Maddie Vance

Read 366
4/27/14

Literacy Assessment Write-Up
For this assignment, a child named Sophie (pseudonym) was assessed on a
variety of literacy tasks in order to assess her literacy development. The child is a
female in kindergarten and was given these assessments on April 21
st
, 2014. The
child completed six tasks on the following topics: Rhyme, Beginning Sounds,
Spelling, Letter-Sound Production, Words in Isolation, and a Leveled Reading task.
Several of these assessments are used in PALS testing, the group of literacy tests
used to asses elementary school readers. How she performed on these assessments
allowed me to gage where she is in her stage of reader development.
For the first assessment, the childs concept of rhyme was tested. The activity
worksheet gave the child three pictures at a time, and the child had to circle the two
pictures representing the words that rhymed. Each set was given to the child row by
row and the child was able to correctly find the correct rhyming words in each row.
She self corrected herself on the first row of pictures, because she originally thought
bear and cheese rhymed, and then she changed her answer right away when she
realized that was wrong. Right when the worksheet was given to the child, she said
she knew how to do it and didnt need instruction. She proceeded through the
worksheet without assistance and read the words aloud as she circled them so she
could hear the rhyming of the words. She seems to grasp the concept of rhyming
words without any difficulty and is developing appropriately in this category.
The next assessment completed by the child was the beginning sounds
worksheet. On this worksheet, there was a picture given to the child along with
Maddie Vance
Read 366
4/27/14

three others, and she had to circle the other picture of the object with the same
beginning sound. The first picture was read to her in every row, and then she would
read aloud the other three pictures to herself until she excitedly said aloud which
one was the correct answer. We did this for each row of pictures until she had
completed the worksheet all the way through. She correctly identified each picture
with the same beginning sound as the first picture without any assistance. She got
them all correct and received an 8 out of 8 for this section. This activity shows that
she is developmentally progressing correctly as a beginner reader.
The next assessment in the packet assessed her spelling development. This
section was a little difficult for her, as she is a stronger reader than she is speller.
She scored a 24 out of 40 in this section. She particularly had the most difficulty with
the blends and digraphs section and did not receive very many points in that
section. She also had trouble with the long vowels and usually only got 1 of the 2
long vowels in the word. Out of the 10 words, she was only able to spell 2
completely correctly. While doing the worksheet, the word would be said aloud to
her and then she was asked to write it in the box. Several times, she would say I
dont know how to write that and I would respond by telling her to try her best and
write down whatever she thought was correct. She tried the best that she could with
each word and sounded out the more difficult words. She struggled with this
assessment and is classified in the beginner reader stage due to her developmental
spelling that includes beginnings, endings and some vowels. For each word, she was
able to correctly get the initial consonant, and the short vowel, and for most of the
Maddie Vance
Read 366
4/27/14

words, the final consonant. This shows she is developmentally on track as a
beginner reader and just needs to work on her blends, digraphs and long vowels.
For the next assessment, she was assessed on her reading of words in
isolation. She was given the preprimer list and told to read the words that she knew
aloud one at a time. Out of the 20 words, she read 13 of them right away without
hesitation and received credit for knowing them. A few of the words she said she
didnt know and moved to the next one, but for a few words, she thought she knew
them but said an incorrect word similar to the word. For example, for he she said
his and for his she said has. The child is an excellent reader but she often gets
confused with similar words and just needs to study her word study words. Due to
her scoring on this assessment, she moved onto a level C reading.
On this task, the child received the Sam book and was told the title of the
book. I tried to go over the story with her beforehand, but she stopped me and told
me she could read it on her own without my help. She proceeded to read the story,
getting 25 out of the 30 words correct. On the word he, she stopped and asked me
what that word was, and the word was given to her. On four other words (out, goes,
down, and goes) she read the word incorrectly and said the substituted words as
given on the assessment sheet. She didnt seem to understand what the story was
saying, and showed no comprehension. She missed words and this could be due to
the fact that we didnt go over the story beforehand. In the beginner stage of reading
development, it states that the child performs guided reading where children are
introduced to the story and vocabulary and asked to read the story aloud on their
Maddie Vance
Read 366
4/27/14

own. She perhaps could have scored better had she let me go over the story with her
before she started reading. Since she did not score a 90% or above on this story, she
did not move on to the F leveled reading, Max. She instead went on to the letter-
sound production task as assigned from the concept of word task.
In this final assessment, the child was shown a worksheet with various
letters and combinations of letters shown in large print. One at a time, the child
went through the letters and said aloud the sound each letter makes. She performed
well on this task, as she got the sounds for every single letter correct. However, the
groups of letters on the sheet, she had trouble with. When there was a group of two
letters together, she could not correctly produce the sound. For Sh she said it
sounds like what a single letter S sounds like. She did not include the sound of the
h. For Th, she said it makes the Zzz sound, and for Ch she said it makes Cha.
So she got the Ch part, but added an a to the end. She scored a 23 out of 26 in this
section, only incorrectly saying the groups of letters. Perhaps she is more used to
seeing the letters individually and gets confused when they are grouped together.
She just needs practice with how the letters sound when they are paired with other
letters.
Based on this group of assessments, the child is in the beginner stage of early
reader development. She is in the last few weeks of her kindergarten year and will
soon be moving onto first grade. She knows the alphabet and has concept of word,
and can name at least 20 sight words. To make recommendations for teaching this
child, the teacher should continue with read-alouds, as this is where she will gain
Maddie Vance
Read 366
4/27/14

most of her comprehension. In order to build fluency, have the child read the same
text that was read the day before, to warm them up and get them reading fluently.
Have them read aloud to themselves or to a partner. To gain more sight words, have
the child practice writing these words on a white board, play bingo with the words,
or create sentences using a variety of the words. After the child reads a story, have
them work on their writing by writing a response to what they read, or have them
complete open-ended sentences. The most amount of time in the readers diet
should be spent on fluency, with that being the main focus in this stage. The child
used in this assessment will remain anonymous and this assessment was completed
honestly and accurately.