Over the Shoulder Miscue Analysis

     Last year I was enrolled in the class Literature and Learning 1 and 2.  In this class one of our biggest assignments that we had to complete was what the teaching world calls a "Miscue Analysis".  A Miscue analysis is done when we try to gain more knowledge about our students as readers in our classroom.  A text is chosen that the student will read, as a teacher you have a written out script to follow along with while the student reads, the student is recorded while reading, then the student is suppose to give a retelling of what they just read to you.  Truth be told, this was one of the most challenging and frustrating experiences I have had in education so far.  It is hard for me to really rely on something like a miscue analysis to judge what kind of reader my student is.  I think this analysis does not account for a lot about how a reader learns to read and why they read the way they do.  Sometimes students can have a lot of syntax, semantic, or graphophonics miscues that may lead you to believe that a student cannot read but when they retell the story they just read to you it shows that they have comprehended the main ideas, listed characters, make connections, and can even make higher order thinking connections.  However, I do think miscue analysis' are necessary to see where a reader is at the time and it helps you discover strategies that are being used by the reader.  With all that said, and I believe that was a mouthful, I was very apprehensive to do an Over the Shoulder Miscue Analysis (OTSMA) for my Literature and Learning 3 class this semester.
     I was reassured by my teacher that this OTSMA would be far less painful than the initial miscue analysis that we had done the previous semester but I still had my doubts.  While this analysis was less in depth I was still worried that it wouldn't show me what my reader was capable of.  I did my best to change my attitude towards the analysis going into it and make it a positive experience.  I worked with a sixth grade student to perform this OTSMA.  At the time sixth grade was reading Phantom of the Tollbooth by Norton Juster so I had the student read to me for about fifteen minutes from that book.  One thing that I was skeptical about, and I think this is very important when performing the OTSMA is knowing the student as a reader before doing the analysis.  I had only been with my sixth grade class for a couple days and knew barely anything about them so I was naturally I was worried.  I got through the OTSMA with no qualms and surprisingly the student wasn't panic'd either so that helped me a lot.  With the Phantom of the Tollbooth it is hard to catch the puns that the author writes in but my student did a fairly good job at that.  My student is a proficient reader so he did not have many miscues.
     I think that it is very important to know your student as a reader when doing your miscue analysis.  Because I did not have much time with the student prior to doing the OTSMA it was hard for me to know where the student is and how I can I can better help them while doing the OTSMA.  This is something that I think that I can improve on.  Working with the student for more time prior to the OTSMA will help me help them.  Another thing that I believe that I can work on is being more familiar with the text before I work with a student.  Being more familiar will allow me to ask better questions during the OTSMA and it will help me ask better questions during the aided retelling part of the OTSMA.  One thing that I thought I did very well is encourage and reassure the student that what they are doing is for me and does not reflect on their reading abilities.  Sometimes students can feel a lot of stress and pressure to read perfectly when I tell them what I need them to do and they actually don’t read as well as they can because they are nervous.  I thought I did a really good job of reassuring the student and making them feel comfortable.  Another thing that I thought I did really well was engaging in the book with them by not only asking questions to help with my OTSMA but also engaging in conversation about the text with the student.  I am the type of person and I think that I am the type of teacher that really is all about reassuring that my students are important and intelligent.  I think tests can really overwhelm most students and if I can help alleviate some of that pressure by teaching them the correct tools to read and giving out positive attributes.