Instructional Plan

Guada is in the phonetic stage literacy in both Spanish and English according to Rubin-Carlan. Her skills in each of the language domains is different, and various with natural development and her instructional experience in each language.   Overall, her productive skills are much higher in Spanish than in English. These higher skills in Spanish help her when she is reading or writing in English. She continues to struggle with English, and she does not receive any literacy instruction in order to develop her Spanish literacy.

            Her oral skills in English are the lowest of her skills.  She does not have the confidence or the vocabulary to speak with such fluency, and really struggles to put together more than a few sentences at a time. She is able to if forced, but if she becomes frustrated, she often reverts to Spanish. Her code-switching, according to Karen Beeman, was inter-sentential during our formal interview. She would start in English, and the words like “and” “but” or “um” would prompt her to continue in Spanish. Spanish pronunciation influences her English, and she has difficulties with the “y” sound in yes, and the “th” sound in “think.”

  Because there are many Spanish speaking peers in her school day, she can often chose not to speak English and still have her needs met. Her oral skills in Spanish are much higher than in English. She is able to talk fluently, with flowery language and elaborate details. Her discourse pattern often follows the typical story telling style of many Spanish speakers.  (Montaño-Harmon)

This also shows up in her writing in both Spanish and English, where she often strays away from topics to stories that are somewhat connected, and then circles back to them. She can write pages and pages in both languages, and loves to write. Her Spanish writing is much more accurate with spelling and grammar, but her meaning is rarely lost in English. In Spanish, she has normal mistakes for a student her age, mixing the s/c in Spanish words, forgetting accent marks, or simply leaving out the letter “h” altogether. Her oral Spanish skills influence her writing in English when she phonetically spells “tink” for the work “think.” Even when copying facts for a research paper she skipped the “h” in the word “thing” and spelled it “ting.”  This shows her using her knowledge that Spanish is phonetically spelled transferring to apply the same rules to English. In English, she writes and can be understood by most of her teachers, even those that are non –Spanish speaking. However, she struggles greatly with spelling and verb tense.

Although she does not test at grade-level in Spanish or English in reading, her Spanish reading is much higher. Guada really enjoys reading, but vocabulary is a very large issue in texts in English if it is not comprehensible input (Krashen 2003).  When texts are well selected just slightly above her reading level, she is an independent reader. Depending on the topic, this level can range from 1^st grade to about 5^th grade.

Guada has the metacognitive awareness to discuss reading strategies. Guada openly talks about how when she reads in English and comes across words she doesn’t know that are very important (she says they keep repeating) she tries to use clues, but sometimes she ends up confusing herself. However, when given key-words ahead of time in a given text, she can extrapolate meaning even when it is far beyond her instructional level. Because of this, I believe her Spanish reading skills are more developed than many of our assessments (Achieve 3000- only assesses with non-fiction texts) give Guada credit for.  The Underlying Principle of language learning supports this idea. Guada exhibits the fact that some of her strategies like looking for words that repeat, work with either language.

She relies heavily on cognates in English and this helps her, such as “escapar.” Other time, she incorrectly used her her understanding of “exito” and thought that exit in English meant “success.”  She does reach a level of frustration when she is attempting to read a text that is far beyond her level. Often materials are not adequately modified for her language development in all the content areas. In these classes, she can easily shut down.  She is aware that this does not help her, but does not see an alternative when so much of the information is beyond her grasp. This is where more instructional guide and a change of materials will be important to improving her literacy.

In English, Guada is a “word caller” and does not read with much fluency or intonation even when reading out loud at her independent level. However, in Spanish she often adds intonation, inflection and emotion to what she is reading. Her understanding that the words on the page are representations of what happens when people interact is clear. I believe that with more literacy instruction in English she can reach the same quality fluency.  

Guada is a sequential bilingual, and her literacy skills in Spanish help support her English language development. Her love for reading and writing has helped her make great gains in literacy development in English this year. At the beginning of the year, she found it very difficult to put even very simple requests needs and wants into sentences or on paper. Now, she continues to read and write more advanced, detailed stories.

Currently, Guada does not receive any instruction in Spanish. As part of her instructional plan, I would encourage our scheduling staff to allow her instruction in Spanish language arts. This would help her develop more literacy skills in a language that she is already comfortable with, and it would strengthen her ability to transfer her knowledge about literacy from Spanish to English. I would also encourage all of Guada’s teachers to allow her to use whichever language she felt she was able to communicate in most clearly. Our school is rich with bilingual staff who are able to translate any assignments that she does in Spanish.

Although I believe Guada would benefit from literacy instruction in all domains in both languages, she has higher needs in certain areas for each language. In Spanish, she needs much more support in reading and writing than she does in speaking or listening. In English, she needs instruction in reading the most, because this is how she accesses (or attempts to access) information from her content area classes. Followed by her need for more reading instruction, is support with speaking. After reading and speaking have improved and were the focus, I believe she will have an easier time improving her writing. Because reading and writing are a social construction of our knowledge, her ability to write will improve after her reading and speaking skills have. All of this does not mean that Guada should not be practicing all skills throughout her day, it simply is to support where teachers should focus more attention first.

To help Guada even more with her literacy development, it is important that she receive more guided instruction in reading and writing in both Spanish and English. She is an avid reader, which has supported her in her language development. Now that she has been able to read more independently she needs to be provided with reading materials about the content areas that are at her level. Along with these materials, Guada needs the opportunity to think about what she knows about the subject before reading. Providing her with pre-reading activities such as K/W/L charts, turn and talk questions or pictures will help develop a deeper understanding, as well as continue to develop her oral skills in English, and improve her academic vocabulary in Spanish.  The sociolinguistic view of reading supports the idea that students gain much more from a text when they have developed background knowledge, have spoken with their peers, and have engaged with the topic of the text before reading. All these pre-reading activities will strengthen not only her oral production skills in English, but also her awareness of what she knows about the text before she encounters it.

Vocabulary skills will help improve her oral skills, as well as her reading and writing skills. When these vocabulary words are used often, and in multiple context, they will help Guada retain them and eventually use them in her own speech and writing.  As Freeman, Freeman and Mercuri have stated “ We interpret and reinterpret what we read in part based on our social interaction as we clarify or deepen concepts presented in a text” Discussing content specific vocabulary ahead of time, and seeing in used in multiple contexts will help Guada continue to refine her definition of these new vocabulary words and the ways in which they can be used.

Guada does a lot of writing, although most is very unstructured and not guided in a way that supports her needs. She would benefit from smaller, more specific writing assignments that are assessed and then returned to her quickly. It would also give her instructor a better understanding of her immediate needs, or things that she has learned well. Based on these smaller writing assignments, she could receive mini-lesson designed around one or two aspects of writing. Examples could be vocabulary use, spelling errors, verb tenses, comma use, depending on the focus of the class, as well as the errors seen in her writing. This small focus, used often and repeated in multiple contexts, will help her incorporate these concepts first in a very specific piece of writing, but hopefully later on she will also incorporate it in other areas of writing as well.   

To provide this instructional plan, new materials will need to be provided. She will need new texts in each content area that are language appropriate for a newcomer in 7^th grade.  It would also be helpful for her (as well as many other students) if each class had a continuously growing word wall that students could access during their speaking, reading, or writing time.

Although Guada has made significant leaps in her English language skills this year, she is not receiving any instruction in Spanish. I continue to struggle with how to best encourage and enlighten our staff to the development of bilingual literacy, and how we can best support all of our bilingual students to develop their skills to their maximum capacity. 

Reading Assessment

Guada reads often in English. She enjoys reading, and selects typical teenage girls texts. She has read Stargirl, (with guidance) and other stories about relationships, love and friendship.  She loves reading and writing. Whole group reading is effective for her, and she much prefers that, because she gains more from it when she is read to than when she reads alone. She does not like to read out loud in groups, because she does not like feeling inadequate about her pronunciation. When she reads a book that is at her reading level, she reads independently and enjoys it. She often walks to and from class with a book in hand as she continues to read. 

She reads much more in English than in Spanish. She has texts at home in Spanish, and repeatedly asks for texts in English. She has the ability to read in Spanish, but her motivation to learn English is strong and reading provides her a safe, non threatening place (as opposed to speaking) to learn.

Depending on the text, Guada can gather main ideas. When the text is appropriate for her, she can recall facts and easily summarize. No matter what language it is in, she tends to summarize (in speech) in Spanish. She does not offer information about a text until she is asked, although often I tend to think this is her timid personality rather than a lack of comprehension. 

In Spanish, she can read a text like "Casa en Mango Street" but due to the metaphorical language and complex ideas, she cannot understand what the stories are about. 

When a text is too high for her (like many of the texts she gets in other classes) she cant often gather details. For example, when reading Touching Spirit Bear, she understood that Cole was on an island, but didn't understand the background story or the details what happened when he arrived. 

In Spanish her fluency is higher. She reads with more intonation, but still struggles to be a completely fluid reader. With more common, conversational phrases, she reads with more intonation and pace. She pauses and corrects herself when she comes across difficult words (investigación, asistente). In Spanish, her fluency rate would be a 4. 

In English, she reads at a much slower rate with little if any expression. Her pronunciation often gets in the way of her fluency. When she comes across a problematic word she simply stops. Sometimes she can pronunce a word but doesn't know the meaning. In English she reads at level 1 fluency. She reads rather independently at the 3rd grade level, but does come across vocabulary words that are unknown (seesaw, trudging). She continues reading most of the time if she can pronounce the word to see if the word really is important for the story. Guada understands punctuation in print, but does not often use it all the time in her writing in either Spanish nor English. When given instructions in Spanish or English, Guada can apply concepts to either language. 

Writing Analysis

Guada writes a lot, both in Spanish and English. At home, she writes stories and poems, and has talked about wanting to become a writer.


Everyday, the students start with a free write for 5 minutes. Normally, Guada writes in English. This week I asked her to write two different entries in Spanish so I could see what her Spanish looked like. Here are some things I found about her writing.


 In English, she makes many spelling errors that are common among developing language learners. (tink for Think, bicause for because). Other spelling errors she makes too but inconsistently. In one writing sample she writes "and" "anh", but in others she writes it correctly. "hwo" represents "who," although again, it is inconsistently used. 


According to the Rubin/Carlan stages of writing, I believe Guada's writing in English is in the phonetic stage. She makes some erros repeatedly and  doesn't always include silent letters, and a lot of basic words are still spelled incorrectly. She inconsistently uses correct spelling, so I believe that she is starting to reach towards the transitional stage in English.  Her tendency to write words as phonetically as possible is a clear transfer from her knowledge about spelling in Spanish. 

 Syntaxtically, she makes some erros that are transfer from Spanish. ("having years", or "to do fat" for "become fat") Other times, she omits subjects (is for "it is"). There is clearly transfer when she says "the person hwo like to see sports in the tv", She transfers the verb mirar and uses it literally, and forgets the inflection on the verb like. On top of that she confuses the preposition in/on in English. This is especially common for speakers of Spanish with limited English. 

 She rarely code switches in her writing in English. If she can not find the vocabulary word, she will often ask for it, or she will simply use circumlocution to get around it. (Often using the phrase "the thing that...") When Guada can not find the correct vocabulary, she can still be understood. In her English writing she wrote "like when you have 4 or 5 years or up" instead of "more," and "5 or down" that meant "5 or less."

In Spanish, she makes common mistakes for in grammar and spelling. She confuses por/para, and does not include the letter H in her writing, almost at all. She also intermixes b's and v's in her writing. These are common errors for a student her age, and aren't unique to her English language learning. Her spelling approximations in Spanish are much closer to the correct spelling than when she approximates in English. Because of this, I believe she is in the transitional phase of writing in Spanish. 


Guada occasionally code-switches. She was writing about "being as free as a bird" and wrote " si fuera free..." in her sentence, although early in the same writing piece she used the word "libre." He

She writes a lot, and her ideas are communicated, although not with academic vocabulary. Just as the Montaño-Harmon article stated about discourse patterns, Guada has a lot of run-on sentences, both in Spanish and English. Her Spanish sentences tend to be longer, and veer off on to related topics. However, she does not make this transition smoothly. Her writing lacks transitional phrases in both Spanish and English. 


Guada does not receive any instruction in Spanish, except for instructions about what to do, or explanations in Spanish from me or another BRS. I continue to struggle with where to go from here. I believe the research that she should be developing both her language skills to better her literacy but our schedule does not allow her to get academic reading in English and Spanish for Spanish speakers.


I recently gave her a reading assessment called Achieve 3000. It is a leveled computer program that will increase in difficulty if you answer correctly, or decrease difficulty if you do not. What was really surprising to me was that although her writing in Spanish is in the transitional phase, her reading (only according to this test) is "pre literate."  I am not very familiar with the test, and would like to sit down with Guada one day to get a better sense of her reading in Spanish. It's puzzling to me to think she can be pre-literate in reading and be in a transitional phase in writing. Because I cannot count on this test to be the only source of the measurement of her abilities, I am spending time with her next week reading in Spanish one-on-one to assess it myself as well. 

Oral Development

Guada is a sequential bilingual student. She is clearly Spanish dominant. She has told me several times that although she can speak more in English, she prefers not to for the fear of making a mistake. I have constantly encouraged her with my stories of learning Spanish and confirmed to her that I continually make mistakes when I speak to her in English. Although, that has yet to help her feel more comfortable.

Guada clearly has linguistic transfer from Spanish to English. Sometimes, it is good, because it gives her vocabulary. Examples of this, were evident when she spoke of the book, Touching Spirit Bear, she mentioned the similarities between atacar and attack, injections and inyecciones . However, in her speech, she uses copying from Spanish to English. Sometimes it causes her to incorrectly assume similarities like “having hunger.” With terms that she has learned only in English, she will code switch into English, and then back into Spanish. For example, she will say, “ Tengo maestras que hablan  español en la clase de Social Studies y Language Arts.” This is an example of inter-sentential code switching.
She rarely uses linguistic blending, she more often switches directly into Spanish when she struggles to find the vocabulary in English.  A lot of times, even when I speak to her in English, she will respond in Spanish.
Although she doesn't have the linguistic ability to use longer sentences that are more detailed and have flowery lexical terms, she does use this speech pattern in Spanish.
Guada feels very comfortable speaking Spanish. We also have many Spanish speaking students, with whom she is close friends. So, she feels very comfortable speaking Spanish, and although her English is quite limited compared to most students, she does not feel ostracized by her language skills.
While it is good for her not to feel a high anxiety at school, she also can get by with limited English because she is still able to get her needs met without speaking much English. Most of her close friends are Spanish speakers, and she says that they “sometimes” speak in English, but “mostly” speak in Spanish.
When I asked her who she speaks to in English, she names a few classmates that don’t speak Spanish. When she wants to talk to them, she speaks in English.
In English, Guada’s language development is at the beginning. She can answer questions with short phrases.  “I like to read in English.” She can restate short stories, although sometimes she lacks the correct verb tense. ( He is hungry vs. He was hungry.) She can talk about her classes and what is easy and difficult in school, but has a hard time discussing academic topics. When discussing Touching Spirit Bear, she could retell a short piece of what happened to the protagonist when he was attacked by a bear, but didn’t know why the protagonist was on the island in the first place.

In Spanish, she has little problem communicating her thoughts in a sophisticated way. I would place her at an “Expanding” level, as she continues to learn academic vocabulary.
She can explain things that have happened ( a story about a cousin who told her not to watch telenovelas), or make predictions about what will happen in a story very easily in Spanish. Often, even when a text is in English, she is able to discuss it in Spanish, using more detailed, specific language than she currently is able to do in English.

Guada

Mi estudiante quien voy a llamar Guada, es estudiante de septimo grado. Es de México.  Entró nuestra escuela en el sexto grado, hablando muy poco inglés. Vimos progreso en su inglés mientras trabajaba con maestros bilingues y leía mucho. Recibió apoyo de los maestros bilingues, aunque no tomó una clase adicional especfica par la lectoescritura en ningun idioma.

En enero del mismo año, se fue Guada y pasó 6 meses en Mexico. Durante este seis meses en México, asistió una escuela intermedia, con tenía una maestra que venía a enseñarles inglés, aunque Guada me dijo que no le ayudó porque ya sabía lo que enseñó.. Regresó a nuestra escuela en octubre de este año escolar. Aunque había trabajado mucho en mejorar su inglés, todo el tiempo en México lo hizo difícil mantenerlo. Cuando regresó, solo tenía el puntaje de 106 en su SRI de inglés. No habló casi nunca ademas de a la gente que habla español. Casi nunca me entendió cuando la hablé en inglés.

Este año, está recibiendo mucho más instrucciones trabajando en las destrezas académicas en inglés. Tiene una clase de lectura además de su clase de arte linguisticas. En esta clase, trabajan en actividades de la ortografía, la comprensión y vocabulario académico.  A Guada le encanta leer (siempre me pide más libros, pero que son en inglés), y este año está avanzando muy rápido en su capaz de la lectoescritura. Escribe mucho en inglés, aunque su gramática le falta mucho, por la mayoría se puede entender lo que Guada quiere decir.

Aunque está recibiendo mucho apoyo desarrollando sus destrezas académicas en inglés, no recibe este apoyo en español. Por causa de que tiene la clase de lectura en inglés, no puede tomar lectura y español porque las clases están dadas al mismo tiempo. Por ende, no está en un programa bilingue. Solo está recibiendo apoyo desde maestras que hablan español, (yo) o las interpretes que tenemos. (los BRS)

Ya puedo hablarla en inglés y me puede entender, aunque muchas veces me contesta en español. Hace riesgos académicos en sus clases y da un esfuerzo. Muchas veces aunque no requiere  los maestros que presenta algo, Guada intenta a dar presentaciones en inglés. Habla en voz muy callada (casi no se oye) pero habla bien. Poco a poco, está creciendo su confianza.


Su familia no saben inglés y no tiene mucho comodidad con la escuela. Dicen que al principio no entendieron las calificaciones que recibió, me habló de las diferencias entre las escuelas en México y las escuelas aquí. No tienen libros en inglés en casa, y por eso siempre me piden.

Guada es una muchacha muy amable, tienen amigas que hablan español, pero también se relaciona con estudiantes que no. Sigue trabajando mucho y entiende que este esfuerzo tiene una conexión a su aumento de inglés.