This weeks blog post is about my experience with Over The Shoulder Miscue Analysis (OTSMA). In more simple terms this is basically a way to assess a students reading abilities fairly quickly. You can do this with OTSMA by looking for their miscues (mistakes) and figuring out quick mini lessons to help this student build new reading strategies.
While learning about this process in class I was quickly overwhelmed. The process itself did not seem too stressful but the idea of thinking about performing something such as an OTSMA on a real student with no practice seemed a little terrifying. But alas, this is the teacher education program. I am not expected to have these practices down perfectly. This is a time for me to learn and grow as a future educator and there is truly no better way to learn or grow than to just do it. So I decided to put on my brave face, smile, and just go for it. In the words of Thomas Paine, "The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection." Sometimes it won't be easy (actually often times it won't be easy) but you still need to push through and learn from it. My first year of teaching certainly won't come close to perfect but I can certainly learn from it and better myself for the coming years. In regards to the OTSMA... it won't be perfect but the student will still learn SOMETHING and I will learn SOMETHING as well. That's the best we can both do.
The student I was doing the OTSMA with was one of my practicum students. This student is fives years old and in kindergarten. Her teacher sent me with six books for her to choose from. These books are apart of a reading program the teachers are mandated to use. The teacher had told me three of the books were in her reading level and the other three were slightly above her reading level. For the comfort level of my student I chose to let her choose which book appealed most to her. She chose Where Is My Cat? by Ann Starman. She explained to me that she chose this book because she liked cats, fair enough! I was happy to see she was reading the cover and examining the title and pictures.
I know I should have chosen a book to read with the student but because this student is in kindergarten I didn't feel prepared to be doing that. Until this OTSMA I had not watched a student read, I had only been reading to them. Because this year may be their first experience with reading, I had no idea where to start in choosing a book.
Overall, the assessment went well! My reader read the book with few miscues and seemed to even enjoy herself while reading. I was able to have conversations with her about the miscues and we even had a great conversation about how helpful it can be to look at the pictures in the book when we get stuck on a word we do not know. I also noticed how great my reader was with attempting the sound out words and blend syllables on her own. She often times looked up at me when she got stuck on a word and I simply said, "lets start with the beginning of the word" she immediately went right back into the book and began to sound out the letters until she formed a word. This showed me that she did have her own reading strategies built up, she had proven to be comfortable with sounding out words and using letter sounds. Yes, she wasn't exactly comfortable jumping right into unknown words but she still gave a fantastic effort at reading them once prompted with the go-ahead to sound out the words. I was very impressed and pleased with our OTSMA session.
Because she had demonstrated a solid concept of sounding out letters to form words, I knew I shouldn't waste her time with going over phonics strategies. Instead I went over how to relate text to pictures in a book. I noticed that many of her miscues looked very similar to the words that were written in the book. Many of these words often directly related to the pictures in the book. We talked about how the pictures were so similar to the text. In one instance she read the word 'bag' for 'basket'. After we re-examined the sentence and the picture she was able to fill in the 'bag' for 'basket' because of the picture in the book helping her.
The assessment fell short for me in terms of book selection. I was not able to really pick out my own book for the student to use therefore I hardly had any prep time with the book I was about to teach a lesson with therefore a lot of my thinking and teaching was done in the moment. I guess that kind of is the beauty of OTSMA, it is meant to be done in the moment based on how the reader read the text. This relates back to the art of teaching. You just kind of need to be thinking in the moment and doing what works best for your class and running with it. You of course should plan what you are teaching that day and how you will teach it. Soon enough the unpredictability of the classroom will kick in and you will be adjusting.
I felt lucky enough to have had my student miscue enough to be able to teach her something but not so much that it hindered her understanding of the story. I kept thinking about what if I had a student who miscued so often that they just wanted to quit with the text. Should we stop? Should this be a teachable moment in pushing through difficult material? Should I assist in the reading? Do we even try to finish the text? Do I continue with the OTSMA? I am still not exactly sure how I would handle this. I guess for now I would think I would want to help the student because I would still want them to finish the story even if that meant me reading the rest of it but praising them for their efforts in starting the story. I think I would still ask them questions while reading that I knew they could answer to boost their confidence. We would probably need to do the OTSMA another time.
This is an assessment I would love to do with a student in my classroom. I like how personal of a process it is for that student. The lessons are about their miscues in the book they are reading. This is not a whole class lesson, it is just for them. In regards to that, once you do this with a whole class you could find themes that many students in your class should be working on. I also like that this is a time to get to know students who may not participate as much while discussing literature. The re-telling aspect of the OTSMA is very powerful to understanding if the student is miscuing but still comprehending or not miscuing but not making meaning either. This process seems to be a good, quick way to help students work on their own reading strategies while building the bridge and strengthening the bond between reading the text and making meaning of the text. Both of these aspects of reading are so important for having a complete understanding.
Besides what I mentioned in my paragraph above, the most valuable thing I learned from this experience is that teaching is about the experience not the end product. So what if this assessment didn't go as well as it could have! Maybe I could have asked better questions, maybe I shouldn't have let my student thumb through the book while re-telling, maybe I should have read the book before my student read it. These are mistakes that didn't harm my student, she still learned something new and I learned something new about OTSMA. The process of teaching should be a mutual experience between the student learning and the teacher learning. If it was a one-sided process it would be boring and then we wouldn't be having experiences.
As in the words of Thomas Paine, I think in terms of my teaching I will grow brave by the reflections I am making about my teaching, myself, my classroom, and my students.
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