Portrait of a reader: Tyson - Ongoing assessments in action

Tyson is a student I have known for two years. He was a member of the school’s newspaper club, which I ran when Tyson was in tenth grade. Tyson was very involved in seeking stories around the school for reporting in the paper. The articles he wrote tended to be short but informative. I did not believe at the time that Tyson had a reading or writing problem.

Now that Tyson is in twelfth grade, I have him as a student in English. One of the goals of this class is for students to learn to write a ten-page term paper. I lead the students through selecting a topic, finding materials, taking notes on the materials, and synthesizing the ideas into a coherent paper. Tyson was at first enthusiastic about writing the paper. He had many ideas about topics he wanted to investigate. He settled on the topic of culinary education, as he wanted to attend college and become a chef. Tyson had no problem locating a variety of sources to support his topic, including brochures from colleges, websites, pamphlets, and books.

When it came time to take notes on what he had read, Tyson wrote very little information down. I began to think that brevity was merely Tyson’s style. I thought perhaps he would be able to talk to me about what he had read and that I could then offer suggestions to him on adding to his notes so that his paper would have adequate support. Tyson seemed to be really trying to tell me about what his reading materials “said” about education in the culinary arts, but ended up shrugging his shoulders and telling me he really did not know what “they” (the materials) were saying.

Tyson met with me during his free time with his pile of resources and began telling me what people in the pictures were doing. For example, “This student right here is learning to make pastries and stuff, not like dinner things.” I could see Tyson making use of the pictures as meaning and that was a good strategy, but that alone was not going to provide Tyson with all or even most of the information available. Tyson would need to rely more on the written text.

I asked Tyson to read for me and I used miscue analysis. This was not the first time I used miscue analysis, but I have to admit, it had been a long time since I employed this kind of instructional assessment. Tyson read from one of the pamphlets he collected that was from a culinary institute. I recorded Tyson on a tape recorder and also recorded the miscues as they occurred on a typescript that I prepared before our meeting. When he miscued, Tyson used meaning and syntax cues each 50% of the time. Two out of eight miscues were self-corrected. I had a difficult time knowing if Tyson self-corrected because of visual information, syntactic information, or both. In any of these cases, Tyson was clearly relying on meaning and syntax to read.

I played the tape recording of the reading back to Tyson and asked for his comments. He told me he knew he did not read all of the words “right.” At that point I felt I had failed as a teacher because I could see that Tyson was working hard to pull meaning from the text. I felt I had not approached the listening portion in the best manner. I told Tyson to listen again to the recording and tell me how he was making sense of the text, in other words, what was he doing when reading to get what he could from the text. This seemed to be the first time Tyson was asked to be metacognitive about his reading. Tyson listened and described to me how when he came to a word, or section of words that he did not know, he tried to think of words that would make sense there, and substitute those words. He told me he knew the words he “guessed” were probably not exactly the same, but that he felt it better to guess at words with substitutions than to just “skip” the words altogether. This was a good strategy, but we both agreed that he should attempt a word before making a substitution. Tyson laughed a little and said, “You mean sound out the words like I did when I was little? It would take me forever to get through all I have to read!”

Tyson’s hesitancy to work through words then became clearer to me. Tyson thought of stopping for words as an activity for very young students and feared that it would delay his completion of reading. I pulled out one of my old texts from college and began reading to Tyson. I was sure to stop at words that were difficult for me and show Tyson how I still had to stop for words sometimes. I explained that for me to learn new words, it was necessary to stop, break down the word, and become familiar with seeing it. We both talked about how becoming familiar with certain words would make reading the word the next time easier.

On his next reading, Tyson went back through his pamphlet and stopped to break down words. Tyson had no problem at all with the skill of decoding. This time, he was better able to tell me important points of the reading and even make inferences. Tyson told me that although he was satisfied with having comprehended more of the text, he was “frustrated by having to read so slow.”

Tyson’s comment spurred me to take out a novel which was written on approximately a twelfth-grade reading level (the same level as the brochure from which he read). I did not have a typescript ready, since I had not planned to use the novel, but I thought I could make an important point by using the novel immediately. I took a miscue analysis on blank paper, recording miscues as observed and sharing the text with Tyson as he read. After 200 words, Tyson had made only two miscues, both of which he quickly self-corrected. Tyson was also able to discuss the novel and retell what he had read. I revealed to Tyson that both his pamphlet and the novel were written on the same reading level, but that the genres were quite different and therefore each would be read in a different way, possibly employing different reading strategies. As for the information text (the brochure), a slowed reading rate would help with comprehension. Tyson predicted that as he became familiar with certain terminology in the first few resources, his reading of subsequent informational texts about culinary education might “go a little faster.”

It was rewarding to me as Tyson’s teacher to be able to learn of his ideas about texts and reading. Using miscue analysis and a metacognitive approach, I knew how to scaffold Tyson’s reading of informational texts. A week after this miscue analysis session, I checked back in with Tyson and the notes he had taken on the resources he had gathered. This time, Tyson had a plethora of notes, written in his own words. He told me that he did have to slow down his reading and he was not as frustrated, knowing that this was the norm for informational readings. He also showed me a glossary he had created of terms relevant to his research. Tyson had created the glossary for his own reference while navigating texts on culinary education. While I did not feel that I needed to continue miscue sessions with Tyson, after working with him I am excited to use miscue analysis with other students.