case study

"English language learners (ELLs), also referred to as Limited English Proficient or LEP students, are students whose native language is not English and who are not yet able to do ordinary classroom work in English."

David is a student who entered the Yeshivah of Flatbush in kindergarten. He lives at home with his parents, maternal grandparents, and younger sister. He was born at forty weeks with a natural delivery. He reached all developmental milestones on time. He was born in Paris and moved to New York at the age of three years old because his parents wanted to escape religious persecution. His parents sought admission to the Yeshivah of Flatbush because they heard of the great reputation and want their son to be challenged academically and be surrounded by Jews with similar values.

Upon acceptance to the Yeshivah of Flatbush kindergarten, David spoke very little English since French was his first language and the language spoken at home. His parents are both immigrants to this country and own a kosher restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn hoping to support their family. David has a younger sister who speaks French as well. His parents work long hours and therefore don't have much time to sit with David and review homework. David is sometimes at the restaurant late at night when a babysitter can't be found. He is an adorable child who works hard. However when he's tired, his teacher notices he cannot focus and seems lethargic. Overall he's a well mannered and well groomed child. The teacher has had many interactions with his parents who are receptive to hearing about their son's progress and are willing to work on his weaknesses. They are trying to work with him at home and are appreciative of the support he is receiving in school. French is the spoken language at home but his parents both speak English. Upon acceptance to the school, we were considering applying for Department of education services for him but since his iq was at a normal level aside from verbal comprehension which is an English language , we were told he would not qualify for services. He made progress that year academically and socially and there was never a question after that point whether additional support was needed or not.

David is now in the second grade. He has made great academic strides. The school has given him academic support and remediation and his mother has been working with him tirelessly. In the first grade he caught up to his peers, learning the fundamentals of reading and writing. During class he does not consistently raise his hand to participate in class discussions, but when the teacher calls on him, he always knows the place. He does well in math, but is below grade level in reading and science. He does well on spelling and vocabulary tests, but has difficulty with reading comprehension tasks. He has an excellent memory and is a fast learner. He is a visual learner preferring flash cards and smart board games to help him with things he needs to learn. He also picked up language rather quickly so is probably an auditory learner as well. 

I worked with David on target ELL on a journal writing project. Using Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM) and Limited English Proficient/English Language Learners Observation Rubric I assessed David’s ELL reading and writing levels. He is currently performing on the end of first grade level for comprehension but can read with accuracy like a second grader. His articulation is poor since French is his spoken language at home and his dominant language. For example, he has trouble pronouncing words with th sounds and the letter ‘s’. When speaking, he also makes grammatical errors with male vs female and past tense. For example, he'll over generalize and say "I ated breakfast" or "I bited the apple ". In spelling and vocabulary he does well because he has a great memory. His strengths are in visual perception, working memory, and processing speed as noted on the iq test he took three years ago upon acceptance to the school. Due to the lack of English he spoke he did poorly on the verbal comprehension subtests, indicating a possible learning difficulty. However, now three years later we can more readily say he is a child who would benefit from more ESL instruction to strengthen his verbal skills and there is likely no learning difficulty. The school provided him with an English teacher who worked with him on letters and sounds when he was in kindergarten twice a week for half hour sessions. By the middle of the year he was caught up to the weakest student of the class and everyone was pleased with the results.

Following our class’s guidelines, on the SOLOM - Student Oral Language Observation Matrix which was administered this month, David scored at level three across the board. For comprehension, he understands most of what is said at slower-than normal speed with repetitions. The teacher sometimes has to break down instructions and or demonstrate them so he will understand. However, his comprehension is fair in the sense that he can follow one step directions and follows the class routine. For fluency, he's at the third level because his speech in everyday conversation and classroom discussion is frequently disrupted by the student’s search for the correct manner of expression. He sometimes has a hard time articulating his thoughts and finding the right words for what he wants to say. He also does not understand idioms.However, he understands everything that is being said by peers and can participate in conversations with them.  For vocabulary he scored a three because he frequently uses the wrong words; conversation somewhat limited because of inadequate vocabulary. He has an immature and limited vocabulary. However, he picks up vocabulary fairly quickly and does well on tests of vocabulary words. For pronunciation he is at the low end of the three level because pronunciation problems necessitate concentration on the part of the listener and occasionally lead to misunderstanding. He tends to swallow his words and speak nasally so it can be difficult to understand what he is saying. He also speaks very quickly. But he can be understood by the teacher at this point because she has trained her ears to understand his speaking. the last level, grammar, is also level three since he makes frequent errors of grammar and word order, which occasionally obscure meaning. He often capitalizes letters randomly and mixes up pronouns. But he is able to write basic sentences using a noun and verb. So overall, he scored a 15 placing him in phase two of language acquisition. I observed him in different settings - frontal teaching, group activities, small group lessons in resource room, recess, and lunchtime. I observed math , science and language arts lesson in order to get a full picture of his learning style. He does well in a small group and when he is reviewing homework he is more confident than when learning a new lesson. He is a motivated learner and the teacher has a positive reward system for the whole class to encourage participation and achievement. There are twenty four kids in the class and an assistant teacher. The teacher has excellent class management and the students all know what is expected from them. She writes out their daily schedule so they know what to expect. The children are overall happy and eager to please. David's level of overall fluency allows him to participate fully in academic activities. If he doesn't understand instructions he raises his hand or if he does an assignment incorrectly the teacher will edit his work. His command of vocabulary is adequate for him to gain "comprehensible input" from academic instruction and therefore he is able to be in a general education class with differentiated instruction. The teacher uses a smart board, for the visual learners and also reads books aloud for auditory learners. The science and math lessons include tactile instruction. At this point I did not note a marked difference between David’s performance in social settings within the classroom versus his performance on academic tasks. The children seem to be friends with him and he participates in class discussions when he's called upon. It's a cohesive group of kids and the teacher does many group activities to foster teamwork and sportsmanship. I would have thought his pronunciation and/or grammar usage impedes others' abilities to comprehend him and may lead to social difficulties but it seems everyone has gotten used to his accent. The grammar mistakes will hopefully correct themselves as he becomes more proficient in the language.  Initially while in kindergarten David was given extra homework to help him bridge the gap in English instruction. However now he does not need any extra modifications aside from basic ESL instruction. I think he is doing well with the support system in place.

David does well in the class and is not the weakest. He is in the average range holistically. He is able to write sentences in his journal and to read out loud. Math is his strong subject and he thrives on figuring out difficult problems, racing against the clock. He has friends in the class and the kids invite him to play with them. I learned a lot from observing him because when you see him in class you might not notice he is different, but when you score it, he is an english language learner - ESL student and is making gradual progress. He picks up on social cues and although he doesn't always have the appropriate language he is able to interact with his peers and communicate his needs and wants. He is interested in cars and trucks and engages in conversations about his favorite tv shows. His peers and teachers can usually understand what he's saying or guess at it.  Obviously, he has made tremendous progress in all areas and it is important to score this and see that across the board his progress is coming along. I see his academic and social performance about equal. He is a nice hardworking kid. His parents have definitely instilled in him a drive to succeed.

His teachers have also tried to modify the instruction for him. If something is too difficult he is allowed to complete it at home. He has an ESL teacher who takes him out twice a week for half hour, provided by the school. She works with him on decoding. The teacher tries to modify but overall wants to push him to do more so she gauges his response. I would recommend continued support from the school and home for this child since he is making such beautiful progress. The assignment we worked on entailed making a journal of what was done over winter break. We worked together for almost two weeks on this.

My data and assessment of David was gained from numerous hours of observations and working with him.  I started out by observing him in the classroom as part of student teaching. I then noticed that he speaks with an accent and the teacher told me he emigrated from Paris. He became a perfect subject for this assignment. I read his file and spoke to the school psychologist and his teachers. I then worked with him, first by having him read a storybook which the teacher told me was on his instructional level based on the Fundations reading program. I did a Running Record.  The following week we read pages from a current event newspaper about the presidential election. David was very well informed about the candidates and the process of voting. He understood the main issues and the vocabulary. He was able to engage in conversation about his choice for president. On week five, we worked on math problem solving. This is David's strong suit. He loves to figure out word problems. He is able to come up with answers in his head rather quickly. He can tell time, add, subtract, and read graphs. He cannot as yet multiply or divide. He does well on math speed drills. The following week we worked on a short story from the fundations common core curriculum. He read the story aloud and I asked him comprehension questions. If there was a word he didn't know, he asked me what it meant. He was able to identify the setting, character, 3 events, problem, and resolution. His memory is sharp and recall is fantastic. He was able to understand the problem as well. I also read him a story because I wanted to test his listening skills which were average as well. On the last week we did a science lesson. We read from national geographic about mixing colors and learning primary colors. I had to help him with preview, predict, question and clarify the Reciprocal reading techniques. A lot of prompting and illustrations were used to identify the process of color transformation. However, once we did the experiment he was able to understand the concept and infer other colors from this concept.

While reading David's profile, I would've thought he would've scored low on the competency and development in literacy. However I am happy to report that he scored average on the developmental continuum in reading and writing. Although the English language is quite complex, David has picked up on many of his academic skills. David is an excellent student because he is motivated to succeed. His parents are strong forces and he has had excellent teachers. I found that his receptive language is stronger at this point than his expressive and oral language. For that reason his reading skills are stronger than his written expression skills. This is purely due to the complexity of the English language and the varied grammatical rules and exceptions that exist. He is having trouble with past tense and Verb subject agreement as well as misuse of pronouns. The nature of French is that it is a more regulated language in terms of tenses and many less exceptions than English. Also French, his mother tongue, has male and female versions. Also the sounds th and gh don't exist in French and therefore see more difficult for him to enunciate.  There is a clearly strong relationship between oral language and literacy skills as seen by working with David. Since his English oral language development was delayed, this affected his literacy. He is on the low end of the reading development continuum. He is competent on this level in his knowledge of phonics, word recognition strategies and comprehension strategies. He knows all his basic sight words. He has fluency on his reading level and can read equally well both narrative text and content area reading text. He is probably at the Transitional Reading phase. He shows an ability to construct meaning by integrating knowledge text structure, Text organization, Language features and can retell and discuss text read. He can also make inferences and predictions based on information which is not explicit and implicit in the text. He also reads orally with fluency and expression. He has become an efficient reader in self-correcting, re reading to clarify meaning, reading on when encountering a difficult text, and using knowledge of print conventions.  He has an increasing bank of sight words, and Sounds-out to decode words. He uses specific strategies which he was taught to enhance his fluency such as using initial letters as a cue to decoding, Using known parts of words to make sense of the whole word, and using blending to decode words. He is now at a point where he is self-motivated to read for pleasure, and demonstrates confidence when reading. However, he does tend to swallow his words and speak nasally so it can be difficult to understand what he is saying. He also speaks very quickly. But he can be understood by the teacher at this point because she has trained her ears to understand his speaking. The last level, grammar, is also level three since he makes frequent errors of grammar and word order, which occasionally obscure meaning. He often capitalizes letters randomly and mixes up pronouns. But he is able to write basic sentences using a noun and verb. So overall, he scored a 15 placing him in phase two of language acquisition. I observed him in different settings - frontal teaching, group activities, and small group lessons in resource room, recess, and lunchtime. I observed math, science and language arts lesson in order to get a full picture of his learning style. He does well in a small Group and when he is reviewing homework he is more confident than when learning a new lesson. He is a motivated learner and the teacher has a positive reward system for the whole class to encourage participation and achievement. There are twenty four kids in the class and an assistant teacher. The teacher has excellent class management and the students all know what is expected from them. She writes out their daily schedule so they know what to expect. The children are overall happy and eager to please. David's level of overall fluency allows him to participate fully in academic activities. If he doesn't understand instructions he raises his hand or if he does an assignment incorrectly the teacher will edit his work. His command of vocabulary is adequate for him to gain "comprehensible input" from academic instruction and therefore he is able to be in a general education class with differentiated instruction. The teacher uses a smart board, for the visual learners and also reads books aloud for auditory learners. The science and math lessons include tactile instruction. At this point I did not note a marked difference between Davids performance in social settings within the classroom versus his performance on academic tasks. The children seem to be friends with him and he participates in class discussions when he's called upon. It's a cohesive group of kids and the teacher does many group activities to foster teamwork and sportsmanship. I would have thought his pronunciation and/or grammar usage impedes others' abilities to comprehend him and may lead to social difficulties but it seems everyone has gotten used to his accent. The grammar mistakes will hopefully correct themselves as he becomes more proficient in the language.  Initially while in kindergarten David was given extra homework to help him bridge the gap in English instruction. However now he does not need any extra modifications aside from basic ESL instruction. I think he is doing well with the support system in place.

David was taught specific methods by his general education and ESL teacher for literacy instruction. He had to be taught letter sounds first and then sight words. The language came alongside this because it came in as a second language he often thinks in French and translates his thoughts into English. He has learned many word recognition strategies and has an excellent memory so was able to pick up much of his oral language by rote. He is a visual learner so flash cards helped him with sight words. Practice definitely helped with comprehension and decoding.

 I learned a lot from watching David because the things we take for granted as English speakers are very different for English as a second language learners. I see my fourteen month old son picking up basic language development and hope he will be a successful reader because I have started reading to him every night. When I dress him I tell him I'm putting on your shirt now. These language acquisition skills will help make him a better reader and a stronger student. David had to first learn these things at the age of five years old, and he isn’t even full exposed to English since he still speaks French at home and is in a dual curriculum of Hebrew and English at the Yeshivah of Flatbush.

On the New York State English Language Learners rubric David scored listening advance low because he is able to focus during class discussion and repeat information discussed. On speaking he scored beginning high because he is able to request what he wants, initiate conversations, and compare things. On writing he scored intermediate low because he can write a descriptive paragraph and write a narrative. On reading he scored intermediate high because he has techniques for faster reading and has basic reading comprehension. So overall he is somewhere in intermediate to high range of functioning as a student. He is fortunate that he started English language instruction at an early age with the proper support systems in place.

David was taught specific methods by his general education and ESL teacher for  literacy instruction. He had to be taught letter sounds first and then sight words. The language came alongside this because it came in as a second language he often thinks in French and translates his thoughts into English. He has learned many word recognition strategies and has an excellent memory so was able to pick up much of his oral language by rote. He is a visual learner so flashcards helped him with sight words. Practice definitely helped too with comprehension and decoding.

My aunt’s husband was born in Syria and came to this country at the age of ten years old. I have a newfound appreciation for his challenges that he faced - academically and socially upon arriving in this country. He barely new English and had to start from the basics. He worked hard and became a doctor. David is fortunate that he came at a young age because he was able to catch up to his peers quickly. My uncle had to translate Romeo and Juliet word for word, missing out on a social life as a teenager because he had to focus on his academics. I have a tremendous respect for him learning the English language and all of its nuances and then going on to college and medical school when many people his age are barely proficient. He had to learn social cues and idioms, much of which he picked up over time and from watching classic American movies. David is fortunate that he was given the resources in school to help him succeed and it is likely that after this year he will no longer need ESL instruction.

 I learned a lot from watching David because the things we take for granted as English speakers he has to train himself to correct. He is a very hardworking student who has motivating teachers. The curriculum is challenging but he is able to handle it because he is a bright child. I learned that there are many modalities for teaching basic reading and that differentiated learning is so important. I also learned that there is a difference between reading and comprehension. Many people can read but not fully understand what they are reading. We have to give students the tools to help them make sure the two levels are equal - not only speed but accuracy as well. I observed an amazing teacher who has many different challenges in her class and handles them with patience and creativity.