Elizabeth Lerch Early Literacy Development and Acquisition 4-8-14 Literacy Assessment A series of literacy assessments were conducted

with a six-year-old kindergarten student named Brenda throughout the spring semester of 2014. Brenda is in the lowest of three reading groups in the class, which are separated by literacy ability. She is adept at expressing ideas and desires, and she has a wide vocabulary when speaking. However, as the assessments will demonstrate, her reading ability is not as strong as her oral and receptive language. The first assessment involved a story titled The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The story was read to Brenda, and she was told that after hearing the story, she would ultimately have to retell the story by herself using the props provided. She had never heard this story before, so it was read to her slowly and expressively. The reading was followed by a picture walk. When Brenda was asked if she wanted to hear the story again she declined, so the reader proceeded to model retelling twice. Brenda was hesitant to begin the retelling herself, so the reader prompted by asking how the story began. Brenda was able to list the main characters but did not use story language when introducing them, so she received a two out of three in the setting and characters category. She was able to fully explain the plots problem with detail, but then looked up for reassurance. The reader nodded for her to continue. During the sequence of events, Brenda left out the detail that the troll threatened to eat all three goats, but explained that the troll didnt want them on his bridge. Therefore she earned the partial rating for that category. Her ending was weak in that it

lacked a lot of detail, particularly about the goats freedom to cross the bridge as they please. For that portion she received her lowest score of a one out of possible three. Brendas overall score was a ten out of 15, which places her in the ranking of Developing Retelling. This score shows that cognitively she has the capacity to recall many details of the story, although she has not yet developed a vocabulary congruent with story-telling. If Brenda had been more familiar with the story, perhaps she would have performed better, but this was conducted in one session. Considering the restraints, Brenda was adequately able to tell most of the story and none of her details were inaccurate. The next assessment and all that follow were conducted with a packet based on the PALS test. The first assessment in this phase was a rhyming activity. The work page that was used had nine rows with three pictures in each row. In each group of three, there were two pictures that represented rhyming words. The example provided was a duck, a ball, and a truck. The instructor pointed to each picture, stated what they were pictures of, and then announced that duck and truck rhyme. Brenda slid the viewfinder down to isolate the next row of pictures. The next row of pictures showed in order a bear, keys, and cheese. There was momentary confusion because Brenda thought the first image had to rhyme with one of the other two to the right of it. Once it was clarified that any two of the three pictures could rhyme, Brenda was quick at pointing out the rhyming words. She got them all correct. Following the rhyming activity was a spelling test, where every correct letter added to the point tally. The researcher demonstrated the task using the word map by saying the word slowly, segmenting it, writing each letter heard, and then verbally blending the letters. Six words were then stated one at a time, and Brenda was instructed to spell the words to the best of her ability. A single point was added for every correct initial consonant, final consonant, short

vowel, correct spelling of a word, and blends/digraphs (if the word contained any). Out of a possible 25 points, Brenda received 17 points. For the consonant-vowel-consonant words, she was able to correctly identify the consonants, but for half of the words she demonstrated use of the Great Vowel Shift. This means that when vowels (a-e-i-o-u) were used, Brenda had a tendency to use a vowel adjacent to the correct one. For example, the instructor said to spell pet and Brenda wrote pit. This is a common mistake that beginner writers make. Two of the six words were spelled entirely correctly. Brendas writing for this portion of the assessment is attached at the end. The instructor was able to hold Brendas attention for three assessment activities on this day. The final one conducted on the same day as the previous two involved beginning sounds of words. This activity utilized pictures, just as the rhyming activity did. This time there were eight rows of images. Each row had a primary image to which students had to match the beginning sound to one of three choices that followed. The example given was a picture of a sun as the primary image, followed by pictures of a book, soap, and a plane. The student was expected to hear that sun and soap start with the same sound. The instructor began this activity by modeling the example, then moving the viewfinder to the next row. The instructor stated what the primary image depicted, followed by the three other pictures. Brenda was able to hear the beginning sounds and identify which words shared an initial consonant without having to hear the words a second time. For rows one through four, the instructor stated what the pictures were of. Beginning at row five, Brenda became adamant about stating the words associated with the pictures by herself. The instructor monitored to make sure that she was saying the correct words for each picture and otherwise did not interrupt.

When class reconvened the next week, Brenda was told she would be reading through a list of words, some of which would look familiar and other she may never have seen before. She was told that when a word was isolated she was not supposed to segment it, but rather look at it for a moment and say the word right away if she recognized it. Brenda was able to automatically identify four words on the list of twenty Preprimer words. The directions for this task were that if between zero and nine words were automatically read by the student, then the next step would be three activities revolving around the alphabet. The first alphabet activity was the instructor showed Brenda a page with all the lowercase letters out of order in 5 rows. Brenda was to state the name of each letter. Of the 26 letters in the alphabet, Brenda got 22 correct. For u she said o, v she said w, d she said b (although she got b correct when she saw that one), and j she said i. The instructor corrected Brenda on the four she got wrong. Next Brenda received a blank sheet of paper and had to write each letter as they were read to her one by one. For this task it did not matter if the letters were written as capitals or lower case. Reversals of letters were considered correct, but were noted. For three of the letters (y, v, and j) Brenda looked to the alphabet strip at the front of the classroom and spoke each letter starting at a until she found the letter asked of her. These were counted incorrect because even though she wrote the correct letters she did not know them without using a resource. B and d were both reversed. While reversals were supposed to be counted as correct, by reversing these lowercase letters she, in effect, wrote the incorrect letter. Finally, when the letter v was said, Brenda wrote a u. All the other letters were written correctly, so Brenda got 20 out of 26 letters right.

The last alphabet assessment involved Brenda being shown 22 capital letters and 4 digraphs. She was to say the sound that each one makes. When she got to the digraphs, Brenda said uh-oh! She has not been taught them yet, so the instructor gave her examples of words with each digraph in them. For the letter V, Brenda said yuh and for Y she said wuh. With the letter I she first said aah but self-corrected, so that letter was not counted wrong. Of the 26 total letters and digraph, Brenda said 21 of them correctly. The final assessment conducted with Brenda was to determine her concept of word. A short poem was spoken to Brenda while the instructor pointed at one of four sequential pictures to depict each of four steps in the poem. Then Brenda said the poem with the instructor, and finally she said it by herself. The pictures were taken away and Brenda was shown the poem written out word for word. The instructor said the poem and pointed to each word as she said it while Brenda watched. Brenda then did it by herself while the instructor kept track of whether Brenda was able to point to each individual word as she said it. She has a clear understanding of left-to-right directionality of text. However, she was not able to point to each word as she said it at first. On the first line of the poem Brenda pointed to the first word while she said the first two words, and then pointed to the second word while saying the third and fourth words. By the end of the first line she was back on track. The second line of the poem went better, but she hesitated when she got to a two-syllable word. Again, she was able to self-correct by the end of the line. The third and fourth lines were completely accurate. For this task Brenda received 27 points out of 32. Based on Brendas level of completion with this series of tasks, it can be concluded that she is at a Beginning Level for reading and writing. She has a very good concept of word and can track print as she reads. Her ability to recognize sight words is not very high, but she can

segment C-V-C words and figure out what they are. Her story language is sufficient, and she is able to recall the events of stories in sequence. In terms of her writing, Brenda consistently writes left to write and her writing is legible. She demonstrates understanding of the difference between upper case and lower case letters. Finally, she also uses the common great vowel shift common of this level when she segments and spells C-V-C words. The next step for instruction would be to build Brendas sight word vocabulary. This falls under the word study category of the Beginning Readers Diet, which should be 20% of instructional time. Her vocabulary can be improved by doing activities with word banks and sight word walls. Brendas comprehension is good, as evident by her ability to retell the Three Billy Goats Gruff story in her own words. Comprehension should fill 20% of instructional time. To help eliminate the vowel shift, Brenda should spend more time working on writing, which is also supposed to be 20% of a Beginning Readers literacy diet. Activities in this area should be aimed at helping her distinguish between the letters that she is not as strong with, like y, v, u, and mixing up b and d. The biggest area that Brenda struggles with and needs the most help with is fluency. Her poor fluency is largely a hindered by her limited vocabulary with sight words. It is difficult to read a passage when she does not yet automatically recognize words like my and he. Fluency instruction (40% of instructional time) should be combined with word study so that this makes up the majority of Brendas instruction.