Assessing a students literacy abilities is essential in creating successful learning

opportunities that meet individualized needs. By knowing a students strengths and

weaknesses lessons can become more personalized to fit a students needs. To obtain practice
in administering and analyzing these assessments, I completed several with a student in my
practicum classroom. This student is currently in Kindergarten and so all assessments were
focused on concepts at this level.
The first assessment that the student completed was about the concepts of rhyming
words. In this assessment that student was presented with three pictures at a time. I would
say the name of the object in each picture and have the student identify which objects rhymed.
The student responded correctly for eight out of the nine prompts. The one the student missed
included a picture of a bear, keys, and cheese. After reading the pictures the student repeated
them, then gave me the response of bear and cheese. She then said each word again and
responded with bear and keys. After she repeated the words several times, I moved on
without receiving the correct connection of the pictures. The rest of this task was completed
correctly at an independent level.

The next assessment focused on identifying lower-case letters. For this assessment, I
showed the student one lower-case letter at a time and asked her to identify it for me. We
followed this process for 26 letters, and the student was able to correctly identify each one.
The student completed this task at a steady pace and without any assistance. She did not need
to self-correct at any point or repeat letters at any point. The student understood concepts in
this assessment at an easy level.
I then used the same 26 letters to assess the students letter production. I would call out
each letter one at a time and have the student produce it on a separate sheet of paper. She
wrote the majority of the letters in their upper-case form. Out of the 26 letters the student had
one reversal with the letter S. She also performed a self-correction on the letter G. The
student completed this task without assistance, and her performance indicated the assessment
was at an easy level.
 The next assessment was used to test the students sound production. I used a new
sheet that was again composed of 26 letters. I would show the student one letter at a time and
instructed her to tell me what sound it makes. The student had no challenges when completing
this task. She moved through each letter without hesitation of assistance of any kind.
I then moved on to an assessment that focused on the students ability to recognize
beginning sounds. For this task, I showed the student a picture and said the name of the item
in the picture. I then showed her three pictures that followed and said the name for each of
those. I then asked her to circle whichever picture sounded like the first picture. The student
was also able to complete this task without difficulty. She answered correctly for all eight of
the questions without needing any assistance.
 The next assessment was designed for the student to demonstrate their spelling
abilities. I used the words listed in the Primary Spelling Inventory that is included in the Words
Their Way text to. According to the student performance she falls within the early letter-name
alphabetic stage. In this stage, the student is beginning to recognize sounds and corresponding
letters. It shows that the student is learning to read and write in conventional ways. Based on
the student performance, it is fair to assume that she will quickly be approaching the middle of
this stage. The student correctly identifies the initial consonant for each word and only missed
one of the final consonants in the word fan. This shows that she has almost master the
understandings of consonants sounds and letter recognition. The short vowels concepts are
where the student falls into the early stages. In this area, the student confused e and a sounds
in the word pet. She also demonstrated that she has not developed long vowel concepts
such as o-e in hope and ai in wait. After writing the word hope leaving off the e, the
student told me she knew the word said hop. I asked her if she could make it say hope and
she said she couldnt, but knew it was incorrect. While the initial and final consonants were
identified in both these words, the student couldnt connect long vowel sounds to letters.

The next assessment was to focus on the student word recognition and reading abilities.
I showed the student one word at a time, and had her tell me what word she believed it was. For
this assessment, I began with the preprimer list. The student answered correctly for nineteen
out of the twenty words. The student had two self-corrections on the words down which was
originally stated as brown, and for by in which she originally responded my. Since the
student performed well on the preprimer list, I continued the assessment using the primer list.
This list proved to me more challenging as the student only answered correctly for eleven out of
the twenty words. For several words, the student told me she didnt know without trying to give
a response. For the ones she substituted, the correct initial consonant was always stated but
without the correct vowel sounds. Since the student answered correctly for more than ten words
on the preprimer list, I did not use any further assessment.
 By analyzing the data from the multiple assessments, the student could be placed under
the early stages of a beginning reader. The student preformed the tasks for rhyme, letter
identification, production, and sound, as well as beginning sounds all at an independent and
easy level. She responded correctly for almost all the questions in those areas with no
assistance. For spelling, the student fell under the category of use but confuse. With
instruction, the student would perform stronger in this area. The student has the
understanding of the basic concepts but would still confuse many of the vowel sounds. The
student would also fall into this category for word recognition. She worked through the
preprimer list without difficulty, showing that she knows the beginning of reading words. On
the primer list, the student was familiar with parts of the words, but would often confuse with
words of a similar structure. She would benefit more from having some guided instruction in
this area. Since she could perform well on most these tasks without assistance, and understood
the beginning concepts of the more challenging ones, this student would be classified as a
beginning reader.
To further develop this students skills there should be opportunities for her to receive
guided instructions for spelling and word isolation tasks. Having the assistance of another
would help her to further develop these skills and work towards her abilities to independent
completion tasks. The student should also continue to be challenged and exposed to advanced
material. Having those resources would give the student practice interpreting text and
identifying more complex words. Additional practice with these concepts would allow the
student to become more proficient and fluent in accomplishing these tasks. Since the student
already has the basic understanding for these skills, only a little guidance would greatly develop
her literacy skills.