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Final Synthesis

This semester I have had the pleasure to observe a first grade girl named Sally at Riverton
Elementary School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is a Hispanic girl who wears glasses and a
skirt to school every day with her blue school uniform shirt. The teacher of the class has
identified her as an at-risk learner. Sally is one of the many Hispanic students at Riverton, and it
has been fun watching her improve in her learning as I observe. Sally excels at math, being
social, and exhibiting good behavior in class. Even though she has several strengths, it appears
from my observations that she has been labeled an at-risk learner because of her struggle in
reading. The teacher, Mrs. Jasper, has also made a comment that Sally has been held back a year
because of her reading and possible struggle with the English language. Although my learner
has a few weaknesses, those get overlooked by the many strengths that she already has.
Riverton Elementary is located five minutes west from downtown Grand Rapids. The
school takes up a block and is surrounded by two-story, run-down houses with broken fences,
chipped paint on the siding of the houses, broken windows, and patches of weeds for grass. This
type of scenery makes sense because according to the Community Research Institute the median
income level for this area is $47,030-$55,906, and this reveals the poverty in the neighborhood.
Families might not have the money to invest into fixing up their houses or yards. The outside of
the school is brown brick with bushes by the front entrance. Before entering the school I noticed
the sign out front with announcements in Spanish on one side and English on the other. The
reason for both languages also makes sense because the neighborhood is more than 30%
Hispanic/Latino (Community Research Institute, 2009). This is a good indication that some
parents may only speak Spanish. The American flag is hung on a pole next to the sign. A
playground is just around the corner on the south side of the school which consists of basketball
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hoops, soccer goals, and about ten swings. When I look at the ground in the front of the school I
notice matted down grass with a trail of where students and their parents walk every morning to
reach the playground on the side of the school. In the morning, several children run from their
cars to the playground jumping with excitement for a new day of school to be with their friends
and learn something new.
In order to enter the school, visitors must use a security buzzer controlled by the office
staff for the purpose of opening the locked doors. The reason for this type of security is probably
because the total crime rate near the school is the second highest in Grand Rapids. The school is
surrounded by the highest crime rate with more than 171 crimes per year in Grand Rapids
(Community Research Institute, 2009). After walking through the doors of the school I find the
office just to the left and the gym to the right where over half the school is eating breakfast.
According to my teacher, Mrs. Jasper, every student in her class of twenty-four students is on the
free lunch program and some are served breakfast every morning in the cafeteria. This is a pretty
good indication that the school is placed in a poor neighborhood where many families struggle to
get by every day.
The social class of the schools area can be identified with one word: poverty. The
percentage below poverty level in 2000 was 25.00 plus. The free lunch program is a good way
for the school to help out families in poverty. According to Taylor and Whittaker in Pearson,
children need to be fed to be able to engage in the school days activities (2013). It is fairly
difficult for students to focus if their stomachs are rumbling. They need nourishment to be able
to perform well in school. Another fact about the neighborhood is over twenty-five percent of
people in this area are without a high school diploma (Community Research Institute, 2009).
Going off the information on the poverty level, the median income level, and the high school
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diploma rate, I think it is safe to say most people in the area cannot afford to go to college to get
a degree in order to increase their income for their family. I wonder sometimes if some of the
students, maybe even Sally, see that their parents did not finish school so why should they? Is
motivation low? These are the types of questions I wonder about Sallys family. I raise this
question not because of the myth that people in poverty will not succeed (Gorski, 2008), but
because having parents with little education might affect the confidence children have in their
education. I do know that Sally reads at home because she received a certificate for a free pizza
at Pizza Hut for completing her monthly reading. Her parents need to sign off on the slip before
she turns it into the teacher for credit. From this information it seems that Sallys parents are
involved in her reading at home.
Mrs. Jasper greets each one of her students by the doorway before they enter the room
with a handshake and her students get big smiles on their faces. She is trying to set a positive
and welcoming tone for the day. There are two African American boys, one Caucasian boy, and
the rest of the class is Hispanic. Her first grade classroom contains seven groups of tables for
students to sit at with two students per table. Every child sitting at the tables is wearing a blue
school uniform and has a pencil box (blue for the boys and pink for the girls) sitting on their
desks. Because every student has the same type of pencil box it is a good indication that the
school must have been provided them. There is a reading nook in the back corner of the
classroom and an Elmo projector in the front along with the teachers desk and a nine by nine
foot screen. The alphabet is strung up in the back of the room and a word wall is located on one
of the side walls with new words that the students learn throughout the school year. Also on this
wall is the Make Good Choices poster where each students name is moved to a different
warning if they are not listening or making poor behavioral choices. The poster consists of a
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first and second warning followed by five minutes off of recess, ten minutes off of recess, no
recess, parent contact, and lastly a conduct report. Sally is one of the students who exhibits good
behavior and gains recognition through receiving a slip of paper that says she made good
choices.
Something that I noticed the very first day of school was that most of the students who
were talking in the hallways outside of the classroom were speaking Spanish, except for Sally.
She speaks English to her friends as well as English in the classroom. It makes me wonder if she
speaks English or Spanish at home. Spanish must be the native language spoken in the homes of
many Riverton students. I also see this when I walk into the office every morning to sign my
name in the visitors log. Several parents come into the office and have conversations with the
secretaries in Spanish, or the secretaries are talking on the phone in Spanish to a parent that has
called the school. I have also witnessed some parents speaking to their children in Spanish when
they drop them off for school in the morning.
Another thing I have noticed about Sally is she has trouble with reading phonemes, like
sounding out the words on her spelling sheets that she receives every Thursday morning. Levine
states that phonemes are the individual language sounds a child makes (2002, p. 131). She
needs to sound out every word that she reads and sometimes forgets the sounds of the words she
has already read. Many times I find Sally second guessing herself when it comes to sounding out
words just like Levine says children with poor phoneme awareness might do. He says that
students might over utilize clues from sentences and engage in a guessing game where they
gloss over the words due to their incomplete perceiving of the language sounds (Levine, 2002,
p. 131). Sally will sound out the word correctly while reading but then look at me to see if it was
right. If I do not respond she will second guess herself and sit there with a look of defeat on her
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face. Sometimes I wonder if maybe phonemes are not the problem and maybe it is more of a
self-confidence issue.
I have come to the conclusion that even though Sally has been held back a year because
of her poor scoring on the MAP tests she knows how to read well. Her problem is not reading or
understanding the English language. It is pure self-confidence. According to Anita Woolfolk in
Pearson, a students self-concept is based on how they view themselves whether it is
academically or non-academically (2013). Maybe her confidence has been shattered because she
has been held back a year or because the teacher has told her time and time again that she needs
to improve in her reading. She might feel pressure to do well, so she hesitates when reading in
fear that she might make a mistake and be looked down upon as being illiterate. Her self-
concept may be negative. After all, Mrs. Jasper did tell me that last year Sally didnt even
know she had an a in her name. She was supposed to be held back two years ago, but her
parents did not do it until this past year. There seems to be a confidence issue with Sally
because even though I have seen her improve in her reading speed over the past few weeks, she
always looks at me to see if she is doing her work right or reading the correct words.
When I first started reading with Sally, she would hesitate often with words. She would
look at me with an expression on her face that said I do not know what that word is. After
noticing this lack of confidence in her reading ability, I would offer her encouragement after she
would read a sentence correctly to me. As the days went by I slowly began to see Sally read
faster and pronounce more words correctly. She seems to remember more words and has
become less hesitate to read. At first when I would ask her to read something to me I could tell
she really did not want to, and there was a look of fear on her face. It may have been a fear of
not being able to pronounce or remember the words on the page in front of her. She be
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struggling with the fear of messing up. Part of me wonders if Sally acquired this lack of
confidence because of her teacher Mrs. Jasper. Mrs. Jasper has a personality that comes off
fairly strong and intimidating. She can be an in-your-face kind of person. She will make
comments to her students including Sally like: Oh come on! You know how to read! Read the
words on the page! Read them! Her tone can come across harsh at times. Maybe this has
affected Sally and her confidence in her ability to read. Maybe she was afraid to make a mistake
in her reading because she did not want to be yelled at by Mrs. Jasper for not knowing how to
read a certain word. Sally may not be comfortable reading in front of her teacher.
Sally may have been hesitant at first, but now she asks if she can read to me from one of
her books she has picked out from the book nook. This shows me that she has become
comfortable reading to me. It may be because I only sit and listen to her instead of claiming she
knows a word she might not. I help her sound out difficult words instead of yelling at her for not
knowing them. I think this has helped Sally regain some confidence that she is very capable of
not just being able to read words on a page, but also to read them well and at a reasonable pace.
Of course because of her toil with phonemes there are always going to be words she may not
know, but I have witnessed mass improvement since day one of observing.
Although Sally may struggle with phonemes in reading, her writing proves that she
knows how to construct words into a sentence so they make sense. One day Mrs. Jasper had
asked Sally to share her journal with the rest of the class. Even though there were about twenty
spelling errors in her writing, she chose to begin her sentences with different words besides the
like her other classmates had done. Her discourse level is better developed than her phonemes in
reading. The weakness with phonemes might appear in Sallys writing with her spelling
mistakes, but she still gets coherent thoughts down in her journal. The structure of these
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sentences in her journal is proof that Sally knows how to write well. There is still the question as
to why Sally still needs to stop and sound out words in her reading but does not seem to have to
stop and think while writing.
One day when I visited the school, Sally was working on a paper that required her to
create a sentence of her own. She asked me if she needed to begin her sentence with a capital
letter. I asked her if she was writing a sentence and she replied with yes, but she then changed
her answer to no after I did not say if she was correct or not. I asked her again if she was writing
a sentence, and she looked at me with a blank stare. Sally sometimes changes her answers
because I do not respond to let her know if her answer is correct. She looks to me for the
answers and automatically assumes hers are wrong when I do not respond. Sally knows that a
sentence needs a capital and a period because she has told me several times before this. It seems
to me that Sally has good syntax and knows the right answer because she stated it right away.
According to Levine, some children are confused by the language laws such as capitalization and
noun, verb placement (2002). Sally on the other hand excels in comprehending this type of
knowledge of syntax in her writing. She just needs to have confidence that she is correct in her
answers and that she knows how to construct a proper sentence.
There are times when Sally has a struggles focusing on the task in front of her; however,
when it comes to attention control, alertness control and mental effort are two of her strengths.
In Levines book, he states that students with good alertness control are able to focus on the task
at hand and engage by listening to the teacher. Levine also suggests that students with good
mental effort control are academically productive with their time (2002). Sally generally begins
her spelling paper when the rest of the class does and, with little help, finishes in time. There has
only been two times where I have caught her looking around the room or talking with another
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student at her table. Sally also has excellent listening skills. One day the teacher was explaining
what a dictionary was. After Mrs. Jasper got done explaining she asked Sally to tell her what a
dictionary was. She stated her definition of it in her own words which were similar to how Mrs.
Jasper had just explained it. She was then complimented for following directions and listening.
Sally is alert, but, at times, needs some push to begin assignments (which is an indication of
some struggle in mental effort). Those were the two times that I needed to help her begin her
assignments. For the most part though, Sally has excellent mental effort and alertness control.
One of Sallys strengths in reading is her memory. At first she needed to sound out every
word over and over again and would gradually pick up speed each time she went over the
sentence. The past two times I observed she has had to stop less frequently to sound out words.
This seems like improvement to me. There was one time when Sally could not remember the
word now, but after a third time reading over the word she did not have to pause for that word
anymore. You have to recognize words when you read them in order for them to become a
part of your long-term memory (Levine, 2002, p. 112). I also noticed that when I asked Sally if a
phrase on her paper was a sentence she said no and told me why it was not a sentence. She
remembered that there needs a period and a capital letter in order for something to be a sentence.
This is all part of her spatial memory which is also known as visual memory (Levine 2002). I
have heard Mrs. Jasper constantly reminding the class of this element every time I go observe,
and it clearly stuck with Sally. It seems to me that Sally has the ability to store items talked
about in class in her long-term memory which indicates that she has strong long-term visual
memory.
Sally appears to do well understanding math and science concepts because she got one
hundred percent on her math homework and understood the science test I watched her take. She
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followed the directions correctly. I wonder how she can understand these subjects and their
directions, yet she struggles with reading. As I have been observing, she is beginning to struggle
less and less with the sounding out the phonemes of words because as she reads sentences on her
paper to me she reads them faster and faster each time. If a word does not sound correct when
she pronounces it, she will keep trying different phonemes until it makes sense. Since Sally
comes from a Hispanic background, I wonder if the language might be a barrier to her when she
reads. Either this conclusion can be made or it is because she does not have enough confidence
in herself to know she is reading correctly. The reason I say this is because I have witnessed the
improvement in Sallys reading and writing over the past few weeks which makes me believe
she knows the words, and her struggles pertain more to confidence issues. An example that
proves Sally knows the elements of reading is when she is asked by Mrs. Jasper why the word
been has two es. Sally replies by saying: We dont know because we didnt make it up!
She has accepted the different forms of the English language.
The fact that Sally is Hispanic could play a role in why she performs better in certain
subjects. Math does not have many cultural differences when it comes to race. It is simply
computing numbers which is pretty straight forward and generic. Language/reading on the other
hand is more likely to be a struggle for her, and I see this in her development with reading. After
all, Vygotsky strongly believed that the essence of cognitive development is mastering the use
of psychological tools such as language to accomplish the kind of advanced thinking and
problem solving that could not be accomplished without the use of that tool (Woolfolk, 2013, p.
259). Language clearly is the segway to understanding not only words for reading, but also
knowledge in many other subjects. It also leads to higher order thinking skills, and it is
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interesting to wonder if the other Hispanic students in the class also struggle with language in
their reading like Sally does.
It is rather confusing because even though Sally seems to toil with language in her
reading ability she does use higher order thinking in the classroom. It is evident that she thinks
at a higher level from her spatial thinking when she was taking a test. This type of thinking
involves mental imagery and reasoning why things work (Sevensma, 2013). The students were
told to read a paragraph, answer the questions, and then circle the evidence to their answers in
the paragraph. This requires some higher level thinking, and Sally found the evidence to her
answer in the paragraph. I know this because I asked her why she chose the answer she did and
she pointed directly to the same word in the paragraph. It is evident that her mind is actively
thinking at a higher level. Another example of Sallys ability to think on a higher level is found
in her complex sentences she wrote in her journal. She began her sentences with words other
than the unlike her peers. Many students in the class were not writing at the same discourse
and syntax levels as Sally was. Her creativity with words is proof that she is working at a higher
level of thinking than some of her classmates.
There is evidence that Sally excels in sequential perception too which is following the
order of steps to complete a task (Levine, 2002). I can see this in her math homework that I
graded. She not only got every addition problem correct, but also colored the pattern on the quilt
the correct color according to whatever answer she got in the problem. Each quilt had a different
problem, and the picture needed to be colored with whatever color was supposed to be used for
that answer. She also followed the steps in her science test that she took. Sequential perception
relates closely to following directions and good listening skills which Sally excels in
dramatically.
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Sally has only mentioned her family one time to me and got excited when she started
talking to me about them because she got a huge smile on her face. She has one ten year old
sister, two younger brothers, and a mom. There was no mention of a dad. When I asked what
her sisters name was she said it was Spanish and did not tell me the name until a few minutes
later. She must have assumed I did not know Spanish, so I would not understand the name if she
told me. The class has family booklets that they draw pictures in to coincide with the sentence
they are supposed to write on the page. One sentence said, With my family I like to play
Sally said tag and then began to tell me about how she loves to go to the park with her family
and get blue smoothies. It seems to me that she loves spending time with her family, and they
play an important role in her life. Something I do wonder, though, is if Sally does have a dad
and if not having one then affects her learning in the classroom.
It has been a blessing going Riverton Elementary every week to observe my learner,
Sally. I have learned a great deal about the challenges at-risk students face every day in school.
As a teacher, I want to make it one of my goals to use the strengths students like Sally already
have to help them tackle the challenges they face from day to day. I believe every student is
capable of learning no matter what their circumstances are. They may just end up using their
strengths to learn in a different way.

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References
Woolfolk, A. (2013). Pearson custom education: Cognitive development (p. 259). Boston, MA:
Pearson Education Inc.
Community Research Institute. (2009). [Data file]. Neighborhood of Garfield Park Crime Rate
Data. Retrieved from http://cridata.org/Neighb_GR.aspx
Community Research Institute. (2009). [Data file]. Neighborhood of Garfield Park Race and
Ethnicity Data. Retrieved from http://cridata.org/Neighb_GR.aspx
Community Research Institute. (2009). [Data file]. Neighborhood of Garfield Park Social
Class/Poverty Data. Retrieved from http://cridata.org/Neighb_GR.aspx
Gorski, Paul. (April 2008). The myth of the culture of poverty. ASCD: Educational leadership
poverty and learning. 65 number 7. Retrieved from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr08/vol65/num07/The-Myth-of-
the-Culture-of-Poverty.aspx
Sevensma, K. (2013). Culture and language. [Lecture].
Levine, M. (2002). A mind at a time. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
Woolfolk, A. (2013). Pearson custom education: The self, social, and moral development (p.
299-301). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.