ideas orally with a buddy (a higher level writer) or the teacher and write them down in a cluster style graphic organizer.  Once that is completed she should take those ideas and elaborate by using the show and not tell strategy.  Since Maria has a tendency to write simple sentences she also should work on sentence combining.  Once Maria begins to gain confidence in her fluency the teacher should correct minimally and expand upon corrections as her confidence grows.