I chose to do three assessments on a student in my first-grade practicum classroom named

Maria. Maria is six years old. My cooperating teacher had described to me that Maria is one of

the most advanced students in the classroom in reading. She also told me that Maria was above

grade level in reading. Maria seemed like a good choice to do literacy assessments on as she

worked very hard in class and it was easy for me to have conversations with her.

Running Record

The first assessment that did with Maria was a Running Record. A Running Record

assessment is where a child reads a book aloud to the teacher. The teacher then grades the child’s

ability to read the book based on their reading fluency and how accurate they can read the words.

According to the textbook, “Literacy in the 21s t Centaury” by Gail Thompkins “Teachers take

running records of students’ oral reading to assess their word identification and read-in fluency”

(Thompkins, 2016, Pg. 86). Before I distributed the running record to my student, I made sure

that I was well focused. I needed to have my full attention on my student. I had to listen very,

very careful so that I could make the proper markings on my running record sheet while my

student was reading the book. A challenged I faced, when I was doing the running record was

making sure to correctly mark the errors with the correct notations. Maria read very fast and

sometimes it was hard for me to keep up with her reading. In fact, she was reading so quickly,

that I was writing so fast, and that my handwriting became messy. I then ended up going back

and re-writing certain markings so that I could read them.

Maria was very strong at was fluency, she was able to correctly read words that they

already knew how to read. Maria was strong in words that she had already seen before and

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recognizes.On the other hand, when Maria did not know a word correctly, she did not really try

to sound it out. When she did not know a word she either asked for my help multiple times or

tried to figure the word out using the pictures. I think the pictures caused her to read some words

incorrectly. I thought it was really interesting that on page four of the book we read, “Big and

Small Cats” by Chuck Garofano she read the word “small” correctly. The sentence in the book

on page four was “Cats can be big or small”. I think that she was able to read this correctly

because of context clues. She probably guessed the other word had to be “small” because she

knew the word “big” and she knew that small was the opposite of big. She used her context clues

in the book to figure out that the word was “small”. However, the word “small” was found again

in a different sentences on page nine. The sentences in the book were “Small cats can make good

pets many small cats like to play many small cats like to climb” ( Garofano, Pg. 9 ). This time,

instead of reading “small” correctly she read the world “male”. I think that she did this because

she did not know the word so she looked at the pictures and thought the cats were males. Maria

was very confident in words that she did know. However, for words that she did not know:

around, groups and together, she asked for help. I asked her to try best but, she wanted me to tell

her the word.

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 The grade level standards that could be applied form doing a read aloud activity are as

followed: Virginia Standards Of Learning 1.7: “The student will use semantic clues and syntax

to expand vocabulary when reading a) Use words, phrases, and sentences b) Use titles and

pictures c) Use information in the story to read words d) Use knowledge of sentence structure e)

Use knowledge of story structure f) Reread and self-correct” ( Board, 2010, Pg 2). And standards

1.10 “The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of non-fictional texts”

(Board, 2010, Pg.2)

If my student could not read word she relied on visual and meaning clues. Maria read at

an accuracy rate of 96% which means we should her to a “to higher text level” (How, 2002, Pg.

3). My student made no self-corrections. She either knew the word and read it quickly or did not

know the word and tried to figure it out or ask for help. I choose a level G book because my

teacher recommend that a level G because she told me that Maria had read Level F books fairly

easily. At the end of the reading, I asked her to tell me what she had read about. Maria was she t

was able to fully comprehend the story and tell me the main points.

Spelling Inventory

The next assessment that I did was a spelling inventory. “Spelling inventories are quick

and easy to administer and score, and they are reliable and valid measurement of what students

know about words” (Bear, 2016, Pg.26). The purpose of the spelling inventory is to see how a

student spells a word before they take an actual test. Spelling inventories tell the teacher what

he/she needs to word on with the student. I think this type of assessments was challenging to do

as a teacher. I think this because I felt the grading was really hard to figure out. I think it was

hard to find the spelling stages because based on the data students could fall into a range of

spelling stages.

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 Maria was able to correctly identify the following features: constants, short vowels and

digraphs of a range of words. Marie could use improvement the following: blends, common long

vowels and other vowels. The standards of learning that aligned with this assessment were

Virginia Standards of Learning 1.13 : “The student will write to communicate ideas for a variety

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of purposes f) “Use correct spelling for commonly used sight words and phonetically regular

words in final copies” ( Board, 2010, Pg.2) and Standard 1.6 “The student will apply phonetic

principles to read and spell. Standards a) use beginning and ending consonants to decode and

spell single-syllable words and c) Use beginning consonant digraphs to decode and spell single-

syllable words” ( Board, 2010, Pg.2)

According to the textbook, “Word Their Way”, “if the student is beginning to use the key

elements of a feature but still has some misspellings from the previous stages, the student is at an

early point in that new stage” (Bear, 2016 Pg. 330) I think that Maria would be at the Early

Within Word Pattern spelling stage .She was not able to get any of the common long vowels or

other vowels. However, within the common long vowels she was able to recognize some of the

vowels she heard. She is just learning this skill.

Phonemic Awareness Assessment

Lastly, for my choice assignment, I chose to do the Baseline Assessment for Phonemic

Awareness Skills for First Grade. According to “Word Their Way”, “Phonemic Awareness refers

to the ability to segment and reflect on the smallest units of sound: individual phonemes” (Bear,

2017, pg. 104). The purpose of a phonic awareness assessment is to allow for students to

understand and process the sounds of letters. If they can understand the phonemes, this can help

them develop their spelling as they will be able to sound out words. I chose this type of assent

because I had never heard of a test like this before. I thought it would be interesting to explore

phonemes. I was excited about doing this assessments. I felt like it was going to be interesting to

hear my students try to figure out and process sounds.

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 My assessment student, Maria got a 100% on almost all the different skills tested. Her

lowest was Skill 5: Segmenting Words into Phonemes. In the word “fix” she thought the middle

vowel was an “e” sound. For the word, “Ride” she thought the middle vowel was a “U” sound

and for the word “Huge” she thought it was an O sound. This tests alginates with the following

Virginia Standards of Learning Standards of Learning 1.4 “The student will orally identify,

produce, and manipulate various units of speech sounds within words. c) Blend sounds to make

one-syllable words. d) Segment one-syllable words into individual speech sounds (phonemes).

e) Add or delete phonemes (sounds) to make new words” (Board, 2010, Pg.2).

Summary of Funding’s

On October 9th 2018, I did a running record with a student named Maria in the first grade.

She read a book to me called Big and Small Cats by Chuck Garofano. This book was a level G.

Maria made a total six of errors. She mistake the “word” strong for “sharp”. She had trouble

recognizing the word ‘small”. She asked me how to spell the words: climb, around, together and

groups. I think moving forward, I would like to do a lesson that involves practicing sounding-

out words because I think Maria is very good at recognizing words that she does know.

However, she gets frustrated when she does not know a word and then relies on the teacher.

On November 8th 2018, I did a spelling inventory with Maria. I used the feature guide

from the “Words Their Way” textbook. Maria spelled out 26 words on two sheets of writing

paper that I gave her. She scored a 6/26 on words spelled correctly. She scored a 35/56 for

correct feature points. Maria got 100% on constants, short vowel and digraphs. She got a 6/7 on

blends. She had trouble with common long vowels and other vowels as she scored a 0/7 on both

of these features. However, she is beginning to recognize some long vowels. To move forward

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and improve her spelling I think that it would be important that give e weekly spelling test where

we practice cite words with long vowels. This way she can learn through practice.

On October 9th I did a Phonemic Awareness Baseline Test with my student, Maria. She

got nearly a 100% on skills 1-4. On skills 5: Segmenting Words into Phonemes, She struggled

with the correct vowel sound for the sound: “ride” “huge” and “fix”. To improve on phonemic

awareness I will continue doing a vowel card activity. In this activity, the teacher reads a word

and the student must then hold up the vowel sound they hear.

References

Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2016). Words their way:
Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J:
Merrill
Board of Education Commonwealth of Virginia (2010) English Standards of Learning for
Virginia Public Schools Retrieved from
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/english/2010/stds_english1.pdf
How To Take Reading Records (2012) Scholastics Canada Retrieved from
file:///C:/users/public/desktop/running%20record%20instructions.pdf
Thompkins, G. (2017) Literacy for the 21st Century 7th Addition Pearson Education.

Tompkins, G.E.

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 Rubric
Emma Wesley

Score Self-
Evaluation

Grade-level Appropriate Assessments 2 1 0 2

The choice
assessment is grade-
level appropriate.

Professional language and 2 1 0 2

presentation The language used Some of the language
and images used is not
presented are professional and/or
professional in some of the images are
nature. 1 complete difficult to read and
document is are not facing the
uploaded into correct way. There are
Canvas on time. multiple documents
uploaded. The rubric is
not attached at the end
of the document.

References to course readings 2 1 0 2

The course readings Course readings are
are cited (APA) in minimal and are
natural ways and a lumped together at the
reference page is end of the summary or
included. in one location.

Assessments were administered 2 1 0 2

accurately Attention was given
(and is evident Parts are missing in
through the the assessments.
summary and Levels are not
artifacts) to the provided.
appropriate
administration of
the assessments.

Thorough summary 2 1 0 2
There is a section A few pieces of
for each of the information from each
assessments. The assessment is missing.
process and results It is not clear how you
for each assessment would move this
are clearly student forward based
explained. The next on the results of each
steps based on each assessment.
assessment are
described.