CIED 321 Primary Literacy Assessment and Instruction

Spring 2024 Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Assessment and Instruction Report #1: Writing

Part 1: Overview

Madeline Lee Ellis Elementary School, Harmony Emge School 3/15/24 2nd
District 175, Belleville, IL Grade
Student Pseudonym: Star Assessment Time: 8:50-9:00
Classroom Context:
This assessment took place at Ellis Elementary School in Belleville, IL. Ellis Elementary is a PreK
through 3rd grade school that has about 360 students. The students at this school are about 37%
White, 44% Black, 5% Hispanic, and 14% multiracial. About 72% of the students at the school are
from low-income households. This assessment took place before the beginning of the school day.
The student came to join us in the art room, where other assessments were also taking place. The
room was well-lit and had brightly colored decorations. There were three teacher candidates
working together to give the assessment to the student.

Part 2: Diagnostic Assessment Plan

Writing Diagnostic Assessment Tool Description

A. We began by showing Star the following written introduction letter:

Hello! Our names are Ava Oetjen, Madeline Lee, and Meghan Shinault. We are
studying to become teachers. Thank you for reading and writing with us today!

Ava likes to go shopping, try new foods, traveling, and spending time with
friends and family. Her favorite food is pasta. Her favorite place is Florida.

Meghan likes going on walks, cooking, and reading books. Her favorite food is
sushi. Her favorite place is anywhere at the beach.

Madeline likes watching movies, baking, and playing card games. Her favorite
food is ice cream. Her favorite place is Colorado.

Would you write a letter telling us about what you like?

Thank you!

B. We then asked Star to write her own letter of introduction. We gave her our
introduction letter to use as a mentor text and reference while writing.

Teacher Candidate Partner(s): Ava Oetjen, Meghan Shinault

CIED 321 Primary Literacy Assessment and Instruction
Spring 2024 Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Assessment Procedure:
- I acted as the note-taker during this procedure, Meghan was the primary administrator of the
assessment, with assistance from Ava
- Meghan introduced the activity by showing our sample introduction letter to Star. She
started to read it aloud.
- Star began to read aloud with her, so Meghan went more slowly and pointed to each word to
let Star continue along with her.
- Meghan kept an encouraging tone and helped Star with words she didn’t know.
- After reading, Meghan summarized our expectations for Star: “If you want to think about
some stuff you like, you can write a paragraph like ours about what you like. You can write
about what you like to do, your favorite food, and your favorite place.”
- Meghan set our sample text where the student could see and said, “I’ll put this here in case
you want to look at it.”
- Then we were quiet so that Star could focus. We gave her plenty of time to work on her
letter. We let her write for as long as she wanted to so that her sample was authentic.
- We noticed that she stopped and thought about her writing. She read it back to herself.
- Meghan gave encouragement: “You can write as much as you’d like. If you want to write
more, go ahead.”
- We noticed that she looked back at our sample letter to get ideas about what to write.
- She seemed like she wanted to continue writing so we offered some ideas: “Do you have
any siblings or pets at home? If you have a favorite meal you can write about that.” She
smiled and nodded at the suggestions, and continued writing.
- Ava gave encouragement by saying, “You’re doing awesome!” and “I’m excited to read
this!”
- We noticed that she had lots of stamina. She wrote for a while, until an announcement was
made that the students needed to leave for their field trip.

Part 3: Commentary

1. What developmental writing stage is this writer working at?

This writer, Star, is working at the transitional writing stage. It is clear that Star is in the
transitional stage because she is correctly using within-word patterns such as spelling the long e
sound using the ea vowel pair in “cream” and “beach.” This shows an awareness that groups of
letters work together to correspond to sound. Similarly, she knows that many words have a silent e
at the end, like “name” and “have.” She also used correct punctuation, putting a period at the end of
each sentence. Another strong indicator of her writing stage is that she had a lot of stamina while
writing. She was able and willing to write about her interests and her family for a long period of
time. Within the transitional stage, “writing is becoming more fluent, because the children are better
able to sustain the idea or topic about which they are writing as they encode that information,”
(TRW 58). Other students who can write about a focused idea for a long time, using within-word
patterns to spell words, are likely in the transitional writing stage.

2. What evidence of the six traits of writing is evident in this writer’s sample?
This sample from Star shows evidence of all six traits of writing. Firstly, it had a clear main
idea, and the content of her letter focused on telling us facts about herself. Her writing had
CIED 321 Primary Literacy Assessment and Instruction
Spring 2024 Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

organization because she started by listing some of her favorite things, and then in the second half
of her letter she described her family. The voice of her writing was friendly, starting with an
enthusiastic greeting. Because she is in the transitional stage, she was able to analyze our mentor
text and reason about how to respond (TRW 58). I think this helped her choose appropriate content,
organization, and voice for her writing that mirrored our introduction letter. Her word choice helped
convey her message, such as when she used the words “dogs” and “puppies,” which have different
shades of meaning, to paint a clear picture for the reader. She has sentence fluency because the
sentences flow in a logical order and vary in length. Finally, she used writing conventions such as
punctuation, some capital letters, and correct grammar.

3. What kinds of reading experiences will help to improve this writer’s abilities?
Star would benefit from teacher-led interactive read-alouds. In these read-alouds, the teacher
models fluent reading of “literature and informational texts that are typically at or above their
current grade level,” (TRW 309). Then, the teacher helps the students use active thinking and
reasoning skills such as predicting and retelling to respond to the text. These comprehension skills
will help students think critically about text and write meaningful responses to a variety of texts
from different genres. They will also increase their vocabulary through these read-alouds, so that
they can write using more academic language. Star enjoys listening to others read, so interactive
read-alouds would be engaging for her and would help her feel motivated to write meaningful
responses such as she did in this assessment. Along with this, it is important for students to have
opportunities to read many genres of texts, including fantasy, biography, poetry, and others, because
“exposure to a variety of texts helps children envision new possibilities for writing,” (TRW 332).
During this assessment, Star was able to write a letter based on a mentor text, although she may
typically write in a different style. Students will be able to use diverse mentor texts to write in new
ways, using different craft and text structures.

4. What kinds of writing experiences will help to improve this writer’s abilities?
To improve Star’s writing abilities, she could engage in quick writes. These are “informal
opportunities for children to respond to text or other topics in short writing blocks,” (TRW 316).
They allow students to write without the pressure of a grade, with a focused topic provided to them,
where they can practice writing with clarity about an interesting topic. These can be done daily to
help students improve their fluency and confidence in their writing. Star’s stamina indicates that she
would enjoy having time to practice her writing every day, and she could look back and reflect on
these quick writes to see how her writing has changed and how she could continue to improve.
Another valuable writing experience would be writing blog posts. Students are motivated by
knowing that someone will read and respond to their writing (TRW 317). They could write blog
posts about a variety of topics and could practice writing purposeful replies to their classmate’s
writing. This would also help them develop keyboard skills, which will be necessary as they
continue through school. These writing experiences would be beneficial for Star and other writers in
the transitional stage.

References

Gehsmann, K. M., & Templeton, S. (2022). Teaching Reading and Writing: The Developmental
Approach (2nd ed.). Pearson.
CIED 321 Primary Literacy Assessment and Instruction
Spring 2024 Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Appendices

Appendix A – Star's Introduction Letter (Writing Sample)

[Star]