Heather Sanderson
Eastern Connecticut University
December 8, 2018
Case Study
Student A is a 12 year old male EL student who was born in the United States. I was surprised to learn “most ELLs are U.S.-born citizens” (Wright, 2015, p.18). He was born in San Diego to two highly educated immigrants from India. The family moved to Connecticut three years ago. The language spoken in their home is Telugu. Student A’s parents and family speak Telugu at home and they often take trips back to India to visit family where Student A is surrounded by Telugu speakers as well. In a September 2018 study by Centre for Immigration studies it was found that “between 2010 and 2017, the number of Telugu speakers in the U.S. surged 86%-the largest uptick in a foreign language speaking group” (Bhattacharya, 2018). The article goes on to state that the reason for the uptick is that citizens in this area of Southern India where Telugu is spoken are known for their expertise in the tech and engineering fields. Many Telugu speakers immigrate to the U.S. because of the demand for tech and engineer workers we have here. Of the 10 ELL students we have at our middle school two are Telugu speakers and both have a parent who is an engineer. Student A is in my Level 2 science class so I have been able to get to know him well and to see where he excels and struggles. Student A is a hard worker who wants to do well. He is a great self advocate who is often asking me questions during class. He also spends a great deal of time at home on his studies and will email me questions on a regular basis if he is confused. Student A enjoys participating in class discussions, but will often misunderstand the question asked and sometimes his answer will not make sense.
When I did a file review on Student A, I found interesting data that supported much of what I was seeing in the classroom. I first looked at his CMT scores. Student A was a Level 4 exceeds in Math on his CMTs. In my class where right now we are studying Chemistry, there is quite a bit of mathematical equations that need to be used. Student A almost always gets the math right but struggles with conclusion questions when we bring all the laboratory information together. Student A did not do as well on the ELA section of his CMTs where he scored a Level 2 approaching. I have noticed in my class that Student A has a hard time with reading comprehension. He sometimes completely misreads the question and gives an answer that does not match what I was asking for. I have also noted that he does not answer two part questions well. For some reason he will answer the first part of the question and completely ignore that there is a second part to the question. I have attached a sample of Student A’s work below where for two different questions he did not address the second part.
Some other things I learned from Student A’s file review was that he had all B’s in grade 6 and 1’s in conduct and effort which is the best you can get for conduct and effort. While Student A is putting in a great amount of effort he is still unable to get A’s due in most part to his reading comprehension and writing. Some notes his ELL teachers put into his records were that there is “some disconnect between what he is thinking and saying”, “reading comprehension is an issue” and he “cannot communicate ideas clearly orally and can only communicate ideas at a basic level in writing”. Student A got all 3’s intermediate for listening, oral, and reading.
Based on Student A’s data, observations, and work samples I conclude that this student needs to focus more on reading comprehension and to elaborate more in his writing. To help Student A with his reading comprehension in Science, I am going to follow the suggestion given in Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners The SIOP Model and provide Student A with “more high-quality, high interest, nonfiction texts”(Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 260). Since this student is so driven and willing to put extra time into his studies at home, I will provide him with interesting articles on things we study this year such as volcanoes and earthquakes and will have him practice writing down the big picture, as well as the authors message, and what the student finds compelling about the article, which are all suggestions put forth by Echevarria, Vogt, & Short to help ELL students “read closely” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 260). Another strategy that may be helpful to Student A is to “convert the question into sentence starters” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 53). If Student A takes the question and turns it into an answer, often called “TTQA” turn the question around by elementary teachers, then he will be less likely to ignore parts of the question. I will also make sure to pay special attention to the student when he is answering questions in class and when I see him not fully answering a question I will ask him “what else is the question asking “ to help him realize he is not reading the whole question at times. To help Student A elaborate more on his writing I will provide more models for what the length of an appropriate answer should look like. Modeling assignments is one of the strategies the SIOP Model discusses as being helpful to the ELL learner. Another great strategy to help Student A provided by Echevarria, Vogt, & Short is to provide sentence starters to my ELL student (p.136). By providing sentence starters, Student A will get a better idea of all the different areas I would like discussed when he answers questions in my class.
Student B is a twelve year old female who just arrived from China at the beginning of this school year. Student B is a native Mandarin speaker. While she is not in my science class, I have observed and interacted with her in her computer graphics class, art class, and pull out ELL class. I have also spoken with her science teacher and her after school Math Counts activity instructor to get to know her better. While I thought she could not speak English when I first met her I have come to realize speaking is one of her better skills in English. Student B however is very low in listening skills, so she was not speaking because she could not understand what was being asked of her. She is extremely shy in her computer graphics class and art class but is much more social in her pull out ELL class, where she is with others who are also adapting to life in the U.S. Her pull out ELL class is made up of 5 students who have all arrived in the U.S within the past 3 years. This student is an extremely bright girl who excels in Math. Even though she just arrived in the U.S. she is in a high achieving Level 1 Math class and even participates in an afterschool Math league called Math Counts. Math Counts is a program where middle school students compete with their peers from other schools in Math. Her Math Counts instructor told me she is very comfortable working with others in the group on math problems. Student B is from an upper middle class highly educated family.
When doing a file review for Student B the records were a bit sparser due to the fact she just arrived here from China. I did get to see her report card from China from her 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. Student B received all A’s in those grades in China. When reviewing her LAS Links scores she had 7 total points in speaking, 3 in listening, 3 in reading, and 7 writing. From my observations I could see that she struggled with listening. Even when the teacher would say “look up here” to point something out to the class she did not look up until she noticed everyone else was doing that. The teacher did have a nice discreet way of tapping her when it was time to listen to what he was saying.
Student B needs to work on speaking, writing with an even a greater concentration on listening, and reading where she has the most difficulty. I was told that Student B struggles the most with reading comprehension in science after speaking with her science teacher. From my observations I noticed her listening skills to be the weakest of the four. The authors of Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners suggests when working with ELL students that “all the skills should be worked on in a unified manner” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p.33). One strategy that I think would be helpful to Student B is to provide “a minilesson that precedes the regular whole-class lesson” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p.44). This mini-lesson would consist of science videos which would help improve her listening skills. I would also provide the Nearpod presentation on her iPad that I am going to use with the class the week before. I would advise her to turn on her text to speech function on the iPad this way she can read through the lesson as many times as she needs to while working on both her reading and listening skills. Providing these mini-lessons before the whole class instruction will allow Student B to become comfortable with the science content and be able to follow along with the lesson better and not feel so overwhelmed. Another educational strategy to help Student B work on her listening and speaking skills is to provide her many opportunities to work collaboratively with her peers in lab groups. When a student talks in a peer group “about a topic they have the opportunity to try out new words, grammatical structures, and language functions” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 153). Also discussing science in a small peer group provides a “reduced risk” environment where the ELL students can feel more at ease (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 155). While working collaboratively in lab groups student B would also be working on her writing skills by taking down observations answering the questions as she goes through the lab. Student B would also benefit from graphic organizers which “provide scaffolding for students in the form of a visual representation of language” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 134). Another great strategy for Student B to help with her listening and reading skills is to use audio supported text on the iPad at all times. There are two ways to support the student here. The first is discussed in Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners where “teachers can now type a sentence or paragraph about a concept to be studied into a Web site that provides translation services and have that concept rewritten in a student’s native language” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 52). The second way to support this student in science class is to have her use the text to speech option on her iPad. The iPad will orally read to her anything she highlights which combines listening and reading to better support the student with both skills.
Both Student A and Student B have many positives going for them in their journey to be successful ELL students. First of all, both students have highly educated parents and “the parents’ level of education also influences their children’s success” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p.7). Also both these students come from upper middle class families with the resources to support their children with any extra educational needs they may have such as tutoring (Wright, 2015, p.15). Both of these students are highly motivated to be successful in their education. Student A regularly asks me questions about science content and has asked me how he can improve in science class numerous times. I have observed Student B arriving to class early and getting started even before the bell rings and Student B participates in after school Math Counts League to further her impressive math skills. Both students A and B have promising futures in the United States.
Resources
Bhattacharya,A. (2018). America’s fastest growing foreign language is from South India. Quartz India. Retrieved from https://qz.com/india/1399825/telugu-is-uss-fastest-growing-foreign-language/
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M, & Short, D.J. (2017). Making Content Comprehensible For English Learners The SIOP Model (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Wright, W. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: Calson Publishing.