Running head: STUDENT ASSESSMENT PROJECT 1

Raegan Stead

Student Assessment Project

EDU 325
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Introduction

Trevor is a second grade student and has been at his current school since preschool. He is

African American and is eight years old. He is currently on an IEP for a specific learning

disability. At school he is placed in a second grade general education classroom and goes down

to the self-contained special education classroom if he is struggling on an assignment or if he is

refusing to do his work and/or disrupting the class. He usually needs to be prompted to do his

work, but once he gets started he can do it on his own. He has a short attention span and gets

easily frustrated with his assignments. There is not a paraeducator in his general education

classroom, so he is sent to the special education classroom to get extra help. Sometimes he will

try to make jokes and get off topic to avoid doing his work. He responds well to rewards and will

immediately start doing his work if promised something in return. Rewards used are a piece of

candy, being able to ask a question, or getting to tell one joke. Trevor gets along well with other

students, but acts less mature than the students in his class. He listens to directions and does what

he is told, but it seems like he does not understand why he is engaging in the behavior. Trevor is

also very clumsy and messy. The inside of his desk is always full of garbage, crumpled up

papers, broken pencils, and books with pages and covers missing. He always has food on his

clothes because he eats very quickly at lunch and has a hard time using silverware correctly. He

skips through the halls instead of walking and frequently trips over his own feet. At home, Trevor

lives with his aunt and acts immaturely. He usually does what he is told, but eventually reverts

back to his immature behavior. He enjoys eating, playing games, and telling jokes.

Procedures
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Prior to completing the assessment, I asked my cooperating field teacher which

student should asses. She suggested Trevor and gave me all of the background information

on him that I could not fill put myself. He does not live with his parents so I had to ask her

for the rest of the information. I have worked with Trevor multiples times throughout the

semester so I had most of the background information already. The interview took place

before the assessment was given. The assessment took place on April 4th and April 9th.

Trevor and I worked on the assessment in the cafeteria while it was empty. On the first day

we did the first two assessments and on the second day we did the second two

assessments. During the assessments, Trevor was given a break between tests because he

has a hard time focusing for long periods of time. The break was about five minutes long

and he received a Reese Cup as reinforcement for completing the first assessment. Each day

the assessments took about thirty minutes to complete. After finishing each day, Trevor

received another Reese Cup as reinforcement and as a reward for helping me on the project.

He was excited to help me with the project and was even happier to receive the chocolate.

While analyzing the data, I found that Trevor is received very low scores in words read per

minute and on his retelling ability. Both of those areas are affected by fluency and

comprehension, which is why those were chosen as targeted areas for improvement. The

strategies were chosen selecting the strategies.

Assessments Given

The assessments given were Nonsense Word Fluency and Oral Reading Fluency. The

NWF assessment presents made-up words consisting of two or three letters. The student

being assessed is asked to read as many of the words correctly as they can in one minute.

They receive one point for every letter sound that they pronounce correctly and one point
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for each whole word read correctly. According to Ritchey (2008), NWF measures a student's

ability to apply letter sound relationships to vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel-

consonant pseudowords.

This ability important for students because it allows them to recognize letter-sound

relationships and not just memorize the sounds of certain words. The “words” are

presented in rows of twelve rows of five.

The Oral Reading Fluency assessment was broken up into three parts. Each part

contained a different story that the student had to read and a retell section. The student

was give one minute to read as much of the passage as possible. While the student was

reading, the assessor marked mistakes, missed words, and skipped lines. When the minute

was up, the assessor put a bracket around the last word read. That indicated how many

words were read in the time period without accounting for mistakes. The mistakes were

then added up and subtracted from the total words read. That figure determines the total

number of words read in the time frame. After the student completed the oral reading, they

were ask to retell as many details from the story as they could. They were given one minute

to retell the story. While the student was summarizing the passage, the assessor marked the

number of details the student was able to provide. When the time was up, the assessor took

note of the number of details given by the student and scored their summarization based

on the retelling. This sequence was done three times with three different passages.

The Oral Reading Fluency assessment is important because it shows how many

words a student can read correctly in one minute. The student has to also comprehend

what they are reading because they have to retell what they just read with as many details

as possible. It is important to give the retell test because in order for students to
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understand what they are reading, they have to be fluent readers. According to Francis,

Santi, Barr, Fletcher, Varisco, & Foorman (2008), this relationship between fluency and

comprehension has been argued theoretically and studied empirically, where it has been

shown across a variety of settings and contexts using different measures of fluency and

comprehension, that a fluent reader is more likely to have better comprehension skills.

Fluency and comprehension build off of each other and the scores in these categories can

show why a student is doing well or poorly.

Results & Analysis

Trevor received a composite score of 95 for the DIBELS assessment. He is considered

well below the benchmark for the end of the year. On the Nonsense Word Fluency

assessment, he read 7 words correctly and was able to correctly pronounce 31 letter

sounds in the time frame. He is considered below benchmark for CLS and well below

benchmark for WR. He was able to read words that were similar to actual words and was

unable to read the rest. He got to the third row on the assessment before time ran out. He

tried to sound out the words he could not read and sometimes tried to spend a lot of time

on one word or letter. On the first DORF assessment, Trevor read 49 words and had 7

errors, which resulted in a score of 42. His retell for that passage was average and he was

able to remember three details from what he read. He explained the details in 25 words. In

the second assessment, he read 40 words and had 7 errors, which resulted in a score of 33.

His retell for that passage was weak and he could only remember two details from what he

read. He explained the details in 15 words. In the third assessment, he read 51 words and

had 6 errors, which resulted in a score of 45. He read more words this assessment, but
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could only retell 2 details in 13 words. He began to make up details about the passage so

the time was cut short.

Total RF Word RF Quality

Measurement Errors Words Correct
Words Count Response
DORF Probe 1 49 7 42 25 2 (3 details)
DORF Probe 2 40 7 33 15 1 (2 details)
DORF Probe 3 51 6 45 13 1 (2 details)

Average Words Correct 40 RF Word Count Average 17

DORF Accuracy 68-77% RF Quality Response Average 1

Table 1. Trevor’s performance on the DORF and RF assessments.

Areas Targeted for Improvement

Targeted Area A

The first literacy area that Trevor needs to improve in is fluency. Fluency is targeted

because Trevor did not read many words per minute and struggled to sound out some of the

words. The mistakes made on some of the words reduced his total words read score. Trevor will

need to be able to use this skill for the rest of his life, so it is important that he improves on it

now while he is still relatively young. In order to improve his fluency, two strategies would be

implemented. The first strategy is assessment. Assessments would be used to find underlying

cause of non-fluent reading and address those in instruction. According to Murray, Munger, &

Clonan (2011), without an adequate background in assessment, many teachers may not realize

the limitations of oral reading fluency data, and they may also fail to gather additional data to aid

them in making effective instructional decisions. This means that assessment could undercover

reasons as to why Trevor is struggling with fluency and his needs could be met during
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instruction. The assessments would also provide data for progress monitoring and instruction

could be based off of the data.

The second strategy is repeated reading. Repeated reading allows the student to

practicing reading orally, which can increase fluency. On the DIBELs assessment, Trevor

struggled with reading orally and read at a slow pace. Practicing those skills with different

passages could increase the number of words Trevor can read correctly during a period of time

and will help him make less mistakes. The student also rereads the passage until they receive a

sufficient score, which could give Trevor a goal to reach. Using repeated readings as an

intervention to increase fluency, Boon, Spencer, & Strickland (2013) found that results indicated

that both students with LD consistently retained higher fluency gains on the high fluency

criterion passage for all post-intervention sessions. The same type of intervention could be used

with Trevor and his process could be monitored by assessing his growth from session to session.

Targeted Area B

The second literacy area that Trevor needs to improve in is comprehension. Trevor was unable to

accurately retell many details from the passages he read. He was able to tell a few details at first

then he eventually got off track and started making up details or he would repeat the same details

over and over again. In order to improve his comprehension, two strategies would be

implemented. The first strategy is structure strategy intervention. According to Meyer & Ray

(2011), strategy interventions employ modeling, practice, and feedback to teach students how to

use text structure strategically and eventually automatically. Using this strategy will increase

Trevor’s ability to use the text to understand its meaning. The classroom teacher would have to

model skills such as comparison, problem-and-solution, causation, sequence, collection, and

description. After modeling, the teacher would practice with Trevor until he is able to find
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meaning in the text on his own. Feedback is also important because it lets Trevor know how he is

progressing and what skills he still needs to work on. Direct instruction, modeling, scaffolding,

elaborated feedback, and adaptation of instruction are important to teaching students to use their

knowledge to uncover text meaning.

The second strategy is Say Something. This is a strategy that involves interrupting a

student’s reading and asking them questions about what they had read up to that point. According

to Kissau & Hiller (2013), weak readers are often so focused on understanding and correctly

pronouncing individual words in texts that they lose sight of the general message. This strategy

has students stop reading frequently and has them reflect on what they read. Students are

encouraged to discuss what they have read in detail. This strategy could also be implemented in

groups and the students could discuss what they have read with one another. This strategy would

help Trevor because he was very focused on reading the words and sounding them out rather

than understanding what the passage meant. He would still be able to try to pronounce the words

correctly, but he would read less at a time and reflect on a smaller amount of information. This

would also help him remember the information longer. Progress monitoring could be done by

slowly increasing the number of words or sentences read before stopping to ask questions.

Conclusion

Overall, I found that Trevor is well below the second grade benchmark for the end of

the year. He struggled to read in both the Nonsense Word Fluency assessment and the Oral

Reading Assessment. He seemed to not take the retell section as seriously as I would have

liked, but I could tell he just wanted to be done with the assessment. I found allowing

Trevor to have breaks between the assessments to be important because I do not think he

would have continued to cooperate without them. The Reese Cups also helped keep him
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engaged in the assessment. I also found the benchmark scores to be important because it

allowed me to see where Trevor was compared to other students his age and it gave an idea

of the kind of intervention he would need. I was surprised to find how below benchmark

Trevor performed because when I work with him in his classes he does not seem to have a

problem reading and answering questions about what he read. I have found that he works

better when someone is helping him and keeping him on track.

Bibliography
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Francis, D., Santi, K., Barr, C., Fletcher, J., Varisco, A., & Foorman, B. (2008). Form effects on
the estimation of students' oral reading fluency using DIBELS. Journal Of School
Psy chology, 46(3), 315-342. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2007.06.003

Kissau, S., & Hiller, F. (2013). Reading Comprehension Strategies: An International Comparison
of Teacher Preferences. Research In Comparative And International Education, 8(4),
437-454. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/rcie.2013.8.4.437

Meyer, B., & Ray, M. (2011). Structure strategy interventions: Increasing reading comprehension
of expository text. International Electronic Journal Of Elementary Education, 4,
127-152.

Murray, M., Munger, K., & Clonan, S. (2011). Assessment as a Strategy to Increase Oral Read
ing Fluency. Intervention In School And Clinic, 47(3), 144-151. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1177/1053451211423812

Ritchey, K. (2008). Assessing Letter Sound Knowledge: A Comparison of Letter Sound Fluency
and Nonsense Word Fluency. Exceptional Children, 74(4), 487-506.
http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/001440290807400405

Strickland, W., Boon, R., & Spencer, V. (2013). The Effects of Repeated Reading on the Fluency
and Comprehension Skills of Elementary-Age Students with Learning Disabilities (LD),
2001-2011: A Review of Research and Practice. Learning Disabilities: A
Contemporary Journal, 11, 1-33.