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, whil