Analyzing Student Data Project

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dramatic change in the American public schools' demographics due to the country's immigration peak; the highest in the nation's history. This is happening at a time when American schools are charged with the highest accountability level for students' performance in academics. The country's cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity is reflected by the families and students in K-12 classrooms. It is important that teachers prepare to satisfy the diverse linguistic, developmental, educational and cultural needs of such students for them to learn and develop optimally. Today, more than ever, teachers face the challenge of how they can best meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. Therefore, every educator today is an ESL/ELL teacher. This paper looks into one of the needs of CLD students and how teachers can help them attain their needs. The paper Will look specifically into the needs of a CLD learner - Jack A. - and what he needs to improve further in the near and far future.

CLD Students' Learning Needs

CLD students usually struggle with English reading because they lack their second language vocabulary, or are unable to make connections as a result of the curriculum's and instructions' cultural differences from their own. When they have a disability, their learning is impeded even further. Therefore, it is important for teachers to assess their instructional methods, how they teach and what is their student classroom population structure to determine whether or not there is a need to deploy a teaching technique that is more cultural responsive so that the needs of their CLD students can be met. By doing this, the teachers would not just ensure that the students' needs for education are met, but their struggles do not lead to them being wrongly placed into special education programs (Alford, 2001).

Proficient student readers differ from their less proficient counterparts like our case study - Jack A. - in a number of ways. For instance, they use various strategies in reading comprehension, both in English and their native language; they draw on previous knowledge; and habe a higher likelihood of having many vocabularies. CLD struggling readers, like Jack, on the other hand, due to lack of the three features, experience difficulties in overcoming reading challenges, resulting in lower comprehension of passages whilst reading (Alford, 2001).

In comparison to native English readers, CLD struggling student learners like Jack have a different focus whilst reading. In fact, Jack specifically is more likely to pay more attention to the meaning of words and the use of various strategies to understand what is being read, for instance, translating text from English to his native language or mother tongue, trying information transfer from one language to another and being aware of cognates. CLD students struggling with reading like Jack find it hard to make the important connections to the necessary vocabulary for an understanding of the text being read because English reading is based on the students' familiarity to the cultural and linguistic aspects of the English language. Since ELLs are not able to connect their background knowledge to the text and vocabulary being read, they tend to use unproductive strategies, which, in turn, complicate their ability to comprehend whilst reading text (Alford, 2001).

Teachers can help Jack A. to be more successful in English reading by deploying integral and effective instructions designed specifically for such students. It is important for the students' teachers, environment and instructions to be effective and responsive, as they are critical CLD student success elements that can help develop their prior knowledge, culture, motivation, interests and even home language. This also incorporates Jack's bilingualism and multiculturalism validation and valuing as positive elements, with the ability to develop what he brings to the classroom, instead of believing that he does not come with anything (Alford, 2001).

Components of Reading Instructions

When it comes to reading, teachers must consider all the important components of reading instruction. These are as follows:

Oral Language Development -- this reading instruction component is important for CLD students like Jack because it links reading and writing, and also the students' first and second languages.

Phonemic Awareness -- this is an important element for struggling readers similar to Jack to improve their reading skills because it gives students the ability to not just hear words, but also manipulate their sounds in speech. This component is also about teaching approaches like READ WELL to help Jack A. with decoding. READ WELL is a systematic program comprising of 38 units, with each unit covered in lessons spread over three to four days. Depending on the complexity and difficulty of the text being read, Jack can practice in leveled texts with the help of their teachers, or on his own; he gets to progress at his own rate through the program whilst learning explicit decoding strategies.

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The READ WELL program also incorporates comprehension assessments and activities (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Vocabulary -- this reading instruction component should include: prefixes and suffixes, key vocabulary, figurative language and idioms, context clues and the use of dictionaries and glossaries. It is important for teachers to go through new text to determine problematic vocabulary, which should be covered before Jack can read the text; this can help improve Jack's success in reading the new text (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Fluency -- this is how accurately and quickly a student with Jack's ability is able to read text. CLD students struggling with reading need to practice both silently and orally in order to improve their fluent reading ability. Hence Jack also needs to hear what fluent reading is all about by listening to fluent readers. Jack can practice without being on the spotlight and subjection to the pressure that comes with it, through books on tape, shared reading and choral reading with the teacher. The READ NATURALLY is a program that comes in handy when helping students like Jack with their fluency needs. Upon assessing the students to ascertain their fluency level, a story that matches their reading level is chosen, the students make predictions and write about the knowledge gained from the topic, and finally, time their reading for one minute (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Subsequently, the students read the story for one minute whilst marking the words they find difficult. They then count the correct number of words and record it on a graph. The teacher follows by modeling fluent reading of the same text or story twice. The students then read the text again until the predefined fluency goal is attained for the read number of words. Finally, the students respond to comprehension questions, with regards to the story, write a retell, and reread the story for the last time, for one minute, aloud, to the teacher. The teacher listens for expression and accuracy to determine if the goal has been successfully met or not. If the latter is the case, the same process is repeated.

Reading Comprehension -- this is the important reason a struggling CLD student learns to read and can be of great assistance to Jack A. as well. Teachers must teach Jack who is struggling with reading how to make use of strategies for improved comprehension. Graphic organizers, making predictions, modeling strategies, finding the main idea, monitoring understanding and what needs to be done if meaning is lost, summarizing and asking questions are some techniques or interventions that teachers can use to help Jack read comprehensions successfully (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Motivation -- teachers must inspire and motivate CLD students struggling with reading because without it, the students will continue to struggle. The teachers should create more opportunities for social interactions; provide tasks as close as possible to the real world; allow students to choose what they want to read; assist students to learn and use reading strategies; offer students meaningful, engaging and interesting tasks; provide students with instructions at their reading levels for increased chance for success; and build a partnership between the school and the students' homes by getting parents involved in their children's education (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

For teachers to implement the six reading instruction components above, research-based methods, coupled with those mentioned above, can be used. Some of the techniques or interventions based on research that teachers can use generally are as follows:

Descubriendo la Lectura -- this is a program that uses a Spanish Observation Survey and targets first grade CLD students struggling with reading. The students in the lowest 20 class percentile receive instruction through this program that features taking a running record to monitor student progress, building fluency by reading texts familiar to the students, using ideas in the running record to write a story in a notebook, introducing and trying to write a new story and re-constructing cut-up stories (the teacher writes sentence strips from the story read the previous day). This program was designed to last 12 to 20 weeks (Gay, 2000).

Language Experience Approach -- this intervention entails teachers using the students' language and writing to teach them how to read. Jack discusses with the teacher what he wishes….....

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