*Pseudonym used to protect the identity of this student.

Interest Inventory Report

Emma is a fifth grader at a middle school in a small city in Virginia. She is ten
years old and is an English Language Learner. I conducted an interest inventory with her
to determine her interests and attitudes toward reading and school. After I explained that I
needed help learning how to ask students questions for an assignment at JMU, Emma
gave me a big smile and said, Ok. I learned from the interview that Emmas family
moved to the United States from Kurdistan within the last five years or so. Emma has two
younger brothers, one is a baby and one is in third grade. Emma explained that she likes
her baby brother for the most part, but her third grade brother is very annoying. When I
asked Emma what she liked to do outside school she quickly responded that she likes to
go to the mall and also likes to play basketball, soccer and tennis with her friends. She
explained that basketball is her favorite sport.
Emma likes funny movies and said that her favorite funny movie is Rio 2. When
asked where she would like to travel or visit, Emma responded that, I would like to visit
Canada or California. She explained that some of her family lives in Canada and she has
friends in California where it is warm. I asked Emma, If you could travel to any time or
place in the past, where would you go? She immediately responded, Texas, 2012
because I used to live in Texas for six months. I miss my friends there. If Emma had a
surprise day off from school, she explained that she would have a big party at school with
teachers and kids. She clarified that it would just be for fun and no one would have to do
work.
Throughout the interview, Emma was eager to share about herself and answer my
questions. She sometimes asked for clarification, but she never took any longer than a

few seconds to respond to a question. I learned a lot about Emmas background from the
initial questions I asked about her personal interests. At the end of our interview Emma
wanted to know if I would be asking her any more questions and if we could do more
questions the next day. She was highly cooperative and engaged during the inventory
interview.
Another segment of my inventory focused specifically on Emmas reading
interests and preferences. One question involved naming a variety of genres and asking
Emma to indicate if she liked to read about them or not. She was very interested in
celebrities, sports, and animals. She asked for me to clarify what celebrities meant when
I asked her about that topic. This might be a reflection of her continuing vocabulary
development as an English Language Learner. When I named the jokes genre, Emma
responded, definitely instead of simply yes or no. She indicated that romance,
wilderness survival, friendship, and science fiction were alright genres. She was not
interested in mystery, history, other countries, cars, or action genres. Emma indicated that
she prefers reading fiction, but Nonfiction is kind of ok. When I introduced the
fiction/nonfiction question, Emma asked if nonfiction meant information books.
When I asked Emma what her favorite books were she responded immediately,
Well there are two. The first was Pumpkin Trouble, she described that this story is
about a chicken getting a pumpkin for Halloween. The second book was Joey Pigza,
which, according to Emma, is a story about a boy who swallows a key, moves schools,
and gets a dog. The Joey Pigza books are actually a series by Jack Gantos. It appears that
the book Emma referred to was, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key. In a follow up with
Emma, I would ensure that she knows Joey Pigza books are part of a series and suggest

that she might want to read the others since she liked the first one so well. When I asked
Emma what her favorite books had in common, she told me that both books have pictures
and both books are funny. She also mentioned that she thought the books were by the
same author, but they are not. I asked Emma to describe how she chooses a book to read.
She explained that she reads the first page and if she makes more than three mistakes, she
knows she is not on that reading level. I asked a follow up question, What makes you
pick a book to begin with, before you read the first page? She responded that she picks
books that have colorful covers. I find Emmas response to this question very interesting
because she selects books based on her ability to read them accurately and on their
appearance. I am surprised she does not choose books based on content and quality. This
sort of mechanical and aesthetic method for choosing books leads me to predict that
Emma does not typically read books for enjoyment. Since Emma likes funny books and
movies so much, I would recommend books with lots of humor to help her take a greater
interest in reading for pleasure.
Another portion of my inventory involved asking questions to gain insight into
Emmas attitudes about reading and school. I asked Emma to describe the best and worst
part about school; I noticed after the inventory that Emma actually named two worst parts
of school. She explained that the worst part about school was that there is no recess in
middle school, but she also went on to explain that her math class is unfair and too hard.
She suggested, Please let us have more science! instead of math. Emma identified
science as her favorite school subject because, I like how we do activities. She
mentioned that she learned about rocks, plant cells, and vertebrates in science this year. I
asked Emma if she likes to read for fun and she said, Yes, sometimes. She explained

that she usually reads because she has to. When I asked about when she reads, Emma
responded, Mostly a chapter every night. I asked Emma if she read during the day at
school and she explained that she usually does this only when the teachers require her to,
but sometimes reads without a teacher telling her to.
I also asked questions about Emmas beliefs about reading. When asked, What
makes someone a good reader? Emma responded, By reading more and more. She
explained that the amount or quantity a person reads determines if he or she is a good
reader. I asked Emma if she thought of herself as a good reader and she responded,
Maybe ok, I dont really read too much. While I was recording her response, she said,
Like middle. My next question was, What is the most important thing about reading?
Emmas first response was, I dont know. Then she thought about it for a second and
said, Understanding what the book says while youre reading. Not going too fast or
slow. Emma considers people who read a lot to be good readers, but she indicates that
the most important thing about reading is understanding what is read. These are two
contrasting ideas and I would be interested to ask Emma the same question in the future
to see how her beliefs are developing.
I also asked Emma a couple of questions about writing to lead into the writing
activity. When asked if she writes very often, Emma said, Yeah most of the time. She
went on to explain that she writes while she is in school and while she is at home. She
further elaborated that she writes at home for the purpose of homework or to help her
younger siblings. I asked Emma why she writes and she responded, Mostly so your
handwriting can get better. It seems as though Emma writes and reads when she has to,
not because she particularly enjoys the activities.

The last part of the inventory involved creating a writing sample with Emma. I
began by describing that we were going to brainstorm some writing topics and then each
of us would write for about five minutes. I gave a couple of examples of writing topics
and then asked her if she had any ideas. She suggested that we write about what we did
the previous weekend. She smiled and seemed eager to write. While Emma composed her
response, I wrote my own response and made some notes on the back of the inventory
questions about Emmas writing. I noticed that Emma holds her pencil almost completely
vertically and grips with her thumb wrapped around her index finger. While writing,
Emma did pause and erase words. She also leaned over her paper to be very close to the
table. She stayed focused on her writing for the duration of the activity and did not pause
to think or look around. Emma wrote very quickly, writing eleven lines in about five
minutes. She was still writing when I asked her to come to a stopping point. Overall, she
seemed very engaged during the writing activity.
After we finished writing, I suggested that we share our responses with each
other. Emma volunteered to go first. She told me about her weekend from memory
instead of reading from her paper and added in several details. One detail was that Emily,
the girl she played with, is her moms friends daughter. In her paragraph, Emma wrote,
I got to play with Emily and then my mom had to go to some where. In her verbal story
she explained that her mom had to leave Saturday night to do an important job. She also
added that her babysitter, Saylie, made her go to bed at 9:30. At the end of her
explanation she explained that everything she described happened on Saturday. After
Emma recapped her paragraph, she listened attentively to my response.

When I examine Emmas writing response I notice several things. Her

handwriting is legible, but still messy. She capitalizes proper nouns like names and the
country, Mexico. She uses punctuation at the end of sentences and capitalized the first
word of every sentence except one. She included a few periods in the middle of sentences
before the words and and so. However, she did not do this every time she used the
words. Emma has a lot of run-on sentences in her paragraph and the sentence structure is
similar throughout. She has control of grammar and syntax for the most part, but does
deviate from conventional word arrangement in some sentences like, So we had a baby
sitter her name is Saylie she is from Mexico she made us food and then she made us in
our beds. I wonder if this alternate word arrangement is a reflection of the way words
are arranged in Emmas first language.
Emmas spelling is mostly correct, but she does make mistakes with compound
words like somewhere and babysitter, making them two separate words. She uses
mostly simple verbs like went, know, play, go, and made. She also uses only a
few adjectives to add detail to her writing like, cold, and fun. In her verbal account of
her weekend Emma used more adjectives like, important. Emmas use of simple words
and awkward arrangement of words reflect that her vocabulary and understanding of
English syntax are still developing.
From the inventory, I can conclude that Emma likes funny books and reads
mostly because she is required to. She views reading and writing as mechanical exercises
that are completed to develop skills to read and write neatly and accurately. As an ELL
student, she uses simple words and is still developing her vocabulary. Emma has many
interests and is generally eager about learning. I would use this information to create

opportunities for Emma to read books she can really enjoy to challenge her idea of
reading as a requirement. I would also want to work with Emma on her descriptive
language in writing as well as following up on how to use commas and vary sentence
structure. I look forward to learning more about Emmas abilities and outlook on school
this semester.