Andie Deschapelles

TLS 312 Benchmark Written Report

9 May 2017

Language Observation Assessment and Socio-cultural Family

and Community Knowledge Case Study

Part A. Oral Language Development Assessment (Family

Interaction)

My case study child is a four-year-old girl named Allison. She was

born on July 11, 2012 and was only five pounds and one ounce when

she was born. Allison was born four weeks early, which is why she was

so small at birth. During our first home visit this semester, I had asked

her mother, Alexandra if there was ever a concern of Allison

developing at a slower place because she was a preemie. Alexandra

told me that it is actually a myth that preemies develop at a slower

place and that Allison developed right on track.

Allison has been exposed to quality interactions her entire life.

Alexandra has always been involved in early childhood education,

specifically special education, so she had knowledge about how she

should be talking with her daughter. I have noticed that when

Alexandra speaks to Allison, there is an equal amount of interaction

between the both of them. Alexandra asks Allison questions that

challenge her to think deeper about the conversation.

 Alexandra has also supported Allisons language development by

reading with her every night. Allison loves to read books and I think

she expresses a lot of her creativity through books. I have noticed at

school that when Allison is reading on her own, she will narrate the

book based on what is happening in the illustrations.

I decided to transcribe two different audiotapes of my case study

child. I thought it would be interesting to compare recordings of Allison

speaking in two completely different settings. The first episode came

from a recording that was about 3 minutes long and taken while Allison

was at school. This conversation was between my case study child,

Allison, her friend from school, Whitney, and I. The second episode

came from a 55-minute recording of Allison and I speaking, with

interjections from her mom. I only transcribed about 13 minutes of this

recording even though the original recording is much longer.

I used the first episode as a language sample to collect data

about how Allison speaks. During this particular language sample,

Allison was putting together sentences that were, on average, seven

words long. However, the most amount of words Allison put together

for one sentence was 18 words. In this first language sample, I noticed

that Allison only had one articulation error. Allison and Whitney were

talking about a pumpkin Halloween candy basket that they both had at

home. Allison would say, pumpin instead of pumpkin. I also noticed

she had one sentence that had irregular sentence structure. Allison
and Whitney were telling one of the other teachers about a play date

they had recently had and when they teacher asked her how it went

she replied No crying and no fights. Even nice too. This was very

strange because for the most part, Allison has good sentence structure

and she was missing all her pronouns in this sentence.

The second episode took place at my case study childs house

during our second home engagement this semester. I had told Allison

at school that I was coming over to her house that evening after school

so she had been pretty excited all day. When I showed up to her house,

Allison had seen my car pull up and was already outside to greet me by

the time I got out of my car. When we got inside, I put my stuff down

on their kitchen table and was greeted by Allisons mom, Alexandra.

Allison and I went straight back to her bedroom to play with all her toys

like we usually do and were joined by Alexandra a few minutes later. I

knew that I wanted to take an audio recording of Allison talking. I

decided the best way to do this would be to set up my iPad in the room

where Allison and I were playing and have it capture our whole

conversation. First, Allison and I played with her two stuffed animal

kittens, Snip and Nip. Then Allison showed me her rock collection and

then we played a game with Snip, Nip, and all of Allisons horse toys.

While analyzing this recording of Allison speaking, I noticed a lot

of little details that I had not normally picked on when I was talking to

Allison in the moment. I think one of the biggest things I noticed in

Allisons language is how she repeats a lot of her words. For example in

episode two she says and then and then maybe hell come say thank

you Another example of this is also in episode two when Allison says

becausebecause shesbecause shes a sister. Shes a sister kitty,

shes the big one and Snippy is the small one. I would not necessarily

say its a stutter because she is not repeating the beginning sounds

and syllables as much as she is repeating a series of words before

completing her thought. After listening to this recording of Allison

speaking, I noticed her doing this a lot at school to I just had never

picked up on it before I analyzed her language closely.

For the most part, Allison does not have many articulation errors.

However, I did notice that Allison sometimes makes a W sound when

she is pronouncing a word with an R in it. For example, in episode

two, Allison pronounces the word broke with a W sound and says

bwoke instead.

Allison also gives pronouns to objects that do not have a gender.

For example, in episode two, Allison was talking about a rock when she

said, and guess what? Look at this funny guy! He used to have a piece

there but it broke off. Allison also switches back on the pronouns she

uses for her two stuffed animal cats Snip and Nip. She refers to them

as both he and she. I have even heard her switch the pronouns in the

same sentence when she is referring to one of her stuffed animal cats.
Part B. Socio-Cultural Knowledge and Family

Interview/Dialogue (Family Interaction

I have learned a lot about Allison and her mother through the

interviews I have conducted at my home visits over this past year. I

learned that Alexandra grew up in the Flowing Wells area of Tucson

with her parents and her two brothers. Her parents and one of her

brothers are also still living nearby in Tucson while her other brother is

based in Hawaii.

I also learned about the family traditions that Allison and

Alexandra have. One tradition is the large Thanksgiving dinner that

their family has every year. Everyone brings a dish and the entire

family spends time together and enjoys each others company.

Although Allison gets to see Alexandras parents very often, they do

not get to see the rest of their family as much, so Alexandra said it is

always nice and fun when they can all get together. Allisons

grandmother is also very involved at the school I am placed in. She

comes into the classroom once a week to help out and all the children

love having her! Allison does not get to see her dads parents as often,

however, she does spend Christmas with her dads family every year

and she gets very excited because she even gets to go on an airplane

to see them!
 Since Allison is not allowed the use of technology at home, she

has to think of other ways to stay busy. This has allowed Allison to

develop an immense imagination. Something Allison loves to do at

home is create art. At my case study childs house, they have storage

bins full of art supplies for Allison to use. Many of the times I was at

Allisons house for a home engagement, she would be working on an

art project. I think it is also really important that Alexandra lets Allison

display all of her work around the house. I think it makes Allison more

confident in herself and allows her to see her self as an artist.

As I have mentioned before, Alexandra promotes language and

literacy at home by reading with Allison every night. Allison has a

pretty good amount of books in her bookshelf and they choose one or

two to read together. My school helps encourage literacy at home by

allowing the students to check out a book from the schools library

once a week. Our school also has a library bag for each class that gets

sent home to a new student each week. The library book has 5-6 books

in it that the parents can read with their children. There is also a

journal where the children and their parents can write a note and draw

a picture about their experience with the library bag. Coincidentally,

Allison had the library bag at her house during my last home

engagement. They still had two more books to read but Allison was

telling me how cool it was that all of her friends were taking home the

same books!
Part C. Child Literacy Kidwatching Assessment

Allison started off in the beginning of the year pretty advanced in

her literacy development. Allison was already able to write her name

and many of her letters. In the morning when the children first start

arriving, they have to write their name and their age on their name

mat. As they get better and better, the thing they are writing also

become more challenging. In the beginning of the year Allison started

off writing Allison Mary Valdez 4. As the year progressed, we would

start adding more words for her to write. By the middle of the year she

was writing, Allison Mary Valdez is 4 years old. Now that it is almost

the end of the school year, she is writing, Allison Mary Valdez lives in

Tucson, Arizona with ease. However, this is written on her name mat

so she is still referring to the name mat for spelling of the newer words

(See documentation #7 and #8).

In December we started doing tooth-brushing charts. After the

children brush their teeth, they have to go to their chart, find what day

of the week they brushed their teeth on, write that day of the week,

and write their name from memory. I noticed that when we started

doing these charts, Allison would write all of the letters in the word, but

would scatter them all over the paper (See documentation #1). We

discovered that Allison was doing this because she was running out of

room horizontally. To help her put all the letters in order, she started
writing on the backside of her chart where she has more room and is

now writing the entire word in the correct order (See documentation

#9).

I have noticed that Allison is very good at making detailed

drawings and explaining what is in them. As you can see in

documentation #5 and #6, Allison is able to answer a question by

drawing pictures and explain what she would like dictated on the page.

I have also encouraged Allison to draw what she is thinking about. One

day at my placement, Allison had woken up from a nap and was telling

my mentor and I about this crazy dream she had. She was having a

hard time explaining the story so my mentor told her to go draw her

dream (See documentation #4). Allison explained that we were all on

an airplane trying to fly away from a monster but the monster had

crazy wild long legs and was as tall as the airplane.

The first Kidwatching activity I chose to do with Allison was the

book handling activity. When I first started the activity with Allison, I

purposely handed a book to Allison upside down with the back cover

facing her to see if she knew how to hold the book properly. I knew that

she knew how to handle the book properly because she immediately

turned the book around to the front cover and flipped it so it was no

longer upside down. I chose the book Art and Max by David Wiesner

because we had read it as a class a few months earlier and I wanted to

see if she could still remember what the book was about. Allison has a
great memory so when asked what the story was about, she was able

to give a good summary of what happens in the book. Once we started

reading together, Allison was explaining some of the illustrations and

able to point out uppercase and lowercase letters, however she is not

able to read any of the words yet.

The second Kidwatching activity I chose to do was a writing

assessment. I have noticed that Allison will draw to convey meaning

(See documentation #4, #5, and #6). Many times when Allison is

drawing she will come up to me and ask if I will write the description of

it (See documentation #10). Allison will also sometimes write random

strings of letters on her work (See documentation #5), however, most

of the time when she wants to write something, she will ask how to

spell it. Something else I noticed in this assessment is that Allison uses

simple punctuation, however, she does not always use it for the correct

purposes. In documentation #7 and #8, Allison is using period. In this

writing, Allison is not using periods when she is finishing her thought,

however, she is using them in the place of spaces between her words.

As a future teacher, I have learned so much about Kidwatching

and literacy. I have learned how important it is to build relationships

with my students and their families. I learned so much about Allison

through our home engagements and was able to bring this knowledge

back to school and apply it in the classroom. I noticed that I always had

a deeper connection with Allison because I was also familiar with her
home life. I have also had the opportunity to learn about literacy

development in young children. I honestly did not realize how much I

even learned throughout the semester until I looked back at the

documentation I had analyzed and realized that all the documentation I

had collected has a different meaning to me than it would have at the

beginning of the semester. I have gained many valuable skills this

semester that I will be able to apply in my future teaching.

Part D. Using Literacy Observation and Data to Inform

Instruction

The activity I am choosing to do is a book making activity. For

this activity, I will give Allison all the materials she needs to create a

book. When doing this activity I do not want to give to many

instructions because I still want it to be as open ended as possible.

However, I will encourage Allison to think about what type of story she

wants to create and help her plan out how she would like to use all the

pages in the book to tell the story. I will also encourage her to draw

pictures on each page and assist when she is writing.

Rationale

As I got to know Allison, I learned quickly that she has an

immense imagination, which can be seen when she is drawing,

creating art, and reading at home, as well as at school. I think having

Allison create her own book would be a great way to use Allisons

interests to encourage literacy. One of the reasons behind doing this

activity is to give Allison confidence as a writer and reader. Although

Allison does not know how to spell yet, she knows how to write all of

her letters so, with guidance, she is able to create words. I think this

activity will give her more experience with writing words and hopefully

inspire her to want to continue writing on her own. I think this will give

her confidence as a reader because, since she is the author of the

book, she will know exactly what is happening on each page and be

able to share her work with others. This is an activity that can easily be

recreated at home so Allisons parents have new ways to continue

supporting her literacy development at home.

Goals of the Activity

One of the goals that I would like to accomplish during this

activity is helping Allison start to put together words and create short

phrases and sentences in her writing. Another goal of this activity is to

show Allison that there are more purposes to writing than just for

convention. I am also hoping to encourage Allison to write about her

familys interests or things that she likes to do at home with her mom

and dad to help bridge the gap between home and school.

Resources/materials
 The materials that I will need are paper and a stapler to create

the book, a pencil or pen for writing, and crayons/colored

pencils/markers to create the illustrations. To create the book itself I

will need to gather a few pieces of paper, fold them in half, and staple

along the fold to create a book bind.

Structures

To complete this activity, I do not have much setting up to do. I

will need to make the book, but this is something that Allison and I can

even do together. As far as space goes, I do not necessarily need a

designated area to do this activity. We can do it on the ground, at a

table or even at an art easel, as long as we have a hard surface to

write and draw on. I will also need to set aside time for this activity. I

want to make sure that Allison has enough time where she does not

feel rushed. I think rushing a child while there working will make the

activity un-enjoyable and I want Allison to have a positive experience

with writing.

Plan to implement

In my classroom, the children have free-explore time after lunch.

During this time, you can usually find Allison sitting at the tables

drawing or doing an art project. I would use this time to invite Allison to
create a book because she would have plenty of time to work without

being rushed and has access to all of the supplies she needs.

To start the activity, I would gather a few pieces of paper to make

the book and have Allison help with the process. Once we decide how

many pages the book should be, I would encourage her to plan out

what she wants to happen in her story. At home, Allison has two stuffed

animal cats that she loves and often brings to school, Snip and Nip. I

would use these as artifacts and see if she would be inspired to make a

book about them. Allison is also currently obsessed with horses,

unicorns, and lizards so these could all be potential artifacts and

inspiration for a book.

After the illustrations are done, I would ask Allison to tell her

story to me. Because Allison is such a new writer, I would probably do

part of the dictation while she does the rest of the writing. Allison

knows how to write all of her letters, both uppercase and lowercase,

but does not know how to spell yet. I could also write a sentence down

for her and she would be able to copy it. After her book is done, I would

have Allison share her work with her peers and her parents. I would

even make a copy of the book, laminate it, and keep it in the classroom

library. I think this would make Allison feel confident about her writing

because her work would be displayed with other books and she would

be able to read the book herself.