AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT My central focus for this assessment case study is on language arts due to my knowledge of William’s health history —his chronic ear infections may have affected his language acquisition and I wanted to assess where he is at currently with basic skills in ELA. These activities and assessments were inspired by the Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards. Will participated in five activities (three in Language Arts and one in Mathematics) ‘aimed at assessing his emergent language skills. The mathematics activity was created out of a spontaneous teachable moment with goldfish and required language skills as well. ‘The following standards are covered in these activities: Standard 2.A— Demonstrate interest in stories and books 2.A.ECa — Engage in book-sharing experiences with purpose and understanding. Standard 2.B — Recognize key ideas and details in stories. 2.B.EC — with teacher assistance, identify main character(s) of the story. Standard 4.B ~ Demonstrate and emerging knowledge and understanding of the alphabet. 4.B.ECd — with teacher assistance, begin to form some letters of the alphabet, ‘especially those in own name, Standard 5.A - Experiment with writing tools and materials 5.A.ECe — with teacher assistance, write own first name using appropriate upper/lowercase letters. Standard 8.4 — Explore objects and patterns. 8.A.ECa— sort, order, compare, and describe objects according to characteristics or attribute(s).ac > oP Mow ao young cniaren acquire literacy; Will learns to write. Will, a 3-yearold boy, spent the past few months participating in activities designed to promote his emergent literacy skills. He drew pictures of past life experiences, expressed his name in a variety of mediums, iscussed the plot of stories, and created his own stories through dramatic play. Here you will see the process and product of Will's handwriting st ~ Experiment with writing tools and materials. THE PROCESS: Will is shown experimenting with a marker. He first tried to draw while gripping the marker pinky-side down, but then switched to the grip depicted in this picture. He also switched colors halfway through the drawing. IELD Standard 5.A.ECb - Use scribbles, letter- like forms, or letters/words to represent written language. THE PRODUCT: This picture depicts a butterfly (shown in blue) and Wills representation of the letter ‘w’ (shown in orange). When prompted to attempt to write any letters, Will wrote the letter- like forms while stating: “These are ws. W is for Wiliam." Pp A CLOSER LOOK: There are many letter-like forms on the writing sample above, and this is a magnified view of a couple of them. The letter ‘w’ is distinguishable on the left with Will's clear and sharp up and down strokes that are required to write a ‘w.’ On the right, there are more up and down strokes that still resemble a ‘w.’