Yetta M. Goodman

 November 6-7, 2007
 Co-Author of:

   Reading Miscue Inventory:
  From Evaluation  to Instruction
                 and
  Reading Strategies:
  Focus on Comprehension

                               TRANSCRIPT

Something Extra for College Adoption d  
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If you missed the wonderful discussion about instructional dialogue with Yetta Goodman or if you just want to recap the discussion you can read the transcript below .

The postings listed below are not in the order in which they were received. For your convenience, we have relocated the responses to questions so that they appear directly after the questions posed.

We hope you have enjoyed this discussion as much as we have and will join us in our next discussion.

To Learn more about Richard C. Owen Publishers Inc.,
visit our website at www.RCOwen.com

   
READING STRATEGIES is for classroom teachers, reading specialists, and special education teachers.  It has value as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses in reading instruction.  The first part of the book places the reading process within a language framework within a sociocultural context.  the bulk of the book is on reading strategy lessons with a focus on semantic cueing systems, syntactic cueing systems, and graphophonic cueing systems.

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  1996 pb  256 pages  
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Richard Owen

Good evening friends and welcome to another online author discussion.  We are honored to have Yetta Goodman with us for the next two days.  Those of you who were part of TLN author discussions last July will remember the stimulating conversation with Yetta.  If you weren't with us, you might want to visit the website to review the transcript.  You can access it by clicking this Goodman transcript link. 

Our purpose in asking Yetta to return at this time is specifically to provide opportunity to students and school faculty who are studying the Reading Miscue Inventory and Reading Strategies books by Yetta Goodman, Dorothy Watson, and Carolyn Burke, and to raise questions about theory, content, and application of the ideas discussed in those books.  We had considered holding the conversation on a separate listserve, but this community generates such good questions and comments that we wanted to include everyone. 

Even though we want to keep pretty focused on the content of the books, there is plenty of room to explore a range of topics that relate to reading process, formative assessment, and instructional decision making in addition to the core content of miscue analysis.  We welcome the involvement and contribution of everyone on this list over the next two days. 

Let's start this discussion with a very broad question that will no doubt prompt more specific comments and questions: 

Yetta, you have committed your professional life to a study of miscue analysis.  Over the last four decades, what do you consider the most significant contributions of miscue analysis to our understandings of reading process and instruction?  How has miscue analysis influenced the field of reading/language arts instruction? 

Yetta's response might come this evening; more likely it will arrive tomorrow morning.  If you have a burning question, there is no need to wait until she has written to the group.  Please feel free to post your question or comment, either as a reply to this message or as a new post sent to tln@listserve.com with a subject that reflects the content of your message.  I am eager to get this conversation under way.  Yetta is sure to reply at her first opportunity.

We are very pleased Yetta Goodman has agreed to spend this time with us.  Please welcome Yetta to the TLN listserve.

Richard Owen

Yetta Goodman

Notes from Yetta Goodman

I am pleased to be back on this online author discussion.  There are an exciting group of inspiring teachers on this listserv.  I have been reading your questions and concerns on other author's online discussions and come away very impressed with teachers' search to help them continue to develop their expertise in the teaching of reading. 

I always find talking and thinking about miscues exciting whenever I am engaged in this process.  So please feel free to ask very specific questions about specific miscues you want to understand.

I want to discuss the contributions of miscue analysis in two ways.....  First miscue analysis continues to inform my own knowledge about the learning and teaching of reading.  I have my own questions that I continue to wonder about as I talk and think about miscue analysis. Then I'll discuss contributions of miscue analysis to the field of reading instruction.

One of the most important insights for me is how I continue to be convinced that producing miscues is something all humans do as they use language.  I've probably said this earlier.  But I am convinced that humans can not learn language without making miscues -- they are actually part of how we develop language. This is true of oral and written language; first, second and more languages; and reading and writing as well.  And miscues reveal the knowledge of the language user -- content knowledge, linguistic knowledge (phonics, graphophonics, syntax/grammar, and semantics/meaning). I'm glad to respond to questions about any terms I use although many of them are conceptualized in the RMI and Reading Strategies books.

As far as influence of miscue analysis on reading instruction, there are a number and for tonight I'll start with one. One aspect of miscue analysis influence on reading instruction is how to "listen to kid read".   When teachers become knowledgeable about miscues, they listen to readers in new ways.  They don't interrupt readers to ask them to read something over or correct as they read but listen patiently and try to understand why the reader is producing the miscues and what it reveals about the reader's knowledge. And they help the children and adolescents in their classes to listen to their peers in these new ways as well.

I think I'll stop here and see where you want to go from here. One thing I encourage you to do during these sessions is to note any miscues you make as you read online and we can begin to consider the ways in which we (proficient readers) miscue and what our miscues reveal about the reading process in general and each of our individual responses to our reading.

Yetta

Debbie

Good Morning, Yetta, and everyone!

This is a great group of inspiring teachers. 

What I really like about your statement "listen to kid read" is that it shows the difference in teachers' roles during the assessment:  that meaning making is key and does not equate to a 1 to 1 perfect rendition of the printed text.  This phrase applies to all readers regardless of age.  If we are listening for glimpses into why the reader makes the miscues they do, then we are not looking to perfect their oral reading (the final product).  It then opens the door to finding the strategies that will help them become better readers. 

In the Reading Strategies text I like how the way you format (for lack of a better word this early in the morning) the strategies doesn't include traditional words "objectives" and the like.  It makes us rethink our vocabulary and thinking when creating strategy plans.

I feel that I must include some background information about my classes as they cover the age spectrum.  Three of my classes are participating:  Elementary Reading Methods, Elementary Language Arts, and Teaching Adult Literacy.  These are online courses at the graduate level (Indiana University) and we are located at the far reaches of this country although sometimes we have a global population.

Thanks for having us participate!

Debbie East
Indiana University

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

By the way if you catch my writing miscues please feel free to point them out to me.  I do read my messages a second time before I send them and you'll continue to find them. I'll try to explain why I make such miscues.  

Carolyn Burke, Dorothy Watson, and I have struggled with providing "lessons" for teachers to consider without establishing the notion that lessons are prepackaged and formulaic.

Just a few thoughts about this now and we'll see where that leads us as you and your students interact with me about these issues.  "Strategy lessons" are instructional parts of the big picture of reading curriculum.  For the most part, I believe that such "lessons", which are organized in a similar way to guided reading or reading group instruction, emerge from teachers' interactions with their students.

In environments in which teachers encourage students to raise questions, there are almost always questions about "why" from the kids. I was in a first grade classroom sitting in on a strategy lesson/guided reading lesson where the group was reading together about a farm in which a goat was being milked.  What a great time the group had discussing and arguing about whether goats give milk.  It all got started by Georgie saying, "Only cows give milk!", and Fatima (a new dominant Spanish speaking child), a shy and quiet child, responding hesitantly, "I used to help my grandma milk her goat".   So the curriculum shifted at that moment to science and social studies.  A little later, the story had the word "stoop" as a noun in it.  In this situation, the seven children all had a copy of the same book and they were reading it aloud but individually together (you know what that sounds like).  They came to the word "stoop" and you could hear the kids slow down, listen to each other responding with at least three different pronunciations of the word, and they looked at each other and then at the teacher.  She said.... “So what do you think that means?”.... (always with the focus first on meaning making).  They generally thought it meant a place to sit on or a porch or a patio.  Then the teacher asked.... “Do you want to figure out how to read that word now or go on to find out more about the story?”  That teacher's question seemed to give the kids permission to keep reading and that's what they did. The teacher wrote some notes for herself so she would remember to come back at a later time to having the students organize a chart with words that have the "oo" pattern in them.  Another teacher I knew would send his kids off on a "double o" hunt after such an experience.  They'd collect the words with "double oo" and then organize them into categories (stoop; book; choose headed some of the categories). And the kids discovered that this is a spelling pattern that does not lend itself to simple spelling or phonic rules. The children are engaged in language inquiry or language study. They learn that they continue to make sense of written language even when they aren't too sure about the pronunciation of a word.  They also know that the meaning of individual words often come from the context of their continuous reading of a text. Both of these understandings help them become more independent readers.

None of the directions these lessons took were something the teacher could specify as objectives ahead of time.  There are general objectives that the teacher could state such as supporting her kids to understand the power of context; or knowing that readers make sense as they continue reading authentic materials.  But the specific "learnings" of the children come from the critical moment teaching that the teacher is sensitive to as she responds to the children. Because the teacher knows that language use always provides opportunity for study and that children are always curious about the world in which they are engaging, she knows that she has continuous opportunities to reach many aspects of what she hopes to teach. Because of such understandings about how curriculum works, we (Dorothy, Carolyn and I) tried to develop lessons that are suggestions for teachers to consider as part of an ongoing reading curriculum.  But we are convinced that the teacher is always the decision maker.

Thanks, Debbie for introducing your classes to me.  I have taught Elementary Reading Methods and Language Arts myself. I've not taught an Adult Literacy course but I've worked and researched a lot about adult literacy and adult second language learners and look forward to questions about all these areas. I hope the preservice and inservice teachers joining this online discussion will introduce themselves in terms of the population they teach and the far reaches from where they come.

Yetta

Kathy

Hi,

This is my first time participating, so I hope simply hitting the "reply to all" is the appropriate method to contribute.

It has been my great pleasure to work in Arizona with the Goodmans at the Eye Movement Miscue Analysis laboratory, but currently I am in Paris (vistors welcome).  I haven't made new miscue discoveries while here, but am thrilled to see how much societal emphasis there is on reading.  People read while riding public transport - my students tell me that is to avoid looking strangers in the eye.  They also read when they have a few minutes break between classes/work.  And the television is full of book talks, movies made from and compared to books, and author interviews.  The literacy infrastructure is well in place.  I started the semester by asking my students to bring in something that was important to  them and tell us why (a show and tell just to get them talking).  About 1/3 brought books or poems.

My students write well, and exhibit critical thought, but need to be nudged in that direction.  They worry a bit about right and wrong answers, and are often flustered by novelty and by ambiguity.

Kathy (O'Brien Ramirez)

Kathy

Dearest Debbie in the far reaches,

 The geographical isolations are an excellent motivation to get students reading, letting them develop both their individuality and their universality. I really like concept development across age groups, so it is interesting to
consider such a wide student range.

Good morning.  It's afternoon in Paris and my lunch hour is ending, thanks for giving me good things to read!

Kathy

Shellon

Hi Yetta and others,

My question is does miscues really affect comprehension greatly?

Shellon

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Hi Shea -- important question!

Yes, miscues affect comprehension sometimes not at all; sometimes in very minor ways;  and sometimes greatly.

So it all depends on the miscue.  Keep in mind though that the miscue is often predicted by the reader's background knowledge before the reader encounters the word/or phrase being miscued,  so the reader's comprehending/ comprehension process across the text also causes miscue to occur.
 

What population of students are you working with?

Yetta

Shellon

Thanks for your response.
I work with 30 kids age 7-11.
Quite an interesting group !!!

 

I AM ALSO CONSIDERING RUNNING WORKSHOPS ON THIS PARTICULAR AREA (MISCUE ....) but I first need to do more research on such.

 

I shall be greatful if you can give some advice.

 

Shellon

Yetta

My workshop with teachers/parents on miscue analysis usually starts by engaging the adults in how they read. I have overheads (I can say more about these if anyone asks) that engage the audience in reading different kinds of things that promote a lot of talk about how the people in the audience read.

We try to explore the reading process by engaging them in reading to each other a short story or a piece and people follow each other's reading.

Then (depending on time) I ask folks to keep a lot of the miscues they notice as they wonder through stories and streets and read a variety of things in their daily lives.

My first focus is -- how do we (most often proficient readers) read....

Then I have tapes of kids reading and we do similar kinds of analysis on the kids.  We talk about how adults and kids usually do the same thing.  What makes the adults better is their years of experience, their confidence, and their flexibility.  So how do we develop experiences, lessons etc. to help kids develop confidence and flexibility and ultimately the most important things -- to love to read.

Yetta

Genevieve

Can you say more about those overheads? It is always difficult to find appropriate and engaging ideas to share with adults.

I am also curious about your thoughts relative to doing running records in a benchmarking protocol as opposed to miscue analysis. ( Fountas and Pinnell, Marie Clay et al).

Genevieve

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Re: overheads (can be put into powerpoint too) to use with adult readers including parents to help them understand the reading process.

A number of you have asked about professional development engagements that involve adult readers/ parents in thinking and talking about reading..

I use a number of the strategy lesson protocols/engagements that are in the Reading Strategies: Focus on Comprehension group that work well with adults.

Petoskeys is on page 164.  I use this to show adults how they develop meaning through context.  It is a short piece of text where the concept of Petoskeys is developed across the text.  I reveal the sentences one at a time and engage the audience in discussing what they think Petoskeys is/are at each sentence.  What did you predict it was?  Why did you think so?  And for every subsequent sentence I ask....  Now what do you think?  Did you change your prediction? Why and how?  I do not tell them what it is, they discover it themselves. 

A number of the strategy lessons that focus on predicting and confirming semantic cues are good for adult readers. We discuss the rationale for these strategy lessons so you can develop your own over time.

By the way they are also good for proficient readers to explore their own reading process.

Cloze procedures are also good to use with adults. These are described and there are examples in the strategy lessons sections of both the RMI and the Reading Strategies book.

Yetta

Deb

Whole Language Voices in Teacher Education was a required text in a course taught by Jerry Harste towards the end of my course work.  It is a great resource for ALL of us who may end up teaching grown ups about language and the language process.  Teachers in elementary/secondary/adult teaching situations would find a wealth of information there.

Good ideas, Yetta.  I just spoke with Pam Mason-Egan yesterday morning and she mentioned doing cloze procedures with her struggling readers at the college where she teaches.  She uses cloze procedures with her students as a way "forcing" miscues.  She then proceeds to ask them what they go through to make sense of what they were reading.  Word choices - how they weeded out words or included words.  It provided an avenue for discussion about reading and language process. 

That being said this cloze procedure that you and Pam have discussed is not the normal or 'traditional' cloze procedures where every 5th word is removed.  Also, isn't there in the Reading Strategies book a cloze procedure that focuses on prepositional phrases (removes the preposition of the phrase) so that the function of the phrase becomes a topic of discussion?  This would be a great way to get kids into the discussion as well.

Anyway, I have always used the traditional way but was always very unsatisfied with it in terms of whether it really told us anything that we didn't already get some other way.  I will no longer do this - it is important to constantly reflect on why we do what we do and to observe whether it works or not.  When aha moments hit like it did with me yesterday it shifts your perspective completely!

Deb 

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

I enjoy your responses and your interactions with others, Debbie.  I recommend that those working with college readers look for the work of Pam Mason-Egan.  She is developing a very strong revaluing reading program for adult readers at the college in Florida where she works.  Her research is cutting edge.

The traditional cloze procedure as Debbie mentions has been used over the years as a comprehension measure.  And it has a lot to offer.  You take a passage and delete the 5th or 7th word.  There are scores in the research to suggest how readers comprehend based on exact replacement. There have always been arguments and research about whether there should be exact replacements or if high quality substitutions (semantically and syntactically accepted) are also acceptable.

We began to use these as strategy lessons when we wrote Reading Strategies: Focus on Comprehension. We selected the kinds of slots we wanted to use to help the readers focus on particular aspects of the grammar/ text structure. We called these selected slotting lessons.  In the Strategies Book we have a number of different ones.  For example we explore the He said, she said slots by putting a blank where said/asked goes.  One miscue that cause struggling readers problems are cutesy words that some basal readers put into their texts.... cried John.... smiled mother......Tom hollered.... Father questioned ...We wanted the kids to know they could substitute said or asked in those slots and they could continue to read and make sense. 

I hope I am still making sense.  Ask questions if I'm not.

Yetta

David

Hi Yetta and other listserv members,
 
I have a question about repeated miscues across the text. There is a place to record these on the Reader Profile form and you have written about them in the book. We can see that readers may change their response to the text when there are names like "Sven" or "Claribel," and they may keep trying different things with a word like "lorikeet" or they may just stick with one substitution consistently. What do these different response patterns show about the reader's use of linguistic cue systems and psychological strategies? I am having trouble coming up with a good explanation of this for my students.
 
David
 
David Freeman, Ph.D.
Professor of Curriculum and Instruction
The University of Texas at Brownsville
Brownsville, TX

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Welcome David....

I think that repeated miscues across the text tell us so much about how the reader transacts with a text and the comprehending process as Ken Goodman talks about it. Comprehending for those of you just joining the reading process conversation is how a reader is making sense of print in the act of reading. Comprehension is what readers know as a result of the process of comprehending.  Miscue analysis tells us a great deal about the reader's comprehending process. We use retelling to tell us more about the comprehension process.  I have a few examples to share from various repeated miscues. (I'm probably writing too much about this but there are differences in different repeated miscue analyses).

1.  John omits the word "oxygen" every time (about 11 occurrences) it occurs in the text.  He always says to me when he comes to "oxygen" I think I'll skip that word;" or "that's that word I don't know again" or "There's that word again."  In each case I smile and nod my head subtly (although I know he is somewhat annoyed with my lack of support), reminding him to keep reading and I wasn't going to help him in such situations (I'd told him that before).

In the retelling he is telling me about how the men on the space ship (all part of the story) didn't have enough oxygen.  He looks surprised at the moment he says "oxygen" and says "That's that word I didn't know—oxygen."  Since it was after the reading and the retelling, I thought this would be a good time to talk with him about how he decided he knew and we looked back together at the sentences in which the word appeared and John read a few of them again aloud without hesitation. Then I said to him "So who taught you that word?"  And he could say he did it himself and how.  John knew the word "oxygen" but didn't know it in the context of the reading.  As soon as he could talk about it himself (present his ideas to the world through his conversation with me about the story) he realized what it was.

2.  In the RMI both Betsy (RMI) and Gary (Strategy Lessons)  have repeated miscues to explore.  We discuss Betsy's response to house and home in her reading of The Man Who Kept House on p. 193. Betsy knew both the words "house" and "home" in their more common uses in the story. She reads both without miscues in a number of places.  But she is not sure of how "house" combines with "keeping".  Her transactions with the text/author provide her with a number of opportunities to explore the concept of "keeping house" and she learns it as a result of the transaction/mediation with the text.  As Margaret Meek says "texts teach what readers learn".  That's why the material we use with readers needs careful consideration on our part and good authors provide readers with written language that has powerful cohesive devises throughout the reading of a text.  It is also why well-written predictable books work so well.

3.  When Erica reads the The Man Who Kept House (See an article in the NRC Yearbook by Y.Goodman, Rasinsky, DeFord, Cunningham, Anders and Gotswami) she miscues on "husband"  (occurs about seven times in the text). She produces a non-word each time (“hubble bad,”  “husbed,” etc).  She finally reads "husband" on line 0607 (page 259, RMI, latest edition) of The Man Who Kept House.  The sentence in the text is: When the wife went into the house, she saw her husband with his legs up the chimney. In this context, the first time in the story that husband and wife are related in one sentence, she gets it and then reads it again in the next paragraph without hesitation. In this case it was the lack of specific reference and the word "husband" is presented in the story out of context in relation to other characters in this story.   

The explanation of the concept of repeated miscues depends on the particular repeated miscue and the ways in which the readers develop them across the reading of a whole story/article.  It often is related to the developing meaning or grammatical use of the word in a particular context. Halliday and Hasan would probably enjoy this discussion because it also reveals insight into the cohesion/coherence aspects of the text.    Therefore, another thing to do to help explain repeated miscues is to engage the reader in a Retrospective Miscue Analysis strategy lesson to explore the many strategies the reader used across the text.  I usually do this after the reading and retelling with such questions as: So when did you know what that word/phrase was? Let's look back at the text and think about it?  How did you figure that out? Who helped you? etc. etc. The reader can provide us with so many insights into the importance of repeated miscues as we develop greater abilities to engage them in conversation (talking and thinking) about their own reading and responses.

I have other examples and perhaps they will come up in other responses.

Yetta

Ruby

Hello Yetta,

I was interested in the repeated miscues as I had a kindergartner reading Nobody Listens to Andrew, and she read the whole book inserting "Herbert" for "Andrew" on every page until she got to the very last page.  She then read "Next time, we will listen to Herber, Her-ber, ANDREW!!!" She (me too) was so excited that she figured out that word.  I don't know what clicked for her.  Perhaps it was the first time she really attended to the print since the name substitution did not break down meaning.  She taught herself that word, and it was joy, joy for the two of us.  She didn't talk herself to meaning as John did.  So what did she do?  Have a period of disequilibrium, think about it a moment, apply prior knowledge (she had heard the book's title many times) or use graphophonic cues?  Or can we always know what goes on inside their heads?  Or I guess we need to ask them.

Ruby
Who is trying to write her way to meaning.

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Ruby -- You wrote yourself into a great response -- I guess we need to ask them.

Somehow she made some connection between Herbert and Andrew.  (Does she know a Herbert? Or has she recently read a book about a Herbert?)  Maybe she has made some connection between  erber and dre.  She may not yet have completely  developed the stable left to right orientation.  Or she may have some relationship between H and A -- remember in young children's handwriting capital H and capital A can look very similar.
But do ask her even now. 

But the most important thing that happened to her is working out something for herself.  The "I can do it by myself" syndrome builds confidence and a knowledge that I can be in control of my own learning.  It's a powerful lesson for younguns'.

Yetta

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Ruby -- You wrote yourself into a great response -- I guess we need to ask them.

Somehow she made some connection between Herbert and Andrew.  (Does she know a Herbert? Or has she recently read a book about a Herbert?)  Maybe she has made some connection between  erber and dre.  She may not yet have completely  developed the stable left to right orientation.  Or she may have some relationship between H and A -- remember in young children's handwriting capital H and capital A can look very similar.
But do ask her even now. 

But the most important thing that happened to her is working out something for herself.  The "I can do it by myself" syndrome builds confidence and a knowledge that I can be in control of my own learning.  It's a powerful lesson for younguns'.

Yetta

Ruby

Thanks Yetta!

I hadn't thought about the reversals common to kdgers or the A/H similarity.

I wish I could ask her now, but she moved after kindergarten and is probably a 7th grader.

Ruby

Yetta

From Yetta Goodman

Ruby -- Isn't it amazing how long some issues/concerns can stick with us.  I remember things like this from the first classes I taught in the 1950's.  We can't go back and do much about it now but we sure can move ahead with  the new knowledge.

Yetta

Katie

Good Morning Yetta,

 In your book, Reading Miscue Inventory From Evaluation to Instruction,2nd edition, you make the statement, "Over the years, we have discovered that readers use a range of correction patterns."  Would you speak to us about correction patterns?

Thank-you,

Katie

Katie Moeller, Coordinator
The Learning Network/Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc.

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

On page 146 to 148 (RMI 2nd edition) we list different correction patterns from those that are corrected; those that show unsuccessful correction attempts  and some of those can be fully acceptable in the sentence and the story  abandons correct form where readers read what is expected but then decide they don't like it and self correct to something else.

Also, there can be correction patterns not just at the point of miscue but across the text such as repeated miscues that David asked questions about.  We know that readers make corrections silently during their oral reading. We know this when we ask students to talk and think about their reading with us and also by examining our own reading of a text.

I once had a reader come to me a second week for a retrospective miscue analysis session. He opened the book to keep reading for me and said, “Oh, I was thinking about the miscue I made last week when I was reading.”   Most proficient readers tend to self correct those miscues that don't make sense and tend not to correct miscues that occur that make sense.  That's why lots of good readers believe they don't make miscues.  They are so proficient in their reading that their predictions and confirmations happen as they are making sense of the text and they don't disrupt their reading at all.

The more we explore self correction patterns, the more we are able to know how well the reader is comprehending the text while they are reading.  Are they paying attention to making sense as they read?  Or do they ignore sense as they read, often reading carefully and slowly to avoid making miscues and carefully sounding out as they read often with few corrections? 

Yetta

Lori

I have a novice question for you.  In a recent coaching conversation with a teacher, we were talking about a specific miscue a student had made.  He had read the word photographer as you would teacher, preacher and so on... Photograph-er.  The teacher had interrupted him to discuss the miscue and I was suggesting that she have her conversations with the child post-reading, rather than in the middle of reading.  She had commented to the student on the wisdom behind the error (she is operating from that perspective) and then simply provided the student with the pronunciation.  I was troubled by the use of the word error and by the tendency to jump in at point of difficulty.  After the fact, the student asked me again about the word when he encountered it a second time.  I showed him the words, photographer, cartographer, and biographer.  I read the second two words aloud, explaining the meaning of each word (one who makes maps, one who writes biographies) and he immediately said, “Oh, I get it. Photographer.” (pronouncing the word correctly) Throughout our conversation it was clear to me that he understood the word—he knew what it was, be it photograph-er or photographer.  My conversation with the teacher centered on using her running record to rethink some of the student’s miscues.  She is a wonderful teacher to work with, very eager to improve her practice and well on her way to being a very fine teacher, but the notion of every reader making miscues and not all miscues being, in and of themselves, a problem is very new to her.  She has inadvertently been sending a message to children that all errors must be corrected.  I asked her to look at her notes and think about which of these errors truly impacted understanding.  The student is a good reader (comprehension, highly motivated, naturally curious, etc.) and made 9 errors in a passage of about 150 words.  Only three of these impacted meaning in a very subtle way and were very consistent—a good teaching point, I thought, not just for this reader but for the group she was working with.   The child was neglecting plurals that the author had used to create the notion of all of these events (ex. Winters) rather than one in particular.  It was subtle, but because it was a very deliberate and repeated choice on behalf of the author, I suggested she have this conversation with her guided reading group, a very writerly little group.  

So now my question.  As part of our study of miscue, we are reading Ruth’s book and in reading, I had this question about the photographer miscue.  Would you consider this misarticulation or an intonation shift?  I am a bit muddled over the distinction.

Thanks,

Lori

Deb

I'm going to let Yetta and others cover your question.  What I will provide is what I do with my teachers (graduate level reading methods but it works with undergraduates as well).

My reading methods students have just completed this assignment (RMI on themselves).  I have them record themselves reading a book they have never read before that isn't child level (no picture books or children's chapter books) on a topic of interest.  They are to do 3 of them and code them.  Then write up what they found out about themselves as a reader.  Most of them were surprised that they made miscues; granted most did not affect meaning but would have been counted as errors if doing a running record.  Since we are engaged in online learning here I did not require retellings (hard to read without focusing on answering the questions if you already know the questions you are being asked before reading).  It takes at least 3-5 RMI's for them to feel comfortable doing the coding so it is important to do more than 1.  I have them do 2 Procedure III RMI's and 1 over the shoulder (Ruth Davenport article).  The over the shoulder one proves to be a bit more difficult to do (no forms provided) but just as insightful because we had done the other 2.   

All of this to say that perhaps you can have your teacher conduct an RMI (audio tape the reading), code her miscues, get a more difficult book if the miscues aren't there, and do it 2 more times...perhaps this way she will recognize that no one reads perfectly - this was a huge eye opener for me when I did it on myself. 

Anyway - great question that I will be looking forward to seeing the answer to!

Deb

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Lori is thinking the photographer miscue through like I am.   I've been wondering about it and others of you may want to get into this exploration from your own experience and understandings.  Teacher and preacher are two syllables with the stress on the first syllable. And Lori is right about what the readers are learning about the concept of the er ending.  In early reading material  how many "er" ending nouns  indicating the kind of work people do have more than two syllables like photographer.  "Photographer" may be one of the few that young readers come in contact with in first or second grade. Lori mentions in a previous email biographer and cartographer but those probably are not in reading material until fourth grade and up and may not be for many children in their oral language as well. So it may be that in having to shift the intonation from photograph (first syllable)  to photographer (second syllable and shift the vowel sound of the second syllable too) shows development. I hope folks will begin to make some lists of these and we can share thinking about this. But of course as Lori says below these are logical (as well as linguistic) issues that readers are learning as they read. When kids begin to miscue, it makes me think more about the linguistic issues as well.

Who can come up with other multisyllable words such as photographer and think about how their readers respond to this.  Finding similar words for the reader to consider was helpful to the reader Lori was working with.  As we consider similar words and patterns it may help us understand the miscue from its linguistic complexity.  It might also help us think through whether this is a misarticulation

Yetta

David

Hi
I gave some thought to the "photographer" miscue. I suppose it isn't really a miscue since it is just an alternate pronunciation, and the way the reader said the word indicated an understanding of what the word means. The general rule in English is that we add -er to verbs to make them nouns meaning the person who does whatever the action of the verb is. "Photographer" is somewhat marginal. We do have the verb "photograph" so it seems to fit the rule. However, there are other words like "stenographer" and "biographer" that aren't made up of a verb plus -er. It might be better to say that some words that have the form like "photography" can be changed (topography, for example). There is also a difference between how we could break up the word into meaning units (morphemes) and sound units (in this case syllables). If you look at "photographer" the morphemes are photo graph and er, but the syllables, at least in my dialect would be pho to gra pher. All of this would be interesting for older students to investigate. We could ask, for example, if a person signs a lot of autographs (maybe a baseball player) could we call him an "autographer"? and if so, how would we pronounce that word? Linguistic investigations make students more aware of how language works. Besides, for some of us, it's fun.
David

David Freeman, Ph.D.
Professor of Curriculum and Instruction
The University of Texas at Brownsville
Brownsville, TX

Deb

Great ideas, David!  Linguistic inquiry...exploration is fun!

Thanks for such great ideas.

Deb

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

I was hoping that David would respond to this and give us more insight  into this discussion. Linguistic study is lots of fun when we follow up our own questions and when we realize that what we discover is open to argument and discussion.  All of David's ideas make a lot of sense.  I've learned to enjoy this kind of thinking as a result of doing miscues with kids.  Miscue analysis has helped me become so much more aware of the relationships between letters and sounds and how these change depend on shifts of context. Interesting that in three or more syllable words the spelling of the morphemic ending is /er/  but in two syllable words  the spelling can be author/ writer/ or....   I wonder why?  David?

Yetta

David

Yetta

As I recall the er/or distinction has historical roots. Kids could look up some histories of er and or words to see what they can find out. There is no difference in meaning or pronunciation. I associate the or words more with British English.

David

David Freeman, Ph.D.

Professor of Curriculum and Instruction

The University of Texas at Brownsville

Brownsville, TX

Yetta

Good idea....
Another suggestion for a language study for kids who wonder about why there are such different endings.

They are not there just to confuse kids/teachers but they have historical reasons behind their use

Yetta

Lori

And I should have mentioned, the student is a fourth grader. I didn’t figure that cartographer or biographer were in his spoken vocabulary, but that he would see the connection between the pronunciation patterns—knowing that there are other words for people who do things that sound the same way.  In retrospect, I wish I had taken him to photography—which I think he might have approached in the same way, but I believe this word is one that he has probably seen and HEARD.  He may have seen this connection.  

Another comment about this guy.  He is a wide reader and I wondered also if the error were in anyway similar to those articulation errors I observed as a ‘city girl’ among the college students I tutored way back when.  Many of these kids were very widely read and very bright kids but in trying out their bookish vocabulary, they often misarticulated a word they fully understood in terms of meaning.  That is, they had read this word and correctly inferred its meaning through wide exposure in reading, but it was not part of their spoken vocabulary—largely due to geography and circumstance.  When they first used the words, they did so in a correct context but had internalized a mispronunciation.  I think that is like what we do with names.  I am a fan of Sharon Tabersky, but had well internalized a mispronunciation of her name before I met her.  I certainly knew who I was talking about, thinking about... But did not know how to pronounce the word.

Lori

Deb

Ok, Lori...so how do you pronouce her name?    You've got me thinking that I might not know how to pronounce it!

Deb

Lori

Well, in my little Swedish/English influenced head, I was saying TAB-er-skee.  She pronounces it Tuh-BUR-skee. Now, when my Czech heritage hubby heard me saying how silly I felt, he made me feel sillier yet.  Growing up around Czechs and Poles, he would have nailed it!!

Lori

Deb

....Ok...so we sometimes feel sheepish at our own miscues! 

Deb

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Names are always a focus for miscue discussions and folks are often quite adamant on the pronunciation and spellings of their own names. 

Saundra/ Sondra or??
Anne/ Ann
Michel/ Michelle 

When there is a country or person that comes into the news that has an unusual name, get the kids/undergraduate/graduate students to note the different ways they hear the name pronounced by newscasters.  I remember doing this during the Viet Nam era when the name of the country was pronounced about four or five different ways. Think of the problems people have with the president of Iran and Pakistan at the present time. We can have an argument about whether or not name substitutions are miscues or just alternate ways of pronouncing.  Appalachia, Ohio, and Missouri are issues in the U.S. How do people who live there pronounce it.  Are they right?  If others don't pronounce it that way what does it mean? 

Yetta

Maureen

Hi Yetta!   

It’s great to have you here answering people’s questions.  As I was reading the posts, I recognized a miscue I was going to ask you about myself, “photograph-er”.  I thought it was a coincidence that someone else had the same one.  So that got me thinking that maybe it was not a coincidence, and that leads to my question.

Have you all found in your research that there are common miscues that occur at different reading abilities?  If so, can these miscues be grouped or generalized for strategy lessons?  I do not have my book at home to see if the answer to this question is in there-if it is, let me know and I will look up my own answer tomorrow at school!

Maureen Morrissey

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Hi Maureen.  Good to hear from you again.  I'll be in New York for NCTE.   We do find that miscues cluster especially in one story/article.  For example in The Man Who Kept House that Betsy reads in the Reading Miscue Inventory, line 301 starts In his hurry, the woodman had left the door open behind him. .Betsy repeats the beginning of the sentence a number of times and eventually self corrects her the/his substitution.  Many readers hesitate, stumble, or miscue on the beginning In his hurry.  We've decided that the beginning of this sentence was rewritten for a basal reader to simplify the text.  The original was probably In his haste, which someone thought might be too difficult for the readers. In trying to simplify the beginning of the sentence, the author/editor actually made it harder. We don't think people say "In his hurry” but say “In a hurry."  So miscues do cluster where the grammar of the text is unusual.  But this happens to readers of different abilities.  It is how they respond to their miscue that suggests their reading proficiency.  Betsy is not a very confident reader and she hesitates and repeats.  A more proficient reader would probably make a mistake, make one self correction attempt and keep reading.  

On the other hand, insertion miscues, such as a reader reading  He went far far away  for  He went far away  are usually produced more by proficient readers.  They insert to edit the text: to add flavor, intonation, and emphasis. Also more proficient readers will omit words or phrases that they don't think are necessary while they read.  They will omit he said or mother said before a quotation, for example. We could add to this kind of understanding by watching for such patterns from different readers.

Yetta

Lori

Maureen,

I have been thinking that this is a very logical miscue from the perspective of a reader who knows that someone who teaches is a teacher and someone who preaches is a preacher.  In that sense, very little must sound unusual to a young reader.

Lori

Deb

Your statement struck me as really important..."very little must sound unusual to a young reader"...when I say the words (not looking at the meaning for a moment) they don't sound unusual to me either.  Granted there are differences but sometimes teachers preach and preachers teach. 

Lori

And every once in a while, they don’t do either!

Lori ;-)

Deb

Absolutely right!  ....(tongue in cheek here...) I never preach!  (eyes rolling)

Deb

Ruby

This reminds me of something Ken Goodman said at an NCTE session one year.  He said (and I'm paraphrasing) that we must teach children to expect ambiguity.  I think Maureen's little boy did just that, and when the word didn't make sense to him he figured out a way to make it make sense -- thus, photograph-er. He has learned a very important reading skill -- shake your head when the rules don't work, accept what makes sense for oneself, and move on.  I think it's the same kind of thing I did ages ago in 2nd grade when I had the word "bath" for a spelling word.  I can vividly remember thinking, "That's a stupid word.  It's spelled b-a-t-h but everyone knows it's pronounced "baf".  I think things do sound unusual to young readers, but the better ones shake their heads and figure out a way to deal with it.

Ruby

Deb

You're right, Ruby. 

Debbie

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Remembering your own miscues or curiosities or concerns from your own literacy learning provides insights for teachers.  A number of us invite undergraduate and graduate students to do a literacy  history over a period of time during a semester.  What do you remember about learning to read and to write? What did you read as a child? adolescent?  When did you learn to read and how?  Self report does not always reveal what really happened to us but does reveal how we felt and explores the emotional aspects of learning (to read).  When you can remember an incident like the baf/ bath one it indeed had a special place in your learning language.

Yetta

Kiersten

Hi Yetta and everyone!
I have a question that may seem off base... After reading the "stoop" example, it made me think about word wall words and spelling lists. I taught in a school which adopted a program with preset word wall words with activities for language study. This has always been a major question for me. On one hand, I can see how knowing sight words and words with irregular spelling patterns could be useful when reading, but on the other, I know that if there is no meaning behind the word study, it is likely to be forgotten. I have never liked using words in this way, but would love your input. In what ways or in what instances would you include these preset words. (It was a requirement and we had to list the words used in our plan books.)  Also, in this same school we were required to do DOL (Daily Oral Language).  After using the adopted program for a couple of weeks, I decided they were pointless...the corrections made to these sentences had no meaning for my students. I started removing student names from papers they wrote, copying them and using them for our DOL. These guided my reading strategy lessons and writing mini lessons. I guess this is how I picture "teaching" word wall words and spelling lists. I would love your thoughts.

Respectfully,
Kiersten Sanders

Deb 

Hi Yetta,

Every semester I get many questions but basically 2 statements/questions about using RMI's at the middle school or secondary classrooms and sometimes with adults.

When teaching reading and/or language arts in middle school and the class sessions are 45 minutes how do we justify spending the time assessing readers with the RMI?  I did get a question in my current classes but they haven't heard back from me yet on this issue.  For me... since the RMI is the ONLY assessment that focuses on the readers language process and where the reading process breaks down for the reader and how and why the miscues are being made, I would do it regardless of the time but I might have them read aloud in small groups with a tape recorder going and also have them do an unaided retelling and the aided retelling (middle & high school kids can do these things after the first couple of times).  As long as it is recorded and the teacher is observing different students read, the audio tape should suffice.

Also, I don't do it weekly but I do it several times a year in order to see progress over time or if miscues fall in certain patterns, or just to see what is going on.  How do we deal the with time issue?  It's present today in elementary classrooms as well.  Any suggestions, food for thought, or other insights for us?

Deb

Samantha

Deb,

I'm sure Yetta will have a more "appropriate" answer, but I have an interpretation too. I plan to teach middle school science, so, comprehension and reading are important to my plans for my students. I think if you’re taking time to assess your students to better serve their INDIVIDUAL needs then you should be praised-- not ridiculed. Especially if your assessments over time are showing growth for even a single student. So much time is wasted in schools on busy work and time fillers. Why not spend some time (even though its middle level/secondary level education) to determine the material that best suits your individual students needs?

Just a thought.
Samantha

Deb

Thoughts are always welcome, Samantha!  I agree with your points and I will add these thoughts when responding to my student's reflection paper.

Deb

Yetta

Hi Deb---

All your responses are good answers to the questions. And your responses to others in this discussion are insightful too.  There may be some extensions that I might add.  Certainly, I want to engage my students in knowing miscue analysis themselves in order to develop strategy lessons around "talking and thinking" about the reading process (another term some would use is metalinguistic and metacognitive awareness).  So the kids can be in small groups as you say and actually do the evaluation of miscues with each other in small groups.  It is important for the teacher in such settings to establish a safe environment where kids understand that everyone makes miscues and making miscues shows what we KNOW about language and content. I am spending time in two secondary school and one middle school classrooms where the teachers are using miscue analysis as a major focus of their reading class.  They spend two sessions a week talking and thinking about miscue analysis in small groups. As you say, after a few weeks the groups can talk about their reading with each other.

That's another part of the answer to the question.  I do miscue with a small group of kids or an individual when I think I need to know more about their reading.  At that time the rest of the kids are reading their self-selected books and writing.

Yetta 

Lori

I am thinking that kids might just as easily be taught to do their own at these levels.  Our classrooms all have access to a laptop computer for each student at this age.  We are a Mac school and Garage Band is a very user-friendly (and kid-favored) program that allows kids to capture their audio.  One school in the district is having kids work on oral fluency (defined as far more than rate for our students) by reading their own short stories and poetry, then setting them against a music soundtrack.  They are using these headset/microphone/ headphones and the kids are in, hook, line, and sinker.  I wonder if this technology couldn’t be used with middle school readers?  If nothing else, the teacher would not necessarily have to be at the reader’s side every step of the way.

Lori

Deb

Just thinking aloud here...I think the technology could be used, too.  But not every school has them and these programs aren't portable so I tend to use audio tapes so that I can plug them in my car stereo or just have them play on a tape recorder while I'm looking at the text they were reading...I'm also wondering if in really rural areas or inner city schools that the funds for these programs just aren't there...

Something to consider and think about.

Deb

Lori

You are absolutely right about the technology issue.  You could burn them on reburnable cd’s, though, if you had access to technology. That would address the portability issue. I am lucky that we have access to lots of technology (and we are rural and poor...), but I think that we have to think differently about what we DO have access to.  Until I saw the kiddos having at their poetry recording, it didn’t dawn on me that Garage Band could be used for more than music composition.

Lori

Deb

I agree about thinking differently about technology and its myriad of uses differently.  The kids are native technology users and we are immigrant users (not raised with it!)...they approach things so differently.

Deb

Yetta

Technology can certainly be helpful in these situations.  It's an important instructional tool to develop and use.  There are also advantages if two or more kids work together at times.

Lori -- your suggestion helps me remember to say something about teachers always keeping in mind the difference between oral and silent reading.  One of the main differences is purpose.  We use silent reading for many more reading experiences than oral reading and the reasons we use each is different.

There is also evidence that we read orally differently than we do silently. Silent and oral miscues are different. We use reading strategies in different ways in silent and oral reading.  I skip whole sections of some things I read silently as compared to oral reading. Plot the way in which you read the morning paper or when you are reading on the internet.  Where do you skip? How do you move along? What invites you to read and what doesn't, etc. etc.  The overall reading process is the same regardless of oral or silent but the fact that oral reading is meant for someone else to listen to expands on the kinds of strategies readers need in oral reading (reading for others), which they probably don't consider when they are reading silently (reading for self).

I believe that oral reading should be thought of in at least two different ways and kids should be involved in the discussion of the differences and to prepare for each.

Oral reading for assessment purposes (such as miscue analysis) should be considered an evaluation of how readers respond to a text the first time through it (like a first draft in writing)  (Keep in mind not many of us read texts more than once anyway).  But oral reading provides the teacher with information about what a reader does, which cannot be assessed silently.  In miscue analysis we wish we could follow miscues during the silent reading process. We are trying to do research on this with eye movement and miscue analysis but we already know that the eyes are looking at places in the text that are different than what the mouth is reporting they are reading.

But another aspect of oral reading is for performance purposes.  Reader's theater, radio and t.v. broadcasts, reading to a friend or another class are reading for performance. I think that a reading program/curriculum developed by the teacher should include "reading for performance".  This is where reading with expression and to perform becomes the focus.  I believe that the focus on fluency in a lot of today's instruction gives kids the notion that all reading is for performance purposes (and in some cases just to read fast).

Part of all reading instruction especially beyond second grade, but it can be introduced earlier, should help kids read flexibly and to vary reading depending on context and purpose. So oral reading has evaluation and performance purposes (always with the focus of making sense).  And silent reading is the major focus of reading instruction because that's the kind of reading we will be doing most of our lives. I suspect that most adult readers in the world (who are not teachers or actors, or readers for the blind or news announcers) may never read orally.   That would make an interesting research study.

Yetta

Kiersten

Hi everyone! I am enjoying learning from everyone! I am so excited to see you talking about the differences between reading orally and silently. I found when doing 3 RMI's on myself that there were miscues made and several repetitions that if/when I read silently, would not have been there. It really made me think about the differences in my students oral and silent reading abilities. I really like the way you describe reader's theatre, plays, t.v. broadcasts etc. as performance reading. It gives a whole new spin on these activities. I used them as student choice, and incorporating multiple intelligences, while focusing on the performance aspects, but will take this new component and use it differently in the future. Thanks!

Kiersten Sanders

Samantha

Yetta,

Greetings from NJ. I understand the concept that miscues can often reduce a student's ability to comprehend the text they are reading. In the field placement I'm in currently, there is a little boy(7-8 yrs old) who struggles with reading, and is at a very low reading level; yet his comprehension of the material he reads is good. How can young readers who struggle with the material (specifically when they read to you and it makes NO SENSE) have comprehension of what transpired in the text? Is this all based on prior knowledge? Are they comprehending the material in their head but not necessarily communicating the material correctly aloud?

THANKS!

Samantha

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Thanks to Deb for her comments on the list serve. 

Samantha -- Young readers (4-8) are developing.  They know that reading is supposed to make sense especially if they have been read to at home and in school or love to listen to stories

So their major focus is on making a sensible story.  Although Betsy (RMI) is nine, still in a few places in the text (lines 312-313; 402; 413-414, etc. pp. 17 & 18 in second edition of RMI), she works at trying to make sense and then leaves her hard work unresolved to continue reading.

It seems your young male reader may be doing just that.  I would argue that although he is struggling with reading, he is not at a very low reading level (except perhaps on test scores).  Since I believe that reading always includes comprehending/comprehension and your young reader provides information that reveals his comprehension he must be reading; understanding. Although he is still struggling or as Peter Duckett, who has done eye movement on 6-7 year olds says, he is still working hard at making sense, his hard work (struggles) must be recognized by teachers/parents/reading specialists as a major aspect of his development and to build on it. We also have to help the reader himself realize that he is NOT a problem reader because "look at the many different strategies you are using to work hard to make sense of the text."

All of us (proficient readers) have to be comprehending what we read in our heads (our brain) before we read orally.  It's the brain that is doing the reading not just the eyes.  The brain tells the eye where to look for more information. It takes time to become an efficient reader and know where to look to gather the appropriate print information needed to understand. (And this is all documented in eye movement miscue analysis research).

In a recent book that I edited with Prisca Martens called Critical Issues in Early Literacy (Erlbaum), Debra Goodman, Alan Flurkey, and I have an article called “Effective Young Beginning Readers” in which we describe readers who are challenges to their teachers like the one you mention above. Lauren, a five year old (in that article) says to her librarian -- "I don't know how to read.... But I know how to read my Barney book.... I like to read.... And sometime I be making up stories and books...'' ("How do you do that?",  asks the librarian)  “If I don't know how to read then I'll do that... Sometimes I look at the pictures to figure out. I practice and I use the alfulbet to learn it..."

Lauren reveals that she has lots of experiences with texts, she has strategies to make sense of books, and she is working out the many ambiguities to decide what are the important aspects of language (grammar and graphophonics / phonics) the orthography, the text, the illustrations, the story line, the characters, the wording etc. etc., to help her understand.  Lauren needs support to do that but only she can figure out the complexities of this. (And most readers learn to do this -- with or without supportive reading instruction).

We have all read with young readers like Lauren and the boy Samantha is talking about if we work with young kids. They start to read a sentence somewhat slowly without miscues and then finish the sentence to make a sensible text and to keep the story going and it doesn't seem to relate to the printed text at all.  (Occasionally, I have read with really beginning adult literacy learners who have had minimal experiences with learning to read do similar things.  But adult learners face other issues to take into consideration, too.)
 
But young "struggling" readers can often tell about what they've read with a lot of confidence. This is a very important moment for their literacy development and so important for teaching. It is important to know how to listen to kids read and know what you are listening for; to understand the paths of development and the complexities of learning to read; to be able to document and keep track of how young children are using their strategies to work through a text; and to understand that most often these are the building blocks necessary for learning to read to continue to develop. The kids are using their inner resources (their pools of knowledge as Carolyn Burke likes to call it) to become readers.  Teachers need to know how to support such critical teaching and learning moments. Knowledgeable teachers encourage and support readers to work through their own strategies for making sense of text rather than focusing on "getting the words right". By careful observation and documentation, teachers come to appreciate the thinking and talking young children begin to express. As a result we see how humans struggle with the ambiguity that Ruby talked about yesterday.

 

Yetta,

David

Dear Yetta,

Thank you for joining the TLN again. I am enjoying the exchanges from all participants. I just wanted to thank you for mentioning the book that you and Prisca edited that includes the article “Effective Young Beginning Readers” that you wrote with Debi and Alan. As you know, I found this article to be particularly helpful as I research the journey of young beginning readers. My concern for children who are effective, but not yet efficient, readers is that they be sidetracked by those who insist that they faithfully and accurately reproduce the actual text. In particular, I worry about so many children who end up like Andrew and become stuck at the word level. It might be helpful for other readers if you could summarize how RMA helped Andrew and others to revalue himself as he returned to the path of meaning making while reading. Of course, the chapter that you wrote with Alan about Andrew should be found and read by all who are interested in this topic.

As always, with respect and thanks to all,

David

(who looks forward to seeing so many list participants at NCTE next week!)

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Yetta

Richard

Good morning friends,

I have thoroughly enjoyed the exchanges so far in this discussion with Yetta Goodman about miscue and reading strategies.  Excellent questions and comments and enlightened responses!  There is lots of meat to chew on, much to peruse over time once the discussion has ended.  But we do still have some time with Yetta and we want to make the most of it.  Yetta has agreed to stay on through mid day tomorrow so I urge you to be thinking hard about the issues that puzzle you and to post a question or comment today, this evening, or tomorrow morning.  All members have a voice--those who are new to the field as well as those who have been active for a long, long time.  Take advantage of this opportunity to talk directly with Yetta and others on the list.  I look forward to more good conversation before we bring this discussion to a close.

Richard

Debbie

Yetta and Everyone,

I have a student this year who teaches in the accelerated program where 90% of the kids in her classes don't struggle with reading.  She doesn't see the benefit of using RMI's with these learners.  I keep wondering if perhaps reading in certain subjects might be an issue with these readers - especially the 10% that are not considered "gifted."  Perhaps these learners don't struggle with English language arts or social studies.  Rather they may be struggling some in science and math but possibly not enough to register on a standardized test...perhaps it does.

So my basic questions to you are:

Why is it important to do RMI's on these learners?  What benefit is it to the teacher to do RMI's?  Any other questions that I should be asking...of myself, of her, her asking of her students?  I've not had the pleasure of a group of students where 90% of the learners were considered gifted - mine followed the proverbial bell curve.

Thanks,

Debbie

Lori

I think that the issue here might have more to do with comprehension.  My husband is teaching reading this year to 8th grade students who are proficient word-callers and experienced AR test takers.  They also test well, as a body, in terms of the big uglies.  Guess what?  They do not think!!  All of his work this year has been centered on comprehension, working to build discussion and metacognitive skills with short, provocative pieces. One stunning example is a pretty typical middle school standard, identifying fact and opinion.  Give them a worksheet, and they’ve got it, hands down.  Present them with an editorial or any other persuasive piece (including cartoons, advertisements, speeches...), and they cannot do it.  They either think it is all opinion—they cannot pick out the supporting facts, or they cannot recognize when they are being manipulated at all.  So these kids are just years away from voting... Georgie would probably say they are doing just fine, but I disagree.  I wonder what miscue would show with these kids.

Lori

Lisa

Hi all.  I'm Deb's student she spoke of with the gifted and talented group.  You are so right!  They do struggle with independent thought.   They can take a mean test but what makes them good at it is the way they have learned to handle things like miscues...they avoid them, making sure they don't happen...they are little perfectionists.  They don't like to push beyond the norm and this is where I have trouble figuring out how miscue analysis for miscues that are almost non-existant can help these students with critical reading and thinking skills.

Lisa

Yetta

Yetta

Maureen

Yetta writes:

 

“The kids discuss what they think happened -- did they make a miscue and why…Other times, the teacher collects all the post-its and categorizes them and helps the kids understand why such patterns occur in reading…, such as reading names, reading aspects of a text that don't make sense, vocabulary that they couldn't work out????”
 

These are my favorite discussions of all with my students!  I’ve had them in first grade as well as third and fifth-in “mixed ability” groups as well as “ability-leveled” groups.  When kids share their thinking about thinking or about reading, and I share mine with them, they get the funniest look on their faces!  For many of the kids, it seems like the first time an adult is treating them as another fully-formed, intelligent, interesting being; for some, it’s the first time they feel part of the Literacy Club ala Frank Smith.  It changes the way they discuss reading afterwards, and it changes they way they think about reading as well.
 

On another note, fluency, I am thinking and writing my way once again.  You would think, after 25 years in the classroom, I might have this stuff down…but changing times have forced me to focus again on this aspect of reading aloud.
 

My district recently adopted the DRA, which we have to administer three times each year.  There are benefits: I am given the luxury of a substitute teacher to cover my class for the whole day, and I can hide away one-on-one with my kids to assess their reading.  I also like that everything is right there in the kit and I have several books to choose from for each level.  The problem I’m having is related to labeling the children with a level, and assessing truly their level of comprehension.  The assessment requires the children to demonstrate an “independent” level of both fluency and acceptable miscues in order to move on to the comprehension part.  And so, I have some kids who have figured out that speed is important, and they read like very fast robots.  These are successful at making the cut-offs, and can then demonstrate comprehension.  I have other students who read with expression, and others who carefully, sometimes painfully, read every word to make sure it is right. (These are fifth graders)  The children who read with expression often don’t make the fluency “cut-off” and therefore have to move down a level, or two or three or four (I had one in third grade who did this) until they qualify for the comprehension part of the assessment.   It’s frustrating that my state and district now have fluency requirements that override reading for meaning.
 

In order to satisfy my own need to know my students’ comprehension strategies, I’ve taken to secretly (well, not anymore…I’m out!) giving them the comprehension assessment at the level I think they can handle, and then testing only for fluency with the lower levels.  This way I am satisfying the state/district, and at the same time getting the info I need to really help the kids move forward.  I understand the importance of reading fluently so that the reader is not bogged down by the graphophonemic/syntactic clues and loses comprehension.  I guess what I don’t understand is how speed reading could be more valuable than reading with expression.
 

Still subversive after all these years….
 

Maureen
PS.  I will be at NCTE next week, and could not be more excited!

Lori

What you describe is our current experience as well and part of the reason we, as a coaching body, are considering recommending that we alter the fluency cut score in this way. Students testing at ‘instructional’ levels in terms of oral fluency (at this point, we are really talking rate) should be assessed holistically on the fluency rubric  (generally, phrasing, rate, expression and accuracy) and that total score should be used to determine whether or not to continue.

Yetta

Hurray for subversive teachers like Maureen.  And please stay subversive!  What this means to me, is that Maureen is a professional who believes that her knowledge and experience are worth more to her students than commercially packaged materials that mandate and control the minds of human beings. Maureen is an independent, critical thinker -- absolutely necessary in a democratic society.  And she knows her kids need to be that way too.

And yet even she is not immune from the pressures and hype being imposed on teachers about narrowing what reading is in the real world.  But coming to NCTE in New York next week might be rejuvenating.

Maureen -- your kids are indeed very fortunate. 

Yetta

Yetta

I became interested in the question of doing RMI with accelerated, proficient, gifted readers a number of years ago.  When we began to do retrospective miscue analysis (RMA) with readers sometime in the 1980's we (graduate students, colleagues, and I) began to wonder whether "good" readers would benefit from miscue analysis and learning about miscue analysis themselves.  We started doing RMA with struggling readers first.  And we discovered a number of reasons for using RMI/RMA with proficient readers.

1.  It is helpful for the less proficient readers to know that the proficient readers  -- skip words and sections of the text; do not look words up in the dictionary all the time; think they read too slowly; don't remember everything they read after they have finished reading; make miscues, and on and on and on.  All readers seem to do a lot of the same kind of things.

2.  There are many good readers who believe (because they have discovered the above about their reading) that they really aren't good readers.  They understand, do well on comprehension and reading tests, but find reading tedious so they don't like it and consequently don't do it a lot.

3.   Why shouldn't all of us as learners know about the processes we use.  Shouldn't we learn about how we read and write in the same way we learn about how we walk, or how our bodies use food or???  It is part of the knowledge of the world that educated people should know about. And when proficient readers begin to find out about the reading process, they begin to think about how they write and even how they learn and think.  This is sometimes called metalinguistic or metacognitive awareness.  I just call it "talking and thinking about.... (in our discussion, reading).

4.  This last one is something Alan Flurkey, Joel Brown, and I have been talking about for a while.  Everyone is a good reader of somethings and a poor reader of somethings.  I can find material that the readers I worry most about can read -- directions for video games, driver license tests, signs along the highway, graffiti.  And I know that every proficient reader has material they read that is difficult for them.  For most of us, we have to hire a lawyer to read contracts because we don't trust our reading ability in this area.  So for all readers there are things we can learn to read with greater proficiency -- physics, math, linguistics, medicine labels, directions to turn on the t.v. set.   We, therefore, have begun to think less about proficient and non proficient readers or good and poor readers and think more about a proficient reading of a text or a less proficient reading of a text.  The labeling has its own problems, of course.  I wonder how it would be in schools if we could say --

 

Lori

Yetta wrote,  “It is helpful for the less proficient readers to know that the proficient readers  -- skip words and sections of the text; do not look words up in the dictionary all the time; think they read too slowly; don't remember everything they read after they have finished reading; make miscues, and on and on and on.  All readers seem to do a lot of the same kind of things.”

When I was coding and thinking about my miscues with the Woolf essay (discussed in a later message), I realized that I had made a miscue very, very much like one that I had visited with a fourth grade reader about this past week.  It had to do with neglecting the plural when the author was using what I would call a literary technique.  I am not quite sure how to explain this, but the use of the plural was very intentional from the author’s perspective and used to create this sense of general rather than specific. The author of the book the boy read was not speaking of one winter in particular, but of all the winters.  She was not speaking of one mountain in particular, but of all the mountains.  That sort of thing.  I omitted a plural in my reading when I believe the author was making the same sort of more sweeping statement.  In reflecting on my own miscues, I immediately thought to myself, “Wow, this is just the same sort of thing Ty was doing!” I can hardly wait to have a chance to get back to this reader and share this with him.  Not only do I, as an adult reader make miscues, but the patterns of my miscues can often be very similar to that which a child might make.  Furthermore, the author of the piece that he read and the author of the piece that I read were using the same sort of crafting technique in their writing.  This kiddo is a writer and I want to visit a bit with him about how he and I might use this technique in our own writing.

Yetta wrote, “ Everyone is a good reader of somethings and a poor reader of somethings.”

I work with teachers K-12 and have sometimes found myself frustrated with those who do not see themselves as teachers of reading, largely because they subscribe to the learning to read/reading to learn belief system and see their role as clearly the latter.  I talk about my own recent experience as a Masters student.  I very much had learning to read work to do when encountering lots and lots of educational research.  I very much had learning to read work to do when I encountered that long dreaded statistics book. I was lucky to be working with wonderful instructors who helped me do the learning to read work I needed to do so that I could read to learn.    And when it comes to all the procedural reading I encounter related to programming annoying little techie devices, such as my cell phone or the annoyingly difficult digital clock in my suburban, I am darn lucky to be related to a fifteen year old who reads procedural texts, regardless of their complexity, with the ease that I approach a cookbook or the pattern instructions for constructing a garment.

Lori

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

I don't need to add to Lori’s self reflections.  But I must say that every teacher should be engaged in such reflections.  We learn so much as we revisit our own learning (that's also a Reggio Emilia concept).  We learn from ourself and from our dilemmas.

Marueen asked if there were many common miscues....Authors often like to use the generic singular in concept books and then the use of the plural that Lori mentions below is also surprising to readers who are predicting the singular.  They often both fit. They are usually semantically and syntactically acceptable but in English we also need to shift the following verbs to match the singular or plural.  For some reason English readers do not shift as easily and usually have to self correct when they come to a verb that doesn't fit the plurality of the noun.  In Spanish, even young readers will read a whole phrase shifting the noun, verb and adjectives as they read from singular to plural.  It is lovely to collect such miscues.

Yetta

Yvonne

Hi Yetta and Everyone Else,

Just want to let you know that I didn't really understand the reading process until I studied Miscue Analysis. How fortunate for me and my students. There are a lot of young people out there who think that reading is "sounding out words" and if they go back and reread, this means they are not "good" readers. I have to explain what reading and the process of reading is about to them.

So, thanks Drs. Goodman and Goodman for your fine work. Knowing about Miscue Analysis has never let me down.

Yvonne Siu-Runyan

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Yvonne -- And you added to our knowledge with your study of teacher's different perceptions of the reading process.  Thanks for your support and your contributions.

Yetta

Lori

Well, here I am teaching miscue for the first time. I don't honestly have that many under my belt and I am treating this as a co-learning situation.  I have three students in my class who completed this course (Assessment and Diagnosis of Reading Difficulties) successfully with another instructor.  In fact, they all have master's degrees in reading.  We have had two classes, and they stayed tonight to tell me enthusiastically that they have all learned more about reading process in two classes than in all their previous work!!  I sure can't take credit for this.  Yetta, Ken, Dorothy... And then this summer, Debbie, Alan and Ruthie--I owe you all so much!!!

Lori

Yetta

Lori

It's the collaboration.... the community of learners.  We're all in this together and keep growing as a result

Yetta

Lori 

Well, my adult learners--solid readers all--just completed their first miscue on themselves.  I gave them a Virginia Woolf essay. They are ALL good readers, but I promise you, they will make miscues. I came in with the fewest miscues (23).  I had not read this essay but rather like Virginia Woolf.  Prior experience saved me.  My adult readers were blown away by the number of miscues they made and by the nature of them.  Learn they will.  Learn they will.

Lori

Yetta

Good stuff

Yetta

Deb

I just had my reading methods course do RMI's on themselves...actually they had to do 3 of them and then write a reflection paper answering some open-ended questions on the process.  I did not have my adult literacy students do this but next semester I will be having them do it.

The reflection papers have been fun to read - different perspectives on RMI's from each one of them and most were surprised that they did have miscues - most had thought they wouldn't have any (nice link to their own findings Yetta!).  I do think they learned a lot.

Deb

Yetta

You are engaging your students in their own inquiry!!

Yetta

Lori

I am asking my students to take a running record AS they record their miscue (at least on a portion of the text) and compare their codings.  I know I miss lots of miscues when I am doing a running record.  I am sure others have tried this and will be interested to hear about your experiences.

Lori

Deb

I've got a question...while the terms are similar between the two assessments, I don't find that much information is gained through the running record because it focuses so much on surface meaning and error rates, which means that it focuses on a 1 to 1 perfect rendition of the text.  This holds even with the MSV questions about meaning.   The coding systems are not the same though - similar but not the same.  How do you handle this aspect of the coding?

Thanks,

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Running record is certainly better than most of the tests using to bench mark kids for Reading First.   I know teachers who use a mix of running record and miscue analysis because they know both very well and they do what's most efficient for them.  I have used miscue analysis for so long that I would have problems using another system.  I do believe that we get more insight into reader's knowledge base through miscue analysis than through running record.  We don't focus so much on checking words so we see reading within the whole sentence and even across sentence boundaries more readily. I also find that running record is overly concerned with self correcting all error.  And fluency is also a focus.  Miscue analysis does not worry itself about fluency in each reading.  We organize the reading performance instruction to involve kids in reading with expression.

Yetta

Genevieve

Personally I disagree. I use the running records as I would a miscue analysis. Perhaps because I am a trained reading recovery teacher. I honestly do not see how the two are that dissimilar. In my opinion, running record protocol is far more than making word ticks. I monitor the child's fluency but also align that with the complexity of the text and ultimately the meaning the reader brought to the text. It goes along with the comments you made about kids who may be proficient readers with certain written text but not with others.

I analyze the type of miscues and what the reader was probably using when making that word choice. Some miscues I dismiss as insignificant while others I don't ( M-S-V)

Genevieve

Judi

Hi Yetta,

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.  I am supposed to give the DRA2 to middle school students, and your quote made me question this program.
 

"Miscue analysis does not worry itself about fluency in each reading.  We organize the reading performance instruction to involve kids in reading with expression."

On the DRA2, if a student doesn't finish reading the segment in a certain amount of time, then you are to stop them and go to a lower level of text.  I will do this, but I still ask the student to do a retelling just so I can see if they understood the text, even though they didn't meet the time criteria.  Many of the times, the student comprehended what they just read; they just didn't read it quickly enough.  What are your feelings on this topic?
 

Thank you,
Judi

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

The only rationale I see for the DRA2 in this case is to learn to read fast.  Why??   Many years ago when I used the Gray Oral Reading Passages I was supposed to stop the kid reading when he got to five miscues in 100 words.  I decided to let the kids continue reading through to the end. I was working with fifth through 8th graders at the time.  I soon discovered that readers might have 5 errors on a fifth grade passage and only 2 on the 6th grade passage; 3 on the 7th grade passage and 5 on the eighth grade passage.
 

I began to question the notion that numbers of errors or rates of reading gave me information about when a passage is too hard or easy.  It is only through getting information about comprehension and through discussion with a reader that I know whether something is too difficult or not for a reader.
 

The kind of information that most accuracy and fluency measures give is arbitrary and the same for all readers.  Miscue analysis engages the reader in the reading process and the teacher has a window into how the reader and text are working together.  Then with a retelling, the teacher is able to make more informed evaluations about readers.

Yetta

Lori

 

I am not a Reading Recovery teacher, but I might suggest that students we might typically classify as ‘frustrated’ using running record data might surprise you in the context of a miscue.  I am convinced that in some very significant way, we have ‘gifted’ children with frustration that probably has more to do with our own frustration in listening to kids.   I am not suggesting at all that we not work with kids in the context of success, but I have been surprised by the ability of children to make significant meaning from a text I might previously have dismissed as too difficult.  I loved running records in the classroom and I still do. They are quick, they are easy, they do give me information about the reader.  But sometimes I think we need to turn the knob, hone in our concentration and push the picture, and I am finding that learning about miscue is giving me that perspective. I don’t discount one or the other, but I think teachers would be stronger to know both well.

Lori

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman
 

Lori -- you've just reminded me of another difference between miscue analysis and running record. Especially for evaluation purposes miscue analysis is always tape recorded because teachers and readers miss their own miscues.  I know some people tell me that they tape for running record too but it isn't part of the procedure.

Yetta

Lori

Do you suppose that each may have its place?  
 

Unfortunately fluency, be it measured ala  DIBELS (which it is not in our district any more, thank you Ken) or ala DRA2 (which includes rate, phrasing, expression and accuracy in a slightly more holistic picture) is impacting my student population.  The impact is two fold. One fold, so to speak, is coming from outside—the powers that be in all things NCLBish.  The second fold, the one that matters to me, is that fluency—or an overwhelming lack of fluency (and I like Alan Flurkey’s definition best of all)—IS impacting our kids in that phrasing and expression are so very poor and responsive that it does impact comprehending and comprehension.  The other notion I cannot discount is that while the very slow reader who comprehends and is as yet in love with reading—willing to take on somewhat daunting tasks in terms of time commitment with the piece is inspiring. Oh, that wondrous stage when reading is so darned wondrous that toothpaste tubes and cereal boxes make for exciting self-discovery.  It is like learning to drive.  Remember when driving to the market to get a roll of toilet paper was exciting?  Well, I do have to be mindful of a time when the reading the child encounters will not be so inspirational—the freshman general science textbook springs sadly to mind for me.  If this child is able to encounter print at one fourth the rate of another reader, then what might present itself as an hour of reasonable high school homework can become four hours of utter torture for another.  I really feel that this is a factor in our utterly terrifying dropout rates among our freshman class members. Early on, I find the running record very helpful in reflecting on fluency and phrasing.
 

When I was in the classroom and beginning to study miscue on my own, I found that it deeply influenced my thinking about running records.  My own analysis of running records is far more Goodman than Clay, but I still feel that running records have been very valuable to our teachers and to myself.  Maybe the difference is in how we come to learn running records.  Initially, I was self-taught there as well—alone in this learning with an old Rigby video and a couple of books by Marie Clay.  I was deeply influenced by Becoming Literate:  The Construction of Inner Control, as I have been by Yetta’s work.  I think running records would not have served me as well had I simply learned to take and code and score them without the study of Becoming Literate.  And I know they serve me far better when I use my miscue lenses in thinking about them. I guess what I am writing my way to understanding is that any practice that is not grounded in theory is less meaningful.
 

Lori

Deb

Of course!  Like you've said here that your running records is more of a Goodman style than a Clay style, understand that the Goodman style will always affect how you use, interpret, and analyze the findings.  I think once we begin to get the theories, concepts, and practices involved behind Yetta & Ken's work and see what happens when learners of any age engage in these practices nothing else we do will ever be quite the same.  

Debbie

Yetta

From Yetta Goodman
 

If you know both you probably integrate them to fit your own purposes. As long as you have a rationale and let it be informed about what you know and believe about reading, it will work for you.
 

I do believe that miscue analysis provides insights about language study in a deeper way than running records do, especially since in miscue analysis the goal is not perfection but to help teachers/readers understand the power of miscues and when miscues actually enhance the reading of a text and are necessary to building meaning.  I often meet teachers who have your background, Lori, and who begin to use running record with greater sophistication about the nature of miscues and language.
 

Yetta

Balaka

Hi All,

Jumping new into the forum. I am clueless over RMI – could you give the full form and the gist. I, most likely do it in another name! Thanks! 

Balaka

Debbie

Hi Balaka,

Glad you felt comfortable enough to ask.  Reading Miscue Inventory (RMI) and Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) are used to see if readers are reading for meaning and consider miscues (others call them errors) as unexpected or unintended results during reading.  Everyone makes miscues when they read and proficient (effective) readers are able to process whether the miscues they make affect meaning or not rather quickly. 

Yetta will be able to more succinctly tell you about RMI & RMA and more thoroughly since she and her husband Ken Goodman are the researchers who developed this way of viewing reading and learning in the 60's.  Every time I write or talk about RMI's I become both more convinced that it is the key way to help all learners learn and that we are currently missing the boat in our schools with the focus on isolated skills and DIBELS testing.  I am none-the-less more than happy to talk about it but still feel that I won't explain something as clearly as I should...This is very different approach to teaching, learning, and the teaching of and learning to read.  It views learning and learning to read as a complex process.

Since reading is a meaning making endeavor and not a skill to be mastered, miscues provide opportunities to engage in conversations with the reader about about how they are making sense at that miscue. By understanding the language process and understanding that everyone makes miscues then we are well on our way to understanding where in the reading process things are breaking down for the reader.  Once we know where things breaks down then we can figure out (and help the reader figure out) what might help the reader deal with the issue through the use of strategies.  The more strategies that a reader has available to him/her the more able the reader is to figure out what the word means and keep reading. 

RMI is a reading assessment tool and is the only one that focuses on the reading (and learning) process rather than the final product of reading.  What I've said here is very broad and general and probably overly simplistic...

Some books that you might find useful are:

• Reading Miscue Inventory by Yetta Goodman, Dorothy Watson, and Carolyn Burke (either the 1st or 2nd ed.) - published by Richard C. Owen publishers.
• Reading Strategies: Focus on Comprehension by Yetta G., Dorothy Watson, and Carolyn Burke (either edition works well) published by Richard C. Owen Publishers.
• Miscue Analysis Made Easy by Sandra Wilde (Heinemann Publisher - sorry Richard)
• Over the Shoulder Miscue Analysis by Ruth Davenport (attached here).

Hope this helps and if not keep asking questions!  This is how we all learn and clarify our own thinking. 

Debbie

Rachelle

Hi Debbie,

Did you attach something?  It didn't come through if you did.  (The Ruth Davenport info)

Deb

Rachelle,

I did attach something but it bounced back to me because we can't do the attachment thing via the listserv. I sent Bakala a copy of the Davenport article.  If you or anyone on the listserv wants a copy e-mail me and I will send it to you off listserv.

Debbie

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman:

I've taken the liberty to paste Balaka's question into a new message since the previous one had so many attachments.

Anyway -- RMI   is Reading Miscue Inventory.  It includes a number of forms which help teachers evaluate readers' miscues as they read authentic texts without the teacher interrupting during the reading.   Thanks to Debbie East for her great response.  I'll just add a few things that might help you get into the process yourself.

What Ken Goodman discovered during the 1960's when he asked 1st - 3rd graders in Detroit to read a whole story to him without interruption, was that these young readers were making miscues (unexpected responses -- some people call them errors) that showed that they were using the grammar of the language they spoke and their understandings about the world to read.  About 70% of most word for word miscues are the same parts of speech for the word substituted.  His first fascination was with young readers who would substitute the for a or vice versa and it seemed to show they knew when a noun was definite or not from their point of view.  When the readers would rearrange phrases or sentences such as saying said Mother for Mother said, it often made sense and seemed to help the reader continue reading.

So we have continued over the last 40 years or so to study miscues in readers of all ages who read many different languages.

The books which Debbie East and Richard Owen mention will give you the theoretical and research background and lots of help with how to do miscue analysis -- this is especially true of Reading Miscue Inventory. But you can get started on your own.  Get a tape recorder and tape yourself reading something you have never read before.  It should be a whole piece -- story, newspaper article, or book chapter. Then check what you have read (by listening to your reading on tape) with the text. You'll discover your own miscues.  Then you begin to ask yourself -- why did I make this miscue and you'll find it is based on your own knowledge of the world and language and sometimes even based on your emotional responses to what you are reading. If you are a teacher put the tape recorder on while you read a story/article aloud to the kids in your classes.  Teachers who read lots to kids are well aware of miscues because even the kids let you know you have made them even when they are not following along in the book. 

The forms we use in the RMI and other books on miscue analysis help us ask questions about how the miscue influences the understanding the reader is developing.  We ask Does the miscue make sense in the sentence and in the story (semantically acceptable)?   Does it sound like language in the sentence and in the story (syntactically acceptable)?  To what degree does the miscue change the meaning?  If the miscue is a word for word substitution, does it look or sound like the word substituted?  In the last two questions (sound and graphic similarity) we get at the reader's phonic/graphophonic  knowledge. 

Reading is a complex process to understand and it just takes getting involved in thinking about reading in terms of what readers do when they read. Since teachers are teaching reading in every class across the age levels, it is important for teachers to understand how reading works -- how children learn it -- and what are the best ways for teachers to organize for its teaching.

On the other hand teachers also need to keep in mind that learning to read is easy.  Consider the notion that the vast majority of people in a literate society that has free public education learn to read within the first 10 years of their lives and a lot of kids in the world by the time they are eight years old can read two or more languages.

Yetta

Kitt

Hello All,

Does anyone ever worry that by focusing so much on the process of reading, we might cause young readers to become overly conscious of the minute thinking steps, thus interfere with meaning? 

I think of the automatic act of driving a car.  When I was trying to share my thinking process with my sixteen year old son, as he was learning to drive, the act of driving became less smooth and synergetic.  I must admit, it's been years since I used a miscue analysis approach of having a reader attempt to "keep watch" over her own reading, so I am just throwing this question out there because it's something I worry about when teaching teacher candidates to consider "teaching process" to a deep level of analysis.  Young readers are already working hard to become automatic with so many of the multiple tasks building up to automaticity...your thoughts, Yetta and others?

kitt

Deb

Hi Kathy,

I used to worry about it but I found that the kids were not focusing on meaning making when worried about the 1 to 1 and error-free reading that comes from not focusing on the reading process...but I also think that it helps to focus on the language process - not just reading.  If the focus is on meaning making and not the correction of mistakes some of the possible interference with meaning making is removed.  This inquiry can happen on everything they read but I tend to pick and choose times when I'm seeing them struggle with the meaning making process. 

I don't do RMI's on everything they read.  I don't assess everything they do in the classroom either but I do make time to observe every child learning. which is often through reading.  I also don't grade everything. 

I actually hate grades and grading as it is a divisive and often demeaning act for those who are not deemed to be 'A' students.  For those who are not A' students it leaves the learner labeled as deficient in some way.  It doesn't tend to measure knowledge, engagement, or progress very well. 

I'm not sure I've answered your question or not.  I'm sure Yetta will have much more to say - at least I hope so as my answer seems a little lean.

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Kathy -- Your comments are very insightful. Frank Smith cautioned that thinking and talking too much about the reading process would interfere with the personal aesthetic (Rosenblatt) engagements that proficient readers have with their reading. I also have worried about this over the years.  Some teachers get so excited about talking about miscues that literature discussions and lots of individualized silent reading go out the window.

So I do think that Frank Smith's caution and Kathy's  must always be kept in mind.  However, given our retrospective miscue analysis discussions/conversations with all ages of readers, I have been convinced that talking and thinking about the reading process as part of  reading curriculum has a place.  As Maureen mentioned earlier, the aha responses as readers' discover the value of knowing that what they do as they read show what they DO know about language is so important.  As Ken Goodman says, they begin to revalue themselves as readers and language users and they also revalue reading too as something that they are in control of, not something they have been "trained" to do. It also helps teachers give permission to those "hard working automatic readers" who think that reading carefully, looking at every word and reading slowly is what reading  is and to help them realize that reading is their own personal transactions with a text, which is under their control. (Rosenblatt, K. Goodman).
 

The readers I work with who are working so hard at reading are often "instruction dependent personalities."  They are more comfortable with trying to do what a teacher wants them to do than to read to make sense for themselves. As a consequence they don't read a lot.
 

Another hopeful thought in this regard.... We have found in a number of studies that readers read differently when they are reading authentic literature as opposed to their tests, decodable texts, etc.  That is, even "struggling" readers seem to know that when they are in a real reading environment they shift their strategies and make attempts to read for meaning.  Miscue analysis on different kinds of texts with the same reader does not show that they read everything in the same way.  Hence my concept of good readers as opposed to good readers.

Yetta

Kitt

Thanks, Yetta, you have inspired me to try to add a bit more miscue analysis into my work both with children and teacher candidates...but adding it with caution to not take it overboard.

Also, FYI, after reading your responses about the -er and -or suffixes, I learned a new "aha" about the two and multi-syllabic endings...never noticed that before!

And, just to let you know, I am using David and Yvonne's book, Essential Linguistics, to teach a linguistics class for reading teachers every spring.  I love the format and the accessibility provided by the book.

Kitt

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman


I strongly believe that the more teachers know about the role of language in teaching and learning, the better they are able to help kids with reading, writing, oral language and many other aspects of language arts curriculum.
 

The Freemans are experts in this area as well as in bilingual/ second language learning and I recommend their work as well.  David has commented on this listserve.  May I also be bold and provide some other references for teachers/ teacher educators in relation to the teaching and learning of language/ Linguistics.
 

I have a book published by NCTE called Valuing Language Study for Elementary and Middle School.  Connie Weaver also has books that focus on linguistic knowledge for teachers.
 

I encourage teacher education programs to build courses such as a linguistic class for teachers (elementary teachers should have such a course not only for reading and writing teachers).  In England every teacher has a course called The Role of Language in Education in their master's program. 

Yetta

Richard

It has been a lively two and one-half days!  Thank you all for being here and thank you for your contributions.  The exchange has been invigorating.  I hope the outcome has offered new learning for all of us, some new thinking about classroom practice, and a bushel basket full of new questions to explore. 

Officially this brings the conversation with Yetta Goodman to a close.  You are more than welcome to continue discussing the issues on the listserve, and I hope you do.  But we must thank Yetta now and allow her to return to other activities.

Thank you Yetta for another stimulating conversation  Thank you.  Thank you.  It has been terrific! 

I want to remind you all that you can click on the links to purchase Reading Miscue Inventory and Reading Strategies.   Both books are published by Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc. 

Be looking for the transcript for this conversation.  It should be posted at the website in about one week.

Please stay with us folks.  Next week we will have David Matteson and Deborah Freeman with us to explore early literacy.  And at the end of the week we will be in New York City for NCTE.  For those of you attending the conference, please come say hello.  We will be at booth 362.

Here's to Yetta and Maureen and all of you who are independent, critical thinkers.  I am pleased to be in your company.

Richard

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman

Since it is not noon in Tucson yet, I'll continue to respond for a few hours. I hope to read and respond to all messages.

Thanks Richard for hosting these conversations.  They are learning experiences for all of us.  And thanks from Carolyn, Dorothy, and me in keeping miscue analysis and reading strategy lessons alive for us over these many years.

Yetta

Yetta

Notes from Yetta Goodman:

I think I've responded to most of the messages.  I was pleased that a number of you engaged each other in discussion.  Although I've learned most about reading and language from my teaching and evaluation of readers, I also learn a great deal from talking and thinking about miscues and the reading process with teachers and readers with whom I work.

I encourage teacher study groups in these areas.  Get a colleague or small group together.  Discuss your students' miscues with each other, read about miscue analysis and discuss some more. Check out sessions on miscues at various conferences coming up. Richard Owen will keep you informed about TLN.  There will be sessions on miscue analysis at NCTE in New York in November and at NRC in Austin in late November and early Dec.  There is a miscue research conference at Hofstra in June and there will be a session at WLU in July.  Perhaps Richard Owen will keep a list of these in his newsletter.  Or you are free to email me in any case.  Also feel free to email or write me with queries.  I learn so much from my interactions with teachers and teacher educators.  Thanks for this experience.

Yetta