Shelby Rose

TE 842

Paper 2

Assessment Analysis

As student’s progress from the primary grades to intermediate, the shift goes from

learning to read, to reading to learn. This concept is evident in Sarah’s reading inventories, as she

is reading a higher level text and concentration leans toward comprehension and understanding

of text structure.

The first of Sarah’s assessments is the Elementary Spelling Inventory. This is derived

from the Words Their Way program and is able to place a student in a stage of development

related to their invented spelling. This assessment is meant to determine if students are applying

phonics skills, the ability to use letter-sound correspondence to derive pronunciation of words,

into their spelling and writing (McKenna & Stahl, 2015). Sarah’s Elementary Spelling Inventory

shows that she is in the late stages of syllables and affixes and on her way to the early stages of

derivational relations. With the exception of missing one word completely, which appears to be

an outlier, she spelling the first 20 words correctly. This shows she is familiar with all major

spelling patterns, including consonant, long and short vowel sounds, as well as blends and

digraphs. She correctly spells words with inflected endings and is working on identifying an

unaccented final syllable. In order for Sarah to progress to the early and middle derivational

relations stage of spelling, she will need to work on base and root word, as well as harder

suffixes such as -ize and -tion. This skills will be applied to ensure Sarah is meeting Common

Core State Standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.4.3.A that says she should be able to “use
combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology

(e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of

context.”

The next of Sarah’s assessments is the Narrative Qualitative Reading Inventory. This

assessment combines all aspects of reading by questioning background knowledge, examining

reading rate and accuracy, then determining comprehension through a series of questions

(McKenna & Stahl, 2015). In this particular passage, Sarah is being assessed on a narrative text.

Beginning to look at Sarah’s QRI, the first important piece is her fluency, the rate at which she is

able to read with accuracy, automaticity, and prosody (McKenna & Stahl, 2015). Sarah is

reading at a rate of 71 words per minute in this narrative passage. This is on the lower end of the

fourth grade fluency norm, which says a fourth grader should read at a rate between 57-115

words per minute. This QRI shows that Sarah is able to read the passage with 97% accuracy.

Many of her errors also do not change the meaning of the text so her comprehension remains

strong. In order to successful read this passage at an independent level, rather than instructional,

Sarah will need to focus on retelling in more detail. This will ensure she meets Common Core

State Standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 which says she should be able to “describe in

depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text

(e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions).

The last of Sarah’s assessments is the Expository Qualitative Reading Inventory. This is

very similar to the previous assessment that combines all aspects of reading, with the exception

that Sarah is now being assessed on a informational passage. This passage shows that Sarah is a

bit more unfamiliar with expository texts. She has less background on the subject, and is unable
to correlate that the numbers within the passage are years and dates. Instead, she pronounces

them as numbers would be said in mathematics. Sarah will need to focus on improved

comprehension and better summarization in order to “explain events, procedures, ideas, or

concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on

specific information in the text (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.3).

Instructional Goals

Goal 1

The first of Sarah’s instructional goals for reading stems from the miscues made in her

reading, as well as the answers she gave to the comprehension questions. It is evident in her

spelling inventory and much of her reading that she is able to successfully decode the majority of

words she encounters, however there are miscues in both passages that relates to the vocabulary

words that she may have never seen. Examples of this are the state names in the narrative

passage (Massachusetts and Pennsylvania), and contextual words such as frontier, locomotive,

and Europe in the expository passage. Because of this, an instructional goal for Sarah should be

to focus on ​Vocabulary Knowledge ​in the oral language comprehension chain of the cognitive

model (McKenna & Stahl, 2015).

Goal 2

Another instructional reading goal for Sarah, based on her various assessments and the

Cognitive Model, is to focus on ​Knowledge of Text Structure.​ McKenna & Stahl (2015) says

that students should be able to recall important story elements in narrative texts and the main
idea and support details in expository texts. As presented in the retelling scoring sheet of Sarah’s

QRI passages, she is not able to recall supporting details of either text structure. In order to work

on her recall skills, which will lead to better comprehension of texts, Sarah’s instructional goal is

a focus in text structure.

Instructional Strategies

Strategy 1 for Goal 1

The first instructional strategy that should be implemented for Sarah’s success in

vocabulary is active read alouds to attend to vocabulary (Wright, 2015). In this strategy, books

are read aloud and certain words are intentionally chosen to explore the definition and relate to

the student’s schema. This can be done as a whole group, as this strategy could help any

student’s word exposure, or could be done in a small guided reading group that would include

Sarah. This strategy was chosen for Sarah because in order for her to decode contextual

vocabulary words in texts, she needs to have knowledge of the words and understand their

meaning. As noted earlier, this is evident in the narrative passage when she encounters the word

“frontier”, and in the expository passage with words such as “locomotive”. If read alouds were

done with Sarah and these words were previewed, she would have exposure to them before she

comes across them in her own reading. This will help her to meet the goal of vocabulary

knowledge that was chosen for her.

Strategy 2 for Goal 1

The second instructional strategy that will help Sarah to meet the vocabulary knowledge

goal is “word associations” (Dominican University of California, 2017). In this instructional

strategy, a word is written, on the board or a piece of paper, and students come up with their own

words that they feel relate to that word. Like the previous strategy, this can be done as a whole

group activity or in an individual or small group setting with Sarah. This strategy is meant to

create associations between vocabulary words that a student may encounter in their reading. If a

student can not think of words that relate to the given word, it is a great opportunity to discuss

the meaning of the word and build vocabulary comprehension that way. This strategy will

continue to help Sarah with the focus in vocabulary knowledge and build her known vocabulary

“toolbox”. Ultimately, any exposure to an increased vocabulary will help Sarah when she

encounters these types of words in her texts. These strategies will help to build that vocabulary

for her and lead to text comprehension.

Strategy 1 for Goal 2

The first instructional strategy to help Sarah reach her instructional goal for knowledge of

text structure is to provide explicit instruction in the summarizing reading strategy (Morrow &

Gambrell, 2014). This is done best by explaining, modeling, and implementing a guided practice

of the strategy, in this case, summarizing. This would be work best if done in a small group,

guided reading session because it allows the teacher to provide direction guided practice to

Sarah. The most important part of why this strategy was chosen is because it can be done for

both narrative and expository texts, both of which have a different structure and way of

summarizing that needs to be recognized. This will help Sarah to reach her goal because she will

be able to see proper modeling of summarizing key details of a narrative text (characters, setting,
plot, etc) and of a expository text (cause and effect, main idea and supporting details, etc). These

are things she evidently needed, as shown in her hindered ability to retell both texts with detail.

Strategy 2 for Goal 2

Along with the explicit instructional strategy, another instructional strategy that should be

implemented for Sarah to meet her goal of knowledge of text structure is to incorporate graphic

organizers (Akhondi, Malayeri, Samad). Again, this can be done with both narrative and

expository texts, making it especially beneficial to Sarah. This strategy is implemented by having

the student complete a graphic organizer that fits and supplements a reading passage. For a

narrative text, this would best be done by completing one that includes characters, setting,

beginning, middle end, etc. For an expository text, the graphic organizer will need to correlate to

the structure of the text (compare and contrast, cause and effect, etc). By implementing this

strategy with Sarah, she will receive direct instruction in recalling and summarizing important

components of each particular text.

As all of these strategies are put into action for Sarah, she will be put on the track to be a

successful reader at the first grade level and beyond.

 References

5 Tips for Improving Student Vocabulary. (2018, February 05). Retrieved from
https://dominicancaonline.com/classroom-management/5-tips-improving-student-vocabulary/

Akhondi, M., Aziz Malayer, F., & Samad, A. (2018, September 04). How to Teach Expository
Text Structure to Facilitate Reading Comprehension. Retrieved from
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/how-teach-expository-text-structure-facilitate-reading-com
prehension

English Language Arts Standards » Reading: Foundational Skills » Grade 4. (n.d.). Retrieved
from ​http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/4

Gambrell, L. B., & Morrow, L. M. (2014). Best Practices in Literacy Instruction. New York:
Guilford Press.

McKenna, M. C., & Stahl, K. (2015). Assessment for Reading Instruction. New York: Guilford
Press.

Wright, T. (2015, May 27). Read Aloud with Attention to Vocabulary. Retrieved November 20,
2018, from ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynPdxVP4q4Y