Roadblocks

Christine Thelen

Why I Chose This Skill

Rationale:
1. Solving roadblocks is a test-taking strategy when
navigating complex Regents-style and NYSESLAT
passages.
2. ELLs struggle the most with the reading and writing
portions of the NYSESLAT and may have less exposure
to academic langauge than their peers.
3. Alignment to class content: Solving roadblocks is a part
of annotating, a skill being practiced in English and
Living Environment.

ESL Standards
1.1 Identify and use reading and listening strategies to
make text comprehensible and meaningful (context clues).
1.16 Apply learning strategies to acquire information and
make texts comprehensible and meaningful.

Strategies for Solving Roadblocks

Student Strategies:
Reading the sentence(s) before and after the word
Circling clue words
Making connections
Using root words
Using dictionary

Phases of Intervention
Phase I:
Analysis of student work (high, med, low) - formative
assessments in Lit & Comp class
Result: Lack of selection of many/meaningful
roadblocks by low/middle/high students. Many words
circled without solutions. Many paragraphs skipped with no
annotations.
Next Step: Refinement of annotation rubric. Small group.

Phase 2:
Small group work using Flowers for Algernon and group of
ELLs and some Gen Ed students. Students shared
roadblock strategies. Emphasis on effort over accuracy.
Result: Students were selecting more roadblocks and
beginning to solve them through Translator role.
Next Step: Slight refinement of approach (more emphasis
on identification of roadblocks and attempts to solve them
and less focus on accuracy).

Phase 3
Switch to NYSESLAT-style assessments (passages with
NYSESLAT-style questions, including context-clue
questions), along with a reminder to annotate and checklist
at the end of the passage to verify that they did annotate.

Results
Low - identification of roadblocks with more prompting,
some attempt to solve roadblocks and few
NYSESLAT-style questions (50%) answered correctly.
Med - some more identification of roadblocks, few
NYSESLAT-style questions (25%%) answered correctly
High - more annotation and more NYSESLAT-style
questions answered correctly (75%).
*Checklist not checked off completely for each student

Next Steps
Low/Middle
Pull-out for continued practice with this skill and
other elements of annotation (asking questions,
making connections) to further reinforce
vocabulary.
More focus on accuracy of words through word
analysis. Thinking aloud strategies. Previewing
questions.

Next Steps
High
Some pull-out and use of Regents-level texts
and NYSESLAT texts.
Student-led annotation of a NYSESLAT text to
reteach skill to low/middle students.
Emphasis on important/unimportant words.