Jessica's Reading Analysis

**As a note, Jessica is a 2^nd grader in a monolingual English school.  I have been teaching a small Spanish literacy group to my Spanish speakers for 20 min per day this year, but this is Jessica’s first and most likely, will be her only formal instruction in Spanish if she remains in our school district.**

Jessica can articulate what good readers do in both languages, although her knowledge of how to read in Spanish has been limited, she has quickly learned how to transfer her skills from English into Spanish during this school year.  Jessica wants very much to please me, as her classroom teacher, and therefore, makes a show of using her reading strategies, especially in Spanish.  She shows me when she chooses to take home Spanish books to read for the night and tells me about her reading and writing experiences when they are in Spanish.  She has been very proud to learn how to read and write in Spanish this year and both her mother and I continue to praise and give much positive feedback for her enthusiasm.

Jessica is reading at a Rigby level 23 in English, which is exactly at grade level.  She has continued throughout the school year making the appropriate gains in her English reading levels.  In Spanish, Jessica is reading at a Rigby level 11, which is a little over one grade level below; however, Jessica began this year as a new reader to Spanish, so she has also made significant growth in her Spanish reading level as well this year. 

          In terms of Jessica’s vocabulary knowledge and strategic behaviors in reading, these both are very similar in both of her languages.  Jessica has quickly learned how to break apart the Spanish words into syllables to better read them and relies on her prediction of words and understanding of the story to make appropriate word guesses if she cannot figure out a word quickly.  Although Jessica uses this same strategy in English, she has also learned important sight words and a variety of spelling patterns to help her decode words.  One area that is unique to Spanish is that a few of Jessica’s mistakes were because she predicted the word instead of decoding the word.  In this case, she made three errors in the running record because she mispronounced the word.  This is most likely because either her parents do not use the correct pronunciation or because she has never read the words, she can only use her sense of hearing to make sense of the sounds.  For example, she read the word silla as the word “sila” and the word ruedas as the word “redas”.  When I asked her what a silla de ruedas was, she pointed to the wheelchair, therefore, she clearly knew the vocabulary, but did not know the correct pronunciation of the words.  On the other hand, in English, most of Jessica’s reading errors had to do with her lack of understanding of the vocabulary.  She was able to break apart the words and almost make the right sounds, but then when I asked her what the word meant, she had no idea.  For example, some of her mistakes were:  gallop, fully, tufts, and browsing.  It was interesting to see how her strategies for decoding and her ability to understand vocabulary in the story were so closely linked.    

          In terms of comprehension, Jessica was able to summarize and answer all of the questions, including a detailed retelling of the Spanish book that she read.  In all of the books that I have read with Jessica in Spanish, although there have been vocabulary words that she struggles with, she has been able to understand the problem and the solution of the story.  I believe this is mostly due to her lower level of reading in Spanish.  Most of the stories at her reading level are more simplistic and often students do not tend to have as many comprehension difficulties.  In contrast, although Jessica has been learning how to use comprehension strategies in English, it continues to be her reading group’s area of struggle and I believe that it is mostly due to their higher reading level.  When I work with Jessica in her small guided reading group, I focus my lessons and teachings on how to use our comprehension strategies to understand the book.  Jessica tends to do a good job of stopping to ask questions, clarifying what she has read or asking the meaning of a specific new vocabulary word.  For these reasons, Jessica has been continuing at grade level in reading in English throughout the year. 

          Overall, Jessica reads fluently in both languages and is able to transfer her knowledge of both decoding skills and comprehension skills to both languages.  Clearly she is a stronger reader in English, but that is due to her three years of formal literacy instruction in English versus her limited formal literacy instruction in Spanish during only this school year.  Jessica enjoys reading and has been a very enthusiastic learner in both languages; this is partly because of her desire to please and also due to her continual success as a learner.