Running head: Literacy Portfolio

Literacy Portfolio
Claire Meitzner
University of South Florida
Emergent Literacy 4312
September 21, 2016

Literacy Portfolio

Component #1: Attitudes Toward Literacy

Mckenna-Kear Emergent Reader Attitude Survey (ERAS)
Description of Survey
The Emergent Reader Attitude Survey (ERAS) was created by Michael C. McKenna and
Dennis J. Kear, two men who desired to learn about young students attitudes towards literacy,
and how attitude towards recreational and academic reading affect students overall development.
Creating a survey like this gave teachers an inside look on their students opinions and emotions
towards reading and allows them to adapt their reading lessons based off these emotions. Earlier
philosophers assumed that if a teacher expressed the right amount of motivation towards the
importance of reading that students would inevitably follow along (Mckenna, Kear 1990 p.1),
but that is no longer the common belief. More and more teachers are seeing the direct connection
between attitude and students reading. Reading is everywhere in students lives and it is
important for teachers to spark their interest in reading early on in their lives. With the help of
this assessment elementary teachers can now understand their students feelings towards both
academic and recreational reading early on in their educational life. Each student who takes this
survey has their own unique feelings towards literacy, for instance a student might love reading
at home (recreational) but absolutely despise reading at school in the classroom (academic).
McKenna and Kear designed this assessment so it could be administered to an entire
classroom or individually to a single student. With this survey, teachers are able to pinpoint the
feelings of their entire classroom and each student individually and use these score to adjust how
they teach reading accordingly. The assessment is designed with the student in mind using
simply worded questions and pictorial format responses. The comic strip character Garfield, with

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varying facial expressions, is the pictorial format that McKenna and Kear chose as the answer
choices for this assessment. Students decipher their emotions towards the questions being asked
and then are asked to connect their emotions to those of Garfields. The entire assessment is
twenty questions long. The first ten questions are geared towards recreational reading and the
other ten questions are based on attitudes towards academic reading. After the assessment is
administered each picture of Garfield is then scored by giving it 1, 2, 3, or 4 points, with 4 being
the happiest Garfield image and 1 being the very upset Garfield image. The scores of the
academic and recreational questions are then added together to obtain the full scale raw score.
Before examining the total raw score, teachers can see the students opinions of reading
academically and recreational. Teachers can check the appendix, which McKenna and Kear
provided in the back of the survey, to compare the students raw score results to a large scale
study that was conducted in January 1989(Mckenna, Kear 1990.p.13). Comparing the raw scores
of the survey allows teachers to see how their students scores relate to a national sample of
students in the same grade level. The raw score calculations allow teachers to create an
instructional plan for their students incorporating the new knowledge of the students attitudes
towards reading.
Background Information on Student
My host school classroom is kindergarten. Generally, kindergarten students are all put
under the category of being an emergent reader, so this assessment would work with
practically any of the students in my class. The first two days of my internship I observed the
students and decided that Madison Phelps (pseudonym) would be a great choice. Madison is a
five-year-old student who is very social and interactive in the classroom. She is a Spanish and
English speaking student. Her family speaks mainly Spanish at home, but she is fluent in both

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languages. Her family consists of her mother, father, one older sister, and herself. Her mother
helps her with reading and homework. She likes a variety of different books from Disney books
to David Gets in Trouble books. From what I have observed, she is very active in the
classroom and communicates well with the teacher and her peers.
Administering of Survey
I discussed with my CT the best time to pull Madison from the group to administer the
test. When the time came I asked her to join me for a small assignment that she was going to do
with me. At first she was nervous to be doing something different from the rest of the class, but I
anticipated that, so to open her up, I started asking her questions about what she liked to do for
fun and about her time at school. Then, I transitioned into the survey by allowing her to pick a
colored pen that she would like to write with, she picked pink. She loosened up to me and gave
me her full attention while I explained the activity and what the different Garfield images
represented. I also made sure to insist that she answer the questions truthfully and as best as she
could. I read each question aloud and gave her time to think about her answer, elaborating when
needed. Some of the questions I have reasons to believe that she may have arbitrarily chose an
answer, for example number nineteen asks how she feels about using a dictionary, when I asked
her if she knew what a dictionary was she said no and after I explained to her what it was she
still chose the answer of the happiest Garfield. Overall Madison gave the test and myself her
undivided attention and as a thank you I offered her two fun stickers. She was very happy, and I
felt a closer connection with her as the day continued.

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Results
Once the survey is completed the surveyor will then count up the points by awarding
each different Garfield with its own score. The happiest Garfield is worth four points, slightly
smiling Garfield three points, mildly upset Garfield two points, and very upset Garfield one
point. After each point is written down a composite score of the recreational reading questions
are calculated and then the same is done for the academic reading questions. Those two score are
then added together to make the full scale raw score. Each of these separate scores are then used
when analyzing the students percentile rank by grade based off the results of a large-scale study
that McKenna and Kear provided. To interpret the results, find all three of the scores separately
in coordination with the grade level of the student. Madisons recreational and academic score
was both 38 which means she had a recreational percentile rank of an 89 and an academic
percentile rank of 88. Her full scale raw score was 76 which made her full scale percentile rank
of 90.
Instructional Decisions
After reviewing Madisons score on the Mckenna-Kear Emergent Reader Attitude Survey
(ERAS) I only have a few instructional suggestions. The first thing I would suggest would to
continue to allow Madison individual reading time and document how she is doing during
independent reading. Allowing students to read independently will also improve their oral
vocabularies (Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p.14). As she becomes an even better reader and
grows as a student expectantly her love for reading will grow equivalently. In addition, I would
continue to gradually advance her reading level and also expose her to a variety of reading levels
during independent reading. Being exposed to different levels will help Madison see what will be
expected of her in the future and it will help challenge herself and make goals for her to achieve

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in the future. In order for this to be successful Madison does not need to be barraged with too
advanced of books that could cause her to become discouraged to read. Along with having
different varieties of book levels I would give Madison the opportunity to read different genres
of books (Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p.21). Reading different genres of books will allow
her to explore her options and see what she is interested in.
Component #2: Print Concepts, Letters and Sounds and Phonemic Awareness
Literacy Practices Observed
My CT recognizes the importance of reading in the development of a well-rounded
student and believes that reading is the basis for all learning. She has displayed many different
literacy teaching tactics that were presented in the reading for this course. The first two hours of
the day are designated specifically to literacy and writing practice. In the earliest days of my
interning this consisted of learning the alphabet, letter sounds, and sight words. My CT uses a
variety of methods to teach these for example, she uses songs and rhymes to help students
remember letter sounds and how to spell sight words. The students respond quite positively to
this tactic. I have observed that Madison specifically singing the songs as she practiced writing
sentences. There is also a large board that has all the sight words in alphabetical order that I have
observed Madison consistently referring to when working on reading and writing. My CT uses
many forms of reading in the classroom such as teacher read a-louds, independent reading, and
reading with a friend. Along with this variety she provides the students with a large diversity of
books to choose from, when reading independently or with a friend. During the foundational
skills portion of the morning my CT focuses of the basic fundamentals that students need to
become better readers, such as phonics, phonemic awareness, sight words, comprehension. My
CT uses a variety of methods to teach these different skills. Sometimes she will read a big book

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and prior to reading the book have the students look at the cover page and the pictures in the
book and make an educated guess as to what the book will be about. Other times she will have a
lesson planned out when the students have to guess the covered words. The students have to read
the non-covered section of the sentence and use context clues, including a picture, to determine
what the covered word is. This lesson helps students with comprehension and the use of context
clues. My CT also uses an activity referred to as Making Words. She gives the students a set of
letters and asks the students to spell out certain words out of the letters they are given. This
lesson gets students to work on their spelling, patterns, rhyming, and phonics. For example, my
CT gave the students a set of letters that contained a, c, t, p, i, and r. She asked the students to
spell at (which was their sight word for the day) then she asked them to spell cat. The students
sounded out the word cat and then found the c in the list of letters. She then had them spell cap,
and so on. This activity is interactive and expands over a large amount of content. Along with all
that, I have observed my CT enforcing the method of Daily 5 in her classroom, which gives the
students a choice of five different literary based sections, to help improve their reading. The five
options are work on writing, word work, a reading computer program, read to self, read to friend,
or read with teacher. Every day the students get the choice of what they want to work on and by
the end of the 9 weeks they are too have had equal time in each section, which they record in a
folder. In the schedule for the day, Daily 5 is allotted an hour and at the half-way point, students
switch and do a completely different activity of their choice. This program is a great way for
students to get a variety of literary practice throughout the week. Since the teacher is busy
working with a guided reading group, this program demands that students be able to work
independently and stay focused.
Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Awareness

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Description of Test
The Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Awareness branched off the many studies that
promote the idea that phonemic awareness is strongly related to success in reading and writing
(Yopp, 1995. p. 20). The education researchers who took part in creating this test wanted to
provide teachers a way to understand and comprehend their students ability to separately
articulate the sounds of a spoken word in order. With this knowledge teachers have the potential
to help create specifically designed lesson plans for students who need help becoming more
phonemically aware, which will in the long run help them become better readers and spellers.
The test asks students to separately articulate the sounds of a list of fairly familiar and common
words such as dog, red, top and race. The list of words has a range of types of words and
structures of words. Some words contain single phonemes, some contain blends, which contain
two or three phonemes, and some contain diagraphs such as /sh/ and /th/ (Yopp, 1995 p. 22-23).
The scoring of the test is based off the number of items correctly segmented, no partial credit is
awarded. The sounds that make up the word had to be given correctly in the right order, if the
student just simply spells out the word it is not considered correct. If students do not understand
the instructions of segmenting the word by the sounds in the word, the teacher is recommended
to give an example to help assist. This test is suggested to be administered on students in
kindergarten or first grade reading range. This test needs to be administered on students who are
already able to read independently because they are already showing signs of being able to
segment words. The test consists of 22 words for the student to segment, if a student scores 1722 words correctly they are considered to be phonemically aware, students who score 7-16
correct are labeled as having emerging phonemic awareness, and students who score 0-6 correct
are considered to be lacking phonemic awareness (Yopp, 1995. p.23). Students who are

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phonemically aware and segment most of the words correctly can be may be put into the
category of a student with high reading and spelling potential. Emergent phonemically aware
students show an average knowledge of phonemic awareness. If students scores fall under the
category of lacking phonemic awareness than it is suggesting that they are likely to exhibit signs
of having difficulty with reading and spelling. If students are unable to understand that words are
made up of sounds, then it will be difficult for them to be able to spell or identify words when
reading (Yopp, 1995. p.23).
Administering of Test
I discussed with my CT that I would be administering the Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic
Awareness to Madison and that it is designed to help me understand her phonemic awareness. At
the time the test was administered, Madison had just finished a spelling activity that required her
to work of listening to the sounds of letters in order to spell different words that had similar
structures and patterns such as sat, cat, pat. By the time I pulled her to administer the test she had
appeared to be warmed up. I welcomed her with a warm smile and explained to her that we were
going to play a word game. I described that I was going to read her a list of words and she was
going to break the word apart, telling me each sound that she heard. She looked slightly nervous,
so I told her we were going to practice before we started, she smiled and we then got started. On
the practice word man, she started out by spelling out the word, but I kindly reminded her that I
wanted her to tell me the sounds that make up the word man /m/-/a/-/n/. She nodded her head and
then we started. From then on she did her best segmenting the words. I could tell that when it
came to words on the list that I knew she could not even spell or words that we larger she started
to have a more difficult time segmenting but overall she did very well. One thing that I noticed
while she was spelling the words was she did a very good job of getting her mouth ready to say

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the word and she sounded out every letter in the words until she got to the end of the word. When
we were finished I said thank you to her and said that she did a great job!
Results
Madisons score of 11 correct out of 22 puts her in the category of an emerging
phonemically aware student (Yopp, 1995 p.23). She did a great job at segmenting words such as
dog, me, sat, and ice. Words that she did not get correct consist of words like keep, grew, three,
job and do. The words she got incorrect I noticed were words that she was having trouble hear
the correct letter sounds for example, job she segmented into /g/-/a/-/b/ instead of /j/-/o/-/b/. She
was confusing the sounds of the letter g and j. Madison being in the emerging category of
phonemic awareness shows that she has potential for becoming a great reader, she is showing
early signs of great phonemic awareness. She does need to work on her blends and digraphs but
considering her grade level and the timing of this test in the school year, her teacher may not
have taught these different word structures yet (they are still working on singular phonemic
structured words).
Instructional Decisions
Based on the results of the Yopp-Singer Test I would have to say that Madison is well on
her way to becoming a great reader but, there is room for improvement. I would suggest more
focus on phonics in the classroom to help her grasp this concept even more. She seems to
understand the importance of hearing the sounds of the words but she does not know all the
different sounds that letters can make. I would suggest continuing to work on her remembrance
of letters sounds (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 161). She could benefit from
activities that require her to match the sounds to letters, especially the letters that consist of more

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than one sound for instance, vowels. Since vowels make more than one sound Madison tends to
get confused and does not understand why they do not make the same sound such as the long a
() sound as in ape and the short a () sound in at (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012.
p.161). Working on vowel sounds would be a good start for increasing Madisons phonemic
awareness. After working on that for a while I would suggest bringing in the concept of blends
and diagraphs. These will help Madison understand that certain letters when placed together do
not need to be segmented completely such as /th/ and /sh/. Keep in mind that all these
instructional decisions should be implemented into Madisons curriculum once she has mastered
the preceding lessons, they should not all be thrown at her all at once. Following the introduction
of diagraphs, I would lastly present prefix and suffixes to Madison. Adding the knowledge of
prefixes and suffixes will assist Madison is decoding words that she may not know. They will
help her understand that if she can decode parts of a word, she may be able to understand the
meaning of the word without having to look it up in a dictionary and it will help her to identify
words that relate to each other based off of similar patterns (Cunningham & Allington, 2016,
p.75). Incorporating more independent phonics practice may also help Madison (Cunningham &
Allington, 2016, p. 39). When she does group phonics practice she tends to look around at other
students answers and seems to second guess her answers. Aside from strict phonics practice,
simply practicing reading aloud in the classroom will help or listening to the teacher read aloud
will help Madison with her phonics (Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p. 33). Lastly I would
suggest finding songs that emphasize working on phonemic awareness. I believe that it will have
a similar affect like the sight word and alphabetical songs that the students often refer too. Songs
that go over common words may benefit the students and help them remember how to spell and
segment each word.

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Reflection
After administering this test, I am not concerned about Madisons overall phonemic
awareness. There areas where she can work on improving, but she is right on track for her grade
level and I am more than positive that she will continue to improve and grow in her phonemic
awareness throughout the year. If she continues to work on remembering the different sounds
that letters make and getting her mouth ready to segment words based on their sounds, I believe
she will turn into a phonemically aware student. If I could I would change the environment that I
chose to administer this test to Madison. Since I chose to do it in the middle of the classroom
while all the other students were working around us, Madison seemed to get slightly distracted
every so often, and would looking at what other students instead of working on segmenting the
words. In the future I will take this into account and find a quieter area for us to work where she
will be less likely to get distracted.
Component #3 Word Knowledge: Vocabulary and Word Study
Primary Spelling Inventory (PSI)
Description of Test
This assessment is suggested for in kindergarten through third grade students to assess the
word knowledge that students bring to their reading and writing (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton &
Johnston, 2012. p.29). The students are read a list of 26 grade appropriate words that get more
difficult as they go down the list (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p.29). The
words vary in type and structure. Words at the beginning of the assessment start out simple such
as fan and pet, these words have simple structures of just consonants and a short vowel. As

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the list goes down the structure of the words gets more complex adding in diagraphs such as sh
in shine and blends such as sl in sled (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p.
315). The test administrator can choose when to stop the assessment when they feel as if the
words are getting too difficult for the student, for instance kindergarteners or other emergent
readers may only be able to spell the first five words (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston,
2012. p. 315). It is up to the administrator of the test to dictate if the student can spell the
pending words. The administrator needs to keep in mind that they do not want to overwhelm the
student too much because it may cause stress and anxiety. The test looks to see if the student
understands and addresses the features that make up words such as initial and final consonants,
short vowels, digraphs, blends, common long vowels, other vowels, and inflected endings (Bear,
Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 315). In order to score the students answers each
word needs to be analyzed by checking off the features spelled correctly (Bear, Invernizzi,
Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 29) that are listed in Primary Spelling Inventory Feature Guide
that is included in the assessment. After each word is analyzed each feature that the student used
correctly gets added to the students total score. The ratio may need to be adjusted depending on
the number of words called out (Primary Spelling Inventory Directions. p.3).
Administering of Test
Prior to administering the test I was aware of some of the students strengths and
weaknesses when it came to spelling, due to the fact that I have been observing her academics
progress for a couple of weeks. Nonetheless I was still interested in seeing how she would do
when she and I worked alone on this assessment. I asked Madison to come and join me and that
we were going to spell some words together. I made sure she was aware that she was to spell the
words to the best of her ability and if she is lost on how to spell a word that she should just do

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her best and write down all the sounds that she hears. I gave her a paper with larger lines so it
would be easy for her to write and then I started the assessment. I called out the first word aloud
fan and then used it in a sentence. She listened to me intently to hear the entire word, then she
repeated the word aloud to herself a couple of times, sounding out the parts of the word f/a/n/.
She then wrote what she was hearing on the paper. She continued this process for the next seven
words. When I noticed her struggling with the words I stopped the test. She stayed motivated
through it all, but I could tell she was looking for some sort of reassurance to if she was
answering them correctly, but I made sure to motive her to keep going and do her best. When she
was finished we finished she look happy with her work, and I thanked her for her participation.
Results
Calculating her results was slightly confusing because I did only administer 7 of the 26
words, this meant that I had to adjust the ratio. After adjusting the rations Madison scores were:
words correct 1/7, features correct 11/21, and a total score of 12/28. The one word that she
spelled completely correct was the first word fan. Following the first word Madison used her
skills of listening for the sounds in the word and this helped her with the features initial and final
consonants but she found it difficult to recognize the short vowels in the words pet, dig, rob, and
gum. When it came to the longer more complex words hope and wait, that Madison did not
seem to be exposed to, she seemed to struggle and that is when I decided it was best to stop,
because the rest of the words only got even more difficult. With these results, we can see that
Madison is capable of identifying the consonants in consonant vowel consonant (CVC) words
and should focus more on short vowel letters and sound recognition. Madisons score puts her in
the spelling stage of an early letter name-alphabetic emergent speller.

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Instructional Decisions
With the results of the Primary Spelling Inventory (PSI) there are a few things that I
suggest for Madison to do to improve her spelling. As an early letter name-alphabetic emergent
speller Madison is able to spell the first sound and the last sound on single-syllabic words but she
often leaves out middle elements of words such as vowels (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton &
Johnston, 2012. p. 11). In the PSI, Madison left out the short vowels in the 6 out of the 7 words
that she was asked to spell. The first thing that I suggest that Madisons teacher to explicitly
teach lessons on recognition of short vowels because students that are solid at determining initial
and final consonant sounds are considered ready for the studying of short vowels (Bear,
Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 166). One way to introduce short vowels to Madison
would be presenting them through the spelling technique of phonograms, otherwise known as
word families (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 167). Word families are groups
of words that rhyme and are spelled similarly, in Madisons case I would suggest using word
families that share the same vowel sounds, such as the short a: pan, man, fan, can, cap, tan, cat
(Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 167). Going over these vowel families will
help Madison break down the word and then be able to understand the different sounds she is
hearing in the words. After going over same vowel word families start to expose Madison to how
to compare different words that have different vowels (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston,
2012. p. 167). Exposing Madison to these different vowels will help her when she is attempting
to spell different words because she can recall words that she already knows that have similar
sounds (Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p.64). A fun lesson to help Madison with her short
vowel recognition would be a game board that has different CVC words on them and in order to
move through the board game Madison would have to spin a spinner that has different vowels on

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then and then she would have to find the word on the board that used the vowel sound that the
spinner landed on (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 193). This is a fun and
competitive game that Madison may enjoy and find very helpful to teach her short vowels. In
addition to more focus on short vowel recognition and spelling I would suggest to continue have
Madison work on her consonant recognition. Even though she got 5/7 of the initial and final
consonants correctly on the PSI I would suggest more practice to help continue cultivate her
knowledge. Using a initial consonants picture and sorts would be a good way to maintain her
knowledge of consonants (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 331-333). The last
two instructional decisions I suggest for Madison, to improve her spelling, would be having her
participate in spell checks and sounds sorts. Madison should be given a set of grade appropriate
words at different points during the school year to measure her spelling progress (Bear,
Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 45). This will help her teacher see her progress, and
if she needs to make changes in her teaching techniques but it can also be shown to Madison to
show her her improvement throughout the year. The sound sorts activity would be a great way
for Madison to practice spelling in general. By giving her a set of images to see, to sound out and
then spell, would be an effective way to help Madison improve her spelling because it makes her
think of the word then sound out and identify the parts of the word and then write them down in
writing (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 57). Also, having her sort the images
based off their sounds and spelling would help Madison recognize how words that sound the
same can be spelled similarly.
Reflection
After analyzing Madisons PSI results and putting together instructional decisions based
on those results I feel as if she is on the right path. As an early letter name-alphabetic emergent

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speller she is applying her alphabetic principle to consonants and leaving out her vowels sounds,
but if she continues to work on her consonant recognition and is given more explicit short vowel
instruction she will be on her way to the next stage of emergent spelling. The PSI assessment did
a good job of measuring her spelling capabilities.
Core Vocabulary Screening
Description of test
This assessment is meant to measure students knowledge of the meaning of grade-level words.
Students are asked to read a word in a box and be able to accurately choose from three other
words, whose definition is similar to the word in the box (Core Vocabulary Screening. P.120).
Students vocabulary knowledge is an essential part of their ability to understand and comprehend
text, and this assessment is designed to see if they have adequate knowledge of vocabulary words
that they may come across while reading grade appropriate text (Core Vocabulary Screening.
P.120). There are 30 words in a box and each word has a choice of three words that the taker
must decide which answer choice is a synonym or near-synonym. The words that the students are
tested were specifically chosen based of commonly seen words that appear in grade specific
literature and instruction (Core Vocabulary Screening. P.120). The score is calculated by adding
up the number of words that the student matched up correctly. With those scores the test can
determine what the students performance level. Performance levels are in three categories; 2330 words correct is Benchmark level, 15-22 correct is Strategic level, and 0-14 is Intensive level
(Core Vocabulary Screening. P.121). Instructional decisions are then made based on the
performance level scored. This assessment is meant to help identify if a student has an

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inadequate vocabulary knowledge, it is not necessary useful for monitoring student vocabulary
knowledge growth over a period of time (Core Vocabulary Screening. P.122).
Administering of Test
When it was time to administer the test I realized that the completion of this assessment
relies greatly on the students ability to read independently, each student has to be able to read
the word in the box and also the three answer choices. This is not something that my focus
student, Madison, is capable of doing at the moment, considering she is a kindergarten student
who is still in the process of learning how to read. To adapt the assessment to fit the skill level of
Madison I decided to adjust the instructions so that she would still be able to take the test, while
making sure not to obstruct the results. I decided that reading the words aloud to Madison would
not affect her ability to tell me which word had a similar meaning. Testing Madisons vocabulary
knowledge should not be affected by her inability to read. Her knowledge of vocabulary can be
tested by her ability to listen a list of words and make the connection between which ones have
similar meanings. After determining the best method of administering this assessment I sat with
Madison and explained to her that this activity was about word meaning and I was going to read
her a word in a box and then some other words and she had to circle one of the words that means
the same or about the same as the word in the box. I explained to her that we were going to do a
practice round. I pointed to the word in the box; scream and then read her the rest of the words;
want, yell, hope while pointing to them. She then had to tell me and circle the word that was
similar in meaning. She listened intently while I read them and watched as I pointed to the
different words, then she responded that yell means the same as scream and then circled yell on
the answer sheet. I told her that she was to do the same thing with the rest of the words and she
nodded her head and we went through the rest. When she got stuck I repeated the words for her

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but I did not supply her with any hints to the possible meanings of any of the words, I just
encouraged her to do her best and to make a guess if she really didnt know.
Results
After adding up the number of correct and incorrect answers on Madisons test, I was
able to determine that she was at the performance level: Strategic. Madison got 17 words correct
and 13 incorrect out of 30. Being in the Strategic performance level means that Madison may be
having some difficulty with grade appropriate vocabulary knowledge. She just barely fit in this
category so she needs to continue learning and being exposed to vocabulary meaning. Madison
seemed to have difficulty with longer words such as carpet, jacket, suddenly, difficult, and merry.
I noticed words shorter more common words such as gift, rip, feel, hop, and little were easier for
her to answer.
Instructional decisions
With the results of Madisons Core Vocabulary Screening there are a few instructional
decisions that I suggest that her teacher should use in her classroom. The first is to continue
preforming teacher read-alouds. Vocabulary is different from many other subjects in that most
words that are learned come from oral interactions and reading (Core Vocabulary Screening.
P.122). Read alouds meets both of those needs. I suggest that Madisons teacher develop her
vocabulary through interactive read alouds (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p.
103, Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p. 90). In order to do this her teacher need to tactically
choose books that have wide range of new words that these students may not have been exposed
to yet (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 103). Look for books that have
vocabulary that the students can use in the classroom regularly, words that are likely to be

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illustrated in the story, and words that are repeated more than once in the books (Bear, Invernizzi,
Templeton & Johnston, 2012. p. 103). Keeping all this in mind when choosing books for read
alouds will help Madisons vocabulary knowledge become exposed to variety, which is what she
needs. Having exposure to different words will expand her vocabulary database. I also advocate
for continuing to add to Madisons knowledge of science math and social studies vocabulary
knowledge (Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p.87). One of the eight pillars of literacy suggests
the importance of integrating reading and writing in science and social studies, this can be done
by explicitly teaching science and social studies vocabulary words. Subject specific vocabulary
words can come up in when students are reading books independently, during read alouds, and/or
on tests, so they should be treated just like all other vocabulary words. Science and social studies
specific words dont necessarily have to be taught directly for instance as a list of vocabulary
words to memorize, they can be explained as they are brought up. One other thing that I suggest
to help Madison to grow her vocabulary knowledge would be to encourage students to promote
word wonder. Two ways of doing this could be having a word of the day activity and having
students dress up like a new word that they learned. The word of the day activity would promote
learning a new word daily and Madisons teacher could strategically use the new word
throughout the day to make memorization and understanding of the word easier for the students
(Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p.100). Madisons teacher could even challenge her students to
use the new word of the day while they are working throughout the day. The other fun activity to
promote word wonder would be designating a day during the school year where the students can
dress up like a word (Swan, 2016) and then explain the meaning of the word to their classmates.
This allows students to get creative with how they would portray a word in a creative manner
and then they would have to be knowledgeable of the definition of the word so they could

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explain it to their peers. Making vocabulary knowledge interesting and fun increases students
motivation to learn new words (Cunningham & Allington, 2016, p.99).
Reflection
To reflect on the experience of administering this assessment and developing instructional
decisions based on the results was challenging but I feel as if the suggestions I have made would
help Madison with her vocabulary knowledge. I found it difficult to decide on instructional
decisions because I was aware that most vocabulary that a person learns is not necessarily
learned in a classroom setting but mostly through social interactions with others and during
reading. I wanted to make sure my instructional decisions did not rely just on memorization and
the process of looking up the definitions of words in a dictionary because that is neither fun nor
effective for everyone. Also, those typical vocabulary teaching techniques are generally difficult
for kindergarteners who are still developing their reading skills. When I was in school I recall
having to take vocabulary test and I was not very fond of them so I wanted to make sure that any
instructional decisions that I made did not rely solely Madisons memorization skills. The
choices that I made, I feel, are fun and interactive and something that I feel that Madison will
enjoy and benefit from.

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References

Core Vocabulary Screening. (2008). Academic Therapy Publications. Retrieved November 8,

2016 from file:///C:/Users/cmeitzner/OneDrive/Documents/USF%20FALL
%20CLASSES/Emergent%20Literacy/COREVocScreening%20Assessment_000-3.pdf
Bear, D. R., Johnston, F. R., Invernizzi, M., & Templeton, S. (2010). Words their way: Letter and
picture sorts for emergent spellers (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Cunningham, P. M., & Allington, R. L. (2016). Classrooms that work: They can all read and
write. New York: Longman.
Mckenna, M. C., & Kear, D. J. (1990). Measuring Attitude Toward Reading: A New Tool for
Teachers. The Reading Teacher SELECTIONS, 43(8), 626-639. doi:10.1598/rt.43.8.3
Swann, Natasha, Dress up like a word day October 5, 2016
Primary spelling Iventory. (n.d.). Retrieved October 25, 2016, from
file:///C:/Users/cmeitzner/OneDrive/Documents/USF%20FALL%20CLASSES/Emergent
%20Literacy/Primary%20Spelling%20Inventory%20Directions-3.pdf
Yopp, H. K. (1995). A Test for Assessing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children. The Reading
Teacher SELECTIONS, 49(1), 20-30. doi:10.1598/rt.49.1.3