Assessing Oral and Written Language
Audience and Purpose
Does the oral comment or written work reach a purpose with its intended audience?
Substance and Form
Discrete and Holistic:
Qualitative and Quantitative:
Assessing Oral Language During Reading-Related Activities:
Assessing Written Language Development During Reading-Related Activities
Audience and Purpose
Does the oral comment or written work reach a purpose with its intended audience?
Substance and Form
- Substance (What a student says): Did they answer the question; relevant information given?
- Form (How the student said or wrote it): Clear and coherent or did they ramble?
Discrete and Holistic:
- Discrete: Elements of student's speech or written work like punctuation
- Holistic: What a students says or writes as a whole
Qualitative and Quantitative:
- Qualitative: A holistic response to how a student did (ie. Timmy, great job. Best essay ever!).
- Quantitative: Uses numbers to dictate student performance (Use rubrics)
Assessing Oral Language During Reading-Related Activities:
- Small Group Literature Discussions: Note students doing nothing or saying something insightful
- Language Play: Chant rhymes, songs
- Drama Based on Literature: Learning their parts and speaking in a way that fits a character
- Answers to Questions
Assessing Written Language Development During Reading-Related Activities
- Portfolios (Student and teacher's favorites of writing examples)
- Also: Journals, stories on characters, essays, captions from illustrations, etc.
Teaching Integration of Oral Language Development and Reading
- Language Play to Develop Phonics and Phonemic Awareness: Chants, rhymes
- Drama: Speaking in a way that fits a character
- Group Discussion of Books: Helps students to develop oral proficiency
- Answering Questions: Help students think on their feet
- Sharing Content Information After Content-Area Reading: Help organize thoughts and guide students to using visual aids
Teaching Written Language Development and Reading
The Writing Process
Journals
Writing Stories: Book experience enables students to come up with creative writing experiences
The Writing Process
- Stage One: Pre-Writing
- Stage Two: Drafting
- Stage Three: Revising
- Stage Four: Final Draft
Journals
- Personal Journals: Private, read only by student and teacher
- Dialogue Journals: Classmate/Teacher responds
- Reading Logs: React to story they are reading
- Double-Entry Journals: Divided in two columns - quotes/lines and a response
- Content Learning Logs: Social studies and Science - KWL, but without the K.
Writing Stories: Book experience enables students to come up with creative writing experiences
- Literature and Genres of Writing: Poetry, ABC books, fairy tales, mysteries and sci-fi.
- Expository (Informational) Modes: Content-area helps students build expository writings
- Our Youngest Writers
- Writing Each Letter of the Alphabet
- Interactive Writing: Teacher and students write a story together
- Language Experience Approach: Preserving student ideas through writing
- Captions for Illustrations: Students dictate captions for illustrations; then, write the captions
Teaching English Learners and Reading
Supporting the Development of English Learners focuses on:
Reading Experiences of Each Stage of English Proficiency
(For students who have learned how to read in their first language)
Preproduction:
Sheltered Reading Instruction
SDAIE (Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English):
English and Other Writing Systems
Alphabetic:
Transfer from One Language to Another
Concepts About Print:
Supporting the Development of English Learners focuses on:
- Reading experiences are appropriate for each stage of English proficiency
- Scaffold reading lessons
Reading Experiences of Each Stage of English Proficiency
(For students who have learned how to read in their first language)
Preproduction:
- Listen and may say a few words (Their names, basic words)
- Can say short phrases
- Teach concepts about print (directionality, differences between letters and words)
- Read simple picture books
- Phonemic awareness: Can recognize and speak English phonemes (if they're similar to their first language)
- Build site vocabulary
- Can start writing by captioning illustrations
- Speak in sentences and can describe events
- Focus on meanings of words (prefixes and suffixes)
- Cognates (words that sound similar in both languages and have the same meaning): orange (English); 오렌지 orange (Korean)
- Cognates (words that sound similar in both languages but have different meanings): estate (English: Large house); estate (Italian: Summer)
- Sight words now include content-area subjects
- Books can be read independently
- Students high level of oral proficiency; real challenge is in content-area subjects
- Advanced word analysis skills (Understand difficult Greek and Latin roots)
- Vocabulary word with multiple meanings
- Scaffolding (Sheltered reading) is essential
Sheltered Reading Instruction
SDAIE (Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English):
- For intermediate proficient ELL students, to teach content-area subjects (ie. Social Studies)
- Use pictures and real objects to convey vocabulary words
- In addition to content-area vocabulary, add words EL students may have problems with (ie. idioms)
- Preview lesson first in the student's first language, review in English (Teacher will need to be bilingual)
- Helps activate background knowledge
- Highlights important information
- Model behavior students should do (ie. highlighting, underlining key words)
English and Other Writing Systems
Alphabetic:
- Transparent: High degree of regularity (Spanish, Italian)
- Opaque: Complex sound-sound relationships (English, French)
Transfer from One Language to Another
Concepts About Print:
- Those who can read in their first language will be able to understand many of these ideas
- Students may need to relearn directionality if it differs in their first language
- Understanding alphabetic principle if their writing system differs.
- Romantic and Germanic languages have the advantages of giving students cognates to help them understand many words
41. Mr. Omega is a fourth-grade teacher. He has five English Learners. He wants, of course, to help them learn to read in English. He should:
a. Conduct daily assessments of each EL's word identification skills.
b. Not teach directionality and tracking of print if his English Learners know how to read in Spanish.
c. Understand that if the children have learned to read in language other than English, there will be a negative transfer of those literacy skills to English.
d. Place these students in the same group for comprehension lessons.
42. Mr. Okada is a teacher who believes in a balanced approach to teaching reading. He understands the importance of phonemic awareness in reading development, so he teaches many directed lessons to develop his kindergartner's acquisition of phonemic awareness. To balance these lessons he should:
a. Develop a series of worksheets to reinforce what the students have learned.
b. Administer a timed test to see what each student has learned.
c. Use chants and songs with rhyming words.
d. Use contextual redefinition and the cluing technique.
43. Mr Gota teaches fifth grade. In his classroom there are seven English Learners who have an instructional reading level of grade three in English. During teacher-directed reading lessons, Mr. Gota should:
a. Ask students to read aloud everyday, without practice, and in random order.
b. Be sure to use the comprehension questions that appear at the bottom of each page in the teacher's edition of the basal reader.
c. Divide the lesson in three parts: first, teach basic literacy concepts, like the directionality in English; second, focus on morphemic analysis, especially Greek and Latin root words; third, read the story, stopping at the end of each paragraph to ask literal comprehension questions.
d. Use a variety of strategies to support these students, including preview-review, visual aids, charts, and real objects.
44. Mr. Ospreay is a second-grade teacher. Within the same week, two new students from Italy become a part of his classroom. Paolo just moved to the United States from Florence. Paolo is a good reader and writer in Italian, but he does not speak any English. The second student, Daniele, was born in Milan. Daniele's parents moved several times; he has lived in Barcelona, Cape Town, and San Francisco. As a result, he cannot read or write in Italian. He, too, does not speak English. Which of the following is a reasonable option for Mr. Ospreay?
a. Paolo will not need to be taught most of the English concepts about print; Daniele will need this instruction.
b. Paolo knows how to read; he can be placed in a group reading a grade-level text.
c. Daniele will not need any English phonemic awareness lessons because Italian is a Latin-based language.
d. Before beginning any English reading instruction, each student must be able to speak at least 100 English words.
a. Conduct daily assessments of each EL's word identification skills.
b. Not teach directionality and tracking of print if his English Learners know how to read in Spanish.
c. Understand that if the children have learned to read in language other than English, there will be a negative transfer of those literacy skills to English.
d. Place these students in the same group for comprehension lessons.
42. Mr. Okada is a teacher who believes in a balanced approach to teaching reading. He understands the importance of phonemic awareness in reading development, so he teaches many directed lessons to develop his kindergartner's acquisition of phonemic awareness. To balance these lessons he should:
a. Develop a series of worksheets to reinforce what the students have learned.
b. Administer a timed test to see what each student has learned.
c. Use chants and songs with rhyming words.
d. Use contextual redefinition and the cluing technique.
43. Mr Gota teaches fifth grade. In his classroom there are seven English Learners who have an instructional reading level of grade three in English. During teacher-directed reading lessons, Mr. Gota should:
a. Ask students to read aloud everyday, without practice, and in random order.
b. Be sure to use the comprehension questions that appear at the bottom of each page in the teacher's edition of the basal reader.
c. Divide the lesson in three parts: first, teach basic literacy concepts, like the directionality in English; second, focus on morphemic analysis, especially Greek and Latin root words; third, read the story, stopping at the end of each paragraph to ask literal comprehension questions.
d. Use a variety of strategies to support these students, including preview-review, visual aids, charts, and real objects.
44. Mr. Ospreay is a second-grade teacher. Within the same week, two new students from Italy become a part of his classroom. Paolo just moved to the United States from Florence. Paolo is a good reader and writer in Italian, but he does not speak any English. The second student, Daniele, was born in Milan. Daniele's parents moved several times; he has lived in Barcelona, Cape Town, and San Francisco. As a result, he cannot read or write in Italian. He, too, does not speak English. Which of the following is a reasonable option for Mr. Ospreay?
a. Paolo will not need to be taught most of the English concepts about print; Daniele will need this instruction.
b. Paolo knows how to read; he can be placed in a group reading a grade-level text.
c. Daniele will not need any English phonemic awareness lessons because Italian is a Latin-based language.
d. Before beginning any English reading instruction, each student must be able to speak at least 100 English words.