Over The Shoulder Miscue Analysis

In my practicum classroom, I was able to do an over the shoulder miscue analysis.  The reader was a student that I have worked with before and who I have developed a relationship with.  She is a struggling reader, but has always been willing to read for me.  The reader was a female sixth grade student.  We used her read-to-self book called P.S. Be Eleven, which is a new sequel to One Crazy Summer. 

Although I have conducted one miscue analysis before, this one was very beneficial because I will actually have the opportunity to work with the student and plan lessons based on the information I gather.  While conducting the miscue analysis and analyzing it after, learned a lot about how the student reads.  While we worked in small groups previous, the student has only read one paragraph to me at a time.  From the miscue I was able to listen to and watch her read a significant amount of text, which showed a lot more about how she reads.  I learned that she has some difficulties when reading longer texts that she does not experience when she is reading a shorter section of text.  This definitely impacts what we will work on in our small reading group. The article “Inviting Reflection on Reading Through Over The Shoulder Miscue Analysis shows the importance of retellings saying, “Retellings become opportunities to investigate the student’s understanding of what was read”.  The retelling in my miscue was very significant because we have been working on reading comprehension and it really told me a lot about what the student focuses on when she reads.  She focuses more on getting through the text than engaging with it. I wish I had asked even more questions to ensure I figured out exactly how much she understood in the text.  I learned from this miscue analysis that the reader I have been working with struggles with thinking deeper about the text than just the logical, step by step plot.  I think that in our small reading group, it would really help the student to include a lesson on what else a story or text could be telling us. 

In order to gain the most information from a miscue analysis I need to learn how to answer more questions that gets the student thinking more about the text instead of just saying, "Can you tell me what happened?".  I think that in this miscue, I struggled to get more information out of the reader because I didn't know the questions to ask without leading her towards the understanding that I wanted.  Learning strategies to push students to share more information would really help make the miscue analysis as beneficial as possible.  I learned that miscue analysis or progress monitoring takes preparation and time to debrief in order to make it worthwhile.  If you know what you might be looking for during it, it can help you create a more purposeful conference with the student.  I have also learned just how important this type of progress monitoring is.  I have had the opportunity to observe my cooperating teacher conduct miscues and see how she implements them afterword.  Miscue analyses can be a great tool for planning future grouping, future instruction, and any intervention that individual students might need.

One moment that really stood out to me was when the reader related what she had read to a situation that had just happened at home with her baby cousin.  From doing this miscue, I figured out that I want to jump on the opportunity to encourage these connections and having the student consciously think about what the text reminds her of.  This thinking and connecting will definitely help her develop a deeper understanding of what she is reading.

In a previous blog post I wrote about how important I think it is to be as connected to individual students’ learning as possible.  One of my teaching beliefs is based on the importance of meeting students at the ability level they are and helping them move forward.  However, you can’t meet students where they are in their learning if you don’t know where they are.  Miscue Analysis is a great way to figure out students’ strengths and what they need to work on.  It can be used to determine the best next steps that would most benefit the learners.  Over The Shoulder Miscue Analysis is a tool that I want to include in my classroom, but I know that it will take practice before I can fully use it to its full potential.

Thanks!

Kate