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Assessment Study
Student Information
Childs Name: Abby
Age: 6 years old
Grade: First Grade
Reading Level: Book level 0.7, Accuracy >90%
Introduction
Abby is a 6 year old first grade student. She is always attentive and ready to learn.
However, she is in a very large class and this can lead to some distractions while working not
only for her, but also for her peers. While talking with her, she frequently expressed her
enjoyment for reading and writing. She is always eager to please those around her, such as her
teacher, and in assisting her peers when necessary.
One of Abbys favorite activities to do after school is going to the apple orchard with her
family, whether she is picking apples or playing on the playground at the orchard. Another one of
her favorite places to go after school is her grandmothers house. There, they bake cookies
together either chocolate chip or sugar cookies. While Abby is in school, she enjoys doing all
kinds of school work, whether it is writing, math, or picture work so she can practice her cutting
skills.
She enjoys reading in school, particularly starting with short books before reading bigger
books. Abby couldnt remember the name of her favorite book, but she said it was about a
character named Hattie May who cooks a pancake that runs away. Abby said that she has plenty
of books to read at home, and some of them are chapter books which she cant read yet. Abby
loves writing, and especially enjoys writing poems about characters from books, like Alexander
and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
Assessment Results
Sight Words
Abby completed the pre-primer Dolch sight word list assessment with 70% correct. Next,
she completed the primer sight word list with 42% correct. I had her attempt the first grade list,
but ended it quickly as she was unable to recognize the words. Her performance on the sight

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words brought up some concerns about her reading skills, thus I administered some of the tests
for non-readers.
Concepts about Books and Conventions of Print
Abby performed exceptionally well on the CAB/CAP checklist. She answered every item
correctly except for in the Level 4 section (concepts about punctuation marks). She was able to
show me a question mark, but was unable to explain what it is used for. Also, she was unable to
identify a comma and explain what it is used for.
Test of Alphabet Recognition
This was the first assessment for non-readers that I administered for Abby. She was able
to correctly identify all letters of the alphabet, both uppercase letters and lowercase letters. Thus,
her alphabet recognition is not a concern when it comes to her reading skills.
Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Awareness
The second assessment for non-readers that I administered for Abby was the Yopp-Singer
Test. She was able to correctly segment 12 of the 22 items. Thus, she is considered to display
emerging phonemic awareness.
Running Record
For the Running Record, Abby read a book to me called I Went Walking by Sue Williams.
This book was given to me under the recommendation of her teacher, and the reading level for
the book as determined by the AR Program is 0.7. The book featured many repeated phrases and
words. Some frequent errors she made were replacing the world did with bib and saw with
was.
Her percent accuracy score was 82% (below 90%), which means that the text was too
challenging for her and in her frustration level. Her self-correction rate was 1:18, which means
she was rarely making self-corrections during the reading. However, she made 5 errors in the last
sentence of the book, which is something to keep in mind. She didnt seem to recognize the
words on the last sentence, so she skipped over them and replaced them with words she did
know; this was the only sentence in the book in which she skipped so many words in a row.
Along with this, the majority of her errors were replacing words as previously mentioned (did
with bib, etc.). This book had many repeated words and phrases on every page, so she made
the same errors over again. Taking these factors into account, this would help to explain why her
percent accuracy score was less than 90%.

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Strengths
As seen in one of her writing samples where she copied the spelling words into her
journal, her letters are all written neatly and clearly. She has a proper spacing between her letters
when writing single words.
Abby has strong conventions about books and print. She understands parts of books such
as the front, back, and title page, and can distinguish between words and letters and knows where
we start and end while reading. Her strong interest in reading and writing has led to this
knowledge.
Another strength of Abbys is that while reading, she has a clear pitch and tone of voice.
She reads at an appropriate volume; not too quiet and not too loud. She knows fairly well how to
segment words and sound out ones that she does not know.
Weaknesses
Abby needs to work on her self-correction skills. If she comes across a word she does not
know while reading, she will quickly substitute it for a word she does know, instead of
attempting to sound it out and self-correct. If she does not substitute the word, she will skip over
it, and even will skip over an entire sentence. This is something she will need to work on.
She is able to identify all letters of the alphabet as determined by the test of alphabet
recognition. However, she will frequently switch around letters while reading, such as switching
d with a b and so forth. As mentioned previously in the discussion of the running record, she
would almost always substitute the word did for bib, which shows that she is unable to
always differentiate between these letters in text while reading.
As seen in her writing samples, she needs to work on recognizing and using proper
spacing between words. In her free-writing sentences, the individual letters are clearly seen, but
not the individual words that make up the sentences.
Resources
Williams, S., & Vivas, J. (1989). I went walking. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.