Student Information

Child’s Name: Ellie (pseudonym)

Age: 5
Grade: Kindergarten
Gender: Female

Introduction
Ellie is in kindergarten at St. Marks right across the street from Bradley. She has an

extremely likable personality and does not know a stranger. Ellie lives at home with her mom

who she loves to play with when she gets home from school. Ellie watches a lot of tv at home

with her mom and enjoys watching movies on her tablet. There is only one book at Ellie’s house,

which is a book about fairies, and Ellie loves to read it with her mom. Ellie thinks that she is a

good writer and knows that she is because, “good writers write a lot.” When I told Ellie that she

was going to help me learn how to be a teacher though, Ellie responded that she knew all about

teaching and would be able to help me a lot. She said, “teachers have to be tough so they can tell

kids what to do, and they have to be very, very responsible.” My time spent with Ellie for the

past couple of weeks has been full of laughter and learning. Ellie had a challenging time getting

focused sometimes because she loves to talk, but she was confident that I was assessing her

because she is the smartest in the class. Overall, she is a very loving, excited, and passionate

kindergartener who has much potential to succeed in the future.

Assessment Results
ABC Test
Going into administering this ABC test, I didn’t know what to expect out of Ellie. I soon

realized that the assessment might be hard for her. I printed off the alphabet in both uppercase

and lowercase, out of order and showed the sheet to her. I had a clipboard of the same thing so

that we both could look at it at the same time on different sheets. The uppercase letters were

much easier for Ellie than the lowercase letters. It was hard for me to sit back and not explicitly

help her when she paused on a letter. I waited patiently and most of them she did correctly on her

first try without any self-correction. Ellie did mix up B and E, but this made sense to me because

they both look very similar.

When the lowercase letters came around, Ellie made a few mistakes that were pretty

typical for a kindergartener. The typical mistakes were, for example, mistaking a “b” for a “d.” I

have seen this in many kindergarten classrooms, and even sometimes towards the end of the

year. Another one that made sense to me why it was more of a challenge for Ellie was, “j” and

“i,” also “p” and “q.” These are all similar mistakes – the letters look similar to one another.

There were a few answers that Ellie had that threw me off a little bit and those were “t” and u”

and “n” and v.” The “t” and “u” are very close in the alphabet, so maybe Ellie has had practice

singing or saying the alphabet in order, while looking at the letters, and mixed them up because

they are directly next to one another. Also, I think that “n” looks similar to “v” upside down.

While Ellie was looking at the page straight on, not upside down, maybe in the moment, Ellie

felt pressure and mixed up this concept.

Overall, Ellie’s literacy ability based on these results is pretty good for a kindergartner in

the beginning of the year. I think that she is on track to have these letters down very soon. The
mistakes that Ellie made were mostly typical of a kindergartener who is learning to read. After

some daily practice, I think Ellie will have these down in no time.

CAP/CPC
Ellie mentioned that she did not have many books at home during our interest inventory

interview. I wondered if this would affect the CAP/CPC test. I chose a Piggie and Elephant book

to use for this assessment because they are short, charismatic books that I thought Ellie might

enjoy. This specific one also had all of the qualifications necessary to administer the test.

Ellie had a hard time focusing, so I am not sure if the results of my assessment are

skewed for that reason, but the most challenging part of this assessment for Ellie was the

concepts about punctuation marks. Ellie was confident in her answers, but got confused about

what a punctuation was and pointed at a few pictures. When I asked where the period was, Ellie

pointed at the last word, but not the period itself. This demonstrated that the concept of the

period going at the end of the sentence was there, but the concept of punctuation might be

misconstrued. There was also some challenge when it came to the convections of print. This also

could have been due to the amount that Ellie wanted to talk about the book rather than take the

assessment, but again Ellie pointed at the pictures when asked where the book tells the story.

Ellie did a great job at identifying the parts of the book and also did a good job at

identifying concepts about words and letters. She knew, with confidence where the front and

back covers were, and also the difference between the title page and the first page. Ellie found it

a little more difficult to locate the title itself on the book, but she had the concept down for where

it would be located. She pointed at the picture, rather than the actual title itself. Pointing at the
words as I was reading them went particularly well, which I think can be difficult for a

kindergartener, so I was excited about that.

Overall, this assessment demonstrated to me a little bit of the outcome of Ellie’s

education at St. Marks so far this year. Because Ellie is only in kindergarten, and comes from a

home where her mom does not read to her often, she has done well on this assessment. Ellie

enjoyed reading as well, which was encouraging for me as a future teacher as well. I believe that

if children can fall in love with reading and writing, they will have an extremely successful

education experience. There are successful students who don’t love to read as well, but the

passion is helpful. This assessment didn’t demonstrate much about Ellie’s writing ability, but it

touched on her reading abilities, which have potential to improve throughout the course of the

school year.

PAST
Ellie is in kindergarten, so when administering the PAST assessment, I anticipated

administering the first 8 subtests. If Ellie missed 3 consecutive items, then I would move on to

the next subtest. After administering the first 5 subtests, then I would only move on if Ellie had

‘mastered’ the subtest. Mastery meant that she got at least 5 out of the 6 questions correct.

The first subtest was a challenge for Ellie. We used pennies to push forward for each

word, but some words blended together. I also thought it was interesting that Ellie repeated the

phrase to me and added a few words on the end. She pushed the pennies forward, but she didn’t

get the question correct because she added a phrase, so it was not repeated exactly. The next

subtest was focused on rhyming. Ellie did a good job recognizing whether or not words rhymed.
She answered incorrectly for: girl – giant and funny – bunny. These words were longer, so I am

not sure if this was the reasoning, but I see this as a possibility.

Sight Words
In this Sight Words assessment, we were called to have the child read the first 25 words.

If the student made more than 10 errors, we were advised to stop the assessment. If the student

made less than 10 errors, we were advised to keep going until 10 errors were made. I anticipated

that the student I was assessing, Ellie, would get through some words on the list, but maybe not

all 25 in the first column. Ellie is in kindergarten and we are still in the first semester, I

anticipated that we would not finish all 100 words in the first inventory.

When I administered the Sight Words test to her, Ellie was challenged by most words on

the list. She was able to sound them out – but struggled with blended sounds, diphthongs and

digraphs, so she ended up getting most of the words incorrect in the end. Ellie was able to

correctly identify the one letter words such as ‘A,’ but was challenged by words more

complicated than this. Ellie also did something else that I thought was interesting. Ellie was able

to identify the sounds of the beginning letter and the end letter, and because of this would

perform these sounds, but make up the letters in between to match words that Ellie knew already.

For example, Ellie saw the word “” Ellie also did something else similar – she would start

sounding out the word, and by the time she got to the end, she would forget the beginning sounds

and make up a word with the same ending sound. This was apparent in words such as, “that.”

Ellie would start out pronouncing the letters individually, and by the end, she told me that the

word as a whole was “at.”

Informal Phonic Inventory

Based on the results I had from Ellie, I stopped this assessment after the first 3 subtests.

Ellie knew the consonant sounds well; she did not hesitate when reading them to me. She

struggled on a few that I believe most kindergarteners would struggle on. Ellie pronounced the

“G” as a “J,” and the “Y” as a “W,” this was not completely unpredicted because these sounds

are very similar, and in some English words, this is the sound that the letter makes.

Consonant digraphs were a point of challenge for Ellie. The same problem that presented

itself during the Sight Words assessment presented itself again during this assessment. Ellie

struggled to make both of the letters one sound. Moving on to the short vowel sounds in CVC

words, Ellie was challenged again. In this subtest/exercise, Ellie took the first sound of the word,

or first letter, and said a word that she knew started with this sound. There was an emphasis on

the first letter, and an obvious lack of comprehension of the rest of the word.

Writing Samples

I took 3 writing samples from Ellie. Ellie struggled to stay focused where we were

working in the hallway, but writing got her focused, so three out of the four times I met with

Ellie, I had her complete a writing sample first before completing the other assessments. Ellie

told me that she couldn’t write every time I asked her to, but after I encouraged Ellie, and gave

her the option to draw a picture and label it, she started writing.

The first writing sample I received, I asked Ellie to write about what Ellie did this

summer and her name. Ellie knew exactly how to write her name and was very excited to show

me. When it came to the sentence about her summer, she didn’t know what to write. I asked her
to tell me about one thing that Ellie did this summer. Ellie did so, and then she decided to write

that this summer, “I had lots of water.” I think Ellie chose this sentence because Ellie knew how

to spell the word, ‘water.’ Ellie started off her sentence well. She is lacking basic writing

conventions such as spacing and capitalization, but I think that this all will progress as her year

goes on. She got the “I” and the first letter of the word “had.” Ellie did this often in our other

assessments as well. Oftentimes, Ellie would be able to quickly identify the first letter of a word

and perform the sound. This writing sample, and the ones to follow all resembled the writing

stage of, “Writing via Invented Spelling.” Ellie would use one or two letters to represent a whole

word and could read the ‘sentence’ back to me. She had a couple letters correct, but at the same

time, in this first sentence Ellie was able to correctly spell the word “water.” The other two

writing samples resembled this first one, the pictures were all very similar, the only difference

was she was not able to spell any words fully. When understanding what Ellie was attempting to

write, it is legible that she was writing, mostly, the first letter and sometimes also the last letter of

the word.

Ellie’s writing samples also told me that Ellie had good fine motor skills. Her letters were

very legible and she did not scribble at any point. In the book we talked about the different stages

of writing, and Ellie’s writing is at the “Writing via Invented Spelling stage,” but her letter

inscriptions were strong. She wrote in all capital letters, and could tell me which ones were

capital and lowercase as well. This comprehension is there, but when to use which (upper or

lowercase) is not quite there yet. Ellie’s pictures were also legible. I could tell that her drawings

were people, and they had legs and arms. The objects that Ellie drew in her pictures were more

difficult to decode, but overall I would say Ellie’s penmanship is strong.

Strengths and Learning Needs
Strengths:
1. Connecting letters to their sounds
2. Recognizing syllables
As seen in the results of Ellie’s assessments, connecting the letters of the alphabet to their
sounds is a big strength of hers. Continually throughout my visits, she practiced vocalizing each
individual letter in a word to make the whole word. Another strength I noticed from Ellie, as
seen in the PAST assessment was her syllable recognition. Ellie was able to blend all of the
syllable’s in subtest number four. She also was able to tell me how many syllables were in five
out of the six words in the fifth subtest, which would be mastery of the subject.
Learning needs:
1. Blending
2. Phoneme isolation
I would start teaching these two literacy skills first with Ellie before we moved on to
anything else. Blending would be first because it became more relevant to me when we were
completing the Sight Words assessment that if Ellie had this down, she would really be able to
succeed. All of the other strategies are there in reading sight words it seemed, which is why I
believe Ellie would be a strong reader if we focused in on her blending.
Phoneme isolation is the second literacy skill that I would teach to Ellie. I chose this because in
Ellie’s writing samples and in the Sight Words assessment, it became clear to me that Ellie was
really strong in recognizing the beginning and ending letter of a word, but it was more difficult
for Ellie to see the middle. Isolating phonemes might help Ellie strategize more when reading
and get all of those syllables in the words that she is reading.