Learning together through retrospective miscue analysis: Salem's case study.

Article Type: Case study Subject: Students, Muslim (Case studies) Reading interests (Case studies) Basal reading instruction (Case studies) Reading skills (Case studies) Developmental reading (Case studies) Books and reading (Case studies) Author: Almazroui, Karima M. Pub Date: 09/22/2007 Publication:
Name: Reading Improvement Publisher: Project Innovation (Alabama) Audience: Professional Format:

Magazine/Journal Subject: Education Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Project Innovation (Alabama) ISSN: 0034-0510 Issue:
Date: Fall, 2007 Source Volume: 44 Source Issue: 3

Geographic: Accession Number: 170278592 Full Text: At school, Salem, (pseudonym) was below his reading level but above his writing level according to his teacher. At home, his father perceived Salem as a proficient reader capable of working independently. From my point-of-view, Salem needed to revalue himself as a reader through understanding that his miscues are an attempt to construct meaning from the text rather than a sign of failure; and, therefore, to view reading as a meaning-making rather than a decoding process. I met Salem two years ago; the son of a friend. I worked with him for nearly five months for four to five hours a week using methods based on the interpretation of Miscue Analysis and Retrospective Miscue Analysis. In addition to my tutoring work, I used several assessment tools, including parent interviews and school documentation. MA and RMA were conducted to determine Salem's problems in reading and to acquire a better view of him as a reader. Family's Perspective: Salem is nine years old. He attended the same school since his family came to the USA from Oman three years ago. Salem has a younger sister. Arabic is the only language spoken at home. Salem's mother, Mona (pseudonym), is monolingual Arabic. His father, who is bilingual, is an undergraduate in a university in the USA. Salem has not attended an Arabic school and has had no teaching instructions in Arabic except for what his mother teaches him at home. According to his father, who provided the information for this study, Salem is a bilingual child who prefers to read in English.

As documented by his father, Salem's favorite reading subject is horses. Salem spends his free time drawing and playing basketball. Salem spends almost two hours daily doing his homework, in addition to an hour and a half spent after school twice a week at the Homework Club. Salem spends twenty minutes reading for leisure. The only time his father reads to him in English is when Salem is doing homework. During an interview with Mona, she explained many things about Salem's academic development. Although Mona wishes she could help Salem more with his homework and reading, she spends every weekend teaching him the third grade Arabic curriculum from Oman, so he will not be behind his peers when he returns home. Teacher's Perspective: Salem is a third grader in a classroom with twenty-six other students. Salem has neither behavioral nor emotional problems. His teacher mentioned that Salem is talkative and socializes with children his age. Mrs. Roberts (pseudonym) says that writing and math are Salem's strengths and that he has a strong personality and fine social skills. Salem likes to read about his country, Oman. Mrs. Roberts identified reading and language skills as Salem's areas of needed development. The test she uses in her school indicates that Salem's reading level is level 2, 1. Upon recommendation from a former teacher and the reading-level analysis, Mrs. Roberts placed Salem in an SFA (Successful for All) oriented classroom. In addition, she decided to place him in an instructional group for math in the previous year. Mrs. Roberts noted that she uses many strategies with him such as "verbal view and individualized instruction" with no further explanation. For recovery instruction, Mrs. Roberts groups her students throughout primary grades. Mrs. Roberts wrote that Salem began using SFA materials the previous year in second grade. According to the program's assessments, Salem is below average in reading and above average in writing. Salem gets actively involved in writing, and he is reasonably persistent in using problem-solving strategies when facing writing problems. Mrs. Roberts suggests that as a tutor I should work with expressions, verbs, word endings, report writing, and retelling in order to improve Salem's reading level. Starting the Actual Work: Salem's parents were enthusiastic about obtaining extra help for their son. When I reread the documentation I gathered from Salem's father, I was surprised in many ways. For example, the teacher's documentation seemed to contradict her decisions regarding Salem's learning experience. If she thinks that math, for example, is one of Salem's strengths, why did she place him in a math group meant for students with problems in understanding math? I was also surprised that he had been working with SFA materials for two years and not exposed to other instructional tools. A student, who is limited for two years to the same kinds of materials and not exposed to a plethora of different books and materials, will certainly experience a drop in his reading level, or at the very least, not improve. Leveling students', in my point of view, limits and/or delays advances in reading because of limited exposure to books of their particular interests. Moreover, leveled texts are determined based on general data and do not address the specific needs of an individual who exhibits both reading strengths and weaknesses at the same time. I am also concerned when teachers use the same materials repeatedly even though little improvement has been established with their use. Varieties of materials are often needed for a student in order for reading improvement to occur. At the very least, using materials that have not produced gains in reading skills for two years seems counterproductive.

Meeting Salem: With his parents' permission, I enjoyed having him come to my house for tutoring sessions. Throughout our sessions, Salem participated in a variety of activities. We would read together, complete reading and writing activities based on the text, and then discuss the strategies used during the session. In addition, Salem loves surfing the internet, so I downloaded many stories and reading programs for him, and would allow him to search for his favorite subjects on the internet without help even with spelling. If Salem tired from our work, he refreshed himself by playing with my son. I can confidently say that I won Salem's trust from the first visit. "Getting to Know You"--Judy Boolmingdale-Vinke : During the first interview conducted with Salem, he asked many questions about the purpose of the interview and its audience. According to the interview, Salem described that he can teach others to read, help them with their drawing and homework, and spell their names. He thinks he is unique because he can draw chickens and help others to read. Burke Reading Interview: Burke Reading interview (1987) is an interview that explores the learner's understanding of what reading is and what a good reader does. Salem always sounds out new or difficult words, according to the BRI, and sometimes tries revisiting them. Salem feels confident in his ability to sound out every word. If sounding out does not produce results, he asks the teacher to sound out the words for him. As questions from the Burke Reading Interview were expanded, he described his love of school and hatred of bullies. Salem liked to talk about his friends and experiences at school; it was difficult to redirect his focus during the interview. Salem described that he enjoyed his two-year experience in the SFA program and believed it worked for him. Sounding out words is his preferred strategy for all reading problems, and he would advise other students to use it. BRI was done also at the end of the tutoring sessions. Elementary Reading Attitude Survey: These survey results revealed that although Salem sometimes likes to read during free time, for the most part, he prefers doing other recreational activities while at home. Salem loves to read about horses but does not have the same strong feeling toward schoolbooks. He said he had no problem starting a new book or reading it in front of other students or a teacher. Salem is familiar with worksheets and assignments at school and enjoys answering them. He has no anxiety about taking a reading test. Learning from a dictionary is one of his favorite things to do as he enjoys browsing for new words to learn. Discussion: Based on previous interviews, I learned that reading for Salem is decoding and reading word by word. Finding meaning from the text was not his primary concern. Kidwatching Child Profile (2002) and The Burke Reading Interview revealed that horses are his favorite reading subject, although he likes to read about other animals as well. Salem was planning to become a veterinarian someday; however, when Salem started participating in activities and

solving mysteries from The Reading Detective Club (1999), he decided to become a detective instead. Salem is caught between two conflicting educational paradigms or forces. At school, he is enrolled in additional classes where he studies materials from SFA for three hours a week. Meanwhile, he also participates in the Cats' Lab in the University of Arizona where the teaching style and materials are quite different. Every time we meet, Salem needs to be reminded to use all the strategies and to think out of the box. Under the SFA leveled educational paradigm at school, Salem is a dependent learner. For example, while reading, the first thing he would do when confronting a problematic word is sound it out and then ask for the answer. It was not easy to convince him to use other reading problem-solving strategies and free himself from sounding out as a lone solution. When I asked Salem to choose a book, I discovered that Salem has little experience in choosing books to read. In the first visit to the Cats' Lab Library, he was moving from one shelf to another saying: "I read chapter books only, I like them" without being able to choose one. Salem also does not have a favorite book or author, although he mentioned he liked the David's series by David Shannon because regardless of what David has done to his mother, she always says she loves him at the end. When at school, Salem did not have a chance to choose books because in every reading session, materials from SFA are provided. Salem added that when he went to borrow some books from the school library, the librarian refused to let him choose "Goosebumps" books because they are above his level and are scary. Visiting the Kids' Center to buy some books was quite an adventure for Salem and a worthy time for me. Salem took 45 minutes to decide what he wanted to buy. He hesitated at first and wanted to test my reaction to every book he picked. He bragged most of the time about his ability to read chapter books, refusing to buy picture books. I was not surprised when he said picture books "are for babies" because this is a common notion among his peers and even some teachers and librarians. I calmly explained that the picture books can be more exciting than chapter books, and they are not written for babies because some of them are difficult to read. He smiled at this, and I encouraged him to buy some picture books. Salem was so excited to have books of his own that he carried them close to his body and showed them to every one he met. I asked him how he felt about buying books about subjects he likes, and he answered, "This is the first time I chose something I really want to read". Miscue Analyses, Retrospective Miscue Analysis: The RMA process enables readers to discuss the underlying logic of their miscues (Brantingham & Moore, 2003). Early work of Ken and Yetta Goodman guides teachers to get an extensive view of the reading process. Even though in miscue analysis (MA) the reader is not yet involved in a discussion about his miscues and reading, retrospective miscue analysis (RMA) "invites readers to reflect on their own reading process" (Goodman, 1996). In my tutoring sessions with Salem, miscue analysis was accomplished five times with different genres. For most of the stories, he was provided with the actual book to read rather than a transcript of the story in order to remove any testing and evaluation pressure from reading. In addition, I wanted Salem to view reading as a real-life experience. In using storybooks, readers are likely to use clues from pictures to solve reading problems, but I view doing such as strength. As long as the story is meaningful and contains challenging clues, picture books offer a valuable reading experience. (Wilde, 2000)

The first story I chose for Salem was The Ugly Camel by Navneet Publications (India) which was written in British English. Most of the stories were about animals as he requested. The final story was The Man Who Kept House. Before beginning each session of miscue analysis, I explained to Salem that the power of MA is its ability to reveal our strengths and awareness of ourselves as readers. This was Salem's first experience with MA assessment. I explained the reason behind having my own copy of what he was reading, marking, and recording during our sessions and notified him that retelling would take place afterwards when he would be asked to describe what he remembered from the reading. I also clarified that he could not ask me any questions while reading, and should behave as if he were reading alone whenever he confronted difficult or new words. In addition, I asked him to remember his favorite part to draw and write about after the retelling. Most of Salem's miscues are high quality, i.e. his miscues are highly similar in graphics and sound to the original word. Marking Salem's miscues reveals that he clings to sounding out and decoding which becomes a barrier to his ability to find meaning. For example, every time a miscue appeared, Salem would continue reading even if the miscue was a non-word. Salem's attitude about himself as a reader began to change after he gained knowledge from his miscues eventually, viewing them as tools for learning rather than shortcomings. Salem's miscues also revealed many areas where we could work on together. From his first reading session and miscue analysis, the following problems were noticed: his spelling is highly phonetic, he uses sounding out only or asks for the word, he loses his place when reading, he focuses on decoding rather than meaning making, he hurries when reading, and answers without taking enough time to think. Punctuation marks are an issue in Salem's reading in that he always omits a comma and inserts a period when the line ends regardless of meaning completeness. According to Salem, he is using materials in school that provide short sentences written in one line each. Exposure to these kinds of materials limits the student's knowledge of text conceptualization and meaning making. Making meaning for Salem seems to be less important than decoding. Salem insists on reading every word correctly (phonetically) even if the meaning is not constructed. Additionally, he remembers only the main characters and general details, and is unable to address specifics. Even though he was reminded every session to focus on comprehension and meaning making, initially, he would still cling to sounding out and decoding. Salem has a rich imagination, which is not appropriate all of the time. For example, he read the word replied as repealed twice in the Man who Kept House. We had a discussion about this word and had some activities to help him figure out its meaning. When he used his strategy keys, he chose to look at the context and guess its meaning. After thinking, he said; "repealed means save". I asked; "tell me more; what did you do to figure out the meaning?" He said; "I read it and stopped and thought and reread it and looked at the sentence and guessed." I replied; "Good strategies; now let's see, does save makes sense in the sentence?" Without taking time to think, he said; "yes, because the wife wanted to save the house." I asked; "from what?" he said, "From the giant monster who wanted to step on the house, so she stays at home to save it." "Giant monster, I wonder from where you got that." What clues told you about the monster?" "No, it is not written, but understood" he replied. His retellings are rich with his imaginative reflections on his readings. Consequently, according to Goodman and Marek's guidelines (1996), Salem's retelling was unacceptable (on the scale of 5 he got 0, 1, 2 except for The Man who Kept House). The retelling guide from Reading Miscue Inventory

(1987) was used to assess his retelling as well. As described above, his retellings disclose his preference for decoding over making meaning. For the first four stories, he could only describe the general idea and was not able to provide details. His rich imagination affected all his retellings. Inferring and predicting skills were not mastered well. During RMA sessions, therefore, we focused on the importance of comprehension. Questions from Goodman and Marek (1996) were used, and gradually, Salem began to revalue reading as a process of constructing meaning and revaluing himself as a reader, learner, and language user (Goodman & Marek, 1996). To address punctuation issues, I gave Salem a chance to listen to me reading the same sentence in different intonations. I also drew his attention to my reading, stopping at the end of every line. Salem became aware of the use of punctuation but still sometimes inserts periods. Besides all the previous issues, RMA revealed how shy and unconfident Salem was regarding reading. Although Salem describes himself as a confident reader, saying he likes to read in front of others and would like to teach others to read, in reality, Salem was sometimes uncomfortable sharing his reading and writing with other tutees from the Cats' Lab. At times, he was so frightened when I asked him if he would like to share his work that I glimpsed tears in his eyes. After a few discussions about the power of miscues, Salem gradually was convinced that miscues are natural in reading; everyone miscues. Accordingly, and before the final celebration at the Cat's Lab, Salem asked me if he could read a book about Arabian horses to the other students for his final project. Retelling was always combined with RMA because the information and knowledge about the text are still "fresh" in his mind immediately after reading. I expanded the retelling to include difficult words he could not read, strategies he used, and revisited all problematic areas. I benefited from Goodman (1996) in establishing RMA setting and questions. After the oral retelling and RMA discussions, Salem was asked for a written retelling and a reflective drawing. I asked Salem to highlight his miscues and offer reasons for their occurrence. When Salem ignored some miscues related to comprehension, I would play the tape or point to it and start some activities around that miscue. Salem's decisions about reading were steadily changed as we continued using the reading strategies in our sessions. RMA discussions drew Salem's attention to some important issues he previously ignored. For example, as Salem neared the end of our tutoring sessions, he was able to grasp the story's theme and infer meaning in relation to his own experience, which he had been unable to do previously. For example, in the retelling and RMA of The Man who Kept House, he said: "the story was about a man who thought only he was good and women are not strong, but she wanted to teach him that she can go to the forest, and he can't do her work at home like taking care of the baby and stuff, the man said: "alright.. alright I can't do your work" RMA discussions also pointed to Salem's strengths in reading. Salem has excellent guesses that surprised me sometimes. He has the ability of analyzing his miscues in a phonemic way; like this example from his retelling and RMA discussions of The Lamb and the Wolf: * So, when you read the story, have you come to new words that you didn't know before? Salem: No, I knew all the words.

* Have you made any miscues? S: Yeh, the word opposite (abused), is that opposite? a, b, sit (sounding out) * um, let me think, I want you to try all the strategies you learned from your keys and see what will work for you; I am sure you can figure out the word. S: opposite, I can go to the computer or get the dictionary and find the meaning of the word * What if you don't have one, like right now, how can you help your self? S: Think * Tell me more. S: We should spell it .. ab, abused * Right, I told you, you can figure it out. Now tell me, what do you think abused means? S: I don't know * Let's try to find out what does it mean. What should we do? Listens to me reading the sentence, and then he read the sentence.. * Any clue? S: Oh, it is like you do or say mean things to others.. * How did you know that abuse has the meaning of being mean to others what did you do? S: Abuse, because it means use, and there is ab at the beginning so it is the opposite and it means .. mean things like saying mean things or doing mean things to others, because I sound it out, I say abused, ed, and you can say the end with d or t. K: So reading again, rereading, worked for you. You read the whole sentence, and you guessed the meaning, which you are always good at, and you figured out the word. Way to go. Having this kind of discussion encourages readers to recognize and reconstruct miscues for greater comprehension as well as fostering a deeper understanding of the reading process. "In essence, RMA seeks to empower readers to view reading miscues as repeated attempts to predict meaning and to make sense of text" (Aspergn & Moore, 2001).

Salem answered all the retelling questions in English except for the words he did not know. Salem would use both languages with me to serve different purposes; English for academic uses and Arabic for all other purposes. For instance, he would read and discuss the book in English but would ask me for a pencil in Arabic. Salem's Writings: Writing about reading is appealing to Salem, even though he could not read his written pieces sometimes. Salem loves to write, to draw what he has written and to read his writing aloud even when not asked to do so. His writing reveals that his understanding of spelling is a straightforward sound-letter relationship. Salem's writing is primarily a synopsis, providing short sentences that are not necessarily coherent. The sense of story making is not well grasped. If Salem were asked to put his long retelling of a book in writing, he would write two or three sentences only. For example, in the Cats' Lab, he listened to a book read to him about a lizards' life and was asked to write a response. This was exactly what he wrote: (The lizards climb with their hands, and in their hands they have sticky spots.) His writing reflects the way he speaks. Salem was not able to put his ideas on paper when we first started the tutoring sessions. He did not know how to express his ideas. Also, punctuation marks are a problem in writing as well. Salem's insertion of marks was random, as shown in the previous example, for instance. Salem has fine motor skills. His drawings are neat and detailed. He always draws when he writes and sometimes would ask to draw without writing. He likes to draw horses, houses and flowers. He can explain his ideas more through drawing than writing. For example, after the oral retelling of The Ugly Camel, he was asked to write a written response. He wrote : "This Book was about the Ugly Camel who heart animals feeling that the camel said to the cow that look at you self you are so ugly and funny but the cow was hearting her feeling's, the end". After writing, he drew a chicken with a cat. I asked him about the relation of his drawing to the story or even his writing; he said, "it is the same; the chicken thought that the cat is her friend, but the cat was only thinking about eating chicks what hurts the mother's feelings. Like the camel who hurt other animals feelings by telling them ugly things like funny cow and fat cow." Then, he added his experience with bullies and how much they hurt his feelings. Alter listening to him without interruption, I told him: "you know what; this is what you should write". Initially, I did not recognize the power of drawing over his oral and written retellings, even though the questions in the retelling segments were precise and open-ended. However, discussing his drawings exposed his acquisition of a story theme not necessarily seen in other responses. Consequently, providing Salem with an environment where he can express himself freely through drawing often reveals his understanding of text, which may be left unnoticed in other types activities. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Strategies Used in Reading and Writing: A-Reading Aloud, Shared Reading, Retelling

Reading aloud was important to introduce him to different genres and provide him with the sense of a story. It strengthened our teacher-student relationship by sharing ideas, laughing, predicting and inferring. When we first met, Salem was unable, or maybe afraid, to predict and was unable to infer. Shared reading worked well by encouraging him to predict and to make sense. During our sessions together, I used a number of reaching strategies. In every reading session, I started by reading aloud. Sometimes I let Salem choose the story. After that, Salem was given the opportunity to choose a book to read aloud. Retelling, guided and unguided, took place after both readings. Salem preferred to infer by drawing and writing and was given the choice to express himself according to his comfort level. Shared reading sometimes replaced reading aloud. Writing activities were stressed after reading. While reading, a discussion about strategies and brainwork took place. In addition to reading stories, I introduced Salem to other genres as well. He had the opportunity to read poetry, dictionaries, encyclopedias, internet text and even a cookbook. Writing activities were also varied, including written responses to reading, creating greeting cards and writing contracts. We signed two contracts: the first one was a tutoring agreement contract where he agreed to be on time and respect the teacher, and the second was "Use more Strategies Contract" where he agreed to try other strategies beside sounding out words. Salem enjoyed signing his name in both contracts. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] To change the retelling routine, I sometimes used "My Retelling Fan" (See Figure 1). Each wing of the fan has a question about the text, like what is your favorite part, or favorite characters? What is the main event? What is the problem in the story? Have you had a similar experience? And can you think of another title? Salem would spin the fan, answer the question that appeared and then spin again (See figure 1). B--"Keys to Reading Success" Another reading activity used in my sessions with Salem was "Keys to Reading Success" These keys were made in the Word program, printed, cut, and put in a keychain (See Figure 2). Each key has a different reading strategy that Salem can use when he finds a difficult or new word. I kept adding keys with new reading strategies every time he tries a new reading strategy that helped. Salem keeps his keys in his backpack, and he is so happy with them that he showed them to his SFA teacher. The strategies on his keys are: sounding out, guessing, visualizing, picture clues, skipping, rereading, and meaning clues. C--"The Reading Detective Club" The Reading Detective Club is designed as a series of self-teaching strategy lessons (Goodman, 1999). Working without adult assistance, children learn to trust their own abilities and strategies by imagining being a detective trying to figure out the clues, reading strategies, that leads to reading. Salem enjoyed the thrill of the mystery and loved problem solving and finding clues. For every new clue, with encouragement, Salem was able to solve several mysteries all by himself. These activities and shared reading helped improve his predictive skills and also enhanced meaning making. Because sounding out is not a possibility in these activities, Salem, in my point of view, learned that sounding out is limited, and he found the courage to try other reading problem-solving strategies. For example, when

he used the activity with The Three Little Pigs, a story that he was not familiar with, his guesses were all extremely acceptable. D--The Internet and Reading: The Scrambled Stories: I wanted to take advantage of the benefits of the internet in teaching reading that I believe is a powerful way to teach students to become more independent and put forth effort in reading. Salem began the activity by searching for his favorite subject without receiving help with spelling. If he got the query right, he would start choosing links, and if he misspelled the query, the search engine automatically asks for a correction or offers one. Giving Salem the opportunity to browse pages and make choices was very powerful and affected his choices in the reading sessions. Reading was not the only outcome from browsing WebPages; drawing, playing reading and spelling games, and writing were other resulting activities. Some links are powerful in that they offer various reading strategies such as reading aloud, rearranging scrambled stories, cloze procedures, etc. Reading from the internet requires guidance and offers the opportunity to seize a critical teaching moment. The student was given a plethora of time to read and explore, but mediation was provided where appropriate. Salem enjoyed rearranging scrambled stories. He started by reading three story cards that were out of order. If he were unable to read a word, the computer would provide him an answer with a click of the mouse. Salem was asked to read the entire story after every arrangement to confirm the sense of the story. We engaged in rich discussions before moving to the next story. He learned a lot from reading aloud, discussing components with me and trying to put the story sectors together in order to make meaning of the story. Consequently, Salem was able to try other strategies in addition to sounding out. Salem also learned to place meaning first before sounding out and developed a stronger sense of story writing. E--Internet and Writing: Coloring and Writing: Several times, Salem requested I print some pages from the internet so he could study and color them. He chose some pictures, printed them, and then wrote a story about each picture. This activity helped him organize his ideas on paper. Previously, Salem's writing contained short sentences that barely related to each other. After several writing activities, including this one, his writing became more coherent and meaningful. Although this activity seems simple, it combined his love of drawing and coloring with his need to write. His rich imagination helped him create stories about the characters he was reading about. F--Cloze Procedure: The Cloze procedure is like The Reading Detective Club in that both of them require using context clues to be completed and both proved that sounding out is a limited reading activity. Initially, Salem rushed to fill in the spaces without reading the whole sentence. He was not focused on making meaning out of his reading when he first started the Cloze Procedure. After discussing his miscues with me, he was able to handle both The Reading Detective Club and the Cloze Procedure. G--Strategies from the Cats' Lab:

The Lab incorporates a variety of strategies to enhance reading skills, including music. I did not think that Salem would love bells and dancing as part of his tutoring sessions, but reading along with music was one of his favorite Lab activities. Once a week, he meets with other tutees and tutors to learn a new reading strategy and to do some reading and writing activities. Working toward the final celebration brought out his potential. He wanted to share his love of Arabian horses with the other students, so he gathered materials from the internet about his topic, bought books at Kid's Center, and tried to put all his ideas together in a book. I was impressed with his presentation in the celebration. He was confident, smiling, and proud to show every one his drawing and work. Miscue Analysis Data Collection: Table 1 demonstrates my work with Salem for over a four-month period. At the beginning of the work, Salem primarily used sounding out, and that resulted in 95% of high graphic and high sound similarity miscues. From the table, we can assume that the higher the incidence of graphic and sound similarities miscues, the higher the incidence of changed meaning the student makes. In addition, Salem, at the beginning of our work, was making only 46% acceptable semantic miscues and 64% syntactic miscues. On the other hand, the table shows that by the end of the sessions, Salem was making sense of texts, and he retold the story perfectly and made only slight miscues that changed the meaning of the text. Moreover, Salem's miscues, by the end of the work, were highly acceptable semantically and syntactically. To conclude, the table shows that Salem was using more than one strategy to solve his reading problems. He was still using high graphic and sound cues (over 75% of the time) but he was also concerned about using syntactic cues and producing miscues that made since in the stories. I learned from my work that the more I use miscue analysis, the better my "miscue ears" develop. Salem's data analysis drastically changed from December to April. His syntactic and semantic acceptability were considerably improved. His retelling in the last MA was more detailed and deep. His miscues when we first started on December shared high graphic and sound similarity. These similarities miscues dropped progressively. Data proved that Salem is beginning to make sense of text rather than sounding out. Salem's data are attached for detailed information. What I learned from Salem: Regardless of the amount of time it took to transcribe RMA discussions and retellings, I found out that I developed a treasure of information about Salem by reviewing his responses. Discussions helped him rediscover himself as a reader, value his strengths, and find ways to overcome his weaknesses. He learned that it is acceptable to make miscues; rather than indicating failure, they reveal understanding. His confidence steadily increased with our work and discussions. In the beginning, he was a shy boy who looked at me with tearful eyes, begging me not to make him share his writing with others. Alternatively, he became a new kind of reader who discovered the true reader inside himself, one who is not intimidated by miscues. For the celebration, he shared a book about Arabian horses. Seeing him presenting his work, smiling to the audience, playing bells, and dancing was touching. I felt that my time with him, even though long, was not wasted. Salem was brave to try new reading. He discovered that sounding out does not always work, even in writing. For

example, he was amazed that the word (shiny) is not written as (shiney) and learned to become a better reader by reading (Smith, 1988). Salem's journey toward revaluing himself and discovering the hidden or ignored literate person inside himself charged his personality in many aspects, not only his confidence as mentioned previously. Salem's mother called after one of the sessions to ask whether I talked to him about helping her at home, because right after the session, he went home to clean his room, wash the kitchen floor, and play with his siblings. I told her that during our session we had read, "My Monster Mama Loves me So" by Laura Leuck, but the discussion that followed the reading was about showing love in all the ways you can. So, the meaning of the story influenced him. Moreover, Salem learned how to choose a book of his interest and not only chapter books. By exposure to different genres,Salem found encyclopedias and stories about animals, especially horses, to be more appealing to him. The second Burke Reading Interview showed the change of Salem's notion regarding reading. According to the second interview, he discussed many strategies to use when confronting a difficult or new word. On the first BRI, he thought of himself as a good reader, during the second interview he described himself as a reader who can use several and various reading strategies rather than sticking to sounding out. Salem said about whether he was a good reader, "Why not, in college I could be. Maybe I am a little bit good reader because in third grade you have to study words to be better in college and really some words are hard". When I asked him about a good reader he knew, he said "Wanita". I wrote her name in that way, but he said, "no it is Wanita with J at the beginning, sounding out does not always work. Sometimes English can be funny". Moreover, I learned from choosing different genres and materials that not all materials are good for analysis. For example, I chose a poem written by a third grader about their picture-taking day but all the students looked messy. That poem was full of students' names, which were problematic for him. These names were confusing and difficult to pronounce for him. In addition, although I could deal with names in the way we deal with dialect in miscue analysis, I preferred using other materials for data and analysis. The article By Flurkey and Goodman (2004) helped me learn about the role of genre in teaching and drawing the student's attention to different text patterns. The choices of reading and writing strategies that complement RMA sessions were suitable. Initially, the student rushed the reading without spending time in making meaning. The Reading Detective Club and shared reading helped him to slow down and think about the text. The student had difficulty choosing a book related to his own interests, but giving him a choice benefited him. The student had not been aware of his insertion of periods at the end of every line, and all the strategies helped drew his attention to the meaning. Salem clung to sounding out, but RMA discussions and his strategy keys helped him revalue the effectiveness of other strategies. The student was given a chance to have a new view of him as a reader through understanding his miscues and their indications through RMA discussions. As I mentioned before, these discussions not only brought out the best of him as a reader, but as a person too, which invariably helped him improve in other areas like writing. Meaning making in reading helped him understand that writing should be cohesive to produce a meaningful text. Salem now knows how to use reading strategies and can work more independently; his requests for help became more infrequent. He can now choose a book he likes and believes that miscues are normal and can be signs of strength. If I were to continue the work with Salem, I would continue using the internet as a source, choose harder books, including expository books such as encyclopedias, let him use the dictionary more often, and maybe tutor him with other students. In addition, I would try to involve his parents more by suggesting more literacy and reading events at home. I would also strengthen my relationship with his teacher and maybe visit her to explain the nature of

our work in the lab. Salem who once said, "This is the first time I chose something I really want to read" enjoys reading independently in both languages. References Aspegrn, C. & Moore, R. (2001). Reflective conversations between two learners: Retrospective miscue analysis. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44(6), 491-503. Brantingham, K. & Moore. (2003). Nathan: A case study in reader response and retrospective miscue analysis. The Reading teacher. 56(5), 466-9. Burke, C., & Goodman, Y., & Watson, D. (1987). Reading miscue inventory: Alternative procedures. Katonah, NW: Richard C. Owen Publishing, Inc. Burke, C., & Goodman, Y., & Watson, D. (1996).Reading strategies: Focus on comprehension. Katonah, NW: Richard C. Owen Publishing, Inc. Davenport, M. (2002). Miscues not mistakes: Reading assessment in the classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Flurkey, A., & Goodman, Y. (2004). The role of genre in a text: Reading through the waterworks. Language arts. 81(3), 233-245. Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. (2000). Guiding readers and writers (grades 3-6): Teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Goodman, D. (1999). The reading detective club: Solving the mysteries of reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, Y. (1996). Revaluing readers while readers revalue themselves: Retrospective miscue analysis. The Reading Teacher. 49(8), 600-615. Goodman, Y., & Marek, A. (1996). Retrospective miscue analysis: Revaluating readers and reading. Katonah, NW: Richard C. Owen Publishing, Inc. Goodman, Y., & Owocki, G. (2002). Kidwatching: Documenting children's literacy development. Heinemann. Martenes, P. (1988). Using retrospective miscue analysis to inquire: Learning from Michael. The Reading Teacher, 52(2), 176-180. Martenes, P. (1997). What miscue analysis reveals about word recognition and repeated reading: A view through a "miscue window". Language Arts, 47(8), 600-609. Smith, F. (1988). Understanding reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Wilde, S. (2000). Miscue analysis made easy: Building on student strengths. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Wilde, S. (1996). Notes from a Kidwatcher: Selected Writings of Yetta M. Goodman. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. KARIMA M. ALMAZROUI, Ph.D United Arab Emirates University, College of Education Al Ain-United Arab Emirates

"the lezerd's clime with there hands and in there hands they have stik spot's."

Table 1. Collected Data of Salem's Readings Readings [right arrow] [down arrow] MA Procedure 111 Syntactic Acceptability Semantic Acceptability Meaning change Graphic Similarity Sound Similarity Retelling / 5 // Readings [right arrow] [down arrow] MA Procedure 111 The Wolf and the Lamb 04-10-04 The Man who Kept House 04-16-04 Y N Y N Y N P H S N H S N 18/28 10/28 13/28 15/28 5/18 13/18 -18/19 -1/19 18/19 -1/19 2 5% 5% 95% 95% 64% 36% 46% 54% 28% 72% The Ugly Camel 01-23-04 The Horse and the Donkey 03-26-04 12/16 4/16 9/16 7/16 1/11 9/11 1/11 2/2 --2/2 --0 100% 75% 25% 56% 44% 9% 82% 9% 100%

Syntactic Acceptability Semantic Acceptability Meaning change Graphic Similarity Sound Similarity Retelling / 5

Y N Y N Y N P H S N H S N

10/11 1/11 7/11 4/11 1/10 7/10 2/10 3/4 1/4 -3/4 1/4 -1

91% 9% 64% 36% 10% 70% 20% 75% 25% 75% 25%

65/68 3/68 60/68 8/68 5/65 60/65 -6/7 -1/7 6/7 -1/7 5

96% 4% 88% 12% 8% 92% 86% 14% 86% 14%

Collected Data of 111 Miscue: Analysis for Failed

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