Katie Hardy

READ 366- Section 3

Literacy Assessment
In the early elementary grades, children are at various stages of reading and writing even
amongst the same grade level. These early students can be fall into three to four different stages:
emergent, beginner, transitional, and instructional. To discover what category a student can fall
into, a first grade student, named Eddie, was asked to complete some tasks that focus on different
aspects of literacy. First, a spelling test, followed by a series of words for Eddie to read aloud,
and then Eddie will be given a short story to read aloud. In this assessment, a retelling was
completed earlier, but will be included in this report to help give more details on Eddies
retelling abilities.
Assessments
I.

Assessment One- Spelling

The first assignment Eddie completed was a spelling test. The JMU student testing Eddie

would read out 10 words, while also making sure to not place emphasis on particular sounds.
Following the sheet given, the JMU student analyzed the words Eddie wrote on different parts of
the words: the initial and final consonants, the short and long vowels, and blends or digraphs in
the words. When Eddie was completing this assignment, he heard the word and then immediately
wrote the word. The final scores results were as follows: 6 out of a possible 6 points for writing
the correct initial consonants, 8 out of a possible 8 for the final consonants, 4 out of a possible 6
for the short vowels, 0 out of a possible 4 for the long vowels, and a 4 out of a possible 6 for the
blends and digraphs, and written 4 of the words correctly out of a possible 10. Based on these
results, Eddie had correctly written all of the consonants for the words, but did not for the vowels
and blends and digraphs. Long vowels in particular he did not write correctly at all.

II.

Assessment Two- Words in Isolation

The next assignment Eddie completed with the JMU student was reading a list of words

individually off of a sheet of paper. Eddie had no knowledge of the words before and was only
shown these words one at a time. While Eddie was reading these words, the JMU student was
marking words that Eddie either had to sound out, hesitated with, or read wrong. Eddie first
began on the preprimer list, where out of a possible 20 words, Eddie read 19 correctly; the word
Eddie had difficulty with was pronouncing sad like said. On the primer list, Eddie correctly
identified 15 out of a possible 20 words; the word ride he read as red, the word find he
read as fend, the word window he spent a lot of timing sounding out, the word this he read
as these, and the word now he read as new. Because he got at least 15 words correct on the
primer list, the JMU student put the first grade list in front of him, but Eddie claimed these words
were too hard and he didnt want to try them.
III.

Assessment Three- Level Reading F My Huge Dog Max

The next assignment Eddie completed was to read aloud a text titled My Huge Dog Max,

which was a level F story. Eddie correctly identified 67 words out of the story out of a possible
72. Three out of those 5 words he read incorrectly, he actually ended up fixing himself on a
second attempt. Eddie also pointed with his finger and had his finger follow along with him as he
read the story aloud. Because he scored higher than a 90% on this level F story, the JMU student
pulled out a level H text to try. After completing a picture walk of the story Mr. Bumbleticker
likes to fix machines by Sandra Iversen, Eddie claimed the book was too hard.

IV.

Retelling of the Three Billy Goats Gruff

Eddie completed a retelling of the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff using paper puppets.

He was evaluated on how he used the paper puppets, told the sequence of the stories events,
setting reaction of characters, etc. Based on the subjective rubric for this retelling assignment,
Eddie received a score of 8 out of 15, or on the high end of the range for Early readers and
using story language, and almost a developing reteller. Eddie struggled with the beginning and
ending of the retelling, especially with the details of what happened at the end. Eddie did have
lots of enthusiasm and different character voices while retelling the story, and used the puppets
for every part of his retelling.
Stage of Development
After completing these assignments, the data was analyzed to place Eddie in a
development stage of reading and writing. Based on these assessments, Eddie falls into the
beginner stage of reading development. Eddie is building a bank of sight words of
approximately 20-100 words, does not read silently, is beginning to use story language when
retelling, points to the words he is reading one at a time, while also recognizing beginning and
ending sounds of words. He can retell what he read when asked, can pronounce multi-syllable
words, and follow directions. Eddie does struggle with grammar mistakes, but this is most likely
because he is an ELL student. Eddies writing is somewhat legible, writes from left to right, and
also writes letter by letter. In addition to these characteristics, Eddie also falls into the beginner
stage because he knows his consonants, and can identify some of the vowels. Eddie is also
reading texts that are labeled as D-H, since the My Dog Max story was a level F.

Recommendation for Teaching

Based on these assessments, Eddies instruction can be broken down into four different
parts to spend time on: fluency, word study, comprehension, and writing. The category fluency,
which takes up 40% of the instructional time, is where he can reread familiar text and practice
with sight words. Eddie can also do activities like Readers Theater and spend lots of time
reading aloud. The next part of the beginner level diet is word study, which takes up 20% of the
instructional time, is the time where Eddie can focus on adding more sight words that focus
vowels, and sorting rhyming words. The following category is comprehension, which takes up
20% of the instructional time, can have activities like listening to stories and practicing read
alouds. Retellings can also help with this comprehension piece. The last category for Eddies
reader diet is writing, which takes up the last 20%, Eddie can do some journaling, continue using
interactive writing and be encouraged to share his writing with his peers. With this beginner
reader diet, Eddie can work on becoming a stronger reader and writer, and then a more
successful student.