Kelsey

Wallace

Literacy Assessment Write Up

On March 16th, I conducted the literacy assessment on a 1st grader. The

assessment showed that the student is a beginning reader and he excelled in almost

every area assessed.

In the beginning sounds, letter production, and letter-sound production, the

child received a perfect score and completed each task with fluency. He would even

laugh a little when I asked him some of the questions. One are in which he did show

some difficulty was in the spelling section. He misspelled shine, skate, float, and

treat. For the long vowel words, shine and skate, he simply forgot the e e on the

end of the words, which I found interesting because I know they had been learning

about long vowel words in class and he always remembers the e. It is possible that

not hearing the words in a context in which he knows they are all long vowel words,

could have confused him. For the other words, he missed the digraphs in the middle

of the word. For example, in the word float, he spelled it fote.

When it came to the words in isolation section of the assessment, the child

flew through the first 2 lists as if they were very easy for him, and received 20/20 on

both lists. Once reaching the first grade list, he missed 3 words, and by the second

grade list, he only missed 4 for a score of 16/20. The words that he dis not read

correctly on the first grade list were: laugh, surprise, and paint. And on the second

grade list, the misread words were: busy, stood, wife, and low.

The student also seemed to struggle with the retelling of the story of the

Three Billy Goats Gruff. He introduced the characters correctly and then laid out the
troll under the bridge. But, when he went to describe the plot he simply said Little

Billy tired to cross the bridge, and then Middle Billy tried to cross the bridge,

Finally he said that Big Billy Wen ton the bridge. He rammed the troll off of the

bridge. He didnt include the reactions of characters at all. Im not sure why he

didnt include more of the details about what happened to each goat when they tried

to cross the bridge or any of the reactions. Im not sure if my instructions werent

clear or if he didnt remember those details to include them. I also think that its

possible that he left out the details because he knew I had just read the story to him,

so I knew the details already. I did not give him any assistance in completing this

task because I wanted to let him show what he knew, so while he left out many

details, he did include the characters and the mail points of each episode.

Given these results, I believe that this student is in the transitional reading

stage. Typically children in late 1st grade to 2nd grade fall into this stage. Some of the

characteristics of the transitional reading stage that this student displayed is: can

read a large amount of words with automaticity, compare text to illustrations to

check for reading accuracy, read fluently, and read texts with short chapters.

For this transitional reader, I would recommend practicing retelling stories

to help improve comprehension as well as practicing spelling words with long

vowels, and some digraphs. This could be done through a variety of activities. For

example, one activity I would like to do is a S.T.O.R.Y. poem. The S is where the

students write the setting, the T is where they write the talking characters, O is for

oops! R is for resolution, and Y is for yes! the solution has been found. This
activity would not only help to build comprehension and retelling skills, but it would

also help teach the child about the different parts of a story.

For the spelling words, I would suggest an activity in which the students

could sort words based on their digraph or try to choose the correct digraph, after

being read the word and having the rest of the spelling in front of them. I also think

the student needs more practice with the long vowel words, so I would practice this

with him by showing the student pictures that represent some long and some short

words and giving them the spelling of the word without the e and ask the students

to decide which words need the e and which are spelled correctly without it. I

would do this activity after a refreshing discussion about the different sounds a long

and short vowel make, since this class has already learned this but need more

practice.