As I read through the article about miscues I could understand that a single miscue does not qualify to draw conclusions about the reader’s proficiency, but I was surprised that it takes twenty-five miscues to produce a pattern of miscue responses. I would think the number would be smaller if the reader is stumbling over even ten to fifteen words. Also, I think we need to take comprehension into consideration even when less than twenty-five words are missed. I guess that’s where the retelling comes into play, therefore all factors need to be considered. Do you worry so much about the miscues when the comprehension is there?
First page, right column, middle: It states all readers make miscues. I think the 25 as a minimum must be that high to account for the normal range. I just flipped though it again to see if they state how long the text usually were but all I said was “long and challenging.” So 25 may sound like a lot, but put into perspective may be smaller than you think. On the following page it also talks about the quality of miscues… which had me think about what you were saying about 25 as a minimum. How many quality miscues verses others types are figured into the 25- which makes me wonder if that’s why it’s a seemingly high number to account for variables.
I agree with you about the comprehension point Kelsie. I instinctively want to argue that reading comprehension involves more skills and processes than are measured by miscue analysis alone. Being able to retell a story does not by itself indicate comprehension. I also question the author's assertion that oral and silent reading are "essentially the same." I'm not convinced that miscues from reading out loud really reveal the thought processes involved in silent reading.
Another concern I have as a classroom teacher is that this process seems to require a significant time investment in each student (preparing typescripts, the actual reading, the recording, and the relistening to each recording to confirm original notes). This seems to be better suited to reading coaches and elementary classroom teachers than middle school teachers who work with almost 100 kids.
Finally, I wonder how effective this program is with ELL students. The author makes a point of saying in the conclusion that the text Gary is reading is "within his language." It seems that there is the possibility that, with ELL students, the number and nature of miscues may be misleading in terms of a student's ability to read for meaning unless the text is in the student's primary language.
I was thinking that the process of reading miscues is a place for the elementary level as well. As I was reading the article, I was picturing this being done with elementary students in an elementary school. It is hard to picture middle level students and teachers sitting down to take the time to read, record, and listen with the many jobs they have throughout the school day. After all, isn’t that what the specialists are for? Then they can pass the information onto the classroom teacher and the teacher can find appropriate reading material from there. This is what sounds logical to me.
Personally, I think its all of our jobs to assess and teach reading and writing within our content. I complete fluency measures with my students as well as comprehension measures. I use the comprehension maze generator via interventioncentral.org to assess student's comprehension of grade level textbooks at least once a year. The website has a variety of tools used for RTI.
Mike, I agree that comprehension involves so many additional factors and that there is a difference between oral and silent reading. In comparison, our district uses the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (TOSWRF-2) as part of our literacy assessments. It supposedly assesses word ID, word meaning, word building, sentence structure, comprehension, and fluency. Students are presented with rows of words, ordered by reading difficulty; no spaces appear between the words (e.g., dimhowfigblue). Students are given 3 minutes to draw a line between the boundaries of as many words as possible (e.g., dim/how/fig/blue). Again, I'm not sure how these types of assessment addresses word meaning or comprehension.
Undoubtedly it is our responsibility as teachers to develop an understanding of our student's reading ability, in terms of fluency and comprehension. It also our job to engage students in the work of exploring new content and honing the skills to communicate their learning through a variety of media. I see all of my students for about four hours every week. I think part of the art of teaching is finding the balance between assessment and exploration. Informed teaching is priceless but information can come from many sources. I simply do not know if the information yielded from miscue analysis given the apparent time commitment outweighs information from alternative sources, some of which are mentioned in this conversation.
I honestly had an elementary class visual in my head while reading this.
As far as Heather’s point, I fully agree that “it’s all of our jobs to assess and teach reading and writing within our content.” ***within our content being key*** And that is about where my agreement ends.
I cannot see an eighth grade science teacher sitting down to do a miscue analysis on material that is music content. I did a quick google search and scanned some journal articles and they have done research on students of all grades but seem to focus on the lower ones. One particular site, learnnc.org states more studies conducted use readers in third grade or higher… while I found one article that used first and second graders.
Tx for the website Carson. There was an article called Ongoing Reading Assessment, with 3 case studies. Interestingly enough 2/3 were elementary but 1 was for a 12th grader. It was interesting that the teacher never realized this student struggled with text, used visuals to get through difficult text, and was not metacognitive about his reading. She did a miscue analysis of a culinary brochure (@ 12th grade reading level) he was using to write a 10 page term paper. Then she used a novel (12th grade) for a miscue analysis and he only had 2 miscues out of 200 words. The student was surprised that she expected him to read them differently. He needed to read the informational text slower and use decoding skills...which he thought were childish. Interesting!
I student taught in a reading recovery classroom and taught for a number of years in the primary grades. I have used miscue analysis and Mike, it is time consuming. The value for me was in being able to determine an instructional level of reading for my students as well as using it to discuss with parents and students in some specific way, reading progress. I also did as the author suggested and recorded each student's oral reading. Playing it back at certain points in the year allowed the students and myself to hear their growth. I had not thought about ELL students. It does raise the issue that if a student is unable to read in their native language or English it may not be the best measure of reading comprehension.
Although time consuming, I had not thought about the benefit of listening to the recording later in the year. It is great to see student progress with evidence to back it up. Also, the recording could show if a student is not progressing and needs extra supports put into place.
Our 7th grade is 1 to 1 with chromebooks this year and I have had the luxury of incorporating so much more technology into my daily lessons than ever before. A time-saving and valuable resource is the fluency tutor google app by texthelp. As the teacher you have an account where you assign students reading passages (vast database), both narrative and expository, based on lexile levels. The students then record themselves as they read the passage using any computer with chrome or android tablet. It provides instant feedback to both the student and teacher to listen to the recording where ever and whenever. From this teachers have instant reading fluency data. It is free plus there is an upgrade (paid) that comes with all the bells and whistles (analytical tools, graphs). Check it out, I love it for my struggling readers and so do they! They have become so independent in recording their passages and listening to their progress over time.
I just took a look at Fluency Tutor. Looks like an interesting application, low risk, positive and easy to use format, super convenient for teachers too. I also like that kids can choose their own time and place to read selected texts. Thanks for sharing Heather.
The students at the middle school where I sub also use the Google chrome books. I have not heard of the fluency reader, but and curious if the teachers know about it and are using it. That is something I will look into. Thanks Heather!
There are SO many google apps for education (GAFE's), it can be overwhelming, time consuming to research and play around with the technology. Another good app is "voice recognition" (speech to text app) where students dictate and it types the text for them, which can then be exported to google drive. Read and Write for google is another that I have yet to play around with, but its supposed to be good.
I also question how comprehension of the text plays into the miscues. Since I teach high school business classes there are many times that students have miscues and then successfully correct the pronunciation of a business term since they have heard it on the news, TV shows, or movies; however, that doesn’t mean they understood what they read. Maybe this isn’t a good example since this usually happens early in a lesson so the words are not that familiar to them. Although, when I have students read and summarize business news stories they can’t always transfer terms to new situations. (similar to Gary not being able to transfer the knowledge of a word) Further, I am not clear as to whether miscue analysis is done for all students, how often it is repeated, and how many teachers complete the process with each child or whether the ELA teacher would share it with me as a middle level math teacher. I still have lots of questions about this issue.
Kelly, you made me question if it is the reading specialist in the middle school that performs the miscue analysis. Then passes that information on to those that would like to know those levels, or are they only allowed to share with certain teachers?
As the special educator, I complete such assessments and others routinely for progress monitoring. I am in close contact and collaboration with the reading / literacy specialist who also completes various measures and disseminates the information via the PLP to general education teachers. But again, I believe we are all responsible for these formative assessments within our respective disciplines. Besides, the reading specialist would not be completing these measures on all students, typically Tier 2 and 3 students.
You all brought up the same questions that I had: is the expectation that the Math, Science and S.S. teachers do these with middle level students? or would it be the Reading coach/specialist? As an elementary teacher, I often struggle with figuring out what I've learned from doing an IRI (independent reading inventory) - I don't always agree with the reading level assigned, nor do I believe it gives a full and accurate assessment of their reading abilities. I don't do the full miscue analysis, in its long form as described by Goodman. In my district, elementary teachers are required to do IRIs or running records once per quarter with each student, and monthly with those students with a PLP or IEP reading goal (usually Special Educator does). We don't audio record, and our passages are shorter. We often use scripted questions which determine not only students' ability to summarize, but their ability to determine point of view or author's perspective, to make inferences about the characters, etc. I do find I know my students better as readers after reading with them one-on-one, but don't necessarily feel equipped to address their miscues (even if I did identify them correctly!). As you can imagine, this IS very time-consuming, especially for elementary teachers who lose much instruction time to the million other things we are expected to do in addition to teaching our content areas! Listening to audio might be a really important aspect for struggling readers, but again, unrealistic in terms of time for all students. I also agree with Mike that kids read very differently out loud than they do silently. We have kids read a portion of the text aloud for miscue analysis, then they reread and complete the rest of the text silently, before discussion with the teacher. (I don't think the reread part is supposed to happen, if Fountas and Pinnell were to have their say, but I find they can't remember much at all if they've read it aloud - even kids who are really comfortable with me.)
Karen, are you familiar with fluency tutor (google app)? I replied to an earlier comment about how it works. Its accessible from any computer with chrome or android tablet. Students record themselves reading a passage- time saving tool!
I can see your point about reading aloud. If they are concentrating more on speaking the word aloud and focusing on not making errors, they could easily miss the meaning of the complete text. I suppose, as you mentioned, the students comfort level with you as they read could play a large roll. At first I didn’t like the idea of Heather’s app as it takes the humanity out of it (in some ways) but after thinking more about it, they would be a lot more at ease not having someone “hover” over them as they read. Guess I’m Team Heather on this one after all. =P
The Goodman article generated a few questions for me to consider within my work with IEP students: 1. How some readers can't or don't generalize words that look the same but occur in different syntactic and semantic contexts (Gary's example with "contented"). 2. The ability to capture nonword substitutions accurately. Additionally, I found the appendix helpful however, it is not consistent with the markings I am familiar with when conducting running records. Are these the accepted universal markings?
After reading both the Goodman article and the responses so far, I also had the question of who performs the miscue analysis in a middle school?
For my reading II practicum, I had to do a miscue analysis with a 5th grade student who was above reading level. I don't agree with the article says by reading and retelling the story, you can get a fairly complete profile of the readers ability. A student could read the passages fluently without a miscue and still not conceptually understand it.
I was also wondering if the state requires miscue analysis to be done in elementary schools or middle schools, or based on the district? Is it required to be done with ELL students, students with IEPs or students who work with the reading specialist?
I agree Melissa. I have 2 LD students that are great decoders but do not understand what they read. This is a typical profile for people with Down's syndrome also. Reading is tricky because of the many skills required to be a successful reader: phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension; not to mention the differences in reading narrative vs. expository text. I have a general reading question regarding determining "reading level"...how do you determine this with confidence? Our district has a variety of measures, but I am always hesitant to lock a student into a prescribed grade level.
In the beginning of the article, the word miscue is defined by Goodman as an "unexpected response cued by readers' knowledge of their language and concepts in the world." It is also stated that miscue is used in place of the word error which I find to be extremely beneficial especially to the minds of young readers. The word error can have such a negative burden and effect on a person of any age. Replacing negative words with ones that bring more meaning and depth can help spin something negative into a more positive light. This is especially important to young students since they are very much influenced by little things like the terms error, wrong, or incorrect. As I continued to read about the development of miscues, I was surprised by how the procedure is developed. It is stated that the material being used for a miscue analysis should be long and challenging to produce a sufficient number of miscues. I'm not sure if I was interpreting this statement completely wrong or not, but I slightly disagree with this. I believe that the material should be reading level appropriate for the student and then continue on to become more challenging as the student's reading proficiency grows. I'm not sure why an educator would use material in hopes to catch a number of miscues. Although I have never conducted a miscue analysis with a young student, I agree that the quality of the miscue is more important than the quantity of the miscue. In my experience working with young students, they tend to rush through their reading producing many small miscues. A miscue analysis is a great tool for measuring a students reading level and proficiency, but I'm not exactly sure how it measures comprehension. Sure, a student could read a sentence and figure out what a word in the beginning of the sentence means, but cant he student successfully summarize what the passed they read means? I feel that another component should be added in to measure the comprehension along with proficiency.
I have to agree. I teach an eighth grade class and I overheard a conversation between two girls the other day. I was taking attendance at my desk and as they worked they chatted about the teacher who handed back an essay today. "Mine was full of red errors" one girl said. "I hate the way she circles my mistakes and puts an E every time I make a stupid error... like I don't already know I'm stupid". Your post made me think of this conversation because as soon as these girls saw their errors they immediately thought "oh I'm stupid". That word error just holds a sense of failure. I completely agree that the word miscue is a lighter way of handling this. Especially for younger students... so that they don't get to the eighth grade carrying misconception that error=stupid.
Is this a reading strategy for students, an assessment for teachers to use or a guide to help us with our own analysis when we do our own analysis. I understand that a miscue is an error in reading fluency but what makes it relevant to document is the quality of the error. I am still trying to understand how to mark a miscue when it happens. I am not sure how a student would feel comfortable having a teacher implement this kind of assessment .Would the students nervousness and eager to do well contribute to the frequency and quality of miscues? Or how would one go about implementing a Miscue Analysis with no permanent class room
Based on my own experiences Fred, I find it best to tape record whenever possible to help alleviate some anxiety. Then again, being recorded would also make me anxious! I hate having to make any notations (for any assessment) while in front of a student- you need to be discrete. I'm either trying to always write so it doesn't appear obvious when they make a mistake or I'll make notes in chunks or wait til the end, depending on the type of assessment.
As I read through the article about miscues I could understand that a single miscue does not qualify to draw conclusions about the reader’s proficiency, but I was surprised that it takes twenty-five miscues to produce a pattern of miscue responses. I would think the number would be smaller if the reader is stumbling over even ten to fifteen words. Also, I think we need to take comprehension into consideration even when less than twenty-five words are missed. I guess that’s where the retelling comes into play, therefore all factors need to be considered. Do you worry so much about the miscues when the comprehension is there?
ReplyDeleteKelsie
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteFirst page, right column, middle: It states all readers make miscues. I think the 25 as a minimum must be that high to account for the normal range. I just flipped though it again to see if they state how long the text usually were but all I said was “long and challenging.” So 25 may sound like a lot, but put into perspective may be smaller than you think.
DeleteOn the following page it also talks about the quality of miscues… which had me think about what you were saying about 25 as a minimum. How many quality miscues verses others types are figured into the 25- which makes me wonder if that’s why it’s a seemingly high number to account for variables.
I agree with you about the comprehension point Kelsie. I instinctively want to argue that reading comprehension involves more skills and processes than are measured by miscue analysis alone. Being able to retell a story does not by itself indicate comprehension. I also question the author's assertion that oral and silent reading are "essentially the same." I'm not convinced that miscues from reading out loud really reveal the thought processes involved in silent reading.
ReplyDeleteAnother concern I have as a classroom teacher is that this process seems to require a significant time investment in each student (preparing typescripts, the actual reading, the recording, and the relistening to each recording to confirm original notes). This seems to be better suited to reading coaches and elementary classroom teachers than middle school teachers who work with almost 100 kids.
Finally, I wonder how effective this program is with ELL students. The author makes a point of saying in the conclusion that the text Gary is reading is "within his language." It seems that there is the possibility that, with ELL students, the number and nature of miscues may be misleading in terms of a student's ability to read for meaning unless the text is in the student's primary language.
I was thinking that the process of reading miscues is a place for the elementary level as well. As I was reading the article, I was picturing this being done with elementary students in an elementary school. It is hard to picture middle level students and teachers sitting down to take the time to read, record, and listen with the many jobs they have throughout the school day. After all, isn’t that what the specialists are for? Then they can pass the information onto the classroom teacher and the teacher can find appropriate reading material from there. This is what sounds logical to me.
DeleteKelsie
Personally, I think its all of our jobs to assess and teach reading and writing within our content. I complete fluency measures with my students as well as comprehension measures. I use the comprehension maze generator via interventioncentral.org to assess student's comprehension of grade level textbooks at least once a year. The website has a variety of tools used for RTI.
DeleteMike, I agree that comprehension involves so many additional factors and that there is a difference between oral and silent reading. In comparison, our district uses the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (TOSWRF-2) as part of our literacy assessments. It supposedly assesses word ID, word meaning, word building, sentence structure, comprehension, and fluency. Students are presented with rows of words, ordered by reading difficulty; no spaces appear between the words (e.g., dimhowfigblue). Students are given 3 minutes to draw a line between the boundaries of as many words as possible (e.g., dim/how/fig/blue). Again, I'm not sure how these types of assessment addresses word meaning or comprehension.
DeleteUndoubtedly it is our responsibility as teachers to develop an understanding of our student's reading ability, in terms of fluency and comprehension. It also our job to engage students in the work of exploring new content and honing the skills to communicate their learning through a variety of media. I see all of my students for about four hours every week. I think part of the art of teaching is finding the balance between assessment and exploration. Informed teaching is priceless but information can come from many sources. I simply do not know if the information yielded from miscue analysis given the apparent time commitment outweighs information from alternative sources, some of which are mentioned in this conversation.
DeleteI honestly had an elementary class visual in my head while reading this.
DeleteAs far as Heather’s point, I fully agree that “it’s all of our jobs to assess and teach reading and writing within our content.” ***within our content being key*** And that is about where my agreement ends.
I cannot see an eighth grade science teacher sitting down to do a miscue analysis on material that is music content. I did a quick google search and scanned some journal articles and they have done research on students of all grades but seem to focus on the lower ones. One particular site, learnnc.org states more studies conducted use readers in third grade or higher… while I found one article that used first and second graders.
Tx for the website Carson. There was an article called Ongoing Reading Assessment, with 3 case studies. Interestingly enough 2/3 were elementary but 1 was for a 12th grader. It was interesting that the teacher never realized this student struggled with text, used visuals to get through difficult text, and was not metacognitive about his reading. She did a miscue analysis of a culinary brochure (@ 12th grade reading level) he was using to write a 10 page term paper. Then she used a novel (12th grade) for a miscue analysis and he only had 2 miscues out of 200 words. The student was surprised that she expected him to read them differently. He needed to read the informational text slower and use decoding skills...which he thought were childish. Interesting!
DeleteI student taught in a reading recovery classroom and taught for a number of years in the primary grades. I have used miscue analysis and Mike, it is time consuming. The value for me was in being able to determine an instructional level of reading for my students as well as using it to discuss with parents and students in some specific way, reading progress. I also did as the author suggested and recorded each student's oral reading. Playing it back at certain points in the year allowed the students and myself to hear their growth.
ReplyDeleteI had not thought about ELL students. It does raise the issue that if a student is unable to read in their native language or English it may not be the best measure of reading comprehension.
Although time consuming, I had not thought about the benefit of listening to the recording later in the year. It is great to see student progress with evidence to back it up. Also, the recording could show if a student is not progressing and needs extra supports put into place.
DeleteKelsie
Our 7th grade is 1 to 1 with chromebooks this year and I have had the luxury of incorporating so much more technology into my daily lessons than ever before. A time-saving and valuable resource is the fluency tutor google app by texthelp. As the teacher you have an account where you assign students reading passages (vast database), both narrative and expository, based on lexile levels. The students then record themselves as they read the passage using any computer with chrome or android tablet. It provides instant feedback to both the student and teacher to listen to the recording where ever and whenever. From this teachers have instant reading fluency data. It is free plus there is an upgrade (paid) that comes with all the bells and whistles (analytical tools, graphs). Check it out, I love it for my struggling readers and so do they! They have become so independent in recording their passages and listening to their progress over time.
DeleteI just took a look at Fluency Tutor. Looks like an interesting application, low risk, positive and easy to use format, super convenient for teachers too. I also like that kids can choose their own time and place to read selected texts. Thanks for sharing Heather.
DeleteThe students at the middle school where I sub also use the Google chrome books. I have not heard of the fluency reader, but and curious if the teachers know about it and are using it. That is something I will look into. Thanks Heather!
DeleteThere are SO many google apps for education (GAFE's), it can be overwhelming, time consuming to research and play around with the technology. Another good app is "voice recognition" (speech to text app) where students dictate and it types the text for them, which can then be exported to google drive. Read and Write for google is another that I have yet to play around with, but its supposed to be good.
DeleteI also question how comprehension of the text plays into the miscues. Since I teach high school business classes there are many times that students have miscues and then successfully correct the pronunciation of a business term since they have heard it on the news, TV shows, or movies; however, that doesn’t mean they understood what they read. Maybe this isn’t a good example since this usually happens early in a lesson so the words are not that familiar to them. Although, when I have students read and summarize business news stories they can’t always transfer terms to new situations. (similar to Gary not being able to transfer the knowledge of a word) Further, I am not clear as to whether miscue analysis is done for all students, how often it is repeated, and how many teachers complete the process with each child or whether the ELA teacher would share it with me as a middle level math teacher. I still have lots of questions about this issue.
ReplyDeleteKelly, you made me question if it is the reading specialist in the middle school that performs the miscue analysis. Then passes that information on to those that would like to know those levels, or are they only allowed to share with certain teachers?
DeleteKelsie
As the special educator, I complete such assessments and others routinely for progress monitoring. I am in close contact and collaboration with the reading / literacy specialist who also completes various measures and disseminates the information via the PLP to general education teachers. But again, I believe we are all responsible for these formative assessments within our respective disciplines. Besides, the reading specialist would not be completing these measures on all students, typically Tier 2 and 3 students.
DeleteHeather, do you compare results with the reading teacher to see where the students are at? And if so, do your results ever vary?
DeleteTypically the results are consistent. Yes we routinely share data, especially around IEP students we share.
DeleteYou all brought up the same questions that I had: is the expectation that the Math, Science and S.S. teachers do these with middle level students? or would it be the Reading coach/specialist? As an elementary teacher, I often struggle with figuring out what I've learned from doing an IRI (independent reading inventory) - I don't always agree with the reading level assigned, nor do I believe it gives a full and accurate assessment of their reading abilities. I don't do the full miscue analysis, in its long form as described by Goodman. In my district, elementary teachers are required to do IRIs or running records once per quarter with each student, and monthly with those students with a PLP or IEP reading goal (usually Special Educator does). We don't audio record, and our passages are shorter. We often use scripted questions which determine not only students' ability to summarize, but their ability to determine point of view or author's perspective, to make inferences about the characters, etc. I do find I know my students better as readers after reading with them one-on-one, but don't necessarily feel equipped to address their miscues (even if I did identify them correctly!). As you can imagine, this IS very time-consuming, especially for elementary teachers who lose much instruction time to the million other things we are expected to do in addition to teaching our content areas! Listening to audio might be a really important aspect for struggling readers, but again, unrealistic in terms of time for all students. I also agree with Mike that kids read very differently out loud than they do silently. We have kids read a portion of the text aloud for miscue analysis, then they reread and complete the rest of the text silently, before discussion with the teacher. (I don't think the reread part is supposed to happen, if Fountas and Pinnell were to have their say, but I find they can't remember much at all if they've read it aloud - even kids who are really comfortable with me.)
ReplyDeleteKaren, are you familiar with fluency tutor (google app)? I replied to an earlier comment about how it works. Its accessible from any computer with chrome or android tablet. Students record themselves reading a passage- time saving tool!
DeleteI can see your point about reading aloud. If they are concentrating more on speaking the word aloud and focusing on not making errors, they could easily miss the meaning of the complete text. I suppose, as you mentioned, the students comfort level with you as they read could play a large roll. At first I didn’t like the idea of Heather’s app as it takes the humanity out of it (in some ways) but after thinking more about it, they would be a lot more at ease not having someone “hover” over them as they read. Guess I’m Team Heather on this one after all. =P
DeleteLOL Carson, go Team Sherman Alexie! :)
DeleteI loved the 1st half of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian".
The Goodman article generated a few questions for me to consider within my work with IEP students: 1. How some readers can't or don't generalize words that look the same but occur in different syntactic and semantic contexts (Gary's example with "contented"). 2. The ability to capture nonword substitutions accurately.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I found the appendix helpful however, it is not consistent with the markings I am familiar with when conducting running records. Are these the accepted universal markings?
After reading both the Goodman article and the responses so far, I also had the question of who performs the miscue analysis in a middle school?
ReplyDeleteFor my reading II practicum, I had to do a miscue analysis with a 5th grade student who was above reading level. I don't agree with the article says by reading and retelling the story, you can get a fairly complete profile of the readers ability. A student could read the passages fluently without a miscue and still not conceptually understand it.
I was also wondering if the state requires miscue analysis to be done in elementary schools or middle schools, or based on the district? Is it required to be done with ELL students, students with IEPs or students who work with the reading specialist?
I agree Melissa. I have 2 LD students that are great decoders but do not understand what they read. This is a typical profile for people with Down's syndrome also. Reading is tricky because of the many skills required to be a successful reader: phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension; not to mention the differences in reading narrative vs. expository text. I have a general reading question regarding determining "reading level"...how do you determine this with confidence? Our district has a variety of measures, but I am always hesitant to lock a student into a prescribed grade level.
DeleteIn the beginning of the article, the word miscue is defined by Goodman as an "unexpected response cued by readers' knowledge of their language and concepts in the world." It is also stated that miscue is used in place of the word error which I find to be extremely beneficial especially to the minds of young readers. The word error can have such a negative burden and effect on a person of any age. Replacing negative words with ones that bring more meaning and depth can help spin something negative into a more positive light. This is especially important to young students since they are very much influenced by little things like the terms error, wrong, or incorrect.
ReplyDeleteAs I continued to read about the development of miscues, I was surprised by how the procedure is developed. It is stated that the material being used for a miscue analysis should be long and challenging to produce a sufficient number of miscues. I'm not sure if I was interpreting this statement completely wrong or not, but I slightly disagree with this. I believe that the material should be reading level appropriate for the student and then continue on to become more challenging as the student's reading proficiency grows. I'm not sure why an educator would use material in hopes to catch a number of miscues.
Although I have never conducted a miscue analysis with a young student, I agree that the quality of the miscue is more important than the quantity of the miscue. In my experience working with young students, they tend to rush through their reading producing many small miscues.
A miscue analysis is a great tool for measuring a students reading level and proficiency, but I'm not exactly sure how it measures comprehension. Sure, a student could read a sentence and figure out what a word in the beginning of the sentence means, but cant he student successfully summarize what the passed they read means? I feel that another component should be added in to measure the comprehension along with proficiency.
I have to agree. I teach an eighth grade class and I overheard a conversation between two girls the other day. I was taking attendance at my desk and as they worked they chatted about the teacher who handed back an essay today. "Mine was full of red errors" one girl said. "I hate the way she circles my mistakes and puts an E every time I make a stupid error... like I don't already know I'm stupid". Your post made me think of this conversation because as soon as these girls saw their errors they immediately thought "oh I'm stupid". That word error just holds a sense of failure. I completely agree that the word miscue is a lighter way of handling this. Especially for younger students... so that they don't get to the eighth grade carrying misconception that error=stupid.
DeleteIs this a reading strategy for students, an assessment for teachers to use or a guide to help us with our own analysis when we do our own analysis. I understand that a miscue is an error in reading fluency but what makes it relevant to document is the quality of the error. I am still trying to understand how to mark a miscue when it happens. I am not sure how a student would feel comfortable having a teacher implement this kind of assessment .Would the students nervousness and eager to do well contribute to the frequency and quality of miscues? Or how would one go about implementing a Miscue Analysis with no permanent class room
ReplyDeleteBased on my own experiences Fred, I find it best to tape record whenever possible to help alleviate some anxiety. Then again, being recorded would also make me anxious! I hate having to make any notations (for any assessment) while in front of a student- you need to be discrete. I'm either trying to always write so it doesn't appear obvious when they make a mistake or I'll make notes in chunks or wait til the end, depending on the type of assessment.
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