1. Maria, a quiet shy seven-year-old, has just moved to the United States from Mexico. Her primary language is Spanish, and you are a monolingual English teacher. The first day in your second grade class, you notice that she is "reading" a Little Red Riding Hood book during DEAR time. She is looking at the pictures, but seems to be unfamiliar with the story. When you ask her to read a page of the text, she stumbles over simple words such as "the" and "my." You point to "red" and ask her to tell you the word, but she is unable to sound it out.
Write a response in which you (1) describe an instructional strategy or activity that you can implement to help Maria and (2) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
2. Kham's primary language is Lao. You are a monolingual first grade English teacher. She can decode well, knows many sight words, and is able to segment most of the sounds on the Yopp-Singer. Her concept of print is average for a first grader. She understands the alphabetic principle. However, when asked to do a retelling of a story she has just read, Kham is able to recall very little.
Write a response in which you (1) describe an instructional strategy or activity that you can implement to help Kham with retelling and (2) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
3. Roberto, a first grader, is learning sight words, and his phonics skills are improving every day. His ability to rhyme words indicates that he has some level of phonemic awareness. Roberto knows most of his letters and sounds. He is able to read in a Level 5 reader; however, his reading is very choppy. Roberto uses little expression, pauses frequently, and tends to read word by word.
Write a response in which you (1) identify one area of need demonstrated by Roberto, (2) describe an instructional strategy or activity that you can implement address this need and (3) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
4. Mark, an active fourth grader, is able to read and comprehend at the fourth grade instructional level. Although he would rather be riding his bike or playing Nintendo, he enjoys reading in his free time, especially Goose Bump books. However, Mark struggles during Writer's Workshop. When asked to write in his journal, he only produces a few sentences. You notice that there are many misspelled words.
Write a response in which you (1) identify one area of need demonstrated by Mark, (2) describe an instructional strategy or activity that you can implement to address this need and (3) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
5. When Lori arrives at school the first day of kindergarten, she goes over to the reading corner and picks up the wordless picture book, Good Dog, Carl. Sitting down on the rug, she begins to look at the book. You notice that she holds it upside down at first, and skips around, looking at the pictures from back to front. When you ask her to tell you about the story, she says very little except that the book is about a dog and a baby. When you ask Lori to write her name, she writes a letter that resembles "L" and then draws circles on the rest of the page.
Write a response in which you (1) identify one area of need demonstrated by Lori, (2) describe an instructional strategy or activity that you can implement to address this need and (3) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
