Individualized Educational Plan

Tutor’s Name:
Tutee’s Name:
Tutee’s Birth date:
Age: 6 Gender: Male Grade level: K
Date given:

Student’s Primary Language: Vietnamese
Assessment given in primary language? No

Oral Assessments Given:
As soon as I was notified that I would be working with a young beginner in the development of the English language, I chose to give assessments that began basic and could be manipulated to higher levels if necessary. To begin the oral language ability assessment, I decided on using Dante’s, Total Physical Response Activities. It worked out perfectly because when I arrived at the classroom, the class was getting reading for their physical education lesson. The teacher allowed me to lead the warm up and assisted the other students, while I paid close attention to Neil’s actions.

The school’s playground has a painted circle on the blacktop with various shapes on its circumference. I asked the students to stand on a diamond, square, or circle; thus leaving the triangles and rectangles empty. Neil immediately stood on a square. I then asked each individual student to identify his or her shape. Neil identified his shape correctly. Following, I gave the total response commands and paid very close attention to what Neil did.

Some of the examples of the commands that I gave include:
Stand up tall. Raise both hands. Touch your head. Touch your shoulders. Touch your hips. Touch your knees. Touch your toes. Hop on your right foot. Hop on your left foot. Hop on both feet. Skip around the circle. Stop skipping. Balance on one foot. Balance on the other foot. Sit down. Stand up. Get in a line. Run to the fence. Turn around.

After the physical education lesson, we returned to the classroom and began another form of oral assessment. I asked the questions listed in the packet that were categorized into the various proficiency levels. I had planned to go through various the various levels, but as I got many blank stares and simple one-word answers from questions in list 1, I stopped there. Some of the questions that I asked included:

What is your name? How old are you? What grade are you in? What is the name of your school? What is favorite color? Name three parts of your body? Count to 25. Say the alphabet. Take me to your desk.

Following the Level 1 questions, I administered an informal interview based on a project that Neil had been working on. He had reproduced on a poster board, a picture that the teacher had drawn. The picture was a rectangle divided into six parts. Each part was labeled: My Vowels, Aa, Ee, Ii, Oo, Uu. The questions I asked were derived from Krashen’s model found on page 27 in Walter’s book.

Some of the questions I asked are:
Is this a picture? What is it a picture of? What is on your paper? Are these vowels? Did you use paint? Do you like your drawing? What color is the vowel A? What color is the vowel U? When did you paint this? What did you paint on? Did you get paint on your hands?

I attempted to use the SOLOM format for the last oral assessment. I chose the simplest picture of the Zoo. I pointed to individual things on the picture and then asked Neil to say their name. This completed the formal assessment.

Oral Evaluation/Observation:
According to Krashen, Neil is at an early production stage. When asked a question that he understood, he answered with one or two words. Level 1 questions that required yes or no answers were almost always responded to. Questions that required for his own thinking and did not provide either/or answers were received with blank stares or a non-relevant response. One question that he did answer well was, "What are you doing?" His response, “Painting ABC’s.” Neil never tried to initiate a conversation verbally. Rather, he would take my hand and pull me to where he was and would point to what he was doing.
According to O’Malley, Neil would receive a rating of 2 in Holistic Oral Language ability. He displays characteristics found in speaking, fluency, vocabulary, and listening levels. When speaking, Neil communicates personal and survival needs. An example is that he asked to use the restroom during the physical education lesson. Many times when he tried to communicate with others or directly with me, he used one or two word utterances such as help, look, mine, no, quiet, sit, my turn, bye-bye, or me first. I did not witness any short patterns in his attempted conversations. Neil has an extremely limited vocabulary. He uses words that are familiar to him and that he hears on a daily basis. Some include chicks, book, ABC’s, game, dance, teacher, friends, and rug. Neil listens to those who speak to him. This was visible to me, as he looked straight at me when I spoke and gave commands during the TPR exercise and as he watched his teacher during a sharing lesson. He can understand some of the words and phrases said, but many times repetition is required. It is clear when he does not understand, as the result is a blank stare.

According to SOLOM, Neil received a score of 8 and is in the early production level of English language development. He has great difficulty in understanding what is said and often needs the statement to be repeated several times before he actually responds to it. He often resorts to silence as he finds difficulty in finding the right word to communicate with. During recess, he came up to me crying and was trying to say something that I did not understand. I had seen him being pushed by another student and waited for him to say it. He did not, so I asked, “Is there something wrong? Did someone push you?” He nodded his head. His limited vocabulary often restrains his ability to communicate and comprehending what he is trying to say is a challenge. His pronunciation is hard to understand and when asked, he will repeat what he said. He was not able to identify anything in the Zoo picture. Grammatical errors are not too relevant, as he really does not yet speak in full sentences.
Using the ELD standards as a rubric, Neil is at a beginning level. He speaks with single words or phrases and answers simple questions with one or two word responses. He can respond to simple directions and questions using physical actions and by pointing, drawing, or matching objects. Neil participated a lot through physical action. When given a TPR command that he understood, he completed the task. However, when a given command that he did not understand, he waited for the other children to begin performing the action and then copied what they were doing.
He does not use common social greetings, but he does repeat phrases that he hears often such as good morning, be quiet, and sit.

Reading Assessment Given:
My reading assessments were very basic and based on the worksheets found in the course packet. After assessing Neil’s oral proficiency by using his vowel drawing, I used that as a transition into finding out about his knowledge of the alphabet. I asked Neil if he could recite the alphabet. He did so perfectly. I then wrote a letter, either capitalized or lowercase, on a piece paper and asked him to identify the letter. He had no problems, so I moved the exercise to I + 1 and asked him to identify the sound that each letter made. Continuing with identifications, I wrote down numbers on a separate piece of paper. He recognized the numbers from 0 to 33. We went to his desk, I pointed to his name, and asked him what it said. He responded, “Neil Hy.” We went to the word wall and I pointed to different words. He identified some, but not all. We then went to a flip chart and I asked him he could read some sentences for me. Some of the sentences were: We are good readers. We sit on the rug. Who stole the cookie? The cat ate a rat and is fat. As Neil began to consistently struggle with the reading, I stopped there.

Reading Evaluation/Observation:
According to O’Malley, Neil is at a pre reading stage. As I observed his behavior during the teacher’s reading of a story after recess, I saw that he does try to follow what is being read. His eyes were fixed on the page and he concentrated on what the picture was showing. Neil repeated the answer that each child gave to a particular question that was asked by the teacher. I later tried to get him to identify color words, but he could not read them. Yet, once I placed the color next to the word, he knew the answer right away. Neil was able to identify most of the letters and their corresponding sounds. He did struggle with the difference between p and b, but once he was shown a picture that began with the specific letter, he identified them correctly. Neil can identify simple words by using his memory or by trying to sound them out.

According to the ELD standards, Neil is at a beginning level of reading comprehension. He shows some of the characteristics of a student who would be at this stage. He understands and follows one-step directions for classroom or work related activities. He responds orally when asked to give the sound to a corresponding letter. He responds to stories that are read, by saying one-word answers and by using physical actions and other means of non-verbal communication. For instance, when asked how we get milk, Neil points to the picture in the book.

According to the Early Literacy Reading Range, Neil is at an early emergent level. He does understand some of the concepts about print. He knows the directionality of words, as he pretends to read a book and moves his fingers below the words from left to right and from top to bottom. He identifies individual letters and some letters at the beginning of words. He identifies most of the capital and lowercase letters. He knows how to change his tone of voice when reading a sentence that ends in a questions mark, period, or exclamation point. However, in order to read the sentence someone has to read it first. He is able to read high frequency words or words that he has memorized off of the word wall. Neil relies heavily on his memory of word structure and outside support when trying to read.

Writing Assessment Given:
To assess his writing skills, Neil was asked to write a sentence about the picture of the vowels that he drew. He appeared exhausted that day and was becoming anxious, so I left the second writing assessment for another time. The next day, I asked him to draw a self-portrait and write a sentence about what he was planning on doing, during the summer.

Writing Evaluation/Observation:
According to the ELD standards, Neil is between a beginning level and early intermediate level of writing strategy and application. He is able to copy the English alphabet in both capital and lowercase letters legibly. He can copy words posted and commonly used in the classroom. When asked to write a sentence about his vowel picture, he wrote ABC and then many other letters that made no phrase or sentence. When asked to read what he wrote he just said, “ABC.” The next day when asked to write a sentence about what he was going to do during the summer, I was very surprised to see that he wrote, “We go to the bechor!” He remembered to capitalize the first letter and put a punctuation mark at the end. He read the sentence so that the exclamation mark was heard. In order to spell the words, we sounded them out letter by letter. I do not know why he added “or” to his last word.

According to O’Malley, Neil is between a beginning and developing level of Holistic Writing. He is starting to convey meaning through writing, but many times he does so by copying words from another source. He repeatedly chooses the same phrases and words to connect in a sentence. He does capitalize the necessary words and adds an appropriate end mark to his sentence. His writing does show common mistakes in spelling, such as writing beach as bechor. By using phonetics, he tries to sound out the words that he does not know how to spell. Many times, he waits for someone else to enunciate the word with him.
According to the Developmental Descriptors of Writing, Neil is at an emergent level. He is able to recognize, name letters of the alphabet and of simple words, and write them such as at, in, to, and, the, see, you, can, me, what, that and we. He is able to identify the beginning letter sounds of words and write them such as sun, boots, zebra, yo-yo, turtle, van, dog, fish, apple, kite, and jump rope. He writes with a left to right progression and forms his letters legibly. When he does not know how to spell a word, he tries to use sound symbol relationships and he looks up to the alphabet charts for help. There are times when he is able to explain his writing by reading it and pointing to the letters. With his vowel sentence, he was not able to clearly explain what he wrote.

Particular Learning Needs and Comments:
? Spoken language ? Reading ? Written language ? Other – Satisfaction
Neil needs help in all of the above areas. He has difficulty communicating with his classmates and teachers, as his vocabulary is very limited. He has some challenges in pronouncing words properly on the initial try, but improves the pronunciation once he hears it from another person. Answering questions that require for him to come up with more than a one or two word answer are challenging for him. When asked to describe or identify parts of a picture, he becomes silent.

His reading and writing skills need to be worked on together, so that he can see the connection between both. He has been able to memorize high frequency words, but he needs to realize that he can read anything that he tries to sound out – even if he has not seen the word before. Neil has a strong understanding of the alphabet and can legibly print his letters. He now needs to see how he can use letters efficiently to express other things in sentences.

Most importantly, Neil needs to gain satisfaction and understanding of his situation. He has often been teased and ousted from small groups because students have been insensitive to his needs. It is important for him to realize that he is just as smart as the other students and that he can acquire a new language through practice and patience.

Short-Range Goals:
Neil needs to increase his English vocabulary. He knows many commonly used words in the classroom, but nothing deeper than that. He needs to learn more survival and basic vocabulary so that he can communicate better with his peers and teachers. Some of the vocabulary that can be practiced include: things in the classroom, objects on a playground, common greetings, foods, measurements, clothing, animals, human emotions, things found in a community, city, or home. Neil could also expand his knowledge of action words and adjectives. To coincide with the importance of vocabulary acquisition, Neil can improve his reading and writing skills by learning to identify things that he already knows and sound out the words that he struggles with.

Strategy for Implementation:
To achieve these short-term goals, each tutoring session should integrate the three areas without becoming overwhelming. It may be plausible to spend half of the session acquiring vocabulary and the other half using the vocabulary in written form. It is essential to use books that show pictures of the vocabulary or have Neil physically touch the vocabulary that is real such as a tree, swing, locker, pencil, etc. Since Neil is a kindergartener, it is necessary to have relevant, hands on activities so that he does not become bored with the material.

Long–Range Goals:
After increasing his English vocabulary, Neil can begin to have more detailed conservations with others. He will be able to express himself with more than one or two words. He will be able to answer questions that require him to give a personal answer. Upon realizing that he does have the skills to sound out words, Neil should be able to read beginning books that are patterned or repetitive. Once he begins to read books, he can be exposed to reading comprehension and writing. He has a strong understanding of letters and their sounds; he needs to take it a step forward and produce sentences that make sense (although they may not be grammatically correct).

Strategy for Implementation:
In order to achieve these long-term goals, Neil will need to stay motivated and interested in the development of this language. He will need the support of not only his teachers and tutors, but also that of his classmates. Outside help and one on one tutoring can help in his progress. Activities that are appropriately aligned with his developmental levels will foster his growth and move him towards new goals. By charting his progress and continually reinforcing his achievements, Neil can and will be successful in acquiring a new language, that probably at the beginning, seemed impossible for him to understand.