FOCAL STUDENT PORTFOLIO 1

FOCAL STUDENT PORTFOLIO

ELL ASSESSMENT AND INSTRUCTION

Rachel Campbell

TLLSC 220
Professor Roudebush
October 19, 2014

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Introduction
This portfolio comprises of my work with my focal student, Anna*, who has recently
transitioned out of the English as a Second Language program at Hartford* Elementary. Besides
being labeled as an ELL or ESL, she can be considered a culturally and linguistically
diverse (CLD) student, a term considered the most inclusive and cross-culturally sensitive
description of a student whose culture or language differs from the dominant culture (Herrera,
Cabral, & Gonzalez; 2013). Currently, Anna is in the 5th grade. I assessed her in four target areas:
funds of knowledge, oral language, reading, and writing. In this portfolio I include the
assessments, rationale for assessment, analysis, and implications for further instruction.
In my assessments, I made sure to consider variables related to the testing situation that
affect the reliability of a test for the purposes intended (Herrera, Cabral, & Murry; 2013). I
limited the effect of variable of administration and situation by keeping my assessments unbiased
and creating an appropriate environment and comfortable environment to decrease student
anxiety. My assessments were either conducted in a quiet, isolated section of the hallway or in
the classroom when the rest of the class was not present for distractions.
Hartford Elementary is an International Bachelorette school that encourages and
celebrates cultural diversity and understanding. The school teaches Spanish as a foreign
language. Many of its students are native Spanish speakers, and although an IB school is
supposed to teach a language other than the native tongue of its students, the community decided
it would be best to encourage this language growth for both the native Spanish speakers as well
as the other students. The classroom I observed was a fifth grade classroom that focused on the
subjects of reading, language arts, and the reading component of science. Although not a Spanish
instructor, the teacher sometimes would incorporate Spanish phrases and words into the lesson or

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class management. The classroom itself did not appear to have any Spanish language posted or
culturally relevant artifacts. The limited instruction I observed did not seem to incorporate
student culture into the lessons, so lacks in culturally responsive instruction and curriculum.
There appeared to be some culturally sensitive literature. The students currently were reading
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and the classroom library contained a couple books about
students going through cultural appropriation. The classroom design shows little cultural
diversity and culturally appropriate material.
Overall, the classroom was positive and supportive environment. Student often times
worked together, whether as pairs or teams facilitated by the desk layout. There was a high level
of participation where students engage in discussion and debate with one another with the
teacher. This includes peer critique (seen in current event presentations) and interactive quizzes
using the Smartboard (in science). In lessons, cooperation was evident and multimedia was used
to engage the students.
Funds of Knowledge
I created an interview with questions that would gauge Annas academic strengths and
weaknesses as well as gather information on the unique cultural knowledge she can bring to the
classroom. This gave me an idea of her funds of knowledge which includes ideas, practices,
abilities, and skills the student possesses, influenced by their community and/or family (Moll &
Gonzalez, 1997). Her funds of knowledge can be used as an asset in classroom instruction for
greater engagement in lessons and to foster more meaningful connections and critical thinking.
Moll & Gonzalez states that the most basic of pedagogical principles is for teachers to build on
the experience and abilities that students bring to class (Moll & Gonzalez, 1997). Assessing the
student for her funds of knowledge is then beneficial to classroom instruction as a whole.

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Anna is a very sweet, slightly reserved girl who seems to enjoy classroom
responsibilities. I chose the interview format to assess her funds of knowledge because
interviews can be an accurate and effective means of obtaining information crucial to
accommodative instruction for CLD students and allow for free discussion between the student
and I (Herrera, Cabral, & Murry, 2013). This way there was flexibility and freedom to ask follow
up questions in order to gather more details. To make her comfortable in order to issue genuine
responses, I kept the student interview informal in the hallway. I told her these questions should
be easy because their all about her and there were no right answers. I sometimes stated questions
in more than one way to make them more open ended. I would respond positively to all her
comments (how it was cool or interesting). I would ask follow-up questions based on her
response to the leading question in order to get more information or details if she didnt provide
them right out. I ended the interview by asking her if there was anything she would like to ask
me. She asked me my favorite animal (I learned hers is an owl) as well as my favorite color (hers
is pink). This established a better connection between us, allowing her to be more comfortable
and honest with me as we progressed through the assessments. The complete interview is
attached. I received more information from Anna through casual conversation, including that she
has family currently living in Mexico, where her parents are from, she enjoys dancing traditional
Latin dances with her sisters and mom, and she participates in student council.
I also reached out to her teacher and the schools ESL director who has worked
personally with Anna for more background information about her and her family. Her teacher
had very limited knowledge of her family, besides that she is first generation born in the Chicago
area. The following is the statement I received from the ESL director:

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She was in a self-contained bilingual (Spanish) classroom until 4th grade, K3rd. In 4th grade, she was mainstreamed to a regular classroom and I worked
with her on a push-in basis. She worked extremely hard and was not timid to ask
questions. In fact, her classroom teacher from last year and I were just discussing
the other day at how well she worked to keep pace with her fellow classmates. I
do not know her parents well but I do know they are very supportive at home.
She has a very bright and friendly older sister that I taught my first year here at
Peirce. She now goes to Lane Tech. I found that Anna sometimes struggled with
math word problems. She would often understand the concepts, however have
trouble at times when put into a word problem. But, like I said she is extremely
hard-working and extremely eager to learn.
Although her teacher and the ELL director were unable to provide many details regarding
her family, the information I gathered gave me a good idea of her supportive family structure and
their heritage and traditions.
Looking at the data collected, based on her artistic interests expressed in the interview,
Anna appears to be a visual learner, engaged by art-based projects like drawing or photography
and reading. Given the responsibilities she appears to been given along with her sisters and her
value of independence indicates that she does well when working on assignments independently,
but given the cooperation she vocalized having with her sisters and family shows that she may
also work well as a member of a group or team for activities.

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Funds of Knowledge Interview

What do you like most about your school?
See 2
What is your favorite subject in school? Is that your best subject? Why?
Math & Reading
Math is really easy for me sometimes, Reading is really fun because I can read the books I like.
Hunger Games.
What is your least favorite class? Which subject do you find the hardest? Why?
Language arts and Social studies. A lot of writing, Writing is not my favorite thing to do. Not a
lot of writing in Mr. Richies class (Asked about Reader Responses, are they hard for her) I like
doing them.
What has been your favorite assignment or project to work on?/ What are you proud of?
Taking pictures. Likes to take pictures of plants for science class. Art, likes drawing
What do you wish you were better at doing?
Writing, Do you practice a lot? Yes.
What goals do you have for this school year? What do you want to do when you grow up?
Writing, get a little better at math; probably, a police officer, or a photographer. Why Police
Officer: I want to defend the people of America. Doesnt know any personally, but really wants
to be one.
What do you like to do outside of school? What are your hobbies?
I play with my dog and sisters.
Who do you live with at home? Who are your family members?
2 sisters, 23-25, 18. One is going to school, and the other is working and has a baby. Not sure
what she works as. Sister goes to Lane Tech. Lives with parents and one sister. Other sister lives
with husband. Her aunt lives close by.
Do you know what school your parents have gone to? Sibling(s)? What do they do?
No knowledge of parents education. Parents grew up in Mexico, and then came here because
they wanted a better life. Doesnt know when they came here, but she was born here.
My mom works in a little company and sells jewelry and stuff like that. My dad works at a
restaurant called Andes. He brings me food. Tortillas with
What makes your family unique? Do you have any special traditions?

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Celebrate Day of the Dead: its because my grandma died a long time ago, after I was born, so I
didnt get to know her well. And every time its Halloween we put a picture of her in front of a
candle. Make food for holidays, Christmas. So, when my aunt and cousins come from Christmas
we could all eat. Tamales. Chicken. Mexican food. Really big family, need a lot of food.
Do you like where you live (neighborhood/community)? Why or why not?
Lives close to school, 4-5 blocks away. Walks to school. Likes neighborhood because Walgreens
and other stores are close to us, so if we run out of food my mom sends my sister with me to buy
food. Goes with sister shopping. Neighborhood: Its a good place because theres not any robbers
or anything like that. Safe. And other times the cops are around to see what happens. (Sees them
doing good job so wants to be one)
What makes you unique? Can you describe yourself in three words?
I like doing my work. Gets it done. I always want to be independent. Always has her work. Likes
being on top of things. Helpful, caring, Cheerful (always cheer for sisters), playful (with sisters,
tag, volleyball, hide and seek)
What is something youd like me or your teacher to know about you?
That I like taking pictures. And drawing. (Wishes for more assignments like that)

Oral Language
I used WIDAs 2008 Grades 3-5 Speaking Test Sample Items to assess Anna oral
language ability. I already knew her WIDA scores in advance (listening being a 6 and Speaking a
5.3). Having this information, I took the liberty of skipping the first two proficiency levels of the
assessment in order to save time and focus on her higher level answers. I then used the WIDAS
ACCESS Speaking Rubric to assess her myself.
I chose WIDAs assessment in order to gain an understanding of the rationale behind her
scores through my own personal experience in administering it. For the test, I showed Anna a
page with pictures and/or a chart on it. The subject of the test was heart rates. This facilitates
math and science language. Assessing her ability to communicate this academic language is
important because the more classroom teachers know about a students ability to function in the
instructional language, the they can plan lessons that minimize potential language barriers while

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providing students maximum opportunities to learn content-area material (Herrera, Cabral, &
Murry, 2013). To make her comfortable and less anxious for the assessment, I told her we were
going to do an activity together and that it wasnt for a grade. I wanted her responses to be
genuine and honest. To make sure she was showcasing her strengths, I also informed her of some
expectations, asking her to provide as much information in her responses as she could with
details. Since Anna can come across as a little reserved and shy, I made sure to give her
encouragement during the assessment.
I started at Proficiency Level 3 and worked my way with her to the highest level, 5.
Overall, she did very well, answering some questions included in the assessment before I even
asked them, demonstrating good critical thinking skills. She provided details and good analysis
on nearly every question asked, using academic vocabulary. From her outside knowledge she
used technical vocabulary including breathing and details such pedaling on the bike. In
accordance to the WIDA Speaking Rubric, Anna provided extended, thorough responses without
further prompting after the questions were asked. She supported main ideas with specific details
and examples showcasing her funds of knowledge: Because when she does running shes
gonna be faster because maybe she is running around her school or running a block or
something. And that gets her really tired. She was able to vocalize comparisons of the material
in front of her to the information she gained from previous questions. She thoroughly understood
the questions when I asked them to her verbally. She sometimes filled her sentences with um
and uh, but it did not distract from her answers and can be considered typical of an English
proficient student her age. Her grammar was not perfect, but she may have imperfections due to
her nervousness. I scored her proficiency level as a 5, Bridging, because of her skill in
expressing complex responses, but does not seem to be at the 6th level that is reserved for

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students whose oral English is comparable to that of their English-proficient peers (ACCESS,
2007). Overall, Anna demonstrated her oral skills by describing, explaining, informing,[and]
evaluating, functions of academic language (OMalley & Pierce, 1996).
In answering these questions as well as those in the funds of knowledge interview, Anna
used prior knowledge or elaboration, inferring, and self-monitoring, skills that define an
effective listener (OMalley & Pierce, 1996). Her funds of knowledge responses as well as my
observations of her in class exemplify her communicative language functions, making her
proficient in social contexts (OMalley & Pierce, 1996). Anna can hold conversations with peers
and understand spoken tasks for class management.
I made some informal observations besides just the formal assessment. In math class, it
appeared that Anna had some trouble understanding a verbal question posed by her teacher. The
problem was dividing 90 by 40, so she was asked how many times does 40 go into 90? Anna
was puzzled, and didnt respond. The teacher than asked, trying to simplify the problem, well,
how many times does 4 go into 9 in which she responded 32. It appears that Anna was mishearing the question and answered for 9 times 4. The pragmatics of the question given the
language structure was unclear for her. At least in the subject of mathematics, it appears Anna
still isnt at the level of listening comprehension as that of her peers.

Speaking Assessment Transcript

ACCESS 2007
Grades 3-5 Speaking Test Sample Items
Assessor (Me): What I need you to do is give me as much information as you can. I want you
to talk in nice complete answers and tell me everything you can to answer the question. We are
going to be doing a science activity and were going to talk about some heart rates. So, some

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back ground information, a childs heart rate is about 90 beats per minute. Im going to ask you a
couple questions about this graph, ok? Can you tell me this part of the graph tells us? (Pointing
to BABY and 130 on graph)
Student (Anna): That the babys heart
beats more than, um, the children and
adult. The babys beats one hundred and
thirty minutes.
Me: Great, can you tell me then what
this shows us? (Pointing to ADULT
and 70)
Anna: That the adults beat, um, less than the child and they breathe seventy beats per minute.
Me: Great, when you look at the whole, what do you learn about how heart rates change as we
grow? Or, what do we learn from the entire graph. What does the whole graph show us?
Anna: That the, um, when we start as babies we breathe a lot and when we grow up into a child
we breathe a little bit less and when we get to adult we breathe even less than child.
Me: Awesome. Ok, how did you figure that out and how do you know that?
Anna: I know that because when I see the graph I know that the, from the beginning it starts at
the top and then goes down, and down. (Pointing to the decline in bars)

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Me: Awesome, ok. We are going to move on to the next questions because you did so well with
that one. So now we are going to look at
this Graph. Now, we are going to talk more
about how heart rates change. We saw how
a persons heart changes as they grow from
a baby to an adult. Now we are going to
see how a childs heart rate changes as they
do different activities. So this is another
graph; it shows us the heart rate of a girl
named Alicia. She is going to do different
activities like sleeping, running, and reading. So, this graph shows Alicias heart rate as she does
these things. Look at this graph and tell me what happens to Alicias heart rate when she does
these different activities.
Anna: Um, when she does running her heart beat-rate is one hundred thirty, almost like when
the babys heart rate.
Me: Great connection
Anna: And when she is reading it is ninety, um, ninety, uh, beats per minute, like the child. And
when she is sleeping she breathes even less than when shes reading. She beats like eighty beats
per minute.
Me: Great, Can you tell me anything else or elaborate on anything? (Silence) Why do you
think that is?

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Anna: Because when she does running she gonna be faster because maybe she is running
around her school or running a block or something. And that gets her really tired. And when
shes reading she doesnt do much like talking or something. Um, thats why she doesnt, um, get
that much heart beats going fast, and when she sleeps she probably doesnt breathe that much as
when she is reading or running cause a normal human doesnt breathe that much at night.
Me: Those are great observations. I am very impressed with that. So, were going to do one
more. This looks like the same graph, but we have some different questions. Why do you think,
oh, you answered that question already. Now imagine that Alicia wants to ride her bike, what
number do you think her heart rate will be?
Anna: I think her heart rate would be to the level of the running activity because when you ride
a bike you pedal a lot and that like gets your legs tired and your body tired and you breathe more
faster like the running.

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Me: Great, (looking at next question) now you completely answered that. Awesome, good job!
You answered some questions even before I asked them.

Reading
I accessed resources from online database of Reading A-Z to use as my reading
assessment. This included benchmark passages with running records as well as retelling scoring
forms (Reading A-Z, 2014). The running records assess the fluency of the student and measures
her reading level. Anna read the passage I gave her out loud, and I marked any errors she made
(including mispronunciation, misread word, omitted word or part of a word or word inclusion)
and self-corrections. The retelling looks at her comprehension level of the material, asking if she

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recalls details, characters, and plot. Retelling rubrics are a good means of assessment, for
retelling gives the students an opportunity to speak at length, if they can, without teacher
interruption in an informal setting.For English language learners, retelling helps develop oral
language proficiency as well as reading comprehension (OMalley & Pierce, 1996). To compare
her level of comprehensibility and fluency across academic vocabulary and content I chose two
nonfiction passages and two fiction passages.
Given that her accuracy scores fell in the 95-100% range, Anna classified as an
independent reader under Reading A-Zs standards. Her accuracy, of course, declined as I
increased the reading difficulty. From my conclusions Anna can comfortably (perhaps with some
challenge) read at the lower to intermediate range of the 5th grade level. This means that she does
not need separate instructional materials to accommodate her language inefficiencies.
However, although she can read and comprehend at her grade level, she may need extra
time to process the language and information than her peers. Usually this type of assessment is
done in a timed setting, but to decrease the level of her anxiety and for greater focus on her
abilities without this outside factor, I did not time the assessment. Although Anna did well, if it
were timed I think her scores would not have reflected her true abilities as well. She was slower
in reading and often had to sound out difficult words (separate from self-correct and error). I
could tell that last reading I gave her, level X, was challenging, and did not wish to exhaust her
further by increasing the level.
Anna did very little self-corrections, and her errors were mainly due to mis-reading rather
than mispronouncing. This shows that she doesnt appear to have much trouble with the
phonetics of language. Her mis-reads include surprising for surviving, skipping for
skimpy, trapins for terrapins, actually for eventually, responding, for recognizing,

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amongst a couple others. This consisted of the majority of her errors. I was surprised by her
ability in reading the Hopi Names passage because it contained foreign words. I believe
because of her Spanish language background she was more familiar with the phonetics of the
unfamiliar words. This shows an outside asset that contributes to her reading abilities. I believe if
she reads other culturally appropriate works her fluency would improve.
Anna did very well in the retelling of the fiction passages. She included specific details,
characters, and events. She showed understanding of the main ideas of the texts. However, Anna
had more trouble in the retelling of the non-fiction passages. She retold a limited amount of
details and did not use many specific academic vocabulary words. My conclusions align with my
knowledge that Anna enjoys reading for pleasure, which includes many narrative stories. Anna
needs more practice in reading non-fiction material for comprehension. In my observations of
her in class when completing a reading about the taiga forest with comprehension questions she
was taking a longer time in completing the assignment than her peers. This demonstrates her
slight difficulty in comprehending and processing academic language based on non-fiction
reading material, agreeing with my conclusions found in administering the benchmark passages.

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Writing
I formed my own prompts for my student to respond to as well as taking an academic
sample from
her English
class in order
to assess
Annas
writing level.
Given that
writing
seemed to be
her weakest
skill, but the
skill she
seems
determined
to practice
and improve,
I wished to
look at a
variety of her

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writing work, formal and informal. The three samples I collected show three different types of
writing, one narrative, persuasive (problem-solution), and informative (compare-contrast)
(OMalley & Pierce, 1996). I wanted to see if there are certain patterns to and constituencies in
her writing. I created prompts that would be interesting to the student in order to engage her in
the task, and open enough in which she would not have trouble writing on the topic. According
to OMalley and Pierce, each prompt used in the writing assessment should.invite the desired
type of genre, engage the thinking, problem-solving, composing, and text-making processes
central to the type of writing, produce interesting, not just proficient writing, be liked by many
students (OMalley & Pierce, 1996). I learned from her funds of knowledge that she values her
community and family, so I had guessed this may be reflected in her work, and so this would also
give her an opportunity to provide more details and information on such. Through the free
writing and academic sample, I can see not only the mechanics of her writing but the content that
reflects her interests and funds of knowledge. My intent for my free writing prompts was to limit
the writing time to 5 minutes. This seemed to be a challenge and source of anxiety for my
student, so I allowed for a couple minutes extension (given her request) in order for her to
complete the work at the level she desired.
Given my findings, Annas writing strongly reflects her oral language proficiency; she
writes as she would speak. This may be why she writes many run on sentences with conjunctions
and subordinating conjunctions and clauses. The inclusion of such demonstrates her inclusion of
sentence variety and complexity. However, she presents a continuous train of thought with very
little punctuation to break up her statements. She occasionally misspells or misuses words
(parantes for parents, true for truth, pretented for pretended, dose for does, their for there), some
of which reflect the phonetic pronunciation, but such mistakes do not detract from

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comprehensibility of the work. Her informal writing are in the forms of a single simple
paragraph, while her academic writing shows the strategic organization of paragraphs, with and
introduction and supporting body paragraphs to provide detail.
I assessed Anna using WIDAs 2007 Writing rubric. Annas writing reflects her grasp of
the functions of writing. When asked about a problem she cares about she wrote in first person
while in the narrative style she switched to third-person. Her academic writing also demonstrates
her understanding of the fundamentals of formal writing. In the sample she included an
introduction with a topic sentence and arguable thesis and body paragraphs to provide evidence
and details. The content of her writing is good (says a lot about her values of human character,
both of the book characters and her family members), but Anna needs some assistance in
improving her sentence mechanics. Anna demonstrated a variety in word choice, fluency, and
good idea development and organization (seen by her timely progression of events in her
narrative). She demonstrates structure and organization in her more formal writing (her comparecontrast essay), but her informal writing doesnt show as much structural organization of her
thoughts and ideas seen by her use of a single paragraph with many run-on sentences. This may
have been due also to her limited time frame and lack of a graphic organizer to synthesize her
response and sort her idea ahead of writing.

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Adding to my collection of her funds of knowledge, based on the content of the free
writes I learned that Anna highly values her family and is particularly passionate about play,
especially with her sisters. It also appears that the support/help her older sister provided has
declined. Her biggest struggle seems to be separating her run on complex statements into varied
sentence lengths. I would revise or improve this assessment by choosing other prompts, perhaps
more subject specific. She took her own interpretation the problem-solution prompt, or just have
taken it more liberally (family can count as community). The prompts I chose as well as her
academic writing show little of content-specific, academic vocabulary that may be scene in

social studies or science. I would like the opportunity to see more of this subject specific
language. I know from my funds of knowledge assessment that she struggles in social studies

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because of the writing, so I would think it would be enlightening to see an example from that
class.

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Instruction and Intervention

Starting with the information I received about Annas funds of knowledge, I have
suggestions regarding instruction to further engage her and challenge her in the classroom. Anna
appears to have a strong cultural background that has traditional practices of Mexican heritage
(like Day of the Dead). Her background in Latin dance at home assists her in the current lesson
of cultural dance that the class is participating in. She could do well with other culturallyrelevant activities, contributing her own funds of knowledge. As the end of October approaches,
Anna could lead a Day of the Dead project to share with the class. In such a project she can use
her photography skills to create a collection of images to share explaining the different
components of her familys tradition or create a cultural mosaic (Herrera, Cabral, & Murry,
2013). Anna provides knowledge that can contribute to the cultural diversity presented in the
classroom. Sharing these cultural resources improves the class as a whole as it has been shown
that increased contacts with diverse students often result in the type of reflection that fosters
significant personal and professional growth among educational personnel. (Herrera, Cabral, &
Murry, 2013). More culturally responsive material should be presented in the classroom not only
for Annas benefit, but for the other students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
as well. More resources could be found through the Latino Cultural Center of Illinois
(Latinocultural.uic.edu). Another resource is the Mexican Museum of Art
(Nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org); a resource that can be taken advantage of to engage Anna
with her love of art in culturally appropriate material.
It is apparent that writing is her weakest skill. However, combining it with something she
enjoys, like reading or something visual, would engage her while enhancing the skill. She enjoys
reading and having a choice in what she reads. If not already a part of instruction, a free reading

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assignment, project, or time could be engaging for her. The project or assignment could be
shared with the class, so she could take pride in her work (and practicing her oral language
skills). For example, this instruction could be the form of a book review. The student could read
the book and come up with a way to promote it to the class. This could be in the form of an
artistic project (poster of students book cover design, or illustrations, or photo book), or a
newspaper style critique to practice writing, both, or another project that the student comes up
with herself. An occupation or animal science writing assignment would also be engaging for
her. Perhaps an informative style writing prompt to show her knowledge about police officers or
owls. She could also do a great how-to making traditional Mexican food to share with the class.
This way Anna can share her home culture with the class. This allows her to make deeper
connections with the academic material and content by maintaining her cultural identity, for
teachers who encourage CLD students to maintain their cultural or ethnic ties promote their
personal and academic success (Herrera, Cabral, & Murry; 2013).
Since Anna did very well in the oral language assessment, I recommend challenging her
further. Instructionally, I suggest improving her speaking skills by presenting in front of the
class. Public speaking increases the level of difficulty and take Anna out of her comfort zone
(given that she is a more reserved student). To engage her in speaking and listening skills, Anna
could present on a slightly controversial topic. Her funds of knowledge given her position in
student council would make her aware and involved in school affairs in issues. She could present
these topics to the class and engage them in discussion and debate. Many of the instructional
recommendations and projects I suggest can be coupled with informal and formal presentations,
discussions, and debate to improve her oral language skills alongside the other fundamentals of
language.

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Given her abilities as a visual learner and artist, since Anna struggles with math word
problems, perhaps visuals can be included with the problems (if not already) or the problem can
call for her to draw the problem herself. If it is a verbal question, the problem should be
completely reworded to avoid confusion if it appears that she is not understanding. The
mathematical question mentioned earlier (How mnay times does 40 go into 90?) may have
been easier for her to understand if the teacher wrote it out as well as been spoken to her. Math
may be best understood if paired with skills and activities she does well with, such as pictures
and reading. However, to avoid confusion it may be best in math word problems to remove any
extraneous language and vocabulary unnecessary to the task.
To complete her work to the level she desires, Anna may need to be provided an
assessment accommodation by receiving extra time in completing writing assignments. This may
also mean her work may be shorter than that of her peers due to her developing control of the
language. The quantity of writing should not be a factor in grading. The most obvious difficulty
she has is with run-on sentences. She needs more practice in creating short, grammatically
correct sentences, before she can master paragraphs with more complex sentence structures.
When writing an essay, a graphic organizer to clearly identify each point and piece of evidence in
each paragraph could be used to separate her sentences and avoid long run-ons. Perhaps she can
organized her thoughts into more distinct ideas and statements with a venn-diagram, or another
form of a concept map. Anna wishes to practice her writing skills more, so administering
frequent short free-writes that have open-ended prompts (in which the student chooses what to
write) would provide her this opportunity and would allow the teacher to access the funds of
knowledge reflected in the writing. Another practice could be to administer reflections after
lessons that introduce new information, for reflective writing can be an effective tool for

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assessing student learning and capacity building.A structured response format that asks the
student to respond to the content objective by describing both what was learned and the ways
new knowledge is meaningful to future increases the probability that the information will
become part of the students permanent memory (Herrera, Cabral, & Murry; 2013). Pairing
reading, an activity Anna enjoys, with a more challenging activity, writing, would engage her in
the activity more. This can improve her reading comprehension, too, through reading logs and
literature response journals (OMalley & Pierce, 1996). Perhaps this can be done with a different
style of compare and contrast essay in which Anna can choose a book she wishes to read and
compare it to the instructional text.
Another writing-reading lesson could be writing a book critique coupled with a
presentation in front of the class to enhance her speaking skills. With these style of writing and
speaking projects it would be beneficial for Anna to conduct self-assessments. When CLD
students are engaged in assessing their own work, they more thoroughly and purposefully
understand the criteria for high-quality products as performance-and experience greater
motivation for meeting those criteria (Herrera, Cabral, & Murry; 2013). By looking closely at
and evaluating her own work, Anna will be able to more fully grasp the expectations of her
writing and how she can improve to accomplish such.
To help her understand and accumulate vocabulary for both reading and writing Anna
could engage in cooperative instruction, for students often have as much to learn from
purposeful interactions and collaborations with more capable peers as they do from the
classroom teacher (Herrera, Cabral, & Murry, 2013). She could work with a partner student who
is either at her same level or higher for partner reading or peer assessment for writing. Or, she
could receive more practice at home. Working with someone, she could read newspaper articles

FOCAL STUDENT PORTFOLIO 37

or another journal source that will introduce her to more non-fiction style writing and vocab in
smaller amounts. It is important to foster Annas abilities in both Spanish and English in this
area. Therefore, accessing community resources such as the public libraries of Skokie, Niles, and
Evanston for multilingual resources would be a beneficial way for her to practice these skills at
home.
Conclusion
Anna is a very capable student with much room for growth. While Annas oral
communications skills align closely to those of her English-proficient peers, there is always room
for improvement, including in reading and especially in writing. To create engaging instruction
and a nurturing environment, culturally responsive instruction should be implemented and
supported given her own funds of knowledge. Familial and community resources can be used as
assets alongside the classrooms to provide meaningful instruction for the academic and cultural
growth of this student and her classmates.

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Works Cited
Herrera, S. G., Murry, K. G., & Cabral, R. M. (2013). Assessment Accommodations for
Classroom Teachers of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Moll, L., & Gonzalez, N. (1997). Teachers as social scientists: Learning about culture from
household research. In P. Hall (Ed.), Race, ethnicity and multiculturalism. Missouri Symposium
on and Educational Policy (pp. 89-114). New York: Garland.

OMalley, J. M., & Pierce, L. V. (1996). Authentic assessment for English language learners:
Practical approaches for teachers. New York: Pearson Education
Reading A-Z. (n.d.). : The online leveled reading program with downloadable books to print and
assemble. Retrieved October 16, 2014, from http://www.readinga-z.com/