Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I worked with my cooperating teacher to pick my child, but also wanted to pick the child
that I was doing my case study on for another class. This particular child is not the lowest child
in the classroom, but he is not the highest either. He is however, very young having just turned
four in September.
I started my assessment two weeks ago and went over the book with him. He was able
to tell me some of the things about the book, but not specific things. This week he wrote his
name and drew me a picture of bendy and boris. Apparently they are both toys and his dad
bought him a bendy toy that he was very excited about. We started going over the letters but he
could not tell me any. I then pointed to the “K” and asked him what letter that was, as his name
starts with a K. He proudly proclaimed, “that’s my letter” to which I responded, “yes, it is, can
you tell me the name of that letter” and he said “e”, so we stopped and went on to rhyming. We
did one together and while he could tell me what the pictures were, he couldn’t tell me which
ones rhyme, so after three attempts with that one, we stopped as well.
I talked with CT about my results afterwards and she said her results were the
same on the PALS test she administered. We talked about his abilities and she felt that
because he is so young, his knowledge was appropriate for his age. He often has trouble
focusing, as he has a pretty short attention span. She said this year was more about social
interaction for him and she suspected the letter names and rhyming would come in kindergarten
for him, or maybe even with a second year of kindergarten.
I would say he is in the early emergent stage. While he can roughly produce his
name, that is the only word he can write. With lots of practice, his ability to write his name has
progressed well over the last few weeks. To help him continue to develop his letter formation
when writing they could work on tracing over the dotted line of each letter and “writing” in their
journals. They talk about a letter each week and do regular read aloud stories already. She also
gives the kid’s a time to read on their own in between projects and in the morning before the day
has started. Since he does know some things about the book, I believe he is progressing in that
as well but I do wonder if he will fully grasp the letters and their sounds by the end of the year.
To continue working on the letter sounds with him and the formation of words I would continue
doing the read alouds and going over the letters every day (as they already do).