Jessie Ortiz

Education 311

Professor Nappi

Fall 2011

Miscue Analysis

                  Edwards Fry’s ten best ideas for teaching reading for teachers’, David Pearson affirm that “Learning proceeds from the known to the new,” is at the heart of all comprehension and learning”. Learning how to read involved so much, it is imperative that as future teachers or current teachers that we do the best of our ability to make sure that all of our students become strong readers and fluent readers. All of our students must read with comprehension. In the book “On Solid Ground” Taberski states that “comprehension is an essential component of reading. Without it, children merely “call” words without understanding what they are reading”(Taberski 2000 p.64). Children must have reading comprehension in order to be good fluent readers. In a miscue analysis you diagnose a child reading ability, you analyze how the child read and what strategies are they using to help them read better. A miscue also inform you the teacher, of how well your student is doing in reading and what you should or need to do either to help them improve  or to keep them on the right track. it give a an idea of what reading level your student is  at, Taberski states that ““Decide whether the book a child is reading is matched to her stage of reading development”. When we know our children reading ability we are able to provide them with books that matched their reading level. We are also able to provide them with help in areas that they are weak. We have to be aware of what methods or strategies will work well for that child. For example prior knowledge should be discussed before reading a text to make sure that the stage is set for what is coming. As teachers we should always make sure that our students are reading at their level. It also gives you a heads up on what books are appropriate for that child. In the book On Solid Grounds Taberski states that “Sorting books by stage, and level of difficulty within each stage, helps me and the children select the ones that will be most helpful in practicing the strategies they’re acquiring” also in the article “What is developmentally appropriate practice” it state that school activities should be matched to children’s abilities-they should neither be too difficult nor too easy, given the child’s current state of development”. Teachers have to find a book that they know that their student can read or that not too difficult for that child. This goes back to Piaget’s cognitive stage of developmental skills; you have to know what stage your students are at so, you can give them the proper material for their stage. Being a systematic observer you will observe each one of your students and you will be able to tell what level they are on. When it’s time to pick books for your students you will be able to pick the right book for them to read or the “just-right” book. When I was doing my miscue analysis with my student, I had to make sure I picked the right book for him/her; the book had to be on their level. The book I choose was a book that they were already reading in their ELA class. The student was able to read the book with ease with a few mistakes but mistakes is part of the process. When doing a Miscue analysis the teachers have to observe what cues the child is using. the cueing system are semantic system which is when the student use his/her background knowledge, story sense, logic, pictorial and graphic resources or their environment to help them  predict what they think the story is about or try to make sense of the story that they are about to read. The next cueing system is graphophonic system this system is beginning sounds, ending sounds, medial sounds, word families, letter combinations, rimes and onsets. . The other cueing system is the syntactic system this system includes grammar structure, structure, knowledge, language patterns, word endings, past/present/future tense and part of speech, this helps the student see the similarities between the structure and the sentence. When doing a miscue analysis these are the cueing systems a teacher should look for while the student is reading. I was conducting my miscue with an eleven year old child in the sixth grade. I had went to the school earlier, the teacher introduce the student to me. I asked her what book she was reading in class and she told me they were reading ”Peter and the star catcher”.  I asked her when did they start reading this book, she said” we started reading peter and the star catcher late September and we are on chapter 16”. I also asked her do she like to read she said” I like to read but I like to read mystery, action and love books. I hate boring books”. She seemed comfortable with me, I then asked her to read the story to me. She began to read the story “Peter and the starcatcher” by Dave Barry. I had her read the first three pages. After she finished reading the story I asked her to retell the story to me. In the book “On Solid Grounds” In chapter six Taberski states “I ask children to tell about what they’ve read so I can see how well they understand it”(Taberski 2000 p.64).  Retelling to some children can be difficult. Some children struggle with retelling a story.  When you asked a child to retell a story they think that you are asking them what their favorite part or what they like most about the story. Children sometimes get confused when you ask them to retell a story. By asking the children to retelling the story, you are testing their comprehension. As a teacher one of your goals is to improve comprehension. Just because a child know how to read a book does not mean they understand what they are reading. After she retold the story to me she showed me that she understood what she had just read. During the story the words that she had problems with she sounded them out. She also self-corrected herself when she mispronounce a word or said the wrong word. She used graphophonic cues which is visual cues  that she did not self-correct for example  she used “Would” for “could”, “Fist for First”, “numberous” for “numerous”, “create “ for “creaky”, “it” for “is”, “decked” for “ducked”, “squirting” for “squinting”, “scary” for” scarier”, “the” for “ this”, “forward” for “wayward”, “cuffin” for “cuff”, “slapped” for “clipped”, on” for “an”, “neck” for “next”, “open” for “upon”, “talk back” for “back talk”, “that” for “then”, “one” for “ an”, “fantasy” for “fancily”, “as” for “a”. She also use semantic cueing system for example one of the sentence say “he kept an eye on the fist”, the student read “he kept one eye on the fist” she used her background knowledge of the word “one eye” instead of “an eye”. She has key knowledge about the passage. After doing the miscue analysis I discovered that all of the cueing systems were being used and need to be used when children are learning how to read and when they are reading and /or the reader are supposed to use all three cueing systems to create meaning.(three cueing system)In the article “A pedagogy of control: worksheets and the special needs child, the author states” “Literacy development in particular is a socially mediated process”. The social context of literacy learning in school context recommends that literacy development can’t be understood apart from the context in which it occurs by studying the classroom context for literacy learning. There are many different ways in which students are socialized to use language. Some learning surroundings provide differential access to literacy activities in which using and participating in important thought. I feel like students should have opportunities to develop their academic discussions that is both linguistic and socio cultural knowledge about what it means to be a member of a certain classroom community in order to attain academic ability.  Literacy is so important and as teachers we have to provide a literacy rich environment for our students, and I think that by teachers doing miscue analysis often it will assure that our students have that rich environment.