ANALYZE STUDENT DATA 1

William: Data Analysis

After looking at the data of William, teachers can see his performance as a reader from

different perspectives. The reading assessment folder includes tests for oral reading, sight words,

spelling, fluency, and comprehension.

In the phonics inventory test, William did quite well in consonant sounds and digraphs.

He recognized 16 out of 20 individual consonant sounds and 4 out of 5 consonant digraphs in the

test. His knowledge of vowels is relatively less competitive than his consonant recognition, with

5 out 10 short vowels and long vowel digraphs recognized respectively. Conversely, William

might find it difficult to catch diphthongs (4 out of 6) and r-controlled vowels and -al (2 out of 6).

William might not be able to identify silence e and he failed to recognize all the 4 words in the

test.

In William’s spelling inventory, he could recognize alphabets well, and he could include

vowels and consonants in his writing and understood the CVC pattern. As a second grader,

William can identify part of words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound

correspondences. However, when it comes to consonant digraphs and diphthongs, William made

multiple spelling mistakes, showing that his phonological awareness is not corresponding to his

spelling capacity.

William’s sight word inventory of the first 100 words shows that he can recognize words

correctly. His accuracy for the 100 words is 94% with 1 self correction. It means that William

can read the text of his grade level relatively accurately, so his reading comprehension will not

suffer. His sight word recognition also affects his automaticity in reading, with 91 words per

minute. He is a good reader from CCSS.

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Fluency is the fundamental skill for reading. As for his informal reading inventory, the

test presents a pretty capable reader at the text level in Grade 2. His understanding of the

background knowledge for the text is 78%, so he is quite familiar with the topic. His reading

speed is 91 words per minute, a little over the higher end of the standard. It shows that William

can read with high automaticity. However, it should be noticed that William’s IRI was taken at

the end of his second grade and it is level 1, so his actual reading rate and accuracy may be a

little lower than what the test shows. Around half of his miscues come from his inability to

identify final consonant blends, while another main reason for William’s miscues is grammar.

He replaced words with similar sounds and changed 2 pronouns. He also made 1 mistake in

using prepositions. He made 1 self correction in the test. The result indicates that he has a

knowledge of basic vocabulary and shows the emergence of flexibility in vocabulary use.

In addition, He gives a quite concise description in retelling the story. His comprehension

of the text is great. He understood the questions and answered the points. We cannot tell how his

prosody was since we do not have any audio or visual material for the inventory.

Overall, William is a capable reader at his grade level. He can read fluently without much

difficulty in understanding words and comprehending texts with familiar background knowledge.

He has a large vocabulary which helps him read fast and accurately. He can also identify details

in reading. However, his phonemic inventory indicates that he has issues with vowels,

diphthongs and silence e. From reading texts, he cannot correctly pronounce final consonants.

His oral reading skills need more attention and instructions.

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William: Goals of Instruction

William’s reading issues lie in oral aspects, so the most pressing goals of instruction for

William are improving his phonemic awareness and promoting his accuracy in spelling.

The first goal is William will identify vowels accurately and sound final consonants

correctly. William also will apply blending and silence rules to his oral reading. It is critical for

readers in lower grades in elementary school to be aware of the sounds that constitute spoken

words. From William's phonic inventory, he understands quite well in phonemic awareness. He

can identify most of the single sounds.

However, his abilities in phonics and spelling are relatively weak. After all, it is difficult

to learn letter-sound correspondence if a child is unable to hear the component sounds of a

spoken word (McKenna and Stahl, 2019). In general, he knows the order letters should be

presented, and he understands how sounds are organized in words with one or two syllables, but

he cannot handle words with blending and multiple consonants well. He cannot handle words

with complicated phonological structures.

Students at lower grades in elementary school should focus on their fluency in reading.

According to the cognitive model on p. 9 of McKenna and Stahl’s book, the first pathway of

automatic word recognition involves fluency in context. Fluent readers equip themselves with

decoding and sight word recognition. Readers need to learn phonological awareness and print

concepts in order to be capable readers. My first instructional goal is to improve his sound

decoding skills.

William’s second instructional goal is he will be able to develop his sound-letter

knowledge. It is a crucial concept for students to understand how words are arranged within

spaces between marks. Research shows that children need to have some word knowledge and/or
ANALYZE STUDENT DATA 4

some phonological awareness before they are able to finger point accurately. According to CCSS

(see the link), children of Grade 2 should have the ability to identify words with inconsistent but

common spelling-sound correspondences and Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly

spelled words. From his spelling inventory, it can be observe that he knows the most common

words’ spelling but cannot make correspondence between sounds and letters by hearing sounds.

As for his alphabetic recognition, proficient readers do not recognize words as whole

units, instead, they do so by identifying the component letters (McKenna and Stahl, 2019). In

addition, young children’s fluent reading ability is closely related to the ability to accurately

match spoken words to printed words. From William’s spelling inventory and sight word

inventory, he can identify most of the sight words in the test, but cannot spell words correctly.

He can only spell high frequency words in his daily life. He also does not know the

correspondence between the sound and the spelling. He should know words by letters.
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William’s Instructional Strategies

Use Blending and Segmenting Games

Overall, William reads with automaticity and good understanding of sight words, but

needs to develop his phonological awareness, especially in blending and segmenting. Most of the

words William encounters are words with one or two syllables. It is crucial for him to identify

simple sounds so that he can move to the following stages of reading without much difficulty.

When children start to learn to read print, they need to be aware of how the sounds in

words work. They must understand that words are made up of individual speech sounds, or

phonemes. A child's skill in phonological and phonemic awareness is a good predictor of later

reading development. However, William will be a third grader, if he is given too much lecturing

in instructions, he will feel bored and lose interest in reading.

The teacher can use games like help children clap or tap syllables in words and blending

syllables to make a word. William can work with classmates or work independently (from

Reading Rockets).

Provide Differentiated Instruction

There is widespread agreement that appropriate and differentiated instruction is informed

by continuous and multiple assessment (Morrow and Gambrell, 2018). Children who are

struggling with reading have different issues, so various instructions and assessments need to be

involved. Teachers and specialists can use their expertise to choose extensive texts and

vocabulary lists to help William. The child can work in small groups. Students can read together,

do peer reading and echo reading. William can also read to the teacher or the specialist to let

them observe and assess his progress.

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Provide Explicit Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary plays a vital role in reading acquisition. Beginning readers in lower

elementary grades should utilize the words they hear orally and the words they see in print.

Children who hear more words spoken at home learn more words and enter school with better

vocabularies. This larger vocabulary pays off exponentially as a child progresses through school.

Students in K-12 grades need to learn 3,000 to 4,000 words every school year.

William needs explicit vocabulary instruction to improve his breadth of vocabulary. From

the assessment he took, a lack of input in written vocabulary can be observed. He can recognize

words by sight well, and it helps his fast reading rate. However, he does not know how to spell

words correctly.

Teachers and specialists can use direct and indirect vocabulary learning strategies.

Teachers can engage William in daily oral language, read directly to him, and ask William to

read extensively on his own. William can also learn directly by receiving instruction in specific

words that are important to students’ content learning or understanding of a particular text.

Various ways can be applied to inspire William’s vocabulary learning (from Reading Rockets).

Draw on Multiple Forms and Complexity Levels of Texts to Afford Access to New

Knowledge

Struggling readers need volumes of practice with both challenging, grade-appropriate

texts, texts that provide opportunities to address instructional needs, and easy texts that have

varying organizations and genre (e.g., narratives, informational, digital, pictorial texts) and

instruction with texts matched to students’ instructional reading levels. For William, teachers can

try to provide texts with less familiar knowledge backgrounds for him. He can start to try to read

for knowledge.
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Sarah: Data Analysis

From Sarah’s data, her performance in spelling and fluency in two types of texts

(narrative and expository) can be observed and assessed. When children enter fourth grade, they

will face a turning point where Their focus of reading turns from decoding and fluent reading to

getting knowledge from reading. Therefore, many kids struggle with comprehension in reading

(“the fourth grade slump”). From Sarah’s data, she also struggles.
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From her spelling inventory, Sarah wrote 18 of 25 words correctly. She could recognize

words with one or two syllables accurately, but had difficulty in identifying words with multiple

syllables. All the errors she made in spells fall into vowels in the middle, among which errors

come from getting the sound wrong while others are from omitting the vowel sound. The test

shows that she has phonological awareness, but her syllable awareness is relatively weak. This

problem also affects her accuracy in fluent reading tests. Vocabulary knowledge is closely

related to reading comprehension and fluency. Nearly 90 percent of English words can be spelled

if a student knows basic patterns, principles and rules of spelling (From Reading Rockets).

The two QRIs represent her reading ability for two kinds of texts. From her QRI narrative

inventory (read an informational story) , her reading rate reaches the standard (around 71 words

per minute) and her correct WPM is about 69. Her answers to pre reading questions suggest that

she can grasp most of the background knowledge needed for the text. There are 9 miscues made

in her reading with 1 self correction. Among these errors, 3 involve adding and substituting

words, 3 are from word recognition (2 conceptual words and 1 sight word), and 2 come from

propositions. Even though adding and substituting is a common mistake Sarah made, her

replacement of words is grammatically correct. Her story retelling gave some details and she

could understand reading comprehension questions. Her answers to the questions tend to be short

and general without many details.

In Sarah’s QRI expository, she stands between being familiar and unfamiliar with the

contexts of the reading. Surprisingly, her reading speed is higher in this text, with around 75

words per minute. Her correct WPM reached nearly 74. She reads the text with automaticity

despite not being quite familiar with the topic. There are 8 miscues (2 are the same words) found

in her reading, among which 3 come from unfamiliar words and 3 come from numbers. In this
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text, she also made 2 errors from using the wrong propositions. She gave fewer details when she

tried to retell the text. Her accuracy of comprehending the text is poorer than the narrative text.

The reason may lie in her unfamiliarity with conceptual words in the text and her ability to read

grade-level text with purpose and understanding.

In conclusion, Sarah is basically a capable reader at her grade level but needs

supplementary instructions to improve her reading. Her spelling inventory shows that she needs

knowledge on vowels and sounds for letters. Her two QRI inventories suggest she needs to

improve her sight vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary. As for grammar, she should improve

her use of propositions.

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Sarah: Goals of Instruction

Since students entering higher elementary grades should get knowledge from reading

rather than reading for understanding, their reading instructions need to be focused on fluency

and comprehension. Sarah should improve her spelling of words with multiple syllables. Sarah

also needs to improve her breadth of vocabulary.

The first goal is Sarah will be able to understand and use phonological knowledge to

improve her accuracy in reading. By understanding combined knowledge of all letter-sound

correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology (like roots and affixes) to read

accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of context, Sarah will be a fluent

reader with accuracy and automaticity. In her spelling inventory, she struggled with omitting

vowels between vowels and did not know the sound-letter correspondence. Vocabulary Learning

to spell is built on a child's understanding that words are made up of separate speech sounds

(phonemes) and that letters represent those sounds. As they get more experience with words,

children begin to notice patterns in the way letters are used and recurring sequences of letters that

form syllables, word endings, word roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Phonological awareness is also

closely related to listening comprehension and speaking. Kids who cannot gain a good

knowledge of phonology will suffer from pronouncing words.

In addition, her QPI inventories indicate that she changes words quite randomly without

paying much attention to the contents, so teachers need to check whether she sees the words

carefully before she reads out.

The second goal for Sarah’s reading instruction is that she will have a larger vocabulary

of sight words and conceptual words by daily instructions and additional instructions. According

to the cognitive model on p. 9 of McKenna and Stahl’s book, pathway 2 (oral language
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comprehension) involves vocabulary knowledge. Background knowledge and knowledge of text

and sentence structures as a whole. Children with the understanding of more words in texts that

they are reading will be more likely to be able to make sense of the text. Teachers also need to be

aware of students’ individual differences in both prior knowledge and cognitive ability. The

more children know about the topic of the text, the better they will comprehend it. For students

in higher grades at elementary school, they begin to attempt to read with sufficient accuracy and

fluency to support comprehension as well as use context to confirm or self-correct word

recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary (from CCSS). Students start to develop

their ability to understand sentences by word groups, and they read with purpose.

Sarah can change words in texts while paying attention to grammatical accuracy,

showing that she can read with the understanding of sentence structure. She needs to pay

attention to expressions of terms and numbers.

Sarah’s Instructional Strategies

Give Explicit Spelling Instructions

Most English words can be spelled if you know the basic patterns, principles, and rules of

spelling. Sarah does quite well in spelling words with one or two syllables, indicating that she

has basic sybllablic knowledge, but cannot be applied to more complicated words. Teachers
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should recap basic patterns and principles for English spelling, and expose Sarah to sufficient

“hard” words.

Sarah’s spelling instructions should include pattern information, which groups of letters

function as a pattern to represent sounds. The instructions include patterns like CVCe/CVVC

patterns to form long vowels (from Reading Rockets). Assessments need to be conducted in

various ways to check Sarah’s understanding.

Provide Multiple Organizational Formats to Support All Learners, Especially Struggling

Readers

Differentiated instructions are extremely important to struggling readers. Rich learning

classrooms have multiple organizational formats to support differentiated instruction (Morrow

and Gambrell, 2014) . They can be whole-class instruction to initiate the study of concepts

embedded in the anchor, small-group instruction that is teacher-led, small and large groups

where students collaborate in shared learning activities, and one-to-one instruction.

Teachers can also make use of the morning meeting time and the last hour of school to

give students some engaging activities. Instead of distributing assignments, teachers can give

Sarah crossword puzzles, logic games or even sudoku puzzles to engage students.

Use Multimedia to teach Vocabulary (from Reading Rockets)

Vocabulary plays a vital role in reading comprehension. Students in higher elementary

grades use vocabulary as a tool to read for understanding. Students are required to learn 50,000

words in reading and oral instructions. For elementary students, resources from multimedia can

help students become more engaged. Children have different learning styles, so using multimedia

can motivate them to learn. They can also find styles of learning that fits them best.
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Nowadays, web-based media have given teachers new opportunities to broaden their

students’ understanding by providing them with an avenue to integrate images, video, and other

multimedia experiences into literacy instruction. Teachers can use pictures and videos to make

abstract conceptual words accessible to students. Teachers can use interactive media like Kahoot

and Padlet to encourage kid to use the words they learn.

Teaching Words During integrated disciplinary content units

The strategy can provide students with hands-on experience applying discipline-specific

vocabulary. They see the words in print, and they use the words in speech and writing (McKenna

and Stahl, 2019). It can provide consistent exposure to words and creates an authentic context to

learn.

Teachers can create lists of disciplinary-specific words lists. Sarah will be asked to

preview words before the lessons. During the classes, kids can be asked to read aloud some texts

containing conceptual vocabulary. Kids will read individually or read to their peers to assess

their recognition of these words.

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References

Dougherty, S. K. A., Flanigan, K., McKenna, M. C., & McKenna, M. C. (2019). Assessment

for reading instruction. The Guilford Press.

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

Press.

English language arts standards " reading: Foundational skills " grade 2. English Language

Arts Standards " Reading: Foundational Skills " Grade 2 | Common Core State Standards

Initiative. (n.d.). Retrieved June 26, 2022, from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-

Literacy/RF/2/