Megan Woodford

Early Literacy Assessment

Fall 2016
Section4
 The student that was chosen for an early literacy assessment was chosen because he was a student
that was struggling a little more than the others in literacy classwork. The case student, Jake, is young for a
first grader; his birthday is in September so he turned 6 after the school year had already started. The child
has a nuclear family, with both parents working and an older brother attending fourth grade at the same
school. Dad is a car dealer and mom is a nurse. The family is new to the school and there is not much further
knowledge on the situation, however the parents do communicate with the cooperating teacher and are
involved in the students school community. Having a nuclear family can benefit the student in a few ways. A
nuclear family presents strength and stability, which can give the child a role model to look up to, as well as
good morals, love, and support. Another way the students can benefit from this kind of family is from the
consistency of the relationship in the home as well as that stability being consistent which can lead to a higher
chance of success. Jake is a very smiley and energetic boy who tends to do whatever the other boys are doing,
even if it means trouble. He has recently become a bit more reserved when a call home was made but
schoolwork remains the same, below average, as it was before. Jake tries his best, but sometimes can get
distracted easily and it is hard to focus again. Overall, this student has great potential with the right
education.
An early literacy assessment is used as a guiding tool for instruction and to help the student and
teacher make goals to aid progress. The information that is received from the assessment is to help figure out
the students need for skills, understanding, and knowledge. There are many ways to assess letter knowledge,
phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, etc., but the assessments that the student completed were
spelling, letter production, letter-sound production, preprimer word list, reading the story Sam, and a
retelling assessment.
The first assessment was spelling. The student was asked to spell 10 words total and was scored on
the correct initial consonant, final consonant, short vowel, blends and digraphs, long vowel, and overall
spelling of the word. This all came to a total score of 40 points and out of those 40, Jake got 22 which turns
out to be an accuracy of 55%. The next assessment done was letter production and it was one of the easiest
for Jake to complete, but the hardest for him to stay focused on. Overall, the student wrote each letter
accurately (some backwards), except the letter j. Reading sight word lists was the next task and this led to
which story he would read following. Starting at preprimer, the lists go up in difficulty from primer, to first,
then second. If the student got 15 words in the first list, he would then move on to the next list, and then the
next, and so on. Jake got 14 out of the 20 words right on the primer list getting at 70% and qualifying him to
read the story Sam and do the letter/sound production. Jake struggled through the story Sam getting a
70% accuracy for the story. Lastly, the student completed the letter-sound production task, which he was
successful at, only missing the production of ch saying the sound of k. He got a total of 25 out of 26.
These assessments support the data of a beginning reader and writer. The student is still working on
spelling words, but at 55% accuracy, he is able to sound out the simple words and spell them correctly. Jake is
also a beginning writer in the way that he can write the letters of the alphabet legibly. A beginning reader is
building between 10-100 sight words. On a list of 20, Jake could read 14 of them, which puts him in that range
of 10-100. While reading Sam, the student knew what was happening in the story by using the pictures as
clues and as he read the story, he pointed and read word by word. Lastly, during the letter-sound production
task, the student demonstrated that he could identify phonemes (Reish,2016). Overall, all of the data from
this literacy assessment supports that the student is beginning reader and writer.
 The same student also participated in a retelling assignment. This is an assignment that evaluates a
student on his recall of a story. In this specific retelling assignment, the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff is
read to Jake and then is retold with the story figures using all of the story elements. The story elements that
are assessed in the recall are setting and characters, story problem, sequence of major events, resolution, and
reaction of characters. After the story is read and the retelling was demonstrated, Jake retold it with the story
figures and was observed for what he was saying.
When the student was first asked if he knew the story he seemed very excited. He lit up with a big
smile and began to tell the version of the story he knew right away, which is almost the same as the story that
he was about to hear. After the full story was read to him he then retold the story again in his own version,
but this time he used the figures and a few more basic details about the plot like in the example retelling
beforehand.
Jake received a 12 out of 15, which puts him in the assessed category of developing retelling.
Overall, the student knew the main plot points of the story, however there were details missed that were
important to the background knowledge of the story. The two main things were specific names of the
characters and the end of the story, which states that, the three brothers crossed the bridge whenever they
liked... This student had a preconceived idea of the story and that is one reason why he may have missed
some of the main points to the retelling.
 References

Reish, M. (2016). Developing stages of reading and rriting for students [PowerPoint slides].

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