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Content: English Language Arts

Content Knowledge: The Candidate demonstrates understanding of the central concepts,

tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates learning
experiences that make these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for learners
to assure mastery of the content in the areas below. Candidates demonstrate and apply
understandings of the elements of literacy critical for purposeful oral, print, and digital
communication.
According to the Center for Public Education (2015), “Reading is the Open Sesame for

acquiring knowledge: learn to read, and you can read to learn just about anything” (p. 2). Most

children begin learning to read and communicate well before they hit school age, and enroll in

preschool or kindergarten. Literacy is put in place to evolve the elements of literacy skills that

students will use to acquire new knowledge in every content area. The elements of literacy

include oral, print, and digital communications. Literacy education also impacts the

development of cognitive functions and skills, such as speaking and listening, critical thinking,

and questioning.

My time in ED 615: Literacy in the intermediate and Middle School Grades focused on

theories, philosophies, and practices of literacy in the intermediate classroom. This included

planning, teaching, and assessing individual differences in student literacy. During that course I

conducted detailed research in a case study, analyzing the development of one student’s

literacy over the course of the semester. My student, S.K., was a 3rd grader at the time. She is

Alutiiq and loves learning about her heritage and the village around her. Wildlife and animals of

any kind are her passion.

I chose to analyze S.K’s literacy development for this course, because with my other

students I was able to use assessments and observation to identify any struggles they may have

had- whether it was word recognition, speaking and listening, oral communications, digital
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resources, etc. With S.K., however, her struggles seemed inconsistent and unidentifiable to me.

After observing and articulating her strengths and needs, I confirmed that S.K. was struggling

with a little bit of everything. On the surface, she was easily distracted and disengaged. Deeper

down, though, she wasn’t able to either recall or comprehend anything she read, beyond a few

words and very simple sentences. This was true between her reading and her writing. She

wasn’t able to make predictions that were based on evidence, or ask any questions that may

bring more meaning to the text. This was a struggle with nonfiction and fiction texts, though her

tendency to take things very literally meant that nonfiction was her strong suit.

Her strengths and weaknesses in speaking and writing were very connected. Even today,

S.K. writes exactly how she speaks. Her spelling has improved, but she struggles with sentence

structure. During ED 615 observations and before, I had noticed that S.K.’s writing was, to sum it

up, all over the place. In some pieces there were either very simple, or even incomplete,

sentences, with too many punctuation marks. In others, there were next to no punctuation

marks at all, and almost all sentences run together. She would often get so focused on writing

exactly what she thinks, the way she thinks it, that she didn’t realize the sentences were

incoherent to anyone reading- they only made sense to her.

S.K. also struggled with making connections to other texts, but she LOVED making

connections to her personal life. Thus, my intervention and assessment in the case study started

out with me implementing a reading response journal (RRJ). “Reading helps learners develop

their writing experience by providing them with inspiration, an extensive pool of vocabulary

items, and grammatical structure.” (Abdullah Attiyat, 2019, p. 162). My goal with this was to

encourage articulation of those connections- be it text-to-self, text-to-world or text-to-text,

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while also practicing those writing skills. While I would never grade her RRJ, I always discuss her

entries. “...students are not put on the spot to give correct answers but are encouraged to

participate at their own comfort level. When errors are made, the teacher models correct usage

or elaborates on students’ comments” (Echevarría & Graves, 2015, p. 35-36). This demonstrates

questioning and clarifying responses, ideally improving oral communications, as well as giving

S.K. an opportunity to realize her own holes in her writing. Accepting the answer, without

corrections, encourages participation and makes students feel more comfortable.

With reading in general, S.K.’s word recognition was slow, but efficient. She takes her

time sounding out words, and she does it well. That, however, often became her downfall. She

typically spent so much time trying to read the word correctly, that the word, or the whole line,

would end up losing any meaning. The given curriculum materials weren’t helping, because S.K.

didn’t have any background knowledge to make personal or content-knowledge connections.

Not to mention, according to Harvey & Goudvis (2017), instruction in any content “is not about

slogging through textbooks, answering a bunch of questions about dates and events, or

spending two periods of twenty minutes a week on science” (p. 26). So, instead of textbooks, I

started with the book Let’s Go!: A Harvest Story by Hannah Lindoff (2017). It had enough of a

broad vocabulary, a good level to challenge her reading strategies, and connected to her love of

culture and indigenous ways. I also wanted the book I chose to be nonfiction, with a novel style

of writing, to challenge her struggles in metaphoric writing.

With gorgeous illustrations and new words to try, the RRJ journal had its first successful

entries. S.K. asked and wrote more questions than I had ever seen her ask, and made multiple
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evidence-based predictions throughout the book (some even without prompting). She even

made some doodles of the animals and plants that she saw in the story.

One of the other interventions I implemented into S.K.’s lessons were games to improve

her literacy skills. Each day of the week, we would do a different activity that focused on

comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, or word recognition. Most of the activities were found

online, but I adapted some of them to fit S.K.’s specific needs.

On Mondays, the Read, Roll & Respond dice games encouraged responses to her

reading, either in her RRJ or as a discussion, without making it seem like I was quizzing her. I

only required her to complete 2-4 questions each session, but if she enjoyed the reading for

that day, she’d ask to keep rolling the dice and respond to more questions in her independent

work time. In her comprehension lessons, the dice questions included making inferences,

implied meanings in text, and her ability to support her thinking from evidence in the text.

Vocabulary assessment was intended to simply introduce and emphasize new words to

S.K. The chart I created was adapted from the Frayer model. Rather than just a word and

definition combination, the Frayer model includes a section for sentences, a picture, and

synonyms and antonyms. “Although furnishing students with vocabulary definitions may assist

some targeted vocabulary learning, students definitely do not fully understand the meanings of

words from definitions alone” (Pressley, et al., 2007, p. 205). The words we used for the Frayer

charts would be any on the word wall, or any that S.K. may have been curious about. I also

formed a similar organizer for content-specific vocabulary. We used these with one-on-one

lessons, as well as whole-class read alouds. This would be partially filled out before knowing the
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word’s definition using context clues, as well as after reading and identifying the word in the

definition.

Wednesday’s were S.K.’s favorites. I used to work with our on-site tutor to track S.K.’s

success in reading Dolch Phrases. Without any meaning behind the sentences, I just wanted S.K.

to get comfortable with grouping words together. The idea was to focus just on reading fluently,

without the overthinking of the meaning behind the sentences. Dolch words and phrases are

scaffolded so that students will recognize words individually, then are able to read phrases and

word units with pauses at “proper” spots. Rather than going through the phrases solely as a list,

I made a set of Read, Roll, Color sheets. This game was a chance for S.K. to read the same

semi-nonsense phrases multiple times, gaining confidence and fluency. I also informally noticed

her self-correction frequency was increasing. S.K. typically struggled with sequencing words and

information. During these games, I watched and listened as she started a sentence, paused and

corrected herself. She would eventually- without prompting- reread the whole sentence once all

the way through, after making a mistake.

My case study evidence included data from running records and multiple miscue

analysis activities. Every Thursday we would utilize Reading A-Z leveled text resources. I used

the running to track S.K.’s words per minute (wpm) and compare it to the accompanying

comprehension quiz results. During the ED 615 course, S.K. seemed to love this activity. She

became less willing throughout the year, and I saw a regression in her comprehension. This

confirmed my observations that the interactive activities, like the games, were more engaging,

and kept her attention for longer.

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At the end of the case study, I compiled all the information collected from the activities,

and created a presentation summary of the findings that supplemented the full report. From

April through February, these literacy activities nearly doubled (1.667 times more) S.K.’s reading

wpm. Her written wpm went up two. After all this, I decided that in future lessons, I’ll

implement more poems. “With any struggling reader, being presented with a long text is akin to

presenting a novice hiker with the prospect of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro; it is simply not a

kind way to proceed” (Wilfong, 2015, p. 48). With stanzas and shorter lines breaking up the text,

however, poetry would hopefully improve S.K.’s fluency, comprehension, word recognition and

potentially even her attitude toward reading.

The case study on S.K. probably taught me more about English Language Arts than it did

her. I realized how much I missed learning about when I took a different education track for my

undergraduate. The case study project helped me build my knowledge in literacy while giving

me the resources and time I needed to identify more than just realizing a student isn’t on-level

for reading and writing. It was also a chance to analyze results for gamifying lessons, and make

note of the effects they had on that particular student’s literacy skills. Making literacy engaging

and actually fun for the learner is a balance that students can only benefit from, when

implemented correctly. “Language acquisition seems to be a case of both nature and nurture”

(Freeman & Freeman, 2014, p. 31).

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References

Abdullah Attiyat, N. M. (2019). The impact of pleasure reading on enhancing writing

achievement and reading comprehension. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ), 10(1),

155-165. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol10no1.14

Center for Public Education. (2015). Learning to read, reading to learn: why third-grade is a

pivotal year for mastering literacy. National School Boards Association. shorturl.at/blrz7

Echevarría, J., & Graves, A. (2015). Sheltered content instruction: Teaching English learners with

diverse abilities. Pearson.

Freeman, D., Freeman, Y. S. (2014). Essential linguistics: What teachers need to know to teach

ESL, reading, spelling, grammar. (2nd ed.). Heinemann.

Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2017). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension for engagement,

understanding, and building knowledge, grades K-8. (3rd ed.). Stenhouse Publishers.

shorturl.at/cESZ4

Lindoff, H. (2017). Let’s go: A harvest story. Sealaska Heritage Institute.

Pressley, et al. (2007). Landmark vocabulary instructional research and the vocabulary

instructional research that makes sense now. American Psychological Association.

205-232.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xLIF0TsTpZvLPN53b4ubJm_OjcEEsvdc3Bes6pxM

BDE/edit?usp=sharing

​Wilfong, L. G. (2015). Using poetry to improve fluency, comprehension, word recognition and

attitude toward reading in struggling English language learners. New England Reading

Association Journal, 51(1), 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1598/RT.62.1.1