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Analysis of William’s Data

Kara Weinstein

Michigan State University

TE 842 Elementary Reading Assessment & Instruction

Dr. Laura Tortorelli

October 14, 2022

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Analysis of Assessment Data

Informal Phonics Inventory

An informal phonics inventory measures a student’s ability to connect sounds with

letters. The individual sounds that create words are called phonemes and a student’s ability to

identify the sounds is their phonological awareness (Stahl et al., 2020) When William was given

the informal phonics inventory to test his phonemic awareness, he demonstrated that he has

mastered consonant sounds and consonant digraphs. He needs additional review on beginning

consonant blends and diphthongs. In addition to reviewing blends at the beginning of words, he

needs instruction on consonant blends when they end words. The assessment also indicates he

needs systematic instruction on short vowel sounds, the rule of silent e, long vowel digraphs, and

r-controlled vowels. William has not met the phonics and word recognition CCSS. According to

the CCSS for 2nd grade, William needs to be able to distinguish between long and short vowels

in one syllable words and know spelling sound correspondences for vowel teams, this assessment

shows that he has not yet mastered these skills. William needs continued instruction on blends

and vowel patterns before moving onto other vowel patterns.

Fry Sight Word Inventory

Sight words are words that an individual reader can read from memory. High frequency

words are words that occur most frequently in the English language. The term “sight word” is

often used incorrectly when referring to high frequency words (Stahl et al., 2020). Sight word

lists, such as the Fry Sight Word Inventory, are lists of high frequency words that are beneficial

for readers to commit to memory. When high frequency words are committed to memory they

become sight words for a reader. Sight words are important because automatic word recognition

minimizes the cognition that needs to be used on decoding and allows it to be used for oral
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language comprehension and strategic knowledge as shown on the cognitive model (Stahl et al.,

2020). William has mastered 94 of the first 100 Fry Sight Words. He has done well recognizing

the first 100 words. The CCSS RF.2.3.F states that students need to recognize and read

grade-level appropriate words. This inventory does not demonstrate that he has mastered words

at 2nd grade-level. Additional assessment of sight words is needed.

Spelling Inventory

William is a middle letter name speller. A letter name speller is a speller that recognizes

consonant sounds and includes vowels in words (Stahl et al., 2020). William is able to correctly

spell beginning and final constants. He includes vowels, but he only correctly identifies the short

vowel sound in 2 of 5 words. Short vowel sounds are the first category where William struggled

on the spelling inventory, which shows he needs additional instruction on short vowel sounds.

The CCSS for writing focuses on the content of what students write, such as creating opinion

pieces, informative texts, narratives, and research projects. William needs spelling skills he has

not mastered in order to produce pieces of writing that meet the standards. CCSS W.2.5 outlines

that students should be able to revise and edit with adult support. William’s writing would need

many spelling edits because he hasn’t mastered the use of vowels.

Informal Reading Inventory

William was given an informal reading inventory (IRI). IRIs are assessments that give

teachers an overview of a student as a reader. IRIs give insight into a student’s vocabulary,

decoding ability, fluency, and rate to guide instruction for that student (Stahl et al., 2020).

William was administered a QRI level 1 passage, which is a specific type of IRI. William’s

results demonstrated that he is in the instructional range with QRI level 1. An instructional level
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refers to a difficulty level where a student can be successful with additional support/instruction

(Stahl et al., 2020).

William’s accuracy and comprehension of the text is at an instructional level. He was able

to read the text with enough accuracy that he understood the content. The wrong answers that

William provided did connect to the story, but were incorrect demonstrating that he can benefit

from additional support with comprehension at this level. William read the passage at a rate at an

independent level for level 1. Williams words per minute was 91 and his correct words per

minute was 84.7 which are greater than the instructional range, so his reading rate is at an

independent level. This demonstrates that William has met CCSS.RF.2.4: Read with sufficient

accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. The results of this informal reading assessment

also show that he has not met the comprehension component of fluency (RF.2A reading with

purpose and understanding) because this text is below grade level. William is instructional at

level 1 because he is instructional in reading accuracy and comprehension.

Goals for Instruction

Goal #1 Phonics - Beginning and Ending Consonant Blends

The first goal for William is to correctly read consonant blends at the beginning and end

of words. According to his informal phonics inventory, William knows 15 out of 20 beginning

consonant blends which puts him in the review category. When reading find consonant blends

and -ng, he was only able to identify 50% (6 out of 12) which puts him in the instructional

category. This information indicates that William needs additional instruction decoding blends at

both the beginning and the end of words. Assessment shows that William is able to decode

beginning and ending sounds when they are single consonant sounds, but he struggles when the

beginning and end sounds contain blends. On the sight word inventory he did not recognize the
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blend in the word what (he responded wait) and he added blends and digraphs to the words were

(he responded where) and find (he responded friend). On the spelling inventory, he was able to

correctly identify all the beginning and ending consonants, but only spelled 2 of the 5 blends he

was asked to spell correctly. All of this data illustrates that William would benefit from

instruction of beginning and ending blends.

The cognitive model of reading tells us the students need automatic word recognition in

order to be able to read and comprehend text. Readers need to have the skills to decode text

before they can gain fluency and gain automatic word recognition (Stahl et al., 2020). Explicit

instruction on blends will help William with his decoding ability which will allow him to gain

fluency and word recognition which will aid in improving his reading comprehension. This

instruction will also help William meet the CCSS for 2nd grade. As mentioned above, William is

expected to apply grade-level phonics to decode words. This instruction will help him move

toward meeting this standard. Instruction on blends will also help William in future instruction

by giving him a broader understanding of CVC words. Instruction on blends will build his

knowledge of how blends can replace a single consonant in a CVC word and that these types of

words have short vowel sounds (Morrow & Gambrell, 2019). This will aid him in his decoding

ability and his next goal.

Goal #2 Spelling - Short Vowel Sounds

William’s second goal is to be able to correctly spell short vowel sounds. On his spelling

inventory, he only spelled 2 of the 5 short vowel sounds correctly. When analyzing the running

record of William’s IRI, we can see that he relies on beginning and ending sounds in his errors.

For example, William read near as name, them as there, and horn as hone. When decoding these

unknown words, it seems like he used the beginning sound and made a guess. Instruction on
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short vowels will be the beginning of his instruction on understanding vowel sounds. Short

vowel sounds are taught before teaching other vowel patterns (Stahl et al., 2020). The purpose of

this goal is to help William spell words with short vowel sounds correctly. Mastery of short

vowel sounds will prepare william to work with both long and short vowels in single syllable

words as outlined in the Common Core State Standard RF.3.3A. Finally, understanding short

vowel sounds will improve his ability to decode and will give him the same benefits he had for

goal #1.

Instructional Strategies

Strategy #1 Sound/Letter Boxes

In order to successfully read words that begin and end with blends, it is important to

ensure that students can hear the individual sounds. Sound boxes are an instructional tool that

help students listen to the word and identify the different sounds. To create a sound box, you

need a standard piece of paper. On the top of the paper you will draw or glue a picture of a word

that has a beginning or ending blend and on the bottom of the page you will create a box for each

sound in the word (McCarthy, 2008). Lint is an example of a word that William missed on his

informal phonics inventory. The top of the page would have a picture of lint and the bottom

would have 4 boxes for each of the phonemes (l,i,n,t). To use the sound box, the student will get

a marker, like a bingo chip, for each of the boxes. They will read the word and move the chip

into the sound box when they hear the different phonemes (McCarthy, 2008). The purpose of this

exercise is to ensure that William understands that blends are composed of multiple sounds.

Once William has mastered hearing the blends, instruction can begin on assigning letters

to each of the sounds. At this stage, the sound boxes will be transformed into letter boxes. The

letter box process begins the same, but will add a step at the end. Instead of simply listening to
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the sounds and moving the markers, William will write the letter that correlates with each sound

in the box, creating a letter box (McCarthy, 2008). This activity will ensure that William can

differentiate between the sounds in words and build an ability to spell words that begin and end

with blends.

Strategy #2 Repeated Readings

According to the cognitive model of reading, the goal of decoding is to increase fluency

and automatic word recognition in order to improve the reader’s comprehension (Stahl et al.,

2020). Repeated readings of books can help build a student’s fluency and sight word knowledge.

The strategy of repeated readings is mainly used for sight-word acquisition (Morrow &

Gambrell, 2019). It can be used to help William with this goal because repeated readings of

words beginning and ending with blends will help commit them to his sight word list. To use

repeated readings, start by having a location for each student to individually store their books. In

their storage space they will keep books that you have selected for them. Give the students

opportunities to read their books over and over. The repeated readings will help with their

automatic word recognition of the words in the story (Morrow & Gambrell, 2019). For William,

select stories that contain words with blends and the beginning and end. Books that contain

rhythms with blends would be very beneficial. Giving William the opportunity to read the blends

repeatedly will help him recognize the words and decode them quickly. The goal is that words

with blends will become sight words for William.

Strategy #3 Short Vowel Family Instruction

To learn short vowel sounds, students should receive instruction in word families that

contain short vowel sounds (Morrow & Gambrell, 2019). This explicit instruction can be done

through the use of word sorts. To use a word sort, create cards that have words from the same
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vowel family on them. Use word families such as -ad, -an, -at, -ed on your cards (Morrow &

Gambrell, 2019). Have the students sort the words based on the differences in the word. Have the

students focus their attention on the middle of the word to identify the vowel sounds. This

instruction will help students identify the different sounds made by short vowels. The goal is that

they will be able to transfer the knowledge that they gain from the explicit instruction into their

spelling of words. Learning to spell short vowel sounds is a component of the letter name stage

of spelling. This spelling stage is where games begin to be used as an instructional strategy

(Morrow & Gambrell, 2019). Games where students need to write words can be used to ensure

that students are applying their understanding of short vowel sounds to their word spelling.

Strategy #4 Short Vowel Sound with Visual Imagery

In order to teach students about short vowel sounds, we can combine the sight and sound

of vowels by having William create visuals representing words that have short vowel sounds

with the letter within the picture (Azar, 1985). To use this strategy, choose a word that contains a

short vowel sound such as bat, pig, or cup and have the student write the letter that represents the

short vowel sound. The student will then turn that letter into the item the word represents. For

example, a would be used to draw a bat, i would be used to draw a pig, and u would be used to

draw a cup. This strategy will create a reminder for the letter and the sound that goes with it. The

purpose of this strategy is to help the student create connections between the auditory sound and

the letter itself by creating a visual representation (Azar, 1985). This strategy will help the

students create a connection between the sound and letter that they will be able to remember

when decoding words.

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References

Azar, T. O. (1985). Teaching the short vowel sounds using visual imagery. The Reading Teacher,

38(9), 926–928.

Dougherty Stahl, K. A., Flanigan, K., & McKenna, M. C. (2020). Assessment for reading

instruction. The Guilford Press.

McCarthy, P. A. (2008). Using sound boxes systematically to develop phonemic awareness. The

Reading Teacher, 62(4), 346–349.

Morrow, L. M., & Gambrell, L. B. (2019). Best practices in literacy instruction. The

Guilford Press.