Literacy Assessment Write Up

Brief Background
Calvin is a quiet, five-year-old in my practicum Kindergarten class.
He is well behaved most of the time and sets an example for disruptive
children in the class. He starts off shy, but once he is excited about
something, he breaks out of his shell and becomes incredibly animated. Over
the course of a few days, I performed a literacy assessment and a story
retelling assessment on Calvin for READ 366. He took to them well and was
excited to answer the questions I had for him.

Phonological Awareness Assessment

Calvin has fairly easy time recognizing the alphabet. He was very
confident about the majority of the letters even if he got them wrong. The
ones he was unable to identify were T, J, and K. The first time
through, he asked to go back to T, J, and K, but did not know them
upon second return. Total, he knew 23 of 26 uppercase letters. When asked
to identify the lowercase letters, he was able to with less ease than the
uppercase. He misidentified h as w, l as i, t as f, and q as p.
When asked if he was sure about them he said he was certain. When asked
to identify g and g, he was unable to and said, I dont know that one
for both of them. Upon second return to the g and g, he was still unable
to identify them. The different font for g threw him off, but the different
fonts for a and a did not throw him off. It is possible he recognized both
a fonts better because there is an a in his name and there is not a g in
his name. Overall, Calvin was able to identify 22 of 28 lowercase letters.
 Calvin performed worse on the letter sounds identification test. He
misidentified the sound of p with the sound of d, and misidentified the
sound of d with the sound of b. He asked to go back to n, w, and
g, but upon second return, he only knew the sound for w. Overall, he did
not know
the

sounds for sh, ch, th, wh, p, d, n, g, q or y and received

a score of 20 of 30 letter sounds.
Calvin performed perfectly on the rhyme recognition assessment. He

seemed enthusiastic about this assessment and was ready to tell whether
words rhymed or not. He earned a 10 out of 10 and did not ask to return to
any word pairs.

Calvin also performed perfectly on the onset fluency assessment. He

requested to listen to the example twice before starting the assessment. He
repeated the word and then said the beginning sound. For example, on
number one, he said, Mad. Mad starts with /m/. He did not exaggerate the
sounds. For example, when saying the beginning sound for pet, he did not
say puh, he said the p sound correctly. He earned a 10 out of 10.

Calvins class had not yet started on blending compound words and
syllables, so I was unsure about how he would perform. I gave him the
examples hotdog and classroom before I started the assessment. He
was excited to combine the words and jumped in the chair for each word he
combined. He earned a 9 out of 10 for this assessment. The only one he got
incorrect was number ten, par-ty. He answered hoagie instead of
party. It was possible that I wasnt saying par-ty correctly, so I repeated
the prompt and his response to him and asked if he was sure. He said Yes,
it is hoagie. He responded more accurately than I expected since he had not
been taught this in class.

Calvin performed better segmenting words into compound words and

syllables. I provided the same examples, hotdog and classroom as I did
in the blending compound word assessment. Calvin would repeat the word
and then break it apart. For example, he said footprint, foot and print. He
earned 10 out of 10 for this assessment.

Calvin had a more difficult time identifying final sounds than he did
beginning sounds. At the beginning of the assessment, he started off
identifying the beginning sounds because he did not understand the
directions given. I stopped the assessment and repeated the directions. He
then understood and we started again. He identified that pick had an
ending p sound, and that come had an ending o sound. He asked to go
back to feet and the second time around he identified the final sound

correctly. Overall, Calvin received 8 out of 10 for the final sound

assessment.

Upon assessing print concepts, Calvin mastered one through six. He

could hold a book with correct orientation, distinguish pictures from words,
locate where to start reading on a page with multiple lines of text,
demonstrates the left side of book is where to start reading, track text with
finger from left to right, and turn pages one at a time from front to back.
Although he can track words from left to right, his one-to-one
correspondence is not fully developed. He will sometimes track one-to-one,
but regularly gets off track with multi-syllable words. For example, in the
poem Black Birds, Black Birds, he will have one-to-one correspondence
until he reaches the word sitting in the first line. For the rest of the poem,
he is off.
Calvin performed perfectly on print concepts numbers eight through
eleven. After reading a sentence, he is able to supply the word that is asked
for after reading a sentence. Even if he does not know how to spell the word,
he will use his beginning letter sound skills to decode the word. He also was
able to identify his name in the sentence Calvin is a smart student in my
class. He got excited about the sentence and smiled after it was read aloud
to him. Calvin easily distinguished letters from numbers on a page by saying
whether it was a number or letter. He told me the letter name and that
numbers were numbers. He did not ask to go back to any character and
finished this assessment
very quickly. Finally,
Calvin completed number
eleven, language
awareness. He repeated the
sentence I like to read.
back to me without running
the words together. His
repetition was fluid and
natural without stuttering
or forgetting the sentence.
Overall, Calvin
performed well on print concepts,
uppercase alphabet recognition,
onsets and rimes, and blending and
segmenting compound words and
syllables. The areas that were
lacking were lowercase alphabet
recognition, letter sound
identification (especially with
blended sounds), identifying final
sounds in words, and one-to-one
correspondence.

Writing
Calvin was asked to write about
something he likes to do while we
were at his table with other
children. The other students were
also writing in their journals, so it
was a relatively quiet atmosphere.
He first drew a green piece of land
covering the bottom part of the
paper. Then he drew a blue sky and
yellow sun at the top of the paper.
Next, in pencil, he drew four
people standing on the grass. Only one person had arms, and his body was
like a typical stick figure. The other three people had rounded, squared, or
triangular shaped bodies with legs and a head. Every person was smiling and
had eyes, a nose, and a mouth. The stick figure was standing behind a brown
ball. He told me that was him playing soccer with friends. He wrote out the
word soccer in the middle of the paper. He spelled soccer like soccse
on his first try. All his letters were oriented correctly. After he was finished
with his writing sample, I asked what it said and he said, Playing soccer,
so I dictated that on the paper. After I left him to walk around the room and
help other students, he attempted to copy my word soccer and spelled it
correctly that time, but wrote a backwards s.
His adamancy of wanting to spell soccer correctly shows that his
writing is more advanced than symbol salad but still not to the point where
he is recognizing words by sight or sounding them out fully. Calvins
weakness in the area of ending letter sounds is prevalent in this writing
sample.

Retelling
Calvin was assessed in a story retelling. I pulled him out of the
classroom during a review session on rhyming that was happening as a
whole class group. Before I told him the story of The Three Billy Goats
Gruff, I asked him if he had ever heard the story before. He said no, so his
retelling assessment is not based on any prior knowledge of the story. I told
him that I was going to read him the story, retell the story for him using
puppets, and that he would get to retell the story using puppets when I was
finished. Calvin listened well to the story and to the initial retelling. While I
used the puppets to retell the story, he grabbed the ones I was not using and
played with them until I asked him to use them. He was excited to get his
hands on the puppets and retell.
Calvin easily retold the major events and the resolution, but left out
the setting and characters. He was able to partially mention the reaction of
the characters at the end of the story, and only reiterate the story problem
fragmentally. His total score was a nine out of fifteen, for an overall
developing retelling score.
Calvin did not retell the setting and characters, so he received a score
of zero for that story element. He retold the story problem by saying They
wanted to cross the bridge. Because this does not mention the troll, or
mention why they wanted to cross the bridge, he received a one of three for
the problem element. During the three episodes, Calvin said almost exactly
what was mentioned on the assessment sheet, so he received a three of three
for the sequence of major events. The resolution aspect of retelling was also
sufficient. He said, Big Billy knocks the troll off the bridge and crosses.
Calvin was able to give the detail that Big Billy knocked the troll off the
bridge, so his resolution response earned a three of three. Finally, Calvin
mentioned only part of the character reaction by saying, After that, they
crossed whenever they liked. The end. He did not mention the grass or who
was able to cross the bridge. Because of his partial response, Calvin received
two of three. Altogether, Calvin received a score of nine out of fifteen,
indicating that he is developing his retelling abilities. He was able to
understand and reiterate the story sequence, but details were lacking in his
story retell.
Story RetellingThe Three Billy Goats Gruff
READ 366
JMU Student_Bailey Dismore Grade Level of Student Assessing_K_
Total Score_____9___________________
1. Read story to child at least once, then through pictures and talk about
what happened in story
2. Use story figures and model retelling the story using all of the elements (be
well practiced)
3. Have child retell story with figureswrite down what child says or record
and write down later
Story Element From Three Billy Goats Gruff What child said in assessment
Setting and Once upon a time, there
Characters lived three billy goat brothers. _____________________________________
Their names were Little Billy, _____________________________________
Middle Billy, and Big Billy.
Story Problem One day, they decided to They wanted to cross the bridge
cross the bridge to eat the
sweet grass on the other side.
There was only one problem.
A mean troll lived under it.
Episode 1 Little Billy tries to cross the The little one crossed. They troll says
bridge and the troll tries to Im going to eat you up He says,
eat him and he tells him to Wait for my brother, he is bigger and
wait for his bigger brother. tastier the troll said Ok and he
The troll lets him cross the crossed the bridge.
bridge.
 Episode 2 Middle Billy tries to cross the
bridge and the troll tries to
eat him and he tells him to
wait for Big Billy. The troll lets
him cross the bridge.
Episode 3 Big Billy tries to cross the
bridge but the troll tries to eat
him. Big Billy has a plan to
butt the troll off the bridge.
Resolution Big Billy rams the troll so hard
that he is thrown off the
bridge and Big Billy crosses
the bridge to join his brothers.
Reactions of After that, the three brothers
characters crossed the bridge whenever
they liked. And, my, the
sweet green grass was
delicious!
Middle Billy crossed. The troll says,
Im going to eat you up. He says,
Wait for my brother, he is bigger and
tastier. The troll said, Ok and he
crossed.
Big Billy crossed. The troll says, Im
going to eat you up. But Big Billy had
a plan.
Big Billy knocks the troll off the bridge
and crosses.
After that, they crossed whenever
they liked. The end.

Rubric for Scoring Individual Story Elements:

Complete, detailed: 3 Partial: 2 Fragmentary: 1 Inaccurate: 0
Setting and Characters (How, where, who at beginning of story?)
Score: __0___
Story Problem Score: __1___
Sequence of major eventsepisodes 1-3 Score: __3___
Resolution Score: __3___
Reaction of characters or ending Score: __2___

Total Score: __9___

13-15Strong retelling 9-12Developing retelling 5-8Early 0-4Little
story language

Recommendations for Teaching

Based on the assessments completed with the child and the data
collected from the results, Calvin appears to be in the late emergent stage for
literacy. He has inconsistent concept of word that is seen when he gets off
track while performing one-to-one correspondence. Until he has mastered
concept of word, he will continue to stay an emergent reader. He has
mastered isolating the initial phoneme, but needs more work identifying
final sounds in words.
Calvin needs some reinforcement of the alphabet, both upper and
lowercase, letter sound recognition, especially for blended sounds,
identifying ending sounds, and tracking words while reading from memory.
 To start his literacy diet, I would take a couple steps back and
reintroduce the alphabet and letter sounds. Working on letters with him for
five to ten minutes a day might be all the help he needs. Since he gets the
majority of letter identification, he would probably need less time focusing
on letters than on letter sounds. I would reinforce the single letter sounds and
ending letter sounds in words in small group time for approximately ten
minutes a day and start instruction on blended letter sounds for the whole
class. Calvins class has not yet started to learn blended letter sounds, so this
would be a good topic to introduce as a whole group.
The most important area of concern I see in Calvin is his concept of
word development. In order to get him to track words better, I would give
instruction in small groups about syllables. Since he gets off track while he
is reading multi-syllable words, I would make sure he knew that even though
a word has more than one syllable, it is still one word. To hone in on
tracking, I would use more engaging materials to help him track words he is
reading. For example, I would let him use beads to drop on each word so he
would slow down his reading and think about the starting and ending sounds
to decode the words.
To help Calvin in the areas he is lacking, I would change the literacy
diet from 20% COW, 20% CAP, 20% Alphabet, 20% Phonological
Awareness, and 20% writing, to 25% COW, 15% CAP, 20% Alphabet, 20%
phonological awareness, and 20% writing. Calvins literacy diet would
consist majorly of phonemic awareness and concept of word, but less
importance would be placed on phonological awareness and concepts about
print because he was sufficient in those areas.