Emily DAngelo

EDU 681
Writing Analysis

Setting/Background: This observation was done with my seven year-old son, Dominic. The
analysis took place in our home. Dominic will be in First Grade in fall. He did very well in
Kindergarten, but does not always enjoy writing. Hed rather be building with Legos! When I
asked him to write a sentence for me, he started to whine. When I asked him to write a sentence
about Lego Batman sets, he immediately got excited and quickly began looking for a pencil
(proof that when given a choice to write about something of interest, kids are MUCH more
willing to comply!)
Stages and Benchmarks: This is what Dominics sentence looked like:
Lego Batman thing aer varee in potit to me
Translation: Lego Batman things are very important to me.
Dominic is in the Early Stage of writing, the Advanced Phonetic Spelling stage. He did know to
capitalize Lego and Batman, which made me chuckle; he is obsessed with Lego Batman kits so it
doesnt surprise me he knew how to write them! Dominics sample shows he spells words using
letter-sound relationships. When I asked him how he spelled the word thing, he told me he
tapped it. He knew how to write the th sound. He also knew that ing is a welded sound (he
learned that sound as one big sound because it is hard to hear all three letters individually). He
did not put an s on the end of the word things, which is consistent with his reading; he often
leaves off suffixes when he reads. He did write some sight words correctly, in, to, and me.
Longer words are difficult for Dominic to read and write because he has not had much
instruction on breaking words into syllables yet. He did, however, realize that the word
important begins with what sounds like in, and he also recognized it ended with a t. His
writing shows he has not had instruction on vowel teams, but could pick out what vowels he
could hear in words. This is demonstrated with the word very; Dominic spelled it phonetically,
varee.

Deficiencies and Recommendations: Dominic does not seem to be demonstrating any

deficiencies at this time. Some recommendations would be to continue working with the silent e
word patterns. Words with this pattern are sometimes difficult for Dominic to read, and he does
not write these words correctly at this time. It would also be a good idea to talk to him about
punctuation as he consistently forgets to use punctuation in his writing. He has a strong pencil
grip and his writing is legible.
Reflection: Because I did this assessment with my son, I felt the entire experience was a
reflection on where Dominic is at with his writing. I am happy to see he has not regressed too
much over the summer (I have to be honest; I have not worked with him much with writing skills

over the summer!) I love the phonemic spelling stage; its so neat to see kids expressing their
thoughts through writing! I was happy to see that Dominic seems to have a clear understanding
of the vowel sounds; those can be so tricky!