EDTE 319 Assessment Task for Language & Literacy Sample 2

1. Identify the specific standards/objectives measured by the assessment chosen for analysis. You may just cite the appropriate lesson(s) if you are assessing all of the standards/objectives listed.

The Words Their Way Primary Spelling Inventory assessed students’ spelling

conventions in order to determine each child’s individual developmental level and their spelling stage. The spelling assessment measured the students’ understanding of the Kindergarten standards:

Written and Oral English Language Conventions: 1.0 – Students write and speak with a command of Standard English conventions Writing: 1.2 – Write consonant-vowel-consonant words (i.e., demonstrate the alphabetic principle).

2. How do the evaluative criteria (or rubric) measure student proficiency for these

standards/objectives? Evaluative criteria are performance indicators that you use to assess student learning. Categories of evaluative criteria include decoding errors during oral reading, use of supporting detail in a paragraph, use of appropriate adverbs to more a story through time.

Students move through five spellings stages as they progress through school, starting

with primary grades and all the way through college. The five stages of spelling development are: Emergent, Letter Name – Alphabetic Spelling, Within Word Pattern Spelling, Syllables and Affixes Spelling, and Derivational Relations Spelling. Children progress through these stages starting at the Emergent level and ending ideally at the Derivational Relations Spelling level. Within each of these levels a student could be considered: early, middle, or late. The feature guide, which is the evaluative criteria from Words Their Way Primary Spelling Inventory, allows teachers to see what levels their students have mastered and what they still need to work on. Each student has their own feature guide, which clearly identifies what they need improvement on and what they understand. All of the students’ feature guides are combined to create a classroom composite, which then allows the teacher to evaluate the class as a whole and create groups based on everyone’s levels.

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The Words Their Way Primary Spelling Inventory is specifically designed for students in kindergarten through third grade. Since the kindergarteners were only tested on words 1-15, they were tested on: initial and final consonants, short vowels, diagraphs, blends, and only one other vowel and one inflected ending. The primary spelling inventory addresses some consonant-vowel-consonant words, as well as other words to see if students are progressing past spelling only consonant-vowel-consonant words. It progresses to see how far the students’ knowledge has extended and to identify how much of a command of Standard English conventions students have. The feature guide clearly shows what spelling level students have mastered and what level they are moving towards.

3. Create a summary of student learning across the whole class relative to your evaluative

criteria (or rubric). Summarize the results in narrative and/or graphic form (e.g., table or chart). (You may use the optional chart provided following the Assessment Commentary prompts to provide the evaluative criteria, including descriptions of student performance at different levels.)

The Primary Spelling Inventory Classroom Composite helps to graphically bring together

the scores of the whole class, as well as identify which levels students have mastered and what they are working towards. Out of a classroom of twenty two students six students scored in the lowest spelling stage, which is the Emergent Stage. This stage for these children is not surprising, since they tend to be low academically across the board and need a lot of extra assistance in class. These students had a difficult time with the test and demonstrated that they have not yet mastered any sounds while writing, beginning and final consonants, or the short vowels. For beginning consonant sounds their scores ranged from one to five out of a total of seven possible, which means they still need help improving their abilities to identify the beginning consonant sounds. The rest of the class all scored in the early to late stages of the Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage. There were two students in the Early Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage, eight students in the Middle Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage, and six students in the Late Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage. The students in the Early Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage scored a six out of seven on their beginning consonants but then did poorly on the final consonants and short vowels. The students that are in the Middle Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage scored six or better out of seven on the beginning and ending consonants, but they need additional work on short vowels. Then lastly students in the Late Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage scored six or better out of seven on the beginning and final consonants and short vowels but got zero to two out of seven on diagraphs. All of the students’ test results are summarized in a Primary Spelling Inventory Classroom Composite which can be found at the end of this commentary section.

4. Discuss what most students appear to understand well, and, if relevant, any

misunderstandings, confusions, or needs (including a need for greater challenge) that were apparent for some or most students. Cite evidence to support your analysis from the three student work samples you selected.

Pefley 3 There were six students that scored at the Emergent stage, which is understandable. Most

of the emergent stage is decidedly prephonetic. This stage begins with children producing large scribbles, then moves to pretend writing that “tells” about their picture, and towards the end of this stage their writing starts to include the most prominent or noticeable sounds in a word. Children in this stage are learning the alphabetic principle, that letters represent sounds in a systematic way, and words can be segmented into sequences of sound from left to right. Children are also memorizing some words and write them repeatedly, such as: Mom, cat, love, Dad, and etc. Most of my students are

moving passed this part of this stage, which can be seen in their writings since most students are getting 4-5 of the beginning letters sounds out of seven words, and a few of the final consonant and medial short vowels. For example, Nicholas, one of the four ELs that are in this spelling stage, spelled the word dig as “dog”. It appears that he could decipher the d and the g sounds but was unsure of the middle letter, so he put a word that he knows that begins with a d and ends with a g. For the word wait as “wto”, it appears that he knows that there is a w and a t sound in the word but is unable to form the word or acknowledge the a sound in the middle. Nicholas is one of eight EL students that participated in this test; half of the ELs are in the Emergent stage while the rest are in the Middle to Late Letter Name-Alphabetic stages. Nicholas was a good example of the ELs that scored in the Emergent stage. I want to keep all of the students who are in the Emergent stage in very small groups since they are at the lowest spelling stage I am going to group the two highest with the two Early Letter Name-Alphabetic children; therefore, creating two groups of four. The two highest children in the Emergent stage are not far behind the Early Letter Name-Alphabetic children so it will not be too much of a reach for them to be grouped together since they are quickly moving in that direction.

Most of the students were able to reach the Letter Name-Alphabetic stage of spelling,

which is what would be expected from this group of students. This class has been working on many consonant-vowel-consonant words and stretching out words while listening to the sounds the letters make. There was about 27% of the class that scored in the Late Letter Name-Alphabetic stage and about 36% of the class scored in the Middle Letter Name-Alphabetic stage. In the Late Letter Name-Alphabetic stage there are six students and all of these students would be put in a literacy group together. They will be working on diagraphs since they have shown mastery in beginning and final consonants and short vowels. Kayla is a great example of this group of students. She can spell fan, pet, dig, rob, and gum all correctly but when she attempts to spell shine, coach, and chewed she writes “soi”, “coth”, and ”tu” respectively. She maybe attempting to use the knowledge that th does make a special sound when she attempts the word coach; however, she demonstrates that she does not have very much knowledge of diagraphs. The lack of knowledge of diagraphs for the Late Letter Name- Alphabetic is normal, and all of these children need to be doing more work with them. There are eight students in the Middle Letter Name-Alphabetic stage of spelling, and these children would be put into two equal groups for literacy instruction. Ethan is a good example of this subgroup of students, because this subgroup is struggling with short vowels. For example, Ethan wrote “pat” and “slad” for pet and sled respectively. He is an average student that does

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need some assistance during reading and writing time but not an abundance, so his test scores put him in an average position and that is expected.

5. From the three students whose work samples were selected, choose two students, at least

one of which is an English Learner. For these two students, describe their prior knowledge of the content and their individual learning strengths and challenges (e.g., academic development, language proficiency, special needs). What did you conclude about their learning during the learning segment? Cite specific evidence from their work

samples and from other classroom assessments relevant to the same evaluative criteria (or rubric).

Nicholas is the English Learner whose work was selected as a sample. Nicholas came

into kindergarten with knowing very little English and has made good strides. When tested on the CELDT, his overall score was a 271, which is an overall beginning performance level. Both his listening and speaking scores were at a beginning level, but his reading and writing skills were at an intermediate level. In class Nicholas does need some assistance with sounding out words and does not have a lot of confidence when telling you the sounds he hears in words. He does work independently and tries hard to do his writing by himself. The writing he does in class does reflect his score on the Words Their Way Feature Guide. He does insert letters that do not belong or mix up sounds and letters. For example, on his spelling test he wrote “swt” for sled, turning the sl in sled into a sw and the ed into the t. I have also noticed him not using short vowels in his classroom writings, such as “frg” for frog.

Ethan is an average student that does require some assistance, but not constantly. He

does need to be reminded to slow down and take his time and do his best while working. Ethan is one of the two students that have an IEP for speech. Ethan has difficulty moving his mouth in the shapes needed for forming some sounds; however, when told a sound he can tell you the letter it corresponds to a majority of the time. Despite the fact that he goes to speech, he is at the Middle Letter Name-Alphabetic stage when it comes to his spelling. He is able to listen to the words being said and write the letters he hears. Ethan is also able to do this during class. For example, he was able to spell the words fan, rob, and gum correctly, while he was able to decipher some but not all of the sounds in other words such as “sik” for stick and “drem” for dream. He has not yet been taught about the silent e at the end of a word, so it is understandable that he would write “hop” and ”blad” for the words hope and blade.

6. What oral and/or written feedback was provided to individual students and/or the group

as a whole (refer the reviewer to any feedback written directly on submitted student work samples)? How and why do your approaches to feedback support students’ further learning? In what ways does your feedback address individual students’ needs and learning goals? Cite specific examples and reference the three student work samples as evidence to support your explanation.

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These children are in kindergarten and the words they were tested on are meant for

kindergarten through third grade, so this assessment was done with the knowledge that kindergarten students were not going to be able to do most of the words. The students were warned about this before ever taking the test. I do not think it would be very beneficial just to had the students’ tests back to them and expect them to understand anything but their score, which their scores do not look very good. On the test itself the score was placed on top, however many they got right out of fifteen, and if they got a word incorrect it was written correctly on the line next to their attempt. Since I do not

believe kindergarteners would get much out of their test and feature guide by just handing it to them, there must be some type of communication between the students and the teacher. The teacher could sit with each child individually and explain how the student did, what they have mastered, and what they still need to work on. Based on what the student still needs to work on, with teacher guidance and influence, have the child come up with a goal for themselves. For example, a goal for Nicholas might be to really focus on getting that beginning consonant in words he writes, since he is in the Emergent stage and he is weak in that area. Once a goal is made, the teacher can tell the child a few strategies to help them achieve their goal. A few strategies for Nicholas might be to stretch out the word, sound out the word, or repeat the word a few times and listen to the first sound that he hears. Keeping the tests as records could prove beneficial because both the teacher and the student will have something to refer to when discussing that child’s growth.

7. Based on the student performance on this assessment, describe the next steps for

instruction for your students. If different, describe any individualized next steps for the two students whose individual learning you analyzed. These next steps may include a specific instructional activity or other forms of re-teaching to support or extend continued learning of objectives, standards and/or central focus for the learning segment. In your description, be sure to explain how these next steps follow from your analysis of the student performances.

From the Primary Spelling Inventory Classroom Composite I would form literacy groups

based on their spelling level. The students at each stage are going to require different instruction to improve their skills. What is done for students should be tailored for their specific needs, not what could be done for all students in general. For students in the Emergent stage to help improve their reading and writing skills, they should: be read to, be involved in oral language activities, have writing modeled for them with dictations and chart, and if they are really low they should be encouraged to pretend read and write. To help their word study activities could include: concept sorts, play with speech sounds to develop phonological awareness, activities that help learn the alphabet, sort pictures based on beginning sounds, encourage invented spelling, and encourage finger pointing while reading books from memory. Specifically for my student Nicholas, I would read to him, model writing, encourage him to write even using

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There are several things that can be done for students in the Letter Name-Alphabetic

stages. To improve students’ reading and writing in the Early Letter Name-Alphabetic stage teachers can: read to students, encourage oral language activities, record ad reread individual dictations, label picture, and have students write in journals regularly. To help them with word study have students: collect known words for a word bank, sort pictures

and words by their beginning sounds, study word families, study beginning consonant blends and diagraphs, and use invented spelling. To advance students’ reading and writing skills in the Middle to Late Letter Name- Alphabetic stage teachers can: read to students, encourage invented spelling but hold students accountable for features and words they have studied, collect two to three paragraph dictations that are reread regularly, encourage more expansive writing, and consider some simple editing for punctuation and sight words. To help students with word study have students: sort pictures and words by different short vowel word families, sort pictures and words by short vowel sounds and CVC patterns, examine consonant blends with pictures and words, practice diagraphs at the end of words, sort pictures comparing short and long vowel sounds, and collect known words for word bank. Some of these activities would be too difficult for kindergarteners; however, some can be used very easily. For my student, Ethan, some activities he could do to improve his use of short vowels would be to: sort words and pictures by their short vowel sounds and sort word families containing short vowels and CVC patterns. To help Ethan with his writing and reading I would read to him, encourage invented spellings, but hold him accountable for things he has already mastered, such as beginning and middle consonants and sight words.

References Bear, Donald B., et al. Words Their Way: Word Student for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling

Instruction. 4th ed. Person Education. 2008. Reading/Language Arts Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade

Twelve. California Department of Education. California: Sacramento. 2007. Nicholas’ Spelling Test: Pefley 7

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Ethan’s Spelling Test: Pefley 9

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Pefley 11 Kayla’s Spelling Test:

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