Profile of a Reader
EDRD 600, Summer 2015
Meet the Reader
Malcolm is a five-year-old African American child in my kindergarten classroom. When I first met him during Registration Day, I could tell he would be an avid learner in kindergarten. He is a hard worker, a loyal friend, and an apt listener. During circle time, he raises his hand almost every time I ask a question or invite the children to share. One time, he even cried when I did not call on him because he wanted to share his thoughts so badly.
Malcolm entered kindergarten with a strong background in print awareness. We completed the Student Interest Inventory (Figure 1) together during our staggered entry days at the beginning of the year in August. He could already write his name independently, as evidenced in question one. Malcolm knew his birthday for question number two and even added a detail about where he was born—in the hospital. His brother Maxton, who is in seventh grade now, attended the same elementary school as Malcolm. Because of Maxton, this family and our school already developed a strong and supportive relationship. The survey went well until we got to question nine. When I asked Malcolm what his favorite food was, he sat there uncomfortably for ten seconds, saying absolutely nothing. I reiterated the question, only to receive the same response. Finally, Malcolm admitted that he had too many to decide. He seemed to freeze up because he did not know the “right” answer to the question, and even when I encouraged him to give me two or three foods he liked, he could not respond to the question. As for his reading interests, he said he likes to read about dinosaurs.
At the beginning of the year, I also ask parents to tell me a little bit about their young learners in a questionnaire I call “Parent Tips for Success” (Figure 2). Malcolm’s mom filled out this form for us during Registration Day while we took Malcolm on a classroom tour. She noted that Malcolm would enjoy reading more about dinosaurs, elephants, and conductors. I was thrilled to see that both Malcolm and his mom agreed that dinosaurs were one of his strongest reading interests—too often I see parents who have absolutely no idea what their child enjoys reading. When I asked her to share a little about her reading habits with Malcolm, she said that they read every day for five to fifteen minutes. I knew from this response that reading was a regularly-scheduled event in Malcolm’s life that occurred in developmentally-appropriate time increments. His mother’s two learning goals for Malcolm were that he write the letter “a” correctly and learn to read, both of which Malcolm will have accomplished with ease by the end of kindergarten. She also volunteered her services as a guest reader, parent volunteer, and social studies speaker, so I could tell that his mother was interested in Malcolm’s educational journey and willing to support him and his classmates by sharing her gifts as an expert.
What I Did
Session 1
I administered a modified Burke Reading Interview (Wilde, 2000). Below are my questions in bold and Malcolm’s responses.
- Why do you like to read?
‘Cause it’s fun. ‘Cause it makes you have to read everything.
- What are your favorite types of books to read?
The stories with the lady walking in the woods. And the magic clothes. [We had just listened to “The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything” over the announcements. After some additional prompting, he added:] I like to read about dinosaurs and sea animals and people and schools.
- When you are reading and you get to a word you don’t know, what do you do?
Stretch it out.
Anything else?
Nothing else.
- Who is a good reader you know?
Someone you like to listen to read to you—my parents.
- What makes a good book?
Reading the book. Some of them are serious and fiction.
- How did you learn to read?
By learning the words I know.
- Do you think you’re a good reader?
Yes. Because I can read a little bit of my library book.
- What would you like to do better as a reader?
Reading stories. The words.
- Anything else?
I want to read on the computer.
Reflection:
Malcolm sometimes struggles to put into words what he is thinking or feeling because his brain is so many leaps and bounds ahead of his present situation. I think he struggled a little with this reading interview because he has never had to define his feelings about reading into specific words, and I left the questions broad intentionally to give him more flexibility with his responses. In retrospect, I could have channeled some of his answers a little more, but this interview did reveal important information about Malcolm.
First and foremost, Malcolm recognizes that reading is fun and everywhere in our surroundings. He enjoys reading with his parents and enjoys reading stories of different genres. He already has one basic strategy for decoding unknown words, which he calls “stretch[ing] it out.” He seems unsure of any additional strategies, so perhaps that can be an area of focus for our sessions. Finally, he wants to read on the computer, so I need to be sure to make such learning opportunities available to him.
Session 2
For fire safety week, we welcomed a firefighter to visit our classroom. We even got to see their truck outside. After the interview and observation session, we came back to the classroom and wrote all the new fireman vocabulary words we had learned. I drew simple pictures to help the students “read” each word. Malcolm’s writing is shown below. The second picture depicts a burning building.
Reflection:
Malcolm seems aware of several conventions of writing. First of all, his name is a proper noun, so he capitalizes it. Most of the other words (with the exception of “Truck”) are not proper nouns and he did not capitalize them. Even though his writing contains no complete sentences since there are no verbs, each thought ends with a period. Malcolm understands that a period says “I’m finished” before moving on to the next thought. He also knows that when you run out of space or wish to move on, writers will go down to the next line and begin the next sentence. Therefore, Malcolm is showing mastery of the top-to-bottom, left-to-right strategy of reading and writing. I am not sure why he precedes each word with “ax,” but he seemed to work well using the words on the board as a model. In future sessions, I will have to start a writing dictionary with Malcolm—I think he would enjoy it!
Session 3
Ms. Summer: Can you tell me what happened in that story, Malcolm?
Malcolm: Bees. Bees was following them!
Ms. Summer: Mmm hmm. What else?
Malcolm: Them got scared.
Ms. Summer: Who got scared?
Malcolm: These two bears.
Ms. Summer: OK. So the bears got scared.
Malcolm: And then this bear said no honey.
Ms. Summer: No honey? So what were they looking for?
Malcolm: Honey.
Ms. Summer: So where did they go to look for honey?
Malcolm: The beehive.
Ms. Summer: The beehive. Did they get honey?
Malcolm: No.
Ms. Summer: Why?
Malcolm: ‘Cause… ‘cause the bees was scaring them.
Ms. Summer: So… did they eat something else?
Malcolm: Mmm hmm.
Ms. Summer: What’d they eat?
Malcolm: Honey jam.
Ms. Summer: Honey jam? OK. Anything else from the story?
Malcolm: Uh uh.
Ms. Summer: Alright. Thank you, Malcolm!
Reflection:
According to the miscue evaluation, Malcolm preserves acceptable syntax and semantics and avoids meaning change in his miscues at least 80% of the time. When he does change the meaning, it tends to be a major change. He sometimes uses graphic similarity. When he has no idea what a word is (like “along” in line 302), he tends to use the letters and attempt to make up a word using some of the same letters, even if the word does not actually exist.
I did this miscue analysis with several children from the three different kindergarten classes at my school as we were preparing to start a pull-out group for about five of the most advanced readers in the entire grade level. Interestingly, a consistent miscue that impacted comprehension was in line 1301: “No honey. Jam!” Many children told me that the bears couldn’t eat honey, so they ate “honey jam” instead. In this case, their comprehension was altered because they missed a very important punctuation mark separating that negative statement (“No honey.”) from the positive statement (“Jam!”). Malcolm too fell into this trap. From a previous session, however, I observed that Malcolm had already discovered that periods are important components of writing. In future sessions, I will work with Malcolm on stopping at periods and explaining how not stopping can change our understanding.
Session 6
Since the beginning of the school year, my assistants and I have written for the students as they narrate their illustrations in their daily journals. I thought that after nine weeks of modeling, it was time for students to take more ownership in their writing. On this day, I implemented our first unassisted journal writing. I was very excited to see what Malcolm would produce. To my dismay, Malcolm completed his illustration (Figure 6) and sat at his table, refusing to write any words. I offered gentle reminders a few times (“Malcolm, I love your illustration! Can I see some words too?” or “Malcolm, do you need a pencil to write your words?”) to no avail. Finally, I told Malcolm that I needed him to get a pencil and meet me in the office between our classrooms so I could help him. Still, he did not move. Malcolm is usually quite compliant, so at this point, I was at a loss. What was wrong?
Malcolm finally came to the office with me when I got the pencil, picked up his writing, and walked into the office myself. We were in a quiet setting with just the two of us sitting at a student desk. I asked him what was the matter, and he sat in silence for fifteen seconds. I repeated the question and got the same response. Finally he admitted, “I don’t know how to write words.” I told him that it was OK—that’s why we were in kindergarten! We worked together word by word to write his story. I asked him the first word, and he said “Everything.” When I asked him to write the sounds he heard, he wrote “Enta.” We repeated the process for the entire story—“Everything is falling off the bridge,” which he wrote as “Enta is Fno oof The Bot.” I told him to trust me that I would help him with his story later, but it was time to go to library.
At the beginning of recess, I pulled Malcolm aside to try the “Have-A-Go Paper” we had just read about in Fisher’s book (1995). I opted to do a three-column chart instead of the four columns because I knew Malcolm was already frustrated and having to practice an unknown word two times would do him no good. His work is shown in Figure 7. After he wrote each word, I would write the actual spelling and talk through some of the sounds as I went to model ear spelling. Then, I let him practice the word the conventional way. When he got to the word “is” and saw that I wrote it the way he had written it to start with, he sported a huge grin and said, “I was right?!” When we got to “falling,” he recognized the “-ing” ending. As I spelled “off” and congratulated Malcolm on realizing there was a double letter in the word (just not the “o” as he thought), he pointed to his spelling—“oof”—and asked, “What’s that say?” When we got to “the,” he took one look at my spelling, which was just like his but with a lowercase “t,” and announced, “I don’t like that one. I like to do ‘The.’” Finally, when we got to the word “Bot,” Malcolm asked, “Does that say ‘boat’?” At the end of the have-a-go paper, Malcolm announced, “I need more. ‘The thing fell off and blood came.’” I asked him how this activity made him feel. After a second of thought, he said, “It made me feel good ‘cause I want to spell it right.”
Reflection:
I found this interaction with Malcolm to be particularly eye-opening. Malcolm has a strong desire to learn and be an independent reader, but he is also at a stage in his literacy development where he knows that there are “right ways” and “wrong ways” to write words. At this point, he was scared to death of being wrong—scared to the point of not even attempting his work. My hope in pulling Malcolm aside to work with him individually was to scaffold him to use the tools he already had—a great awareness of letter-sound relationships and a mastery of basic sight words—to utilize ear-spelling independently. Malcolm understands that his writing contains meaning, which he showed by asking what “oof” spelled and if “bot” said boat. I think he wants others to understand his meaning, so he knows his job of becoming a writer is important if others wish to understand him. Finally, he understands that there are different ways to write words. When he argued with me over the spelling of “the” versus “The,” he knew that the capital “T” made a difference in the world, albeit small. His reaction to the have-a-go paper was positive, so I will be sure to use this method with him frequently.
Connections to Readings and Theories
Malcolm shows a love for reading. This love has been instilled in him since his early childhood because of his parents. It is my job as an educator to immerse children in quality literature. Immersion is the first of Cambourne’s (1984) seven conditions of learning; without this condition, the others cannot proceed. I already believed strongly in the second condition of demonstration. Children will not be motivated to learn to read and write unless they see the adults around them reading and writing in meaningful and authentic ways. However, my belief in demonstration and Cambourne’s fifth condition of approximation used to be at odds with each other. I thought that it was my responsibility as a teacher to model correct conventions in hopes that the children would internalize these concepts with ease. After all, it was in my teacher training that one professor reminded us never to write the wrong answer on the board, since it takes so much more effort to unlearn something than to learn it correctly in the first place. After working with Malcolm and watching him struggle to approximate, I realized that I need to model the process of approximation. I assumed students would be naturally willing to try their best, and then my constructive feedback would turn their efforts into approximation. Malcolm, however, was already aware that conventions existed, and he wanted to do them justice—to the point of losing all ability to function independently. My goal as a reading teacher is to strive for a more proportional balance between demonstrations of conventions and the approximation process.
In addition, my work with Malcolm has reminded me of the most important gift I can give my students to develop a love of reading: time. As Smith asserts, “A child can only learn to read by reading” (as cited in Doake, 1985, p. 94). Without time to practice, a child cannot possibly get better at reading. Next semester, I am implementing a 15-minute independent reading time in my classroom. Each student will have a bag of books I select for them of varying levels, and I will circulate through the room to hold reading conferences with students. I was hesitant to implement such a time at the beginning of the year because I didn’t think my kindergarteners would have the attention span yet. Next year, I think I would be able to start such a program in October. I have already observed many children picking up books to read because they want to, not because they are forced to read. In this environment, I believe independent reading will be successful. Some of Fisher’s (1995) suggestions have already proven helpful as I modify my approach to reading instruction. She suggests that reading time include silent independent reading; quiet reading with a friend or small group; and shared reading with the class. I first got the idea to try her strategies as I watched Malcolm sharing a book with a friend on the carpet. By far, the quiet and shared reading times are the favorite parts of our days together.
Furthermore, it is my job as a reading teacher to empower my students. Mills & Clyde (1991) recognize the importance of a whole language environment in the process of empowering an emergent reader, and I have created my literacy environment accordingly. Empowering Malcolm in his independence, especially in writing, has been a challenge. Fisher’s (1995) tactic of a “Have-A-Go” paper worked wonders with Malcolm, and I have implemented it with other students as well. For Malcolm, the “Have-A-Go” paper allowed him to take a risk without fearing that his approximation would be “set in stone,” never to be adjusted. Wilde (2000) reminds us that as educators, it is our task to find the reading strengths of our students. I know that Malcolm has a strong focus on details, such as illustrations or the letters that compose a word. Other students may have a stronger sense of semantics. That does not mean Malcolm is a better or a worse reader; it just means different systems work better for him, and I know which systems he might be willing to practice with some more.
Recommendations/Suggestions
Personal/Professional Growth
Working with Malcolm as a reader has opened my eyes to some of my approaches as a reading teacher. Since this is my first year in kindergarten, I am frequently trying new approaches and adjusting some of my favorite approaches from third grade. I think too often kindergarteners are thought of in terms of what they cannot do; Malcolm reminded me to focus on what they can do with appropriate support in a literacy-rich environment.
As this fall comes to a close, I am pleased to report that Malcolm is taking risks in his writing. The grin on his face when he realized that he could approximate independently was indescribable. He has started the whole class on a book publishing phase, and the writing center is now more popular than blocks. Malcolm has impacted my teaching: I am excited about getting children to fall in love with literacy as much as he has, and now I feel more empowered as an educator to do just that. I look forward to watching Malcolm—and the rest of his peers—as he continues to construct his own appreciation for the power of literacy in his life.
Works Cited
Cambourne, B. (1984). Towards a reading-writing classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Doake, D. B. (1985). Reading-like behavior: Its role in learning to read. In A. Jaggar & M.T. Smith-Burke (Eds.), Observing the language learner (pp. 82-98). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Fisher, B. (1995). Thinking and learning together: Curriculum and community in a primary classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Mills, H., & Clyde, J. A. (1991). Children’s success as readers and writers: It’s the teacher’s beliefs that make the difference. Young Children, 46(2), p. 54-59.
Wilde, S. (2000). Miscue analysis made easy: Building on student strengths. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishers.