Artifact #1: ELED assessment and instruction plan.

My first artifact is the ELED assessment and instruction plan- this consists of literacy

assessments completed on a grade 1 student, data collected from those assessments, data

analysis, and instruction plans for that student moving forward. The assessments that were

completed were an interest/attitude survey, a primary spelling inventory, word identification

assessments from word lists A-H, and four running records accompanied by their corresponding

benchmark book quick check forms and fiction retelling scoring forms. This was the first time

that I had conducted literacy assessments on an actual student and this experience makes me feel

much better prepared for doing future assessments with students. I also enjoyed looking at the

data that I was able to collect, analyze it, and come up with an instruction plan that I believe

would help the student to improve. I believe this artifact shows my preparedness because as a

professional teacher assessing students and planning instruction based on what I observe will be

skills that I will be utilizing constantly.

Connections to standards.

InTASC standards.

Standard #6: Assessment. The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of

assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the

teacher’s and learner’s decision making.

Standard #7: Planning for Instruction. The teacher plans instruction that supports every

student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas,

curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the

community context.
 Standard #8: Instructional Strategies. The teacher understands and uses a variety of

instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and

their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.

NYS Code of Ethics for Educators standards.

Principle 2: Educators create, support, and maintain challenging learning environments

for all. Educators apply their professional knowledge to promote student learning. They know

the curriculum and utilize a range of strategies and assessments to address differences. Educators

develop and implement programs based upon a strong understanding of human development and

learning theory. They support a challenging learning environment. They advocate for necessary

resources to teach to higher levels of learning. They establish and maintain clear standards of

behavior and civility. Educators are role models, displaying the habits of mind and work

necessary to develop and apply knowledge while simultaneously displaying a curiosity and

enthusiasm for learning. They invite students to become active, inquisitive, and discerning

individuals who reflect upon and monitor their own learning.

Ontario Ethical Teacher standards.

The ethical standard of Care includes compassion, acceptance, interest and insight for

developing students' potential. Members express their commitment to students' well-being and

learning through positive influence, professional judgment and empathy in practice.

DOE claims.

Claim 1: Medaille College graduates know the subject matter in their certification area(s)
 Claim 2: Medaille College graduates meet the needs of diverse learners through effective

pedagogy and best teaching practices.

NY Common Core standards.

CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RL.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate

understanding of their central message or lesson.

CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using

key details.

CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RF.1.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in

decoding words. a. Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs.

b. Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words. c. Know final -e and common vowel team

conventions for representing long vowel sounds. d. Use knowledge that every syllable must have

a vowel sound to determine the number of syllables in a printed word. e. Decode two-syllable

words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables. f. Read words with

inflectional endings. g. Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.

CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RF.1.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support

comprehension. a. Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding. b. Read grade-level

text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings. c. Use context

to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

Ontario Ministry of Education standards.

Reading-By the end of Grade 1, students will:

Demonstrating Understanding 1.4 demonstrate understanding of a text by retelling the story or

restating information from the text, including the main idea (e.g., retell a story or restate facts,

including the main idea and important events, in accurate time order; role-play or dramatize a

story or informational text using puppets or props).

Analysing Texts 1.7 identify the main idea and a few elements of texts, initially with support and

direction (e.g., narrative: characters, setting, problem/solution; information text: introductory

statement, facts, photographs).

Reading Familiar Words 3.1 automatically read and understand some high-frequency words and

words of personal interest or significance, in a variety of reading contexts (e.g., the same word in

different graphic representations such as: on the word wall; in shared-, guided-, and independent-

reading texts; on shared- and interactive-writing charts; in personal writing; in a variety of fonts).

Writing- By the end of Grade 1, students will:

Spelling Familiar Words 3.1 spell some high-frequency words correctly (e.g., words from their

oral vocabulary, the class word wall, and shared-, guided-, and independent-reading texts).

Spelling Unfamiliar Words 3.2 spell unfamiliar words using a variety of strategies that involve

understanding sound-symbol relationships, word structures, and word meanings (e.g., segment

words to identify and record individual sound-symbol correspondences, including short vowels

and simple long-vowel patterns; listen for rhyming patterns; look for common letter sequences

and onset and rime in frequently used words; make analogies between words that look similar;

illustrate words to link meaning to spelling).

ELED Assessment and Instruction Plan

Anna Dobrucki

EDL 650

Mary Beth Scumaci

April 7, 2020
Basic Data

A. Student Name: Kenzie

B. Student Grade & Stage of Development: Grade 1 & Stage 1: Initial Reading and

Decoding Stage (Chall, 1983)

C. Type of Assessment Analyzed:

I. Interest/Attitude Inventory (Anna Dobrucki, 2020)

II. Primary Spelling Inventory (Donald Bear, 2008)

III. High Frequency Word Assessment (Lucy Calkins, 2006)

IV. Running Records- Levels D, E, F, I (Reading A-Z Running Records, 2020)

Summary of Assessment Documents

A. Interest/Attitude Inventory (Appendix A- Completed & Appendix E- Blank Copy)

The first assessment that Kenzie completed for me was the Interest/Attitude Inventory.

The assessment consists of 27 questions- 23 quantitative and 4 qualitative. The 23 quantitative

questions are formatted following a Likert scale design with four possible options for answering-

strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree, then based on the response chosen each

response is given a numeric score ranging between 4 for strongly agree and 1 for strongly

disagree (McKenna & Stahl, 2015). The first ten quantitative questions are considered to be

recreational; they measure how much the student enjoys reading for their own pleasure. The

second set of ten quantitative questions are considered to be academic; they measure how much

the student enjoys reading as part of their school and learning activities. The last three

quantitative questions are to gage the student’s enjoyment of specific genres. The four qualitative

questions give the student an opportunity to share specifically which books they are excited to
read, which books they are happy to read, which books are okay to read, and which books they

dislike reading.

I know that Kenzie really likes cats, so I found four images of cartoon cats showing

various emotions to use in my assessment. When I met with her to complete the assessment, I

started off by explaining it to her and why it is an important part of my project. I read each

question for her and she circled her choice of response. I think the four qualitative questions at

the end of the assessment were the hardest for her to answer and I did not want to give her

examples to ensure that I did not sway her response in any way. After I had a chance to analyze

Kenzie’s responses, I found that her recreational raw score was 26 out of a possible 40, and her

academic raw score was 21 out of a possible 40, and the full-scale raw score was 47 out of a

possible 80. Converting these scores, puts her recreational score in the 21st percentile rank, her

academic score in the 11th percentile rank, and her full-scale score in the 12th percentile rank.

Kenzie clearly prefers to read in a recreational context more than in an academic context, which

makes a lot of sense to me, knowing her personally. I think reading in an academic context

causes her some anxiety, she does not like to fail and is very sensitive about doing things

‘wrong’. Building her confidence when it comes to reading will go a long way in boosting her

enjoyment of reading for academic purposes.

B. Primary Spelling Inventory (Appendix B)

The next time that I went to meet with Kenzie to work on assessments I quickly

explained them and then asked her which she wanted to start with, and she chose the Primary

Spelling Inventory. Since Kenzie is nearing the end of the first grade, I decided to call out all the

words on the list (Bear, 2008) and I was sure to follow the directions that specifically said to call

out the word, use the word in a sentence, and then repeat the called out word. Prior to beginning I
told Kenzie that there may be some words that she may not know exactly how to spell, but just to

try sounding them out and to try her best, she also asked if capitals matter, to which I said no.

The first few words she got through with no problem, and even midway through the list I

was a little surprised that she spelled a few of the words correctly, and she struggled quite a bit

with the last few. For the words that she was really struggling with, she repeated them to herself

and really tried to stretch the word out, which is a great strategy for her to use. I observed that

she still gets confused sometimes writing her ‘d’s and ‘b’s- for example, with the word ‘rob’ I

heard her sound it out correctly r-o-b, however on the page she wrote a ‘d’ instead of the ‘b’ the

she sounded out. Kenzie was able to spell 13 out of the 26 words correctly, getting 46 out of 56

feature points. She can correctly spell initial and final consonants, short vowels, digraphs, and

blends. She struggles most with long vowel patterns, somewhat with other vowels and inflected

endings. I identified that she is in the within word pattern spelling stage.

C. High Frequency Word Assessment (Appendix C)

The next assessment that Kenzie chose to do is the High Frequency Word Assessment.

High frequency words are those that appear most often in written English (McKenna & Stahl,

2015). For this assessment, I chose the Lucy Calkins Word Identification Assessment. The

assessment consists of eight different lists of high frequency words- the student will read the

words, starting with list A, without pausing to sound the words out and continue through the lists

until one is reached in which the student does not know five words in a row, or eight words in

total on the list. Prior to beginning, I told Kenzie that if she gets to a word that she does not

know, to skip it and move on to the next one.

Kenzie correctly read all 25 words on each of the first four lists, on word list E she

misread ‘your’ for ‘our’ and get 24 out of 25, and on word list F she did not know the word
‘idea’ so she skipped it and got 24 out of 25 again. She struggled the most on word list G- she

read ‘been’ for ‘begin’ but self-corrected, she read ‘thought’ for ‘through’, she did not know

‘special’, ‘they’re’, or ‘themselves’ so she skipped them, and she read ‘useful’ for ‘yourself’

receiving 20 out of 25 correct. She surprisingly did better on word list H, she read ‘begin’ for

‘being’, ‘saviour’ for ‘several’, and ‘waited’ for ‘wanted’ and got 22 out of 25 correct.

D. Running Records (Appendix D)

The last assessment that I completed with Kenzie was a running record. During a running

record, an educator uses coded notations that allow for error analysis to determine type of error

or reason (McKenna & Stahl, 2015). Since I had no idea what level Kenzie would be at, I made a

guess and brought a level D text, The Wheel (Reading A-Z Running Records, 2020). After

analyzing the running record, I found that she had achieved an accuracy rate of 97% putting her

in the independent level, which meant that the text was too easy for her. She comprehended the

text well, receiving a perfect score on the associated benchmark book quick check, and scoring

13 out of 18 points on the fiction retelling scoring form. I thought it was interesting that when I

asked her the second question on the retelling form, “where does the story take place?” she was

not able to answer, and asked me, “what does “take place” mean?” so I had to rephrase the

question, and even then she had a hard time answering.

For my next meeting with Kenzie, I moved on to a level E text, The Vet (Reading A-Z

Running Records, 2020). She actually did even better on this text, getting an accuracy rate of

99%. She got perfect on the benchmark book quick check and this time scored 16 on the fiction

retelling scoring form, I did have to rephrase the setting question again, but she did a better job

answering the question this time. I came prepared with a second text, in case the level E text also

fell into Kenzie’s independent level, which it did, so we moved on to the level F text, Monkey to
the Top (Reading A-Z Running Records, 2020). Kenzie again received a 99% accuracy rate with

this text as well and received perfect on the benchmark book quick check. On the fiction retelling

scoring form she received a score of 12, which is the lowest so far, however I think she was more

distracted during this reading as there were other people having a conversation within earshot.

Since she had again scored in the independent level, I did one more running record with her, this

time via FaceTime. I chose a level I text, skipping levels G and H in an attempt to get to an

instruction or frustration level, On Vacation (Reading A-Z Running Records, 2020). Kenzie

made more mistakes with this text, but it was also longer so she still landed in the independent

level with an accuracy rate of 98%. This time she got one of the questions wrong on the

benchmark book quick check and she received a score of 13 on the fiction retelling scoring form-

she had a hard time remembering everything that happened and the order of events since the text

was longer.

E. Instruction Plan

By the end of Grade 1, students will: 3.1 automatically read and understand some high-frequency

words and words of personal interest or significance, in a variety of reading contexts.

Literacy & Informational Text 1R: Fluency 1RF4: Read beginning reader texts, appropriate to

individual student ability, with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

Kenzie has successfully met these grade 1 standards and in order to encourage her to keep

learning, she can start to move towards meeting the grade 2 standards.

After completing all these assessments with Kenzie, it gives me quite a good frame of

reference to plan next steps for her moving forward. She did very well on the assessments, better

than I was anticipating for her grade level. Thinking back to her interest/attitude inventory, I am
a little confused about why her academic score was so low. The only thing that comes to mind is

that it must come back to a confidence issue, she gets anxious that she will make mistakes, and

this prevents her from enjoying reading in an academic capacity. To try and get over this anxiety,

I would recommend that she continue to practice reading aloud and in front of others; Kenzie has

two younger siblings, so I think it would be a great idea to read to them.

After analyzing Kenzie’s spelling inventory, I found out that she is in the within word

pattern spelling stage, and that she struggles most with long vowel patterns. I found a few

resources that I think would be helpful for her to practice with. The first resource is doing word

sorts and grouping words based on their spelling patterns

(https://topnotchteaching.com/literacy/teach-long-vowel-sounds/).

Another activity that I think would be helpful is to have incomplete words that are

missing their long vowel patters for Kenzie to fill in

(https://topnotchteaching.com/literacy/teach-long-vowel-sounds/).
 The last activity that I think Kenzie would benefit from to work on her long vowel

patterns is a read and write activity; first she reads the whole word, then she underlines each

sound in the word, writes the word out by sounds, and then writes and reads the whole word

again (https://topnotchteaching.com/literacy/teach-long-vowel-sounds/).

Kenzie did very well on the high frequency words assessment, I would suggest taking the

words that she did not know or the words that she got wrong and practicing them specifically.

After she has gotten more comfortable with them, incorporating the words into a game would be

a good idea. One game would be to write each of the words that she was struggling with out of

two pieces of paper and create a memory matching game. Another game to play would be to
write each high-frequency word on a sticky note and distribute them around the house/classroom,

Kenzie would have a scavenger hunt sheet with all the words on it and she would have to track

down the words to match them up.

After analyzing the errors and self-corrections that Kenzie made during the running

record assessments, majority of them are visual and a few are syntaxial. When students are

making these kinds of errors and self-corrections it is usually because they are not actually

decoding the whole word, they look at the first letter and some of the other letters and their brain

just makes a guess. One suggestion I would give Kenzie would be to slow down, because she

was going quite fast. A lot of the words that she made errors or self-corrections with I know she

knows, because she got them right in the high-frequency word assessment. If she slowed down

and actually looked at all the letters in all the words, I do not think she would make as many

errors or need to self-correct as often. A game that could help Kenzie with not making visual

errors is called popcorn- write words that looks similar to each other on separate pieces of paper

and put them upside down in the middle, one at a time players will pick up a word and if they

read it correctly they keep it, if not they put it back in the middle

(https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Popcorn-Sight-Word-Rules-3566100).
 When looking at the five pillars of early literacy, I would say that fluency is the one that

Kenzie needs improvement with most. I saw her phonemic awareness and use of phonics during

the spelling inventory as she sounded out the words to spell. Her vocabulary and comprehension

skills were tested during the benchmark book quick checks and the fiction retelling scoring

forms. According to McKenna and Stahl, “fluent reading should involve accurate and automatic

word recognition, with appropriate prosody or inflection” (pg. 163, 2015). Kenzie is doing well

with the accurate and automatic word recognition, however she can keep working on developing

proper prosody. This is something that will come with time, the more practice she gets reading

aloud, but is also something that should be modeled for her from those that read aloud to her. I

mentioned earlier that I believe she may be reading too quickly, if she slows down a little she

will be able to use prosody more easily and she will be able to emphasize punctuation better.
 F. Reflection

I remember on the first day of class when I was first introduced to this assignment, I felt a

little anxious about it and this feeling intensified when I opened the example that was posted for

us to look at. I quickly moved past anxious and right into very overwhelmed after seeing that the

example was 50 pages long and contained so many pieces that I had no knowledge about. As the

semester progressed and we covered the various pieces that the assignment contained I felt more

at ease thinking about having to complete it but is still seemed like a huge task. I started with

creating my interest/attitude inventory for my student and I got my student to fill it out. That

wasn’t so bad, I thought. I picked my assessments; there were a lot of parts to this and it took a

couple tries before I finally got together everything that I needed, but again not so bad. I met

with Kenzie and did my first round of assessments. I was a little nervous to make sure that I

conducted them all properly and noted down everything I needed to and appeared professional

and put together, but apparently, I did everything I was supposed to. By this point I was fairly

confidant in my abilities but that write up for after the assessments was still looming over me.

Eventually I finished doing all of my assessments with Kenzie and it was time to start the write

up portion of the assignment. I started writing. It took a couple days, but somehow, I finished,

and it turned out that it wasn’t as scary as it seemed at the beginning of the semester. Breaking

the assignment down into chunks and just doing it a step at a time made it much more

manageable and actually even quite enjoyable.

I liked this assignment because it was hands on- we were conducting our own real

assessments, analyzing the results, and from there coming up with recommendations for

improvement. It was much more practical and than making up data in class or even being

provided with data that may be real, but we did not go out and gather it ourselves. There were
real patterns to observe and real students for us to try to help. Something that I will change in the

future and try to incorporate is to use ‘student talk’ after completing a running record. This is

something I found on the Reading A-Z website after my assessments were all complete and I was

working on my instruction plan, “After the reading, talk to the child about some of the things he

or she did during the reading. Reinforce and praise certain behavior with comments and

questions that focus on specific behaviors” (https://www.readinga-

z.com/newfiles/levels/runrecord/runrec.html). There were many positive behaviours that I

witnessed Kenzie do throughout the running records that I could have praised or questioned her

about to reinforce them. I really enjoyed working with Kenzie and it seemed like she had fun

getting to show me what she is capable of. I feel better prepared for my future classroom

settings- as a student teacher and hopefully as a full-time teacher some day.