Diagnostic Reading Report 1

Diagnostic Reading Report

Julie E. Hawkins
Texas A&M University
RDNG – 361 – 501
Misty D. Stiles, M.Ed.
December 7, 2018
Diagnostic Reading Report 2

Diagnostic Reading Report

Name: P.C. Date of Report: 12/07/2018

Grade: 3rd Dates of Testing: 10/3/2018 – 11/14/2018
School: Spring Creek Elementary Age at Testing: 9 years old
School District: College Station ISD Examiner: Julie Hawkins

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

P.C. is a third-grade student at Spring Creek Elementary School in College

Station ISD. She has been 9 years old since September of 2018. P.C has attended Spring
Creek Elementary School for the entirety of her school career. P.C. lives with her mother,
father, 1st grade sister, and twin 3-year old sisters. Her family is very involved in P.C.’s
school life and gives her the opportunity to participate in many different extracurricular
activities. P.C. enjoys reading in her spare time. Her other hobbies include playing
soccer, dancing, and making slime.
Assessments were conducted after school hours during a program called Kids
Klub. Assessments were administered during the forty-five minutes that students were
allotted to work on homework from school. The environment in Kids Klub in comparison
to the school day is more relaxed, more fun, and less structured. These differences did not
change the formality and seriousness of the assessments. In terms of assessment, seven
sessions were conducted. The examiner did have extended interactions with the student
however through the Kids Klub program and P.C. was observed nearly every weekday of
the semester. During each session, typically two assessments were administered.
The assessments were organized in terms of concepts. Basic concepts were
assessed first, with more difficult concepts being assessed later in the sessions. The order
in which concepts were assessed are as follows: concepts of print/print awareness, letter
knowledge, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, fluency,
vocabulary, affective factors, and comprehension. Shorter assessments were completed
back to back, and two at a time. These tests were organized in the same order that was
taught about in the Reading 361 course.
P.C. has a positive attitude towards reading and was always willing to sit down
and complete the assessments. Throughout the assessments, P.C. was cooperative and
enthusiastic. P.C. is a caring and friendly student who greatly enjoys school and learning.
P.C. gives off an impression of greatly understanding the material they learn and often
understands a concept before other classmates. P.C. is always ready to participate in
Diagnostic Reading Report 3

activities and assist her peers when available. P.C. is patient and is a strict follower of the
rules.

TESTS ADMINISTERED

Screener – Not Administered

A screener is a type of assessment that is administered to all students to give an
idea about their skill level. Screeners are often administered at certain times
within the school year to get an overview of how they are doing. “Screening tests
attempt to provide a broadly defined estimate of a student’s overall achievement
level in a given area. These tests, which are brief and fairly general, are typically
administered individually and are used to identify students who are not meeting
grade-level reading benchmarks. These tests also identify areas where more fine-
grained assessments should be administered for particular students. Above all, the
results indicate the next step to be taken in reading assessment: the administration
of diagnostic instruments” (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, pp. 24 - 25).
A screener is not a specific concept in itself but can rather assess students for
many different concepts. Screeners can test for any concept that is seen to be
necessary. Screening tests should not be used to diagnose where a child is at, but
instead provide an overview of a child’s abilities and an idea of if the teacher
should assess the child further. Screeners are not concrete evidence that a student
is struggling in reading, but they are a measure that teachers can use to see which
students need further assessing.

Print Awareness – Form 4.2 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, pp. 98 - 100)
Print awareness is the idea that students understand how books are printed and
how to read them. This concept does not rely on students actually recognizing
words or comprehending the text on a page, but rather how to go about reading a
text. Some aspects of print awareness include knowing the front and back of the
book, knowing the correct way to hold a book (upright with the spine on the left),
knowing where to start reading on a page, knowing that you read from left to
right, knowing that you read from top to bottom in terms of full lines,
understanding punctuation marks, understanding the difference between
lowercase and capital letters, or identifying a single letter or word in terms of
structure. Without print awareness, students will not be able to read text in front
of them. This concept is the basis of all reading, and without an understanding of
this students would not be able to ever comprehend a text.
Diagnostic Reading Report 4

Print awareness makes a great reader because you cannot be a great reader if you
are trying to decode words while they are upside down, or if you are reading from
right to left. Without the skill of print awareness, they would have no clear
understanding of how a text is supposed to be read and therefore could derive
many different meanings from it depending on how they decided to read it.
Form 4.2 was used to assess print awareness. Students are given a textbook to use
alongside this assessment. As the student holds the book, the teacher asks
questions that require the student to demonstrate concepts such as where the front
and back of the book is, the correct way to hold a book (upright with the spine on
the left), where to start reading on a page, reading left to right, reading from top to
bottom in terms of full lines, understanding punctuation marks, understanding the
difference between lowercase and capital letters, or identifying a single letter or
word in terms of structure.

Letter Knowledge – Form 4.3 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 101)
Letter knowledge or alphabetic recognition is the idea of seeing the symbol “a”
and understanding that it is an A. This concept is what allows students to start
understanding written language and start decoding words. While students can
learn to recognize words as whole units, it is more effective for them to recognize
the individual letters and then put them together to form words. This gives
students the ability to decode new words that they encounter. “There are two
important reasons for teaching children letter names at an early age. First, fluent
readers do not recognize words as whole units. Rather, they do so by identifying
the component letters. This process occurs at an unconscious level, but research
leaves no room for doubt. The second reason is that teachers must have some
means of referring to the letters during instruction. Although it may be
theoretically possible to learn the letters and not their names, this approach would
hardly be practical. The best way to assess alphabetic knowledge is to present a
child with letters, one at a time, and ask him or her to say the name of each.
Several questions arise about how best to implement this procedure” (McKenna &
Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 83).
Letter knowledge helps students become good readers because it is the first step
in giving them the skills to decode words they do not know. Good readers do not
only read words that they already know but can decode new words and use
context clues to decipher their meanings.
Form 4.3 was used to assess letter knowledge. This test simply has all the letters,
both capital and lowercase, laid out in a random pattern. The student is expected
to say the letter name as they encounter the symbol.
Diagnostic Reading Report 5

Phonological Awareness – CORE Phoneme Deletion and Phonological Segmentation

Tests (CORE, 2008, pp. 19 - 29)
Phonological awareness is a concept that includes the ability to recognize that
words are made up of sounds and to manipulate those sounds. This skill is used
with oral language. This is crucial to reading and spelling success as students try
to spell and decode words. Students do not simply memorize the whole word, but
rather individual letters. Therefore, when trying to read or spell a word, they must
sound out each individual part. This is where phonological awareness is
important.
The ability to recognize sounds and manipulate them allows the student to sound
out words. These skills include rhyming, counting syllables, counting words in a
sentence, and alliteration (words that begin with the same sound). Phonological
awareness is a broad term that has many different levels of understanding. A good
reader needs to have phonological awareness skills, so they can sound out
unfamiliar words they encounter in their reading.
The CORE Phoneme Deletion and Phonological Segmentation Tests were used to
assess the student’s concept of phonological awareness. The CORE Phoneme
Deletion Test was administered first. “This assessment included four phoneme
deletion tasks arranged in order of difficulty. The first task assesses the student’s
ability to delete initial phonemes. For example, the examiner may say the word
cat and ask the student to say car without the initial /k/ sound. The remaining
tasks assess the student’s ability to delete final phonemes in blends, such as /t/ in
the word seat; initial phonemes in blends, such as /s/ in the word slip; and
phonemes embedded in blends, such as /l/ in play” (CORE, 2008, p. 19). Then the
CORE Phonological Segmentation Test was given. This test has students break
sentences into words, break words into syllables, and break words into individual
phonemes.

Phonemic Awareness – CORE Phoneme Segmentation Test (CORE, 2008, pp. 30 -

33)
Phonemic awareness is a skill that is the most advanced part of phonological
awareness. Phonemic awareness is a concept that also requires students to be
aware of the sounds that make up the words that we speak. The smallest units of
sound are known as phonemes. Phonemes are the building blocks of oral language
and are sounds such as /d/ in dog or /sh/ in shut. These are the individual sounds
in a word and there are 44 different ones in the English language. Phonemic
awareness is the ability to recognize these individual sounds and manipulate them.
Phonemic awareness is a lot like phonological awareness, but just involves more
advanced skills and working with the individual sounds instead of just
recognizing that words are made up of sounds. This skill is only related to oral
Diagnostic Reading Report 6

language and not written language. “Findings clearly show that (1) children can
be taught to become phonemically aware, and (2) there is a strong causal link
between phonemic awareness and later abilities in phonics and spelling… It is
difficult to learn letter–sound correspondences if you are unable to hear the
component sounds of a spoken word. A certain level of phonemic awareness is a
prerequisite to successful phonics and spelling instruction” (McKenna &
Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 84).
Good readers need to utilize the skills of phonemic awareness, so that they can
decode new words as they encounter them in reading. Acquiring phonemic
awareness is important because it is the foundation for spelling and word
recognition skills.
The CORE Phoneme Segmentation Test was administered to assess the skill of
phonemic awareness. “This measure for Grades 2-12 assesses the students’ ability
to break a work into its component phonemes, or sounds. For example, the word
sat has three phonemes: /s/ /a/ /t/. The word shoe, although it has four letters, had
only two phonemes: /sh/ /oo/” (CORE, 2008, p. 30).

Phonics – CORE Phonics Survey (CORE, 2008, pp. 41 - 52)

Phonics is a concept that refers to the ability to use letter-sound correspondences
to correctly sound out words. This form of instruction helps students learn the
relationships between spoken language and written letters. Phonics is the idea that
the letter b represents the sound /b/ and is the first letter in words such as book,
bag, and bear. Along with knowing letter-sound relationships, phonics involves
skills such as knowing the sound made by common letter patterns such as sh and
being able to use this knowledge to understand unfamiliar words. “Phonics
inventories are representations of what we know about the development of
decoding skills. They are usually organized to test a set of skills in order from
least to most difficult or to assess a particular skill across examples. They may
begin at the beginning, with individual consonant sounds, then single-syllable
short-vowel words, then words with consonant blends and digraphs, for example.
Keep in mind that we must consider the results of any assessment in light of the
number of examples it uses” (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 111).
Phonics is an important skill for good readers to have because it allows students to
read words they do not already know. Phonics is what allows students to sound
out words they encounter in reading. Many English words cannot be sounded out
simply letter by letter since we have complex spelling. Therefore, phonics is
important because it allows students to have an understanding of the sounds that
are connected letters and letter patterns. Also, by using this process in reverse,
students can spell words that they only have heard by breaking the word into
Diagnostic Reading Report 7

sounds and then writing the letters/letter patterns associated with those sounds.
Phonics helps improve student’s understanding of what they read.
The CORE Phonics Survey was given as an assessment on the concept of phonics.
This assessment assesses, “the phonics and phonics-related skills that have a high
rate of application in beginning reading. Reach survey presents a number of lists
of letters and words for the student to identify or decode. Pseudowords, or made-
up words, are included since the student must use decoding skills to correctly
pronounce these words and cannot have memorized them” (CORE, 2008, p. 19).

Spelling – Form 5.6 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, pp. 159 - 161)
Spelling is a concept that refers to how a word is made up of different letters.
There are many different stages of spelling that include emergent spelling, letter
name-alphabetic spelling, within word pattern spelling, syllables and affixes
spelling, and derivational relations spelling. In terms of spelling, “educators have
known that the invented spelling of young children follows a clear developmental
pattern. As children learn about written words, their attempts at spelling reflect
this growing sophistication of their knowledge of orthographic patterns”
(McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 119). First students start to try to write
though scribbles. They then move onto learning letters and using these letters to
try and form words. They then begin to add beginning and ending sounds when
trying to spell, so “hen” may be “hn”. Students then begin to learn about vowels.
Once students understand the alphabetic principle, they begin to learn patterns
that occur in written words. Next, they begin to learn how syllables fit together,
such as the double consonant rule. Finally, students learn how to use semantic
relationships between words, even if they are words that are pronounced or
spelled differently than the common way.
Good readers need to have an understanding of spelling because it can help with
the decoding of words. Although spelling is somewhat backwards of reading, the
skills work together. By understanding spelling, students start to understand the
relationships between sounds and letters. Gaining this knowledge helps students
decode much easier and read with greater fluency.
Form 5.6 or the Words Their Way Elementary Spelling Inventory was used to
assess spelling. This so called “spelling test” should be administered so that
students have not studied the words before testing. This assessment, “can be used
as early as first grade, particularly if a school system wants to use the same
inventory across the elementary grades. The 25 words are ordered by difficulty to
sample features from the letter name–alphabetic stage to derivational relations
stage. Call out enough words so that you have at least five or six misspelled words
to analyze” (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 160). This test has students
simply spell out words, then the spelling is assessed on factors such as the word
Diagnostic Reading Report 8

being spelled correctly, as well as different feature points such as correctly

writing the blend and inflected endings.

Fluency – CORE Masi-R Oral Reading Fluency Measures (CORE, 2008, pp. 77 - 91)
Fluency is a skill that affects how students comprehend a text. “Fluent reading
should involve accurate and automatic word recognition, with appropriate
prosody or inflection. Each component affects comprehension in its own way. To
these three, some have suggested a fourth component: endurance, or stamina, the
ability to read extended texts. The importance of reading with endurance grows as
students move into the upper grades. Obviously, if children cannot read the text
relatively accurately, their comprehension will suffer” (McKenna & Dougherty
Stahl, 2015, p. 163).
Good readers must be fluent because they will not be able to comprehend text
without being a fluent reader. “The literature documenting the relationship
between reading fluency and reading comprehension is extensive and indicates a
linking that is both causal and reciprocal. Oral reading fluency is a general
outcome measure. It makes use of the complex and interactive tasks at the upper
levels of reading skill sequences, tasks that depend on the use of many lower-level
and prerequisite skills. Success on a general outcome measure suggests success on
the prerequisites, making {oral reading fluency} a proxy for multiple reading
skills and processes. When students read passages accurately and fluently, it can
be assumed that they have mastered the lower-level skills, and processes that are
required, but are not explicitly observed, during passage reading” (CORE, 2008,
p. 77).
The CORE Masi-R Oral Reading Fluency Measures was administered. “The
measures consist of Student and Teacher record versions of three oral reading
fluency (ORF) curriculum-based measures (CBM) at each of Grades 1-6. These
CBM measures are designed to sample a student’s oral reading fluency and may
be used up to three times a year. The results of the screening can help determine if
there is reason to further explore student educational needs or to adjust curriculum
or instruction” (CORE, 2008, p. 77). Students will read a passage aloud for a
minute. In the minute, the teacher will assess how many words they are able to
read, and how many mistakes are made.

Vocabulary – CORE Vocabulary Screening (CORE, 2008, pp. 120 - 131)

Vocabulary is important in learning how to read since students must use words
that they have heard to make sense of what they read. Vocabulary is important in
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students can use their different forms of
vocabulary to help comprehend language. There are two forms of vocabulary,
Diagnostic Reading Report 9

sight or high-frequency vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary. “Sight words are

those words that children recognize immediately, at sight, without the need for
analysis. High-frequency words are those words that occur most frequently in
English language texts. Because it is important for children to recognize the high-
frequency words automatically, these words are taught until they become sight
words. In contrast, when we refer to conceptual vocabulary, we are concerned
with word meaning. Conceptual vocabulary is acquired across a lifetime. Our
breadth of vocabulary knowledge continues to grow as we continue to learn more
and more words” (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 180).
A good reader needs to have vocabulary knowledge because it plays a direct
impact on how well the student comprehends the text they are attempting to read.
Vocabulary is important to reading comprehension because our readers cannot
understand what they read unless the understand the meaning of most of the
words. Students cannot comprehend text unless they have vocabulary knowledge
about the words that they are reading. “Vocabulary knowledge is crucial to
understanding grade-appropriate text. Even students who are good decoders will
have difficultly comprehending what they read if they do not have adequate
vocabulary knowledge” (CORE, 2008, p. 120).
The CORE Vocabulary Screening Test was administered to the student. “The
CORE Vocabulary Screening measures how well students know the meaning of
grade-level words they read silently. The task involves reading a word in a box
and choosing which of three answer choices means about the same as the word in
the box. It is a pure measure of reading vocabulary in that there is no need to
comprehend text in order to complete the task and there is no context to provide
clues to the meaning of the word” (CORE, 2008, p. 120)

Affective Factors – Form 10.1 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 250)
Affective factors are the “basic forces that influence whether a child is
intrinsically motivated to read…. {The} four of the most important of these forces
{include}: attitudes, interests, value, and self-concept… {Attitude is a} set of
acquired feelings about reading that consistently predispose an individual to
engage in or avoid reading. {Interest refers to a} positive orientation toward
reading about a particular topic. An individual interest is a relatively stable and
enduring positive orientation toward reading about a particular topic; a situational
interest is a context-specific, often momentary, positive orientation toward
reading about a particular topic. {Value indicates an} individual’s beliefs about
the extent to which reading is generally useful, enjoyable, or otherwise important.
{Self-concept is an} individual’s overall self-perception as a reader, including
one’s sense of competence and the role ascribed to reading as a part of one’s
personal identity” (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 239).
Diagnostic Reading Report 10

Good readers should be aware of affective factors because these factors play a
role in a student’s interest in reading. Readers will not be as invested and will
struggle more if they have a negative attitude towards reading or are reading
about subjects, they have no interest in. Good readers need to be aware of their
own personal affective factors so that they can be engaged in what they are
reading.
Form 10.1 was used to assess the student’s affective factors. This assessment was
a questionnaire that highlights how the student feels about reading. This test is a,
“good, get-acquainted activity {that} involves asking students to respond to
incomplete sentences designed to elicit personal beliefs about reading as well as
existing interests. These {are not} long and involved— {as} a few statements can
go a long way. These statements can be used as a written activity in a group
setting (in which case, they also reveal information about writing development) or
individually as an interview guide, in which you provide each sentence starter
orally and jot down the student’s response” (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015,
pp. 242 - 243). These questions include asking what they student likes to read
about, their favorite part about reading, and what they think of reading outside of
school.

Comprehension – Teacher-Made Test

Comprehension is the understanding of the text that is read. Comprehension is not
only understanding the meaning of the words on the page, but also understanding
what the author is trying to say with the text. The ultimate goal or “bottom line”
of reading is comprehension. If a student is not understanding or comprehending
the text that they are reading, there is no reason to read. Comprehension must be
assessed since it is crucial to reading. “There are two principal reasons for
assessing comprehension. The first reason for assessing reading comprehension is
to gauge the degree to which a student has comprehended a particular selection.
Chapter tests and other postreading assessments often serve this function. The
second reason is to estimate general level of proficiency. The result of this kind of
assessment might be an estimate of the instructional reading level by means of an
IRI or a normative judgment by means of an achievement test. Mastery tests of
specific comprehension skills also correspond to this purpose” (McKenna &
Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 198).
Good readers must be effective at comprehending text because comprehension is
the overall goal of reading. The definition of a good reader comes down to
someone who is able to comprehend a text and understand what the author is
trying to convey with their words. If a student does not comprehend a text, they
are not a good reader because although they can read the words, they are getting
no meaning from it.
Diagnostic Reading Report 11

A Teacher-Made Test was used to assess the student’s comprehension skills. This
test was made explicitly by the examiner for the student based off of an
informational text. This test was administered orally, and the student was assessed
individually in a quiet place. The student was given a quick introduction of the
book. Then the book was read aloud to the student. Finally, the examiner orally
read the assessment to the student and recorded their responses. The questions on
the test worked to assess different levels of comprehension.

RESULTS

Screener – Not Administered

With P.C. a screener was not administered. Therefore, there are no quantitative or
qualitative results.
Screeners are used to determine if students are on the level they need to be on and
if further testing is required. All students are given a screener to see where they
are at. The teacher must use these results to guide instruction for the students. If
there are students in the intensive or strategic level for a concept, they should be
given another screener to see if their results are consistent or if there was another
factor that influenced their first score. For students who are still not at the
benchmark level, they should be given diagnostic assessments to determine what
concepts they are struggling with.
Screeners are important because they give the instructor an idea of where the
student is, and instruction can be adapted to meet the needs of this student. A
screener is the first level of progression because it provides a board overview of
the student’s abilities.

Print Awareness – Form 4.2 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, pp. 98 - 100)
Quantitative: 16/16 Benchmark
Qualitative: P.C. had no struggles with this assessment. As P.C. is a 3rd grade
student, and this test is meant for students who are just learning how to read, she
should have had no troubles on this test. P.C. answered quickly and confidently to
every question. During this assessment there was no sign of hesitation, confusion,
or struggle.
As this was the first assessment administered to the student, and it is the first real
concept they learn when learning how to read, this test does not progress and
build on prior concepts.
Diagnostic Reading Report 12

Letter Knowledge – Form 4.3 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 101)
Quantitative: 54/54 Benchmark
Qualitative: P.C. had no struggles with this assessment and was able to clearly
recognize all the letter. As P.C. is a 3rd grade student, and this test is meant for
students who are just learning how to read, she should have had no troubles on
this test. P.C. answered quickly and confidently to every question. During this
assessment there was no sign of hesitation, confusion, or struggle. P.C. was able
to identify all letters of the alphabet even when they were capital and lowercase as
well as some different fonts.
This test is a progression from print awareness because it is not requiring students
to actually start reading but to apply meaning to the symbols on the page. The
previous assessment only looked at if they understood how to go about reading
while this assessment starts to see if they can read singular letters.

Phonological Awareness – CORE Phoneme Deletion and Phonological Segmentation

Test (CORE, 2008, pp. 19 - 29)
Quantitative:
Phoneme Deletion: 19/20 Parts A – C: Benchmark, Part D: Strategic/Benchmark
Phonological Segmentation: 23/23 Benchmark
Qualitative: P.C. did well on the Phoneme Deletion Test. On parts A-C, P.C.
answered every question correctly and confidently. There was no hesitation on
these parts. When P.C. got to part D, they were sure of their answers except for on
number 17. When asked to say twin without the /w/, P.C. took some time to figure
it out. They were unsure and kept trying to quietly sound out the answer. When
they answered in, she sounded confused and not confident in the answer. P.C. is
between strategic and benchmark for this part because for ending grade 2, 4 – 5
correct counts as benchmark, then for ending grade 3, 4 counts as strategic. Since
P.C. is near the beginning of 3rd grade, I would tend to place them in the
benchmark category, but a little extra practice could be helpful. On the
Phonological Segmentation Test, P.C. had no struggles and answered every
question with great confidence. Students should be at benchmark levels for this
assessment at grade 1, so her performance was expected.
This assessment on phonological awareness is now building on the ability to
simply recognize letters and now recognize the sounds that make up words. This
concept is an important progression in learning how to read as students begin to
break words into sounds and understand their parts.
Diagnostic Reading Report 13

Phonemic Awareness – CORE Phoneme Segmentation Test (CORE, 2008, pp. 30 -

33)
Quantitative: 13/15 Strategic
Qualitative: This is the first assessment that P.C. began to struggle on. P.C.
landed at the top of the strategic category with her score. P.C.’s demeanor
changed when this assessment was given. While she was still cooperative and
trying hard, her answers slowed down, and she hesitated more with her answers.
When answering, P.C. did not make as much eye contact and appeared to be
thinking harder when responding. P.C. missed two words on this assessment.
When give “flew” she answered f-l-oo-w instead of f-l-oo, and when given
“glare” she answered g-l-ai-r instead of g-l-air. In both these cases, P.C. separated
the extra phoneme on the end based on the spelling. She added an extra phoneme
of the last letter of the word.
The tests of phonological awareness were simply working on breaking up words
and syllables and touched on phonemes slightly. This test on phonemic awareness
only focused on phonemes. This assessment is a progression from the one before
it because it is now focusing on smaller and more difficult parts of words.

Phonics – CORE Phonics Survey (CORE, 2008, pp. 41 - 52)

Quantitative:
Alphabet Skills and Letter Sounds: 83/83 Benchmark
Letter Names – Uppercase: 26/26
Letter Names – Lowercase: 26/26
Consonant Sounds: 21/21
Long Vowel Sounds: 5/5
Short Vowel Sounds: 5/5
Reading and Decoding Skills: 128/129 Benchmark
Short Vowels in CVC Words: 15/15
Consonant Blends with Short Vowels: 15/15
Short Vowels, Digraphs, and -tch Trigraph: 15/15
R-Controlled Vowels: 15/15
Long Vowel Spellings: 15/15
Variant Vowels: 15/15
Diagnostic Reading Report 14

Low Frequency Vowel and Consonant Spellings: 15/15

Multisyllabic Words: 23/24
Qualitative: P.C. did well on this assessment and answered quickly and
confidently. By 3rd grade, students should have all these skills mastered, and P.C.
displayed this. One section P.C. should review is multisyllabic words, specifically
those with a silent e. Even when she answered this word incorrectly, she did not
hesitate and answered everything while being sure of her answers.
Phonics is a progression of phonemic awareness because now instead of only
focusing on breaking up words into phonemes, students are expected to
understand how phonemes work together and pronounce many different words
with the phonemes slightly varying from word to word. Phonics requires students
to progress from just understanding how words can be broken up to actually
understanding the relationship between word parts.

Spelling – Form 5.6 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, pp. 159 - 161)
Quantitative:
Benchmark
Words Spelled Correctly: 12/25
Feature Points: 42/62
Total: 54/87
Spelling Stage: Syllables and Affixes – Early – Inflected Endings
Qualitative: In 3rd grade, students are expected to be in Within Word Pattern –
Syllables and Affixes. By the end of 3rd grade, students should be in the Early
Syllables and Affixes Stage. At the beginning/middle of the year, P.C. has already
reached this stage. The first word that P.C. misspelled was in the Within Word
Pattern – Middle stage. P.C. only missed one feature point in this stage, and only
showed signs of struggle once she reached syllables and affixes. When spelling,
P.C. took her time and really carefully though over every word she wrote down.
She did not hesitate too long, but she did not rush either.
Spelling is a progression from phonics because the student is now expected to use
the idea of phonics when forming words on their own. So instead of seeing how
the letters are put together and only having to pronounce it, they are now expected
to be able to have enough understanding of how letters work together to spell
them out without anything but auditory clues.
Diagnostic Reading Report 15

Fluency – CORE Masi-R Oral Reading Fluency (CORE, 2008, pp. 77 - 91)
Quantitative: 75th Percentile
Accuracy: 98 words
Rate Correct: 152 words
Rate Incorrect: 3 words
Total Words in 1 Minute: 155 words
Qualitative: P.C. read the passage with decent fluency. First, she said dark
instead of deep, but quickly self-corrected. Then instead of fingered she said
figured with no real hesitation. P.C. hesitated when she got to the word
instrument, but correctly pronounced it within 3 seconds. Next, she said peeking
instead of peering, and finally said batted instead of battered. Throughout the
passage, P.C. was less confident than before and displayed good reading fluency.
She seemed to be nervous by the fact that she was being timed. She was near the
90th percentile. For Fall, she would have been in the 90th percentile, but for
Winter, she was nine words off. Overall, P.C. displayed confidence when reading
a passage, but some nervousness about the time limit, and when she did make an
error, the words were often visually and contextually similar.
This fluency test is a progression from the prior tests because now instead of
focusing on specific factors of reading and words, the student must put everything
they have learned together to read quickly and accurately. If the student could not
pass the prior assessments, they would greatly struggle when it came to fluency
because they would often make mistakes, have to stop and carefully look at the
words, and not be able to read as quickly.

Vocabulary – CORE Vocabulary Screening (CORE, 2008, pp. 120 - 131)

Quantitative: Benchmark
Form 3A
Number Correct: 24
Number Incorrect: 6
Number of No Responses: 0
Form 3B
Number Correct: 26
Number Incorrect: a
Diagnostic Reading Report 16

Number of No Responses: 0
Qualitative: While P.C. was still in the benchmark category, she began to
struggle more than on some of the other tests. This test was meant specifically for
3rd grade and challenged her more than some of the easier assessments. P.C.
seemed to either know the answer instantly or really hesitate when answering.
During this assessment, P.C. said “umm” multiple times and made significantly
less eye contact than she did on other assessments.
This vocabulary test is a progression from fluency, because the student is now
being assessed on how well they can derive meaning from text instead of simply
reading the text accurately. This requires them not only to read the words
correctly, but they now must be able to connect the correct meaning to the words.

Affective Factors – Form 10.1 (McKenna & Dougherty Stahl, 2015, p. 250)
Quantitative: Not Applicable
Qualitative: P.C. is very enthusiastic about reading and portrayed this in the
assessment. This assessment helped to bring to light how P.C. feels about reading
and what she enjoys to read about. During this assessment, P.C. elaborated greatly
on her answers and seemed like she wanted to share these ideas and wasn’t just
simply answering questions for the purpose of the assessment. P.C. likes to read
about dancing, wizards, soccer, other countries, and the ocean. P.C. stated that he
and her friends all think reading is fun. P.C. reads every night before bed for
twenty minutes and reading is clearly a priority at home. When P.C. gets older,
she wants to be able to read large chapter books regularly. P.C. loves reading
because she can learn new things and there are some interesting stories. P.C.’s
least favorite thing about reading is when she is required to read about topics that
she has little interest in such as robots, football, or dinosaurs.
This test not much of a progression on the prior concepts. The one way this test is
a progression is that students must be able to read well and derive meaning to
know what they enjoy about reading. However, this assessment is less used to
progress on concepts, but to get a solid foundation of what the student enjoys
before working on their main goal which is comprehension.

Comprehension – Teacher Made Test

Quantitative: 5/5 100%
Qualitative: Since this was a test made by the examiner, there is no quantitative
scale to compare it to percentile wise. When read the book on Día De Los
Muertos, P.C. showed significant interest and was very focused on the
Diagnostic Reading Report 17

information. This story was chosen for P.C. as she has expressed that she enjoys
learning about other countries and chose to wear a sugar skull costume for
Halloween. Since P.C. was so focused on the story, she answered the questions
that simply required her to recall information with no trouble. P.C. showed
significant understanding when she was able to answer questions that were in the
evaluate level on Bloom’s Taxonomy. P.C. was able to effectively reflect on the
text while also drawing her own connections. She even was able to reach the
create level through her understanding of the story.
This comprehensive assessment was the final assessment, because it requires a
mastery of all concepts before it. The ultimate goal of reading is comprehension,
and therefore is the ultimate progression of reading assessments.

SUMMARY

P.C. is a 9-year-old student in the 3rd grade at Spring Creek Elementary School. P.C. truly
enjoys reading and goes out of her way to read not only in school, but at home as well.
P.C. has found value in reading through the school and her family making it a priority for
her. P.C. shows determination and signs that she wants to succeed when being assessed.
Overall, P.C. is a great reader, and excels in most areas of reading. P.C. is completely
aware of the different concepts of print and can name all the letters and their sounds. She
has a clear grasp on individual phonemes in words and how to separate words into these
smaller parts. When it comes to phonics, she is confident in all areas, but could use some
review on multisyllabic words with a silent e.
The first assessment where P.C. started to show signs of struggle was on the Elementary
Spelling Inventory. While she is on point or even a little ahead of where she is expected
to be, she has room to grow and improve in terms of spelling. She has a full grasp up to
Syllables and Affixes – Early – Inflected Endings. After this point she struggles with
spelling. When assessing fluency, P.C. started to show signs of hesitation while reading.
She scored well but seemed to be intimidated by the idea of being timed while reading.
Due to this time constraint, she made simple errors.
P.C. struggled some with vocabulary and meanings but did wonderfully on the
comprehension exam. These results show that P.C. does not struggle with comprehending
passages and can use context clues to understand but does struggle with individual word
meanings when she has no context clues to aid in her understanding.
Diagnostic Reading Report 18

GOALS

Spelling:
The first goal for P.C. is to work on her spelling. She is right at where she needs
to be for 3rd grade in terms of spelling, but that does not mean that she cannot
improve. As she is in Syllables and Affixes – Early – Inflected Endings, she
should work towards being in the middle or late stage by the end of the year. This
means she must focus on inflected endings and syllable junctures. This goal is
important for P.C. so that she can stay on top of her spelling going into 4th grade.
By increasing her spelling skills, she will become a better reader and writer.
Meeting this spelling goal will give P.C. a better understanding of letter sound
connections and therefore help to increase her fluency when reading.

Fluency:
P.C. is currently in the 75th percentile for her word count per minute. She can
work to increase both her accuracy and her rate correct in a minute. P.C. should
first work on increasing her accuracy to 99 or 100. If she can start to read more
accurately, she will derive meaning better and therefore be able to read more
words per minute. Then, she should strive to be in the 90th percentile by the end of
her 3rd grade year. She is currently reading 152 words accurately per minute, and
by the end of the year she should strive to be at 166 words per minute. This is a
realistic goal if she can focus on accuracy. This goal is important because it will
aid in her overall comprehension of the texts that she reads.

Vocabulary and Word Meaning:

The third goal for P.C. to accomplish this year is to widen her vocabulary.
Although she was in the benchmark level, she was near the strategic level and can
definitely expand her vocabulary. Right now, P.C. is answering 80 – 86% of the
vocabulary words correctly. My goal for her is to be able to consistently get 90%
of the word meanings correct. This goal is important because with an expanded
vocabulary, she will comprehend the texts she reads better. If P.C.’s vocabulary is
expanded, she will not struggle as much with more advanced words in the text.
Diagnostic Reading Report 19

INSTRUCTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS

Print Awareness
If a student is struggling with the concept of print awareness, they more than
likely have little to no experience with reading and books. An intervention that
could be put into place for a student that needs more supports is simply having an
adult or older child read aloud to them. Read aloud is very useful for learning
about the concepts of print. When a student is read aloud to, they can see the way
a book is held, see how the pages are flipped, and understand that you are able to
derive meaning from these pages. When read aloud is occurring, the reader should
use their finger to point to the words they are reading to help the student
understand that there is a direct connection between the symbols and the words
that are being said while also gaining an understanding of how to read from left to
right. Once a student starts to grasp these concepts, the teacher should ask
questions during read aloud such as “Where should I start on this page?” to give
the student opportunities to show their knowledge.

Letter Knowledge
For students struggling with letter knowledge, they have not had enough
exposure to print and simply need more practice with these symbols. Putting
letters around the classroom on objects can help the student to make connections.
For example, a “D” can be placed on the desk so that students can realize what a
“d” looks like. Hands-on activities are great to aid students in letter knowledge.
One activity students can do is sitting in front of a tray with sand in it. Students
will hear the letter name, and have a picture of the letter as well, then they have to
trace the letter in the sand. As their recognition improves, start to take away the
flashcards, and have them draw the letters just by the name. This would be
effective because it provides the students with multiple opportunities to practice
their letters. This is an activity that combines auditory, visual, and kinesthetic
elements. Students will also enjoy drawing in the sand, making this information
sink in more. This activity allows students to practice in a way that is more
interesting than normally writing.

Phonological Awareness
For students who are struggling with phonological awareness, there are many
activities that can be done to support their learning. One activity that can be fun
for students while helping them practice their phonological awareness skills are
bingo games. Print out bingo sheets with pictures on them. For rhyming, the
Diagnostic Reading Report 20

teacher would call could a word like “bell”. The students then have to find a
picture of a word on their sheet that rhymes with bell such as “shell”. This would
help students because it would require them to have to figure out which words
rhyme by only the sounds and not being able to look at the spelling of the words.
They would have to be aware of the sounds that words make.

Phonemic Awareness
For a student who is struggling with phonemic awareness there are a multitude of
different activities that can help them expand their knowledge. One fun activity is
segmenting sounds with lights. While working one on one with a student they will
have 5 lights they can press to turn on. Say a word out loud to the child. They will
break the word into phonemes and turn a light on as they say the phoneme. This is
a way to help them segment phonemes and count the number of phonemes in a
word. This activity will work because it requires students to break words down
and focus on the phonemes while also using engaging materials to clearly see
what they are doing.

Phonics
For students who are struggling with phonics skills, there are different activities
that can be implemented to support the growth of this skill. One activity is a bag
and ball game. How this game works is all the students get in a circle. One student
will start with a bag and another will start with a ball. When the music starts,
students will pass the items around like hot potato. When the music stops the
students will hold the items. The student with the bag will pull a piece of paper
out of the bag. This piece of paper will have a letter or letters written on it. They
will have to read out its sound, not the letter name. Then the person will the ball
must guess the letter name. Once it is guessed, start passing the items again. This
activity would be effective because it requires students to make connections
between the letter names and the sounds that they make. This activity requires
students to visually look at the letter and say its sound as well as work backwards
and name the letter from its sound.

Spelling
When students are struggling with spelling, they should have practice spelling
words that follow similar patterns. If students simply memorize a group of words,
they are not learning, but if they have to spell different words all based on the
same rules, they can learn how to spell. One fun game that could be used with
students is Spelling Bee Basketball. Students will be divided into two or more
Diagnostic Reading Report 21

teams. Each team will have a whiteboard and will take turns passing it around
their group. The teacher will call out a word and the team must spell it.
Remember to focus on words that follow patterns and not a list of words they
already memorized. Whichever team spells the word correctly first earns a point.
Then they have a chance to make a basket (paper ball into a trashcan) for an extra
point. The game continues. Make sure that every student is getting a chance to
spell on the whiteboard and that not just one or two students are spelling every
time. This activity would work well because it adds an element of fun to normal
spelling tests. Also, focusing on word patterns will help support student learning
better than just having them memorize words.

Fluency
If students are struggling with fluency, performing reader’s theater can help them
to improve this skill. In readers theater, students read a story or a script. They then
re-read it and then act out the script. Re-reading the story helps the students to
become more fluent and understand more aspects of the text. This is an engaging
activity that requires the students to re-read the text and improve fluency. This
activity will work because studies have shown that re-reading is crucial to
fluency. However, students do not often want to re-read stories they have already
read, it bores them. Reader’s theater is a way to almost trick students into re-
reading, since there is now an engaging purpose behind it.

Vocabulary
For students who are struggling with vocabulary and word meanings, a game
called Word Up can help to support their development of this skill. Have
vocabulary words written on a word wall in the classroom, also copy these words
onto index cards. Students will work in groups of 2 – 3 and compete against
another group. This game is played like Heads Up. One player will start first and
hold an index card up to their head without looking at the word on it. Their
teammates must give the player clues about the word using its definition.
Teammates cannot say what the word starts with, sounds like, or any form of the
word. When they guess the word correctly, they pick up another card and keep
playing until the timer goes off. The number of words they guessed correctly is
their number of points for the round. Then it is the other team’s turn. The game
continues until they have run out of words. The team with the most points wins.
This game will work great for learning vocabulary because it includes an
engaging game that students love while stressing definitions.
Diagnostic Reading Report 22

Affective Factors
If a student has a bad attitude about reading or no interest in reading, they need to
complete activities to learn about the value of reading and be introduced to topics
that interest them. Some ways to motivate students include making reading fun
through games and activities like readers theater, sharing your own reading
experiences, giving students access to many different topics and kinds of books,
and giving students opportunities to explore books they enjoy. Making reading a
priority in the classroom and displaying it as a valuable skill instead of a chore
will help students want to read more. To help students in this case, there may not
be specific activities but instead it comes down to the teacher providing multiple
opportunities, being a good role model, and going out of their way to form a
relationship with their students and learn about their feelings regarding reading.
These activities will help because teachers have a lot of influence on their
students’ attitudes. By giving them these opportunities and working with them,
teachers can help students change their attitude on reading.

Comprehension
In terms of students who struggle with comprehension, teachers should work to
teach them strategies to utilize when they read. One specific activity that can help
students to work on their comprehension skills are story maps. Story maps are a
way that students visually represent the story elements that they read about. Story
maps can be simple and just focus on the basic plot, or they can be complex and
focus on several elements. This works great with students because the story map
can get more complex as their skills improve. This activity also will work for
students because it requires students to pay more attention to the story and allows
them the visually connect the elements instead of trying to make sense of
everything in their head. Students can practice and get feedback on story maps so
that they know where they struggle in terms of comprehending a text.
Diagnostic Reading Report 23

References

CORE. (2008). Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures for Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade. Novato:
Arena Press.
McKenna, M. C., & Dougherty Stahl, K. A. (2015). Assessment for Reading Instruction. New York: The
Guilford Press.