Sydney Thomson

Signature Assignment
Language Development, Emergent Literacy, Reading in Young Children
Dr. Madden
Dr. Browne

Introduction
The purpose of this assignment is to learn how to give literacy assessment and also how
to analyze the assessments. The children that are given these assessments are in the pre-literacy
stages of language development and reading development. To get a better understanding of the
idea of emergent literacy and the assessments I chose one child to administer the assessments to.
I selected Gianna, a five-year-old girl in a self-contained kindergarten class at Grenloch Terrace
Early Childhood Center.
For my Growth and Learning class I had to observe Gianna once a week for seven weeks
for a child study. Through these observations and other assignments I have learned a lot about
Giannas background. I sent home a parent survey asking specific questions. From this I learned
that Gianna has a younger sister who is three years old and her mother just had a baby boy that
Gianna was not able to meet because he was in the NICU. I also found out that Giannas parents
read picture books to her every other night.
Gianna is in the self-contained classroom so she receives a full day kindergarten
education. After reviewing a developmental checklist I observed that Gianna can do most things
that a five year old should be able to do. She does have trouble focusing on one task and
listening. She is very stubborn and is constantly having to be redirected throughout the day.
At first Gianna refused to do these assessments with me and just wanted to join the rest of
the class. I then encouraged Gianna with a sticker from the movie Frozen and she cooperated.
Gianna is very active and rarely sits still, she also gets distracted easily.
I conducted four literacy assessments on Gianna to get a better understanding of her
language and reading development. I used Marie Clays assessments: Concepts about Print,
Letter Identification, and Writing Vocabulary. I also did a student dictated story with Gianna. I

went through the assessments quickly while I still had Giannas attention. These assessments
have helped me to analyze and determine where Gianna stands developmentally with literacy. I
will explain my findings through my analysis of each individual assignment.

Concepts About Print

The first assessment I worked through with Gianna was Concepts About Print. I had
observed Gianna do similar book activities with her teacher in centers. I used the Marie Clay
book called Stones. I followed Marie Clays instructions on administering the assessment. Marie
Clay suggests, concepts about print are learned gradually as children become readers and
writers (Clay, 2013, p.40). A young child may not know all of the correct answers or be able to
explain the concepts about print out loud but when a child understands what to attend to, in
what order, and a few things about the shapes and positions of letters and words, this opens doors
to literacy learning (Clay, 2013, p.42). This assessment is not about drilling the student with
what he or she should know about print but just observing and seeing what the child knows and
what the child has not been exposed to yet.
Gianna knew right away where the front of the book was and that you start on the page
with the words not the pictures. When I asked Gianna to show me where to start she just pointed
to the words no one word specifically. I then said, which way do I go? and where do I go after
that? Gianna pointed to the picture. I asked her to move along with her finger while I read aloud.
I knew she could do this because I have seen her do it with her teacher during centers. She
matched the words correctly and also knew to return sweep to the left when a line was finished.
On the next page I asked Gianna to show me the first part of the story. She hesitated and
started to flip back to the front of the book. I then tried to explain further and said, what about
the first part of the story on this page? At that point she was confused and said she did not
know. Gianna then turned the page and immediately noticed that the picture was upside down.
She pointed to the top of the page when I asked where the bottom of the picture was which was

correct. On the next page I asked Gianna what was wrong with the words and she said that they
were upside down too. She then turned the book around and point to the words (not any
specifically) for where I was supposed to start reading.
Gianna knew to read the left page first and then the right. She did not; however, notice
when the line order was altered or any of the sentences or words were jumbled. Gianna knew
what a question mark were and what they meant. She did not know the name of the comma, so I
told her and when I asked what the quotation marks were she called them commas. When I asked
her to locate lowercase letters Gianna could point to a lowercase t, but not b.
On the next page I asked Gianna to locate the words was and on. She stared at the
page so I read it to her again. After that time she pointed to the word was but could still not
find the word on. On the last page Gianna had trouble using the notecards so she just pointed
with her fingers. She could point to one letter and two letters (she also named them). When I
asked for one word she pointed to two different words. When I asked her for two words she kept
her fingers on the same two words. She could find the first and last letter of one word but could
not find a capital letter.
Gianna received a score of eleven out of twenty-four according to Marie Clays grading
scale. This puts Gianna in the third stanine group for her age. This stanine group provides a
guide to how well the child compares with a sample of 796 New Zealand children in February
2000 (Clay, 2013, p.48). There are nine stanine groups so I can see that Gianna is in the lower
half of the children for her age.
Based on what I have observed through this assessment, Gianna struggles with specific
things about the print in a book. She has a basic understanding of how a book is read but could
use further reiteration. I have reviewed Clays Age Expectation Chart, which shows that children

who are Giannas age are not expected to score highly on this assessment. It also suggests that
Gianna will progress throughout this year and be able to understand more about print as she
approaches age six (Clay, 2013, p.49). Gianna will receive more formal instruction on these
concepts as she progresses through her schooling giving her an opportunity to connect her
observations with what she learns.

Letter Identification
The next assessment I did with Gianna was Letter Identification. For this assessment I
had a letter sheet and a grade sheet provided in Clays, An Observation Survey of Early Literacy
Achievement. I put the letter sheet out in front of us both and started the assessment. During
previous observations I witnessed that Gianna has trouble with identifying letters. Marie Clay
says, this task is designed to find out which alphabetic symbols the children are noticing (Clay,
2013, p.85).
At first I just asked Gianna to point to any letters on the page that she recognized. She
immediately pointed to G and said G is for Gianna. She then did not point to any other letters
so I started down the rows. She instantly recognized every letter that was in her name but she
struggled with many others.
Some letters that Gianna did not know the name of, uppercase or lowercase were Hh, Jj,
and Yy. She also did not recognize uppercase D, lowercase b (which I noticed during Concepts
About Print), q, and t. I only asked Gianna the name of each letter hoping to make it easiter for
her, and for some of the letters she gave me the letter, sound, and a word like they learn during
circle time.
Gianna got twenty-two out of twenty-six capital letters correct. She got twenty-one out of
twenty-eight lowercase letters correct. This made her overall score forty-three out of fifty-four.
This score puts Gianna in the fifth stanine group for her age. This shows that Gianna is about at
the half way point for children of her age. Clay suggests, as it is possible and necessary for
young children to completely master the particular set of letters in a language, one would expect
the child to move gradually over time through the stanine score range until he reached perfect
scoring for the symbols of the alphabet (Clay, 2013, p.90). This means that Gianna is still in the

early stages of identifying the letters and after a year or so at school [she] can easily produce
fifty-four letter names, fifty-four letter sounds, and fifty-four words beginning with the letter
(Clay, 2013, p.90).

Writing Vocabulary
When we got to this assessment Gianna was rocking back and forth in her chair and
peeking inside the classroom to see what the class was doing. I could tell from this that she was
getting antsy and just wanted to go join the class again. For this assessment I told Gianna that we
were going to play a game. I gave her the sheet and my pencil and told her to write down as
many words as she could until I told her to stop. At first she seemed more interested in my
mechanical pencil than in writing anything down.
I prompted Gianna by asking her to write her name. From classroom observations I knew
that she could write her first name very well. She did and then proceeded to write other random
letters naming them as she went. I asked her what they said and she said, I dont know. I tried
to prompt her by saying, what about some of your sight words? She jumped up and said,
todays letter is I and I is a sight word. She then wrote the letter I uppercase and lowercase
twice. I tried to prompt her with more but she responded with, Im done.
Gianna did not show that she knew how to spell many words. I seemed like it was not
because of her lack of ability but because she was getting antsy and wanted to go back in the
classroom. I know she can recognize words from observing circle time in the classroom. They
have one activity where they touch a picture and it disappears to show a sight word. Gianna
almost always recognizes each word right away. After doing this assessment I conclude that
Gianna can recognize words but not write them yet.

Written/Dictated Story
When I told Gianna we were going to write a story together she got so excited. She
started dictating it to me right away. Since she was excited about the Frozen sticker I quickly
realized that Giannas story was closely related to the movie Frozen. This assessment was the
most fun. Right after I wrote everything down that Gianna said I asked her to draw a few pictures
for me. She had a lot of fun drawing the pictures but I had to rush her because we were running
out of time. I have the story all put together attached and I also made a copy to bring in for
Gianna so she can keep it in her home and feel proud of the work she did.
When a child tells you a story it is amazing to hear the ideas that they come up with. You
can learn a lot about how developed their vocabulary is and also their sentence structures.
Giannas story shows that she has a relatively strong grasp on the English language and the
format of stories. She was able to relay full sentences with adjectives and verbs to form a story.
One thing that stood out to me was how Gianna described the princess; at first she was sad and
blue. This shows that Gianna has been taught or observed that sad goes along with the color blue.
She then says that the princess becomes angry and red. She then connects anger with the color
red. This is quite intelligent for a five year old. Five and Six year olds sound a lot like adults
when they speak (Morrow, 2012, p.106) Gianna proved this by using complex sentences and
many adjectives in her story. The way Gianna performed in this assessment proves that she is at
the proper stage of language development.

Conclusion
Although these four assessments are not enough to accurately determine Giannas stage
of literacy development, through my observations as well as assessments I can determine some
different aspects of Giannas development as an emergent reader. Gianna is prett average at the
developmental level. She did not exceed scores for these assessments but she did not fall below
what was expected. Gianna showed understanding of different language elements. She knows
many concepts about print, she can identify almost all letters, and she has a strong understanding
of how to speak the English language. This shows that Gianna is on track for a five year olds
development.
Without the observations in the classroom, I would not know much about Giannas
development. These assessments alone cannot determine where Gianna stands. The assessments
do not include any background information and can be misleading. At the time that the
assessment is administered the child may not be focused completely or tired or hungry. These
things can interfere with the data that is collected. For example, Gianna became fidgety and
unfocused as we progressed through the different assessments. Sitting with one person for that
long of a period of time is difficult for a five year old. If I had more time with Gianna I would
have separated the assessments and did one per day to hopefully get her full attention on each.
The assessments are good to determine what understanding children have of each concept
and what level of support they need in specific areas. If I were Giannas teacher I would give
more activities that deal with letters and sounds. Also do sight words many times throughout the
day. I would include writing activities so that she can practice sounding words out and trying to
write them on her own. Without the assessments I would not be able to determine what Gianna

needed help with and what she struggles with. The assessments could help me as a teacher to
teach what the children need to learn.

References
Clay, M. M. (2013). An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (3rd ed.).
Auckland, New Zealand: The Marie Clay Literacy Trust.
Morrow, L. M. (2012). Literacy Development in the Early Years: Helping Children Read
and Write (7th ed.). Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Pearson Education Inc.