ELL Case Study
April 2016
Classroom Observations, Writing Samples, Instructional Planning/Decision Making
Maya’s written English is impressive considering where she was at the start of the year. Her attitude toward writing is noteworthy; she loves to write and is highly motivated. This was expressed by her teachers and noted by me in my observation of her participation in the writing lesson and approach to our work together. Maya has a lot to say and is very eager to do all of the things Hilary teaches her. The writing program in our school is quite rigorous, and Maya demonstrates a great deal of mastery within this program. Maya’s writing is understandable to her and her reader but sometimes has irregular grammar or sentence structure. She uses sound spelling and known sight words to get her thoughts down. Maya refers to the word wall for spelling words that she does not fully know. The clarity and organization of Maya’s thoughts is not always strong, and this was an area of focus in our work together on her butterflies book chapter about food/diet. Here is a sample of Maya’s writing which I looked at prior to working with her. This is the table of contents and introduction to her butterflies book.
A few things caught my attention about Maya’s writing development when I read these samples. The first was that I was very impressed that she as able to do this work independently. I have been teaching this curriculum for years and I know that it can be challenging for all students to take the information they have learned from reading research, and apply it to writing an informational book. I did note that Maya’s table of contents was not very clear and organized, and this is a sign that she may not be thinking about her writing in a clear and organized structure, which is essential for informational writing. The introduction is like an outline for the book. This coupled with what Hilary explained about organization in her writing, pointed to an instructional need in this area. Maya’s introduction is catchy and she demonstrates that she understands that one way to introduce your topic is to catch your reader’s attention, and to start with a place/setting that matches what you know about your insect’s habitat. The chart below was used to teach this mini lesson in her classroom. Maya meets all areas of expectations based on this chart.
Maya shows areas of need in organization of her written ideas (less evidenced in this piece but expressed by her teachers and evidenced in other areas), spelling high frequency words and unknown words, and some mechanics/neatness (upper and lowercase letters, handwriting, writing across lines). I used this information to help guide my work with her.
Classroom Observation
April 14, 2016
Math Workshop
Prior to working with Maya on writing, I observed her at work in the classroom during a math lesson and independent work time. The focus of the lesson was on solving addition and subtraction story problems using place value. I came in close to the end of the lesson. Students were practicing a problem on white boards on the rug with Hilary. Maya was paying very close attention and applying Hilary’s instruction about how to show the work accurately and efficiently to her own written work. I noted how Maya’s gaze kept moving up to the board where Hilary was demonstrating and back down to her own board to cross check. When the lesson ended and Hilary asked students to erase boards and sit on them, Maya kept going to finish her work, showing commitment and persistence.
When it came time for Maya and her classmates to work on a story problem packet independently, Maya was very slow to start, and hovered around HIllary while Hilary was busy with a small group. She was very observant of everything that was going on in the room. I noted that Maya did not say a word to Hillary to get her attention. She just stood there and waited for Hilary to notice her and talk with her. This took quite a while to accomplish. Eventually HIlary had Maya sit next to her and reviewed with Maya what to do. She also offered words of encouragement. Maya chose to work independently near Hilary on the rug and not at her seat. She was working on this problem:
Kim had 85 apples.
She got 30 more apples.
How many apples does Kim have now?
Maya’s work looked like this:
When complete Maya returned to Hillary to show her. Hilary offered more words of encouragement and Maya returned to her spot to keep going. I thought it was interesting that Hilary did not correct Maya’s computational error but instead made the instructional decision to encourage and foster independence. I would agree with this decision because it appears that this is what Maya needs most. Her work on the next problem further supports this thinking.
Maya approached the next problem very slowly. The problem was:
Alex had 47 apples.
She got 30 more.
How many apples does Alex have now?
Maya’s work looked like this:
Maya shows evidence of understanding and made no computational errors. I noted that at this point that she started to embellish her written work rather than move forward. It was a little puzzling to me why she was not continuing given that she was able to read the problems, understand them and solve them. Somehow she was not feeling the confidence to forge ahead without teacher support. These were important things for me to see before working with Maya and are windows into her motivation, feelings, and performance in school.
I decided that given what I had observed about Maya as a student, what I learned from her writing samples, the information I gathered from the language and literacy rubrics, and what she is working on in the classroom writing curriculum, that I would work with Maya on planning and writing a section of her insect book about butterflies for my mentoring and writing sample. Hilary and I discussed this and agreed that it was instructionally sound for Maya and would be beneficial
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