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Nikki Meyer
Emergent Literary
Dr. McKool

Running Record Assessment

Purpose- The purpose of the assessment is to understand a student’s phonics and

word developing skills. It is crucial for teacher’s to implement running
records on their students so they understand where their student’s
strengths and weaknesses are with reading. A running record is when,
“The teacher notes everything the student says while reading a selected
passage, including all words read correctly as well as all miscues (Reutzel
and Cooter 42). When a teacher does a running record they get a better
understanding for the students miscues and they realize what types of
words they may need to work on an essentially figure out what reading
level they are on. A running record also helps a teacher comprehend what
cueing strategies students use for instance, semantic, structure or visual
cues to help figure out a word or passage. Semantic cueing asks the
question, “Does it make sense?” Structure asks, “Does it sound right?” and
visual cueing asks, “Does it look right?” (Reutzel and Cooter 45). When a
teacher examines a students running record, they can determine what
cueing strategies the students used, it may be one, two, all three cueing
strategies. When a teacher recognizes what cueing strategies a student
uses more of, they can develop a lesson to help the student understand the
other cueing strategies better and how to implement them when they read.
A running record helps teachers understand their students reading abilities,
and with this understanding teachers can create lessons to help strengthen
their students weaknesses to help them grow and progress as readers.

Introduction- Jim is an energetic student, always telling stories and volunteering to

answer questions, and seems to really enjoy school. Jim takes pleasure in
reading and is truly intrigued by non-fiction books such as informational
books about spiders or sharks. When performing a lesson on fairytales,
Jim told me that fairytales are fiction, so I know he’s knowledgeable about
what types of books he reads and likes. I’ve observed Jim reading and
witnessed that he is in fact a good reader, but he pauses a lot to think about
the words, he self corrects a lot and inserts his own words into the text
because he assumes what it’s going to say. Mrs. Miller’s first grade
classroom was the setting but Jim and I went into the hallway to perform
the assessment so we could have a quieter place to read.

Methodology- I observed the students during their independent reading time to see which
students made a lot of mistakes or few mistakes while reading, I also
observed the type of books they read to see what level of reading they
were on. One student was on a chapter book while another was reading on
a much lower level with maybe three to four words a page. I wanted to
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assess a student who was on grade level for reading and made some errors
while being able to self-correct and not self correct. I settled on Jim after
listening to him read, I realized that he read with enthusiasm and emphasis
making subtle pauses sometimes to think about the next word. Sometimes
he would repeat words and he inserted his own words a lot into the text
but it seemed to make sense so I knew he was using semantic cues. I went
over to the bookshelf and looked at different books for Jim to read. I
settled on the book Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes because it had a
lot of close words starting with the same letters such as Wemberly and
worried and those words were repeated in a row multiple times so I
thought that Jim might fumble over those words. I also recognized words
such a tree and room, which I assumed he would maybe misinterpret for
the word three or classroom. I asked Jim if he could help me with an
assignment and he jumped out of his seat ready to go, I told him we would
go into the hallway so we could have a quieter place to work. After
meeting in the hallway we sat down and I told him that I was a college
student studying to be a teacher and all I needed him to do was read for
me, “Can you do that?” I asked, “Of course!” Jim replied with the biggest
smile on his face. Jim began reading and I started to perform my running
record, he never looked to me for help with a word but made a few
mistakes, some self corrected, some not, but at the end he was able to
describe to me what the story was about and what happened.

Description- After performing Jim’s running record, I calculated that out of 521 words
Jim made 18 errors with 4 self corrected miscues so Jim got a 22% self
correct rate. Jim got 96% of the words correct which is great for a first
grader but a big problem I observed with Jim’s reading was his fluency.
When Jim read the story, he was very breathy and choppy with his words,
he would read about five words and take a quick breath; he was fast paced
and stopped frequently to catch his breath. The sentences didn’t flow
together but he read with enthusiasm and seemed to be enjoying the story
since every once and awhile he would look up at me and smile or laugh.
Jim made only four self-corrections out of eighteen miscues and the
majority of the miscues were simple mistakes such as saying a word that
rhymed with the actual word on the page, for example, Jim mistook the
word shrink for sink, which made me understand that he was using visual
cueing. Jim also used visual cueing with the word, and, since he replaced
it with at, he replaced the word, wordied with worried and the word, onely
replaced the word only. Jim also used semantic cueing also, he inserted a
lot of his own words or changed the word completely but they made sense
in the sentence. For example, Jim said the word bathroom instead of
room, he replaced the word something with someone and replaced the
word said with called. Jim substituted certain words like, that were, for
the word there, but the majority of the words Jim substituted, he either self
corrected or he used semantic cueing so it still made sense in the story.
Jim only repeated one sentence, after he was half way through the
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sentence he started back at the beginning again and read it all the way
through perfectly. Overall, Jim is a very good ready, he makes little
mistakes and self corrects some of the time. When Jim doesn’t self
correct, he mainly uses visual and semantic cueing to help him make sense
of the words and story. Jim has good enthusiasm while reading but he still
needs to work on his fluency so the story doesn’t read so breathy and
choppy.

Discussion- I noticed that Jim reads very fast and his speed contributes to his
mispronunciation of words. From what I’ve assessed, Jim has a rate
problem, rate is, “Attaining appropriate reading speed according to the
reader’s purpose or the type of passage” (Reutzel and Cooter 65). I would
give Jim a flashcard and have him cover the other words in the sentence
except the one he is reading so he has control over his speed and he would
be able to slow down and sound out the letters in the words so he makes
fewer mistakes with mispronunciation. Like many other students, Jim
inserts his own words into the text and sometimes made up words such as,
“onely” and “wordied”. These words were meant to say only and worried,
but Jim failed to correct them and in return it didn’t make sense with the
story, again I believe it’s his speed that contributes to his mispronunciation
of the words because the words, “worried” and “only” were repeated in
the text and he said them correctly. If Jim can learn to slow down he’ll
realize that the text is saying something different then what he is
assuming, and he will be able to sound out the words better so they make
sense with the text. Jim also has a phrasing problem, which is, “Reading
orally large chunks of text such as phrases or sentences smoothly without
hesitating, stopping to decode, or rereading,” (Reutzel and Cooter 65).
Jim paused a lot during the story to try to decode certain words, he also
chunked the words together, which sometimes messed him up with a
particular word so he would go back and repeat the sentence. Being fluent
is very important because students will spend so much time trying to
decode the words that they don’t comprehend what they are reading. At
the end of the story, I asked Jim what it was about. He explained to me
that Wemberly worried a lot, and instead of giving me his own
interpretation, he started to read quotes from the story to emphasize his
point. This shows me that he had some comprehension of the text, but Jim
wasn’t able to translate it into his own words to make me understand that
he truly comprehended the text. Jim also has trouble with fluency, which
is, “Accuracy and ease decoding, age- or grade-level-appropriate reading
speed or rate, appropriate use of volume, pitch, juncture and stress in one’s
voice, and appropriate text phrasing or “chunking”” (Reutzel and Cooter
64). I would make a list of sight words on flash cards and work with Jim
on them, so he knows them on sight, so when he reads a story, he won’t
substitute his own words for sight words such as, and, the, is, he, she. I
would also make a list of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words such
as, fat, sit, or run because, “Fluency in decoding and writing these simple
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CVC words leads to increased reading achievement and oral reading

fluency, and at the end of first grade, helping children move successfully
through Stage 1 development” (Reutzel and Cooter 69). When students
know sight words and CVC words, they gain a better understanding of
how words are structured and with this understanding comes an
appreciation for different words. When Jim works with his CVC and sight
word flashcards, he’ll be more aware of the sounds and structure of the
word so that when he reads a story, he’ll be more fluent with his oral
reading. In addition to using flashcards, I would model to Jim a fluent oral
reading of a story. When hearing someone else read a story with fluency,
children start to recognize emphasis on certain words and understand that
words should flow from sentence to sentence. “Through this process of
modeling fluent and sometimes nonfluent) oral reading, children learn the
behaviors of fluent readers as well as the elements of fluent oral reading”
(Reutzel and Cooter 77). When a student hears their parents, teachers or
peers read aloud with fluency it alerts them, making them realize that there
is a certain way to read the text, and the proper way is to have the
sentences flow, and to express clarity and emphasis on certain words, so
interactive read aloud where the teacher is modeling proper fluency would
benefit students like Jim.