Module 2: Instructional Challenge

Take a look at the following examples of children's dialect-based miscues while reading and the difference between the child's original response (OR) and expected reponse (ER). Then answer the questions that follow.

OR: It my little monkey here.	ER: Is my little monkey here?
OR: We got to tell.	ER: We've got to tell.
OR: Frog look at Toad calendar.	ER: Frog looked at Toad's calendar.
OR: A word what sounded good.	ER: A word that sounded good.
OR: hisself	ER: himself
OR: I can come to your party?	ER: Can I come to your party?

Are these children's miscues evidence of proficient or non-proficient reading?� Explain. If you were teaching children who made these miscues, what, if any, assistance or teaching would you offer? 

After examining the original responses versus the expected responses I see where educators from the correctionist approach would consider these miscues to be non-proficient.  I, however, disagree. When looking at the original responses first I made sure to take note of grammar and sentence structure.  Then I went and looked at the responses the children came up with.  Most, if not all of their miscues had to do with sentence structure and grammar.  I would still consider these children to be proficient in reading.  When children are code-switching they are often taking what they are reading, and quickly processing it in their mind to "translate" it to their dialect.  These examples show that the students were close with all of the sentences.  When taking an even further look at the examples I can see that the students that made miscues also seemed to get the main idea.  Even if the words were out of order, the student still got the "gist" and got the main idea which is why I would still consider them to be proficient.  Asking a young child to get everything accurate and read with little to no miscues is in my opinion silly.  It is with these miscues that teacher's are able to adjust their lessons or conferences to help each student grow.

If I were teaching these children I would make sure to pull them into a small group.  I noticed that these student lacked inflection, pronunciation, and basic sentence structure/grammar.  One of the ways I would work with these students is with choral reading.  I think that when students hear me read aloud they are able to hear my tone, pronunciation, and expression which can then help them.  I would also pull this group to have a mini grammar lesson.  We would talk about parts of speech and the orders they tend to follow in sentences, especially with commands and questions.  I would continue to monitor progress and check in with the students when necessary.  I believe that with dialect miscues, students need to be surrounded by language and text in the classroom.  With more practice, reading, and even reading partners these students will be able to quickly grasp some of their miscues and be able to improve. 

These students are proficient with only room to grow.  I think that their understandings of what they were reading given their dialect miscues are manageable and expected when dealing with younger children and code-switching.