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.