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STUDENT LEARNING REPORT

Report on the Effect on

Student Learning in a
TESOL Environment

Vanessa Risti

Salem State University

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STUDENT LEARNING REPORT
Introduction

Between the months of March and May 2017, I provided intervention to a group of

Kindergarten students in the area of English language literacy at a public elementary school

located in Peabody, Massachusetts. The school features a population of 465 students, with 3.9%

of the population consisting of English language learners (MA DESE 2017). Most of the students

there are ethnically White, forming 85.8% of the population, followed by the schools Hispanic

population at 6.7% (2017). The ratio of students to teachers is 16.4 to 1, with 33.3% of the

student population qualifying as those with high needs, or those who receive specialized services

that range from one-to-one aides to linguistic and academic intervention (2017). The

accountability status of the school is at level two, meaning that it is not meeting the goals that it

should be achieving in helping students become proficient in the subject areas of English

Language Arts (ELA), Science, Social Studies, and Math (2017). In 2015, 70% of students who

took the ELA MCAS test received as score of Proficient or higher (2017). That same year, 62%

of students who participated in the Math MCAS scored within the same range, while 53% of

students were considered proficient or more on the Science MCAS (2017). Despite the school

not achieving its goals in narrowing the proficiency gap in 2016, those with high needs have 74

out of the 75 points needed to be considered proficient according to the Cumulative Progress and

Performance Index (2017).

The group of Kindergarden students consisted of three students named Rosalee,

Maria, and Dara, who all spoke one other language apart from English. I instructed all three

students as a group twice a week by pulling them out of their respective classrooms and

providing them explicit English language intervention for 45 minutes at a time. While Rosalee

spoke Spanish as her first language, Dara spoke Khmer and Maria spoke Portuguese. None of the
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STUDENT LEARNING REPORT
students use their primary languages during class, preferring to instead converse with me and

each other in English. While Rosalee and Dara only receive English language intervention,

Maria visits a speech pathologist who supports her sociocognitive development by teaching her

communication skills such as providing direct responses to questions and comments. As of 2016,

all three of the students are at a WIDA level of four according to their results on that years

ACCESS test. Despite reaching such a high level of English language proficiency, the students

still required explicit English language support in order to comprehend the ELA- and Math-

based material taught in their respective general education classrooms.

Rationale and Objectives

My rationale behind instructing my students in CVC word families is based on preparing

them for the styles of text that they will encounter in the future. Establishing the foundational

aspects of literacy, such as finding similarities in rhyming words and identifying the sequence of

a fictional narrative, can assist students as they read more complex pieces of text in the upper

elementary levels. Because the students are also learning English as a second language, their

literacy instruction should not only include the development of reading fluency, but also their

reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition through tasks such as guided reading

discussions and activities that prompt students to match words to their respective images.

Although they are taught those skills in their general education classes as well, the instruction

provided in class is not especially tailored to their needs. With this group, I was primarily

concerned with developing their skills in English language literacy because I believe that it plays

an important role in early childhood education, one that provides students with the decoding and

comprehension skills necessary in building literacy in their L1 and L2.

I created my unit on CVC word families in conjunction with the literacy instruction that
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the students are receiving in their general education classes. While the students are being

exposed to reading strategies and engagement with print in their respective classrooms, the

instruction of word families within a TESOL context is based on identifying the students

individual linguistic needs through close observation of their speaking patterns and the

complexity of speech in their L2. Because Maria displayed difficulty in constructing syntax in

her L2, despite expressing a desire for extended English-language discourse, while Dara and

Rosalee primarily spoke in shortened phrases, I approached my instruction with the intent to

support both their literacy and English language acquisition. The standards I referred to in

developing the unit are as follows:

Reading Foundational Skills 2.a.: Recognize and produce rhyming words

(Massachusetts ELA Standards 2011).
Reading Foundational Skills 2.b.: Blend and segment onsets and rimes of
single-syllable spoken words (2011).
Reading Foundational Skills 2.d.: Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial
vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-
consonant, or CVC) words (2011).
Reading 4: Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text (2011).
Reading Foundational Skills 2.e.: Add or substitute individual sounds
(phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words (2011).
Reading Foundational Skills 3.d.: Distinguish between similarly spelled
words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ (2011).
Language 2.d.: Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of
sound-letter relationships (2011).

My intention in selecting the standards was to focus on the students ability to recognize patterns

in print and the meanings contained in both familiar and new words, albeit within the context of

English language education. It was from there that I decided on the objectives that I would

implement within the unit and its corresponding lessons:

Students will recognize visual and phonemic similarities shared between

words within one or more word families.
Students will identify endings sounds in rhyming words.
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STUDENT LEARNING REPORT
Students will be able to substitute initial, middle, and ending sounds to create
new words.
Students will segment the onset and rimes in words in order to decode them in
text.
Students will differentiate between the meanings of two or more words that
share all but one sound or letter (i.e. pop vs. hop; tap vs. rap).
Students will use their ability to recognize the sounds in words to determine
their individual meanings.
Students will provide oral definitions of new CVC vocabulary words.

Because I would spend up to 45 minutes with each student over the course of two days a week, I

would implement up to two of these objectives per lesson with each student. I felt that having

up to that amount of objectives to focus on would increase the students chances of reaching

the objectives that had been set by the end of the unit. The combination of both the standards and

the objectives that stemmed from them created the foundation for the unit and the form of

intervention that would follow.

Pre-Assessment

I measured the students proficiency in decoding and recognizing rhyming patterns in

words in the form of a reading assessment that was administered before and after the sets of

word families have been taught. The assessments consisted of a list of nineteen words, each

representing a list of three word families that served as the primary focus of a single series of

lessons. Working with each student on an individual basis, I asked them to read the words to the

best of their ability, while I made note of any self-corrections, reading strategies, or patterns that

each student demonstrated. Some of notes that I made were based on symbols commonly used

during running records, including the initials SC representing a student correcting themselves

after uttering an incorrect answer, and the letter T would indicate that I told the student the

answer after they had shown difficulty in identifying a word. I would also write brief messages

incase I observed reading strategies that I believed were exceptional in helping the reader
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identify each word. I then used the results of each assessment as a basis upon which I could

establish the goals and objectives I would like to achieve during my intervention. As an example,

I provided extra assistance to Maria after she displayed a habit of sounding out words based on

individual phonemes rather than separating their onsets from their rimes. After the pre-

assessment, I would count the number of words that were decoded correctly or self-corrected and

administer the student a score of how many were she read out of the nineteen that were

presented.

English Language Intervention

The instruction I presented throughout the unit was based on student exposure to rhyming

words through guided reading, read alouds, and a variety of group and independent activities.

The leveled reading books, as found on the website Reading A Z, were designed to be

decodable readers that introduced new sets of words based on the sounds that they shared.

Because this unit was based around CVC word families, I chose leveled readers that featured

instances of words from the word families that I would be teaching for that lesson. For example,

Oliver Hendersons I Can Hop features words such as hop and mop that are used repeatedly

in the story. This allowed students to decode the words within the context of a self-contained

narrative. As the students read, they are asked if they can find any of the words from the op

family on each page. If they did, then they are encouraged to either circle or highlight every

instance of the words that they see. As soon as they are finished reading the story, they are asked

to think of some of the op family words that they remember, as well as whether or not they

mean the same thing. Providing the students with literature that accompanies the lesson

demonstrates how the words they are learning, and the ways in which they sound, can be used in
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a practical manner.

For a concept as abstract as language, I wanted to implement a variety of tactile activities

for the students to participate in as part of their English language literacy intervention. An

example of one of these activities is a CVC word scavenger hunt where students were instructed

to find cards around the room that featured many of the CVC words they were learning over the

course of the unit. The students were encouraged to work as a team to find all the cards and bring

them back to a table, where they would then organize them into categories based on the word

families that they belonged to. After they completed the task, I would ask the students to read the

words under each column out loud and listen to see if the words belonged or if they needed to be

moved elsewhere. I believed that having the students directly manipulate the language they are

learning would help them to form connections between individual words, their word families,

and the patterns they would share.

The activities I created during the intervention not only involved manipulatives, but

physical movement on the students parts as well. For a game of CVC word charades, I would

ask students to read the word that was featured on a card and to act it out without giving any

verbal hints. For example, if a student grabbed a card that said hop, they were asked to hop

in any way that they chose. The students at the table needed to guess the action that was being

performed, and if one student was correct, that student would then be given a chance to act out a

word themselves. This not only demonstrated the students ability to decode the word accurately,

but to also comprehend the meaning of the word and to recognize it by the way it sounds. The

activity allowed me to briefly assess the students skills in listening and reading in order to

determine the form of intervention that would appear in future lessons.

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Post-Assessment

As soon as I finished instructing the group on each set of word families, I reassessed

them utilizing the same list of words that was administered during the pre-assessment, as

attached to this report. As I listened to each student individually read each word, I marked my

copy of the assessment with the same symbols as before, tracking any errors that they student

may make. I also wrote notes that briefly summarized any reading strategies that were observed

during the assessment. Finally, I compared the results from the pre- and post-assessments to

measure the amount of growth that the students made. The assessments were then collected as

part of a portfolio that measured their overall growth in their knowledge of CVC word families.

Results of Assessment

After assessing the students on two separate sets of word families, I have noticed a

pattern in the amount of improvement made between each of the students I serviced. Table A

represents the data collected during the first set of words, while Table B features data from the

second set. The results prove to be dramatically different when comparing the two groups, as

evidenced by the bar graphs representing the pre- and post-assessments. Along the x-axis are the

results from Marias, Daras, and Rosalees pre- and post-assessments, respectively. The blue

bars on each of the graphs represent the results of the pre-test, while the red and orange bars on

each graph represents the post-test results. The y-axis represents the nineteen words that the

students had to read, as plotted based on intervals of two.

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STUDENT LEARNING REPORT

Table A:
Representation
of student data
collected at
the beginning
and end of the
first
instruction
period.

Table B:
Representation of
student data
collected at the
beginning and end
of the second
instruction period.
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In Table A, Maria, or Student A, improved significantly in the amount of words that she could

decode ,mainly interpreting words by applying the /at/ sound to the majority of them. It was only

after the student was provided explicit instruction in at, -am-, and am word families that she

was able to distinguish the endings between each word. This eventually lead to her decoding

almost all of the words provided later on. For someone like Rosalee, or Student C, however,

there was already a significant amount of proficiency in decoding simple CVC words, making

the intervention have less of an impact on her overall reading skills than the rest of the students.

Because of this, little difference can be found between the results in the pre- and post-

assessments. Both of these students serve as foils of each other in terms of the actions taken in

supporting their English language literacy.

Dara, listed as Student B in the results, is one who has shown the greatest amount of

difference between the results of the two assessments. Although she made the most improvement

in her decoding skills during the first assessment, her scores remained relatively low after

explicit instruction of the ap, -op, and -ip word families. During the assessment, she was able to

decode many of the ap words with great accuracy and rapid processing, but as the assessment

continued, she inserted the short a sound in all the remaining words side from pop. She also

substituted the /d/ sound in dip for /b/, a mistake that I have commonly observed among other

members of the group. The error was likely due to the visual similarities between the lowercase

forms of b and d, with little variance between them. Based on this data, Dara should be

receiving immediate intervention in identifying the differences in vowel sounds. Although she

knows the kind of sound that /a/ makes, she appears to apply that sound to every CVC word that

she decoded, thinking that /a/ is an automatic placeholder for the vowel in most of the words she
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read. Helping her to understand the sounds that each vowel makes can facilitate the progress that

she is making in her English language acquisition.

Not only did I compare the improvements made between each group of word families

that I taught, but I also compared the pre-test and post-test of each section, demonstrating how

much each student has learned during each lesson. As demonstrated in Figure A, Dara was

only able to decode two out of the nineteen words presented as part of the at, -am, and an

word families. The student also did not attempt to decode several of the words presented,

including sat, rat, and hat. She was, however, able to exercise the idea that different

strategies are used to decode new words, but despite this, the strategy was often misapplied to the

majority of the words being presented. As a result, dam, ram, and can became bat, rat,

and cat. Having noticed this, I decided to focus on the am and an families more closely with

the student, helping her distinguish between all three word families and identify each word

according to the families they belong to.

After I assessed the students in their ability to define some of the CVC words that they

learned, I found that the majority of them were able to display their aptitude in explaining a

words meaning within the context of a sentence or action. For example, when I asked Dara to

tell me what a cap is, she explained while making a twisting motion that You put the cap on

the bottle. Although this was not a definition of the word in the more traditional sense, it still

demonstrated the students knowledge of the item, what it can be used for, and how the word is

presented in text. In Daras case, however, many of the terms were difficult to define, with the

word cop failing to elicit a response from her. I feel that in her case, more intervention is

needed in the area of vocabulary retention, since she is able to identify the words and their

meanings during classwork, but not during any form of assessment.

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As a result of my intervention, the amount of words that Rosalee was able to decode by

the end of the instruction period increased greatly, yielding a score of sixteen out of nineteen

words read. The student was able to adapt her reading strategy from the pre-test to the terms

being presented, demonstrating her ability to recognize the differences in the forms and sounds

of words. Although the student became comfortable with decoding words using the at ending

just as she did with the pre-test, she was able to include the onsets of the words as part of the

decoding process. This is in contrast to the results of the pre-test, where many of the words were

decoded based on guesses drawn from her early knowledge of CVC words. Rosalee would

continue to demonstrate this pattern of language acquisition and literacy development, as well as

further close the gap between the pre- and post-assessments that would be assigned to her.

I feel that this method of assessment is best in measuring the skills acquired by each

student in the group because it directly correlates with the objectives that had been created for

the unit. Because the goal of the unit is to encourage Kindergarten students to decode new but

simple CVC words based on rhyming patterns shared between each other, there needed to be an

assessment that would reinforce the students skills in performing this task, as well as the

phonemic awareness that comes with hearing words that sound alike. Having the students read

the words aloud, rather than to themselves, provides them with the opportunity to analyze the

words they have read, leading to the decision of whether or not the words being uttered match

the words being presented in print. Providing the students with the same set of words before and

after they are taught allows me to compare and contrast their skills in decoding certain sets of

word families. It also serves as the basis upon which I can determine whether or not each

students individual goals have been met. If they had not, then those goals would be something to

continuously pursue until the student has reached them. Ultimately collecting them as part of a
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portfolio, one that features examples of student work and the reading assessments that will be

shown to the students respective homeroom teachers, can measure the students overall English

literacy development from the beginning to the end of the unit. This can act as an overview of

the students proficiency in this area, and indicating as to what the next level of intervention

should be for them. The assessment is one that tracks gradual growth in student literacy while

establishing goals that support the individual strengths and areas of improvement for each child.

Future Intervention

I believe that if I were to continue teaching the same group in the area of letter-sound

recognition, I would create a unit based on recognizing CCVC words within the same word

families that they had learned in my class. Because the students were able to display proficiency

and growth in the area of identifying words and patterns found in CVC rhyming families, I feel

that I should expand on what they had already learned by introducing new vocabulary and

having each student explain the differences between the CVC and CCVC words that they

learned. The unit would also be an opportunity to introduce consonant blends to the students,

where they would learn that two consonant sounds in English can combine to make a single

sound, such as with trap and stop. Dara, however, would be the only student whose

instruction would be differentiated within the group, as she still displayed difficulty in

decoding and identifying CVC words by the end of the unit. In her case, I would briefly but

explicitly review CVC words with her using flash cards at the beginning of the lesson as well as

before a lesson activity in order to remind her of how CVC words are formed. Teaching the

group a unit on CCVC words can reinforce the reading strategies established in the previous unit

while introducing new vocabulary at a level that can be both challenging and stimulating for

students.
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Conclusion

In analyzing the results of the assessments, I have noticed that my teaching has had a

positive impact on my students reading skills. I believe that this is due in part to providing a

a variety of activities for the students to practice their skills on. Each activity ranged from sorting

words into their respective word families to piecing together the initial, middle, and ending

sounds as puzzle pieces that form a picture of the word being described. This hands-on approach

provides concrete and tangible methods that students can use to demonstrate the knowledge

gained from that lesson. Implementing such activities can aid in the comprehension of new

material while providing tasks that are appropriate for the Kindergarten grade level. Illustrations,

actions, and movements also contributed to the visual representation of language that supported

the students understanding of classroom material.

The combination of non-textual support for a unit centered on reading text was I feel the

primary reason for the students learning as much as they are in my group. What they were able to

improve on by the end of the unit was their ability to decode CVC words as single sets of words

and to describe the differences in the sounds and appearances in each word. This was in contrast

to the students sounding out individual phonemes as a means to indentify each word. Having the

skills to decode words immediately factors into their overall English-language reading fluency,

and with time, can assist the students in my group in discovering new words that follow patterns

similar to the ones explored in my unit. I hope that my instruction of CVC word families

eventually serve as the foundation upon which more advanced reading strategies will develop.
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Cited Sources

Henderson, O., Snyder J. (2017) I can hop. Digital: Reading A to Z. Retrieved from
https://www.readinga-z.com/book/decodable.php?id=12.

Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (2017). Directory profiles

Retrieved from http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/general/general.aspx?topNavID=1&leftNavI
d=100&orgcode=02290035&orgtypecode=6.

Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (March 2011)., MA

Curriculum Framework for English Language Arts and Literacy in Social Studies, Science
and Technical Subjects. PDF. Retrieved from http://www.doe.mass.edu/
frameworks/ela/0311.pdf.
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Figure A: Results from Daras pre-assessment of at, -am, and an rhyming words.
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Figure B: Results of Daras post-test assessment of at, -am, and an rhyming words.