*Literacy Assessment Reflection Continued

I. Assessment 2: Running Record – Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI)

The purpose of the QRI is to assess the student’s reading skills through word identification,

reading speed, reading accuracy, and reading comprehension. The reading SOLs assessed were,

“Reading 1.9: The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of fictional
texts.”. I was a little overwhelmed by this assessment and nervous that my student would also be

overwhelmed. The student identified all the words in the word list, most of them without

struggling. She read the passage with a somewhat theatrical tone of voice, following most

punctuation well. She relied on the meaning of the story to guide her intonation and

comprehension of the story as a whole. Her accuracy level was very high, although needing 11

teaching supplied words, because it was a long passage. Once she was given a teacher supplied

word, when the word reappeared she was able to read it, or self-correct. Flynn (2016) states that

childrens’ ability to recount a story is important in using language skills to develop literacy (p.

162). So, before beginning the comprehension questions, I asked Ivy to recount the story and

give me a short summary of what happened, as if I had never read it. She was able to recount

most of the main feautures/plot of the story correctly. For the comprehension questions, I asked

for her answers without using the look-back approach at all. Based on her responses to the

comprehension post-reading questions, her comprehension skills are good. She struggled with

two of the implicit questions. Implicit questions require the reading to make inferences and

challenges their comprehension abilities. Hoffman (2011) describes the importance of the ability

to identify important pieces, synthesize meaning from background information and interpret their

own meaning based on their experiences (p. 185). One of the implicit questions was discussing a

somewhat smaller detail about the story (#4), so she wasn’t confident in her answer. Ivy gave an

answer for the other implicit question (#5) that was not the given answer, but I believe would

still count. Ivy achieved an independent reading level for this level one passage.

II. Assessment 3: Rhyme

The purpose of the rhyming assessment is to evaluate the students ability to recognize/identify

phonemic pairs that sound alike – building their phonemic awareness. The literacy standard of

learning assessed was, “Oral Language 1.4a: The student will create rhyming words.”. I chose

this assessment, because rhyming words weren’t really used in the passage for the QRI, so I was

curious about her ability to identify rhyming words/sounds. Ivy enjoyed this assessment and saw

it as a game/puzzle. After almost each question, she would immediately circle the two rhyming

pictures/words and say that it was super easy. Ivy correctly identified all of the rhyming pairs.

She seemed very proud of herself. With a few word sets, she would pause and say them aloud to

herself and come to her answer. Overall, she performed extremely well for the rhyming

assessment.

III. Conclusions

Literacy assessments are an essential component of teaching literacy. To be effective teachers,

we must observe and evaluate our students skills in order to set goals for them to move forward

in improving their skills. Tompkins (2017) discusses the role of the NCLB Act on effective

teaching and accountability; assessments are not only essential in tracking students’ progress, but

also evaluating effective teaching (p.4). Ivy’s reading skills assessed from the QRI were

somewhat strong, especially for her grade level. From observing and assessing Ivy’s reading

skills, I found her spelling ability surprising. I was surprised because she can read at a relatively
high level and can recognize and correctly read common long vowels and other within word

patterns, however, she couldn’t make the connection when she was given the task of correctly

spelling words with these long vowels. From this, I can conclude that while strong spelling skills

may help with reading skills, strong reading skills does not necessarily translate to strong

spelling skills. An important factor to consider is that Ivy strongly enjoys reading. Her love of

reading translates into further reading practice and stronger reading skills. As teachers, it is

important to instill a love of reading in our students so they continue to practice and gain more

exposure to text.
 References

Flynn, E. E. (2016). Language-rich early childhood classroom: simple but powerful beginnings.

International Literacy Association, 70(2), pp.159-166. doi:10.1002/trtr.1487

Hoffman, J. L. (2011). Coconstructing meaning: Interactive literary discussion in kindergarten

read-alouds. International Literacy Association, 65(3), pp.183-194.

doi:10.1002/trtr.01025

Tompkins, G. E. (2017). Ch. 1: Becoming an effective literacy teacher. Literacy for the 21st

century: A balanced approach. Pearson: Boston, MA. pp. 1-33.