Week 5 - 3:

Moshe is a ten year old ESL student. I began teaching him to read and write a couple of months ago. His accuracy rate is 92% which is instructional, but his self-correction rate is only 1:6. He is not self-monitoring his reading sufficiently. Though he has made great progress, the fact that he is not fluent in English slows down his learning considerably.  Most of his mistakes seem to be visual. Understandably, he did not have many structural or meaning mistakes as it takes him time to understand the meaning of the sentence. I would, therefore, focus on practicing his knowledge of the different and distinct shapes of the letters. Most of his mistakes were confusing letters with similar sounds. For example, he confused “f” and “t,” which is the same letter reversed. He confused “k” with “x” and “a” with “u,” which do look similar. I divided our mini-lesson into two parts. In the first part, I concentrated on the story he had read. First, he drew and labeled the characters in the story and then used them to retell me the story in his own words.[1] I also created a Venn diagram with the dog from this story and a character we read about last week and had him compare the two.[2] Then I chose to focus on two letters that he confused, the “k” and “x.” I want to improve his accuracy but I need to work through it slowly. First I had him shape the letters out of clay and run his fingers over them so that he can feel the differences. (4 minutes) Then I created a page with a mix of the two letters and he had to highlight the letters in two different colors and then read the page saying the sounds of the letters. (4 minutes) While he was doing that page, I created a quick matching game using words with “t” and “f”, which we played together. He read the two cards he picked up and if they matched he got to keep them and got another turn. If they didn’t then it was my turn to do the same.  The reason why this work so well for this particular child, is because he benefits from being able to hear me read the words as this helps his English speaking and accent. (10 minutes) It was a very successful lesson. Next session I would say words with these two letters and he will have to write the words. I always like to see that a child can encode properly. This appeals to the auditory learners and assures me that he really knows the letters and sounds.

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[1] (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.)

[2] (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.9 Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories.)