Ken Krupa

ELD 308
Assessment Project:

I. Introduction

On September 30, 2010 I administered a student inventory with one of Mrs.

Mears’ ten year old students, Jim. She recommended this student based on his strong

background in most subject matter. Upon our first real meeting, I would say that this

young male student is rather reserved and quiet but at the same time cooperative enough

to work with me without feeling intruded upon.

I. Jim lives with his parents and an older sister and has his own bed room. Both

of his parents work. When asked what kind of jobs they have he said they work at a

hospital. The only job he mentioned having around the house is keeping his own room

clean. After homework and chores are done he enjoys riding his bike around his

neighborhood. He does not have a television in his bedroom, however, he does watch

between 1 - 3 hours a day depending on what day of the week it is and how much

homework he has yet to do. His normal bedtime during school nights is 9 pm. Besides

riding his bike he also enjoys other outdoor activities such as sports and other normal

things that children his age do.

II. In terms of school work, this student enjoys school, likes math and science,

but finds some slight stress with language arts because in writing he sometime s finds

himself making “detail mistakes”. Both parents help him to study when he asks for help

at their dining room table, an appropriate space for such interaction. Jim considers

himself a “not so good reader” because he has trouble occasionally. However, his teacher

says that he is a god reader, and after observing his oral reading during the running record
I noticed few errors. He seems to be harder on himself than he needs to be. Given the

choice to select a book of any topic he said he would read it as long as he found it

interesting or maybe if he knew it was an award winner. He thinks that to become a

better reader he should focus more on reading outside of school. He like to write journal

entries about the texts he is reading, therefore his writing is mostly derived from what he

is reading at the time. He would want he next teacher to know that he likes quality

literature as well as math and science. If he were helping someone learn to read, he

would “teach them the meanings of difficult words”. Lastly, when asked about how

reading would help him in the future, he thought of the immediate future and said it

would help him in middle school and then high school.

II. Running Record

I met with Jim again on October 14,2010 to conduct a running record, in which I

sat behind him while he read aloud a text that he had already read the night before. This

was important because he was already familiar with the text, thus allowing for greater

fluency. The text he read was titled The Fighting Ground by Avi. He had already read

well into the book to the point that he was half finished with it by the time I met with him

to talk about it. In terms of comprehension, Jim was able to reiterate what had happened

in the text, after reading it, with great detail. He included the important details of the

passage which involved character interactions as well as the sequence of events.

In terms of comprehension, Jim was able to retell the passage with a sufficient

amount of detail. He included specific details and how they were related to the larger

events taking place within the text. He also understood individual character motives

throughout the passages he read aloud.

 In terms of word recognition, Jim read pages 90 - 94, and I found very few

miscues. Only four miscues occurred and only one of them, an omission of the word

“for”, actually altered the meaning of the text at hand. There was no graphic similarity

for this miscue because it was an omission. This was not self corrected. Another miscue

was a mispronunciation of “cartridge” as carteradge. This featured high graphic

similarity and was self corrected. Another such error was the mispronunciation of

“tavern” as taverin, which indicates high graphic similarity and was also self corrected.

The final error the this student made with the text was schept for the word “swept”. This

went uncorrected with no meaning change. Jim’s strengths are his ability to decode most

words quickly and recall the information after he has read it. It other words, he is

actively comprehending while he is reading.

Judging from this display of oral reading ability I would say that he is on track for

this grade level. I would suggest having him work on more difficult words during

vocabulary/word study sessions and practice using these words with the correct spelling

so as to both establish better connections to meaning as well as form. He might also

benefit from more frequent use of dictionaries and thesauruses.

III. Directed Reading Assessment

On October 28, 2010, I asked Jim to read two passages from the packet for

Directed Reading Assessments. At this time he read independently on a fifth grade level

and instructionally on a sixth grade level. In terms of comprehension, he certainly

understood each of the two passages that I asked him to read. He recalled all of the

information necessary to answer the questions about Margaret Mead without needing to

look back at the text, even though he knew he had that option. The questions from “The
Lifeline of the Nile” proved slightly more difficult, understandably so, since this is a level

six text passage. He only had to re read some of the text to help him answer two of the

questions. His reading comprehension skills appear to be strong for his grade level.

IV. Writing Assessment

On October 21, I obtained an unedited piece of Jim’s writing. The piece of

writing I have reviewed is a personal narrative about a time in which he was suffering

from an illness. This piece is handwritten and has not been revised and thus is indicative

of how this student was able to perform without scaffolding/assistance of any kind. The

penmanship shown in this piece appears to be on track with grade level expectations.

The main concern that a teacher might have after reading this writing sample is the

construction of sentences. At one point the sentence doesn’t lose meaning, but it simply

end without resolution at the introduction of another sentence. This fall in line with what

this student had told me about how he finds writing difficult at times. There is one

omission of the word “from” in the sentence “… I stayed home school because I was still

throwing up.” This kind of omission doesn’t necessarily alter the meaning of the text,

however it is important that teachers instruct students to write their complete thoughts on

paper when writing in this way so as to produce more compete writing pieces as a result.

The occasional grammatical error also occurs, but these are to be expected of fifth grade

students generally, such as applying an apostrophe when one does not need to show

possession and is instead using the contraction to express “it is” as “its”.

In terms of content, Jim clearly understands how to categorize the sequence of

events in the logical process in which order they occurred. His narrative possess

strengths in organizational style and word choice, however it lacks the sense of a
completed story. Again, as this is a first draft, I can only presume that he was more

preoccupied getting the details in place rather than making this seem like a story with

actual story structure. In order the provide sufficient details, he explores his household

relationships during this period of his life and described in detail how he felt while he

was sick.

In terms of mechanics, Jim’s spelling is on track for this grade level. Some minor

errors, such as misspellings, appear in this first draft, however non of them dramatically

alter the meaning of the text. His strengths are evident in sentence structure, punctuation,

and capitalization when needed. His weakness is evident in his occasional misspelling of

words in a manner that his is missing silent letters. In other words, when in doubt he

simply spells the words the way they sound to him.

Jim appears to be a competent speller in that he spells most of the words he uses

in his writing flawlessly. For the words that are more difficult, he sometimes tries to spell

them the way they sound, which is common in his writing when dealing with some words

featuring silent letters. He has the most difficulty spelling larger words with silent letter

present. He has much less difficulty with high frequency sight words as well as lower

frequency words which he has seen in texts or been exposed to via vocabulary exercises.

V. Summary

My evaluations for this student coincide with what he told me of himself during

the student inventory. For some reason, while his reading ability appears to be highly

fluent, his skills in the writing process are generally good but with a bit more simplicity

in the construction of sentences than I would have hoped. Indeed his reading ability is in

some ways above what one might expect from a child his age, such as the lack of
significant miscues during the running record.

After conducting several informal assessments, I have concluded that Jim’s

strengths as a reader are drawing inferences from background knowledge as well as text

clues. He has the most difficulty in reading with answering mostly in depth questions

about the texts he reads. To further develop his skills as a reader, specifically in the area

of answering in depth questions about his readings, Jim should be encouraged to read

books that are increasingly challenging to him so as to increase his comprehension of

more difficult passages and also regularly be encouraged to question himself about the

readings while he is reading them. This will increase his overall comprehension over

time.

Jim’s strengths as a writer are that he can spell most words correctly without

assistance. After viewing his writing sample as well as some of his reading journal

entries, I have noticed that he has the most difficulty in writing when it comes to telling a

personal narrative in terms of a story with a logical story structure as well as misspelling

certain words according to how they sound instead of how they are actually spelled. He

also has some slight difficulty writing words with silent letters present. To further

develop his skills as a writer, Jim should be encouraged to utilize his available resources,

thesaurus, dictionary, etc. to ensure that he is constructing words correctly. He should

also be given opportunities for improving his use of story structure in personal narratives.

He can accomplish this through heavy exposure to narrative texts and observance of the

elements of storytelling. Of course, increasing the amount of student writing would also

allow him Jim to become better at writing interesting narratives and spelling more

complex words correctly.