Over the Shoulder Miscue Analysis (OTSMA)

     This past week I was able to conduct an Over the Shoulder Miscue Analysis with one of the students in my practicum class. To give you a little background, this student is a 2nd grade girl who has been placed in the above level reading group for her class. She read a book of her choice, which was Judy Moody Goes to College by Megan McDonald.

     Miscue Analyses are not new to me. I've done two more extensive ones last semester for a 6th grader and another 2nd grader. But the miscue analysis I completed most recently was less time consuming and still beneficial. I have worked with this student before in small groups, but I have never been able to see her read out loud because the students read quietly in small group and during independent reading. This gave me the chance to see what she sounds like when she reads out loud, what types of strategies she uses while reading, and how much she actually comprehends.

     I wasn't surprised to learn that the student I was working with made only few miscues while reading this book, but that doesn't mean that I couldn't get valuable information from the miscues she did make and the reading strategies I could hear or see her follow through with. All the miscues that I observed were syntactically acceptable and little or no change was made to the story as a whole. So the miscues she did make weren't extreme miscues. The strategies that she used often were re-reading the sentence/phrase and reading ahead. Most of the miscues she made weren't really considered miscues because she self-corrected them by re-reading the text correctly. I could also tell she was reading ahead because at times she would pause after a sentence for a few seconds and then would precede to read.

     I feel that teachers could learn a lot from their students by performing a miscue analysis. There are subtle things that teachers may not catch just by having them read aloud to the class or just having them read to themselves. I also feel asking the students about what they are reading and seeing if they comprehend what they have read is important. I remember when I was in the 4th grade and each student from my class was sent out to the hall to read a passage out loud. I read the passage quickly, but when the teacher asked me to explain the events from the text, I couldn't remember a single thing and had to re-read the entire passage again. I think that shows how important asking questions or having the student re-tell the text is. Students can sometimes read quickly without many miscues, but then they might not even understand or remember what they read. And isn't that the point of reading? To understand the information given to you?