ELL Case Study
By Maria L Le
CI 5644: Working with Linguistically and Culturally
Diverse Students in the Mainstream Classroom
Maria Le
CI 5644
ELL Case Study
David is a 1st grade, Spanish speaking student attending Pillsbury Math, Science,
and Technology school in Minneapolis. He began at Pillsbury MST for the first time this
school-year. Pillsbury has Native Language Literacy (NLL) program for Spanish
speaking students. Had this program been unavailable, David would have qualified for
ELL services. Spanish is the primary language spoken at home and among his Spanish
speaking peers.
David’s NLL teacher has noticed little improvement in his literacy development
in his native language. She has stated that David and his parents have very low literacy in
both English and Spanish. This may play a major part of his very low reading abilities of
the two languages. This one fact shows evidence that David has BICS (Basic
Interpersonal Communication Skills) for both languages, but surprisingly little to no
CALP (Cognitive Academic Learning Proficiency) in Spanish as well as English not only
for himself – but his parents as well. The NLL teacher, regular education teacher, and I
(his student teacher) have speculated whether his parents have confused the NLL
program to a Spanish emersion program.
In addition to the NLL program at Pillsbury, David’s regular education teacher
has done many things to adapt the curriculum in the classroom to fit the needs of the
Spanish-speaking students. The morning meeting (focusing on the calendar, morning
message, and counting on the 100’s number chart) is primarily done in English with some
Spanish. The Spanish portions include the days of the week, the months of the year, and
counting by 10’s to 100. To help the ELL learners like David in the classroom, a pointer
is used when reading the morning message to show one to one correspondence. Many
visuals are additionally available with labels accompanying them – some of which are
also in Spanish.
The challenges that David seems to face is his lack of comprehension of what is
going on. When receiving instruction in English, he is often quiet and relies on his
Spanish-speaking peers – his best friend especially – to help him through his work.
Interestingly enough, the same behavior is seen when he receives literacy instruction in
his native language. He typically gets two out of ten words correct on his Spanish
spelling tests, and is often found copying word for word during message notebook time in
the mainstream classroom.
When tutoring David, he often did not recognize site words in English and is
unable to recall repeated words within the story. He does benefit from readings that
include repetition and referring to pictures for context clues. I have noticed that he
doesn’t seem to have phonemic awareness. According to his 1st grade oral reading
assessments, David has shown very little improvement in letter sounds from the fall to
the winter. For some reason, he performed lower in the winter than the fall in the
phoneme segmentation portion of the assessment (please refer to assessments in the
appendix). When asking David to stretch out the words with me, he is unable to identify
the beginning and ending sounds of words.
Currently, David’s only known supportive resource outside of home and the
classroom is the afterschool program that he attends at Pillsbury. He has been more social
with his peers (as opposed to clinging to his one best friend) since he has been attending
the after school program. He does prefer to spend most of his time with his best friend
from class and often cries when his friend is not in school on a particular day. David also
seems to be doing all of his math homework on his own at home – for which he has done
an excellent job. He enjoys homework so much that he completes the homework in
English in addition to Spanish – and it’s the same homework! The math homework is
primarily visual which may be an aid to why he does so well with his work.
As an only child, David does not have any responsibilities at home. The NLL
teachers states that he is “babied” at home. David tends to cry when upset for minor
things (accidently saying someone else’s name during morning meeting). There was an
occasion in which his school bus had a small accident on the way home from school.
From then on, he refused to ride the bus and would cry to the point that his mother or
father would need to leave work to come pick him up at school. It has been brought to my
attention that in December, his family moved a few blocks from the school so that David
would not have to ride the bus. He is now being walked home from school by a parent.
When language barriers arise when communicating with David, I have found that
using hand gestures or acting something out has helped. Pictures are additionally a plus
when working through a story. When we came to a word that he did not know, I would
first try to get him to give me the beginning sound of the word (which he most of the time
did not know), then I would then point to the picture of the word on the page. When he
would get the word correct, we would read the sentence again. One to one
correspondence was a must as well as modeling good reading when tutoring David.
David’s handwriting is also in need of work. Although he doesn’t appear to show
any trouble with reversing his letters, he constantly needs to be reminded to leave spaces
in between words, when to use upper case verses lower case letters, and to use a period at
the end of a sentence. This behavior is also seen in many of his other peers, so David is
not significantly behind his peers in his writing. Writing will be emphasized in our
lessons more as I begin my student teaching this spring.
The primary difficulties that David faces when interacting with texts and written
material is seem during assessments when he cannot turn to his Spanish-speaking peers
for help. Even when given the assessment in Spanish, David has difficulty reading the
words. What the classroom teacher and I have done to help with this particular difficulty
is to read the directions out-loud (1-2 times in both languages) so that all students may
benefit from hearing them. When we are able to, we will also point to the words as we are
reading the directions so that David may follow along.
What David does do well is math work. He tends to work better with numbers
than letters for some reason. This may be because the math work in the curriculum will
represent number in written form as well as in picture form (i.e. 4 is represented by four
boxes), whereas letters cannot be represented visually. David will typically perform
better in all subjects when there is a visual.
David’s favorite activity to do is video games. The mainstream teacher had
mentioned that his mother will occasionally threaten to take away his video games if he
doesn’t get his homework done. We have not seen any issues with his homework not
being turned in however. Other things that motivate David is the flip chart where a
student is good on green, has a warning on yellow, and needs to be disciplined on red. He
does try to please his teachers by being on good behavior and to receive the occasional
candy treat for being good.
The information collected for this case study is helpful for my student teaching in
that I am better able to understand what level David is at. He is showing great difficulty
in literacy instruction in both languages because he severely lacks phonemic awareness.
If he is unable to hear, identify, and manipulate the smallest units of sound that
differentiates meaning (phonemes), that is obviously difficult for him to read and write in
any language. More intensive work on phonemic awareness is required in order for David
to succeed in school. I might add more visuals with words accompanying them to
handouts and board work to help David during whole-group instruction.
Reflection
What struck me most about David was how his behavior was the same regardless
of whether instruction was in English or Spanish. I would have guessed that one language
would have been more beneficial for him. When working close with him, I learned that
English Language Learners don’t always require instruction in English. They might need
instruction in their own language, or in David’s case, basic awareness of phonemes. ELL
learners are no different from their mainstream peers in that there are various learning
styles which require a teacher to be flexible with his or her teaching instruction.
What I took most from the course to guide my ELL tutoring was to not
underestimate the use of pictures and dramatic play. These are far more universal means
of communication that can benefit any kind of learner. After working with David, I have
also seen how BICS and CALP can play a role in a student’s literacy development. Just
because David speaks in English without an accent does not mean that he no longer needs
help… there is so much more that needs to be done to allow greater understanding of this
difficult language. As a future teacher, it is my responsibility to recognize these factors
not only in ELL students, but all students.