Danielle Koncius ELD 307 Word Study Assessment In Mrs. Roths classroom I administered a word study to a student.

For the purpose of this paper, the students name is Ashley. The purpose of a word study is to assess the word knowledge of a student. This will help determine where the student is in terms of their writing and reading skills. The word study should be assessing what the student truly knows, so the student should not practice the list of words. The list of words on a word study should be in order of least difficult to most difficult. Like I previously stated, the student should not be practicing the list of words; it should be a list that the student is not familiar with. Before I pulled a student aside to begin the assessment, Mrs. Roth gave me a few tips on the methodology of a word study. First, I, as the administrator, would clearly enunciate the word twice to the student. Then, I used the word in a simple sentence and say the word again. There should be at least five incorrectly spelled words to analyze. The grade the student is in should be taken into account as well. For example, if a kindergartener is feeling frustrated and knows they are not spelling the words correctly; you should stop the word study. If you continue the word study while the student is clearly struggling, this may discourage the student in the future. Once the student spells three to four words in a row incorrectly, the administrator should also stop the word study. There is a feature guide that is useful for scoring a word study. This includes different spelling stages, from early stages of spelling to late stages of spelling. The feature guide shows what each word is assessing. Then you will look and interpret what the student knows and what the student still needs to work on. Lastly, as a teacher, you should take the assessment to inform instruction. You must determine what type of lessons you can perform to strengthen known skills and work on unknown skills.

Prior to choosing a student to pull aside for my assessment, I had asked Mrs. Roth who she believed to be an average student in terms of literacy whom is not excelling over the other students in reading and is not falling behind either. I wished to pull aside a student of this level to help me get a better understand of where the student should be skill-wise at this point in their development. The student used in the word study assessment that I conducted, Ashley, is a female in the first grade. The classroom setting is that of a typical first grade classroom with informative posters, tables for the children to sit at, and a carpet area for morning meeting and other activities. The classroom may have been distracting to Ashley because of the noise level; however, she did not seem too bothered and cooperated very well with me to complete the word study. Mrs. Roth told me to do around ten words on the word study assessment so I will have enough information to analyze. I used words one through sixteen on the on the word study list. I had observed and was very impressed by Ashleys use of self-talk while trying to sound out the words before she wrote it down. I have observed this of her before and it is a wonderful tool for students at this age to use. Ashley did misspell many of the words, but I continued with the list because I felt that she did not get enough words in a row incorrectly spelled and I wanted to see how she would do with the more complex words such as coach. Ashley seemed to have a firm understanding of when to use the letter e at the end of a word but the issue seemed to be with her overgeneralizing when to use it. For example, for the words, rob, wait, and pet, Ashley placed an e at the end of the words, spelling them like, robe, wate, and pete. The rules of using the letter e at the end of a word can be very difficult for a first grader to understand and although she misused it, I am still pleased with her attempt and I am confident that the overgeneralizing will fade away in time. Ashley was able to display her understanding of the initial consonants and a few final consonants. Ashley displayed a little difficulty with short vowels. My findings of this word study assessment with Ashley indicate that she has difficulty distinguishing which words to place an e at the end. This became clear to me when I saw the

overgeneralizing of this rule when she seemed to be unsure of the spelling but knew how to pronounce the word. I knew that she was aware of the words she was writing because she would also read the word and sound it out to herself. She also displays an average understanding of short vowel words such as, fan, dig, and sled. In all, as the administrator of this assessment, I would say that Ashleys strength with writing and spelling is initial consonants. I would also say that her weakness seems to be the oversimplification, specifically with the letter e in this case, and final consonants; although the two definitely go hand-in-hand. Looking at the feature guide, I can determine that Ashley also is comfortable with consonant diagraphs such as, sh and ch and consonant blends such as, sl, st, dr, and fr. Ashley displayed knowledge of inflected endings (-ing) when spelling the word, chewing. Based on the feature guide, I would conclude that Ashley is in the late emergent- early within word pattern. This means that most of the words that she had spelled correctly were in this section of the feature guide. Based on the findings of the assessment, I would infer that the implications for instruction in the future would focus largely on short vowel words and final consonants, being that these are what she struggles with the most. Although she was able to identify the short vowels in a word she did not often spell the words correctly. For this reason I would still work on short vowel words so she can get a better understanding of spelling the words and using the correct final consonant. An example of a lesson for Ashley would be, placing a beginning letter on one index card and the ending letter on another index card. Then, in a different color I would write each vowel (a,e,I,o,u) on different index cards. I would then have Ashley place the different vowels in between the beginning and end letters to create different words. This would help Ashley better short vowel sounds as well as vowel sounds in general. As Ashleys teacher, I would be sure to expose her to sever different ways to practice vowels to make her more comfortable with using them, also decreasing her overgeneralization of using the letter e at the end of words that is unnecessary. After a few weeks and Ashley has been working on what she has struggled with during this assessment and she has developed more as a reader and writer, I would assess her

again to see if she has progressed. Ashley seems to be developing appropriately for her age and I am confident that she will continue to develop and progress with her literacy. This word assessment was very informative and helped me better understand how to analyze a student appropriately when he/she is spelling and/or reading.