Blog 7

Student 1 is fifth grader from Mexico and reading at a DRA level 38.  His primary language is Spanish.  He tended to repeat many sentences to be sure he had a clear understanding of the story.  He self-corrected several times.  When an error was made he had control over the initial sound but the word he substituted for the correct word did not make sense in the story/sentence.  He would then go back to the beginning of the sentence and when coming upon the word would self-correct.  His self-corrections led me to infer that he was using meaning to figure out the unknown word. 
Student 2 is a fifth grader from Turkey reading at a DRA level 24.  He struggled with the first word in the passage which was the main characters name, Albert.  I wonder how many names are unknown due to cultural differences in names.  In all the unknown words he substituted with a word that had the same initial sound.  Many of the words he struggled with seemed to be a lack in vocabulary.  Many of the errors were meaning based.  His summary at the end reflected his poor reading of the text.  Though he scored within the instructional range, he was unable to retell the story with much detail.  Though the text was deemed instructional, the words that he was unable to read impeded his ability to understand the story.  My next steps for this student would be to find a level that was instructional, not just in decodable but comprehendible as well.  I would then teach finding meaning out of the text.
A game that would be fun is called Guess the Covered Word.  In this game you use sentences or a paragraph and cover up words.  You read the sentence aloud omitting the covered word.  Then allow students to guess what the word might be.  As they give words, write them down.  Once a word is given you read it aloud within the sentence to make sure it makes sense within the sentence.  Then reveal the first letter and allow students to make corrections from the choices given. Continue to do this until the correct word is given.  Be sure to tie these strategies into a ‘ independent reading. 
http://www.amazon.com/Guess-Covered-Word-First-Grade/dp/0887245625
            Based on these two examples it would seem that English language learners tend to make mistakes in meaning while reading.  It would seem that scaling back the levels would be beneficial so that the students could read and comprehend the text.