Individual Assessment, Analysis, and
Planning Project
Professor Albertoni
ITL 514
Jessica Kuiper
1 December 2018
LINKS TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS
BACKGROUND HISTORY: LEARNER
For this assignment, I will be
focusing on a 3rd grade student at Bradach Elementary School, whose name is
Nick. Nick is one of four children; he has one older brother, one younger
brother, and the youngest sibling is a newborn sister. Each sibling attends a
different school district. Nick’s primary care giver is his father, and Nick
visits his mother on a non-regular basis. Nick’s siblings are primarily with
his mother, and visit Nick’s father on the weekends. Nick’s mother and father
are no longer together, and it has been noted that this has affected Nick’s
emotional and mental health. Nick’s father works varying hours, and Nick’s
homework is not always completed on time, or at all. Nick’s first language is
English, and he does not know any other languages. In the house, only English
is spoken. Nick has attended Bradach Elementary since Kindergarten, and has
repeated Kindergarten. Nick performs best with a male educator, and struggles
with authority with female teachers. Nick has been known to throw tantrums in
the classroom, and can be disobedient if he does not understand or relate to
the assignment. However, Nick’s behavior has improved this school year, and
receives mostly “O’s” (outstanding) on his behavior chart for the day. I will
be administering a series of assessments one-on-one with Nick to see where his
reading fluency, comprehension and spelling stands, I will then analyze these
results, and create a plan of intervention, if necessary.
ASSESSMENTS TO BE
ADMINISTERED
In
order to assess Nick’s reading ability and comprehension level, I will be
giving him a series of different assessments. The first test is the Oral
Reading Fluency, which will gauge Nick’s reading fluency rate. He will be given
several short passages to read for one minute each. I will record how many
words in the story Nick reads, and subtract the amount of errors. The remaining
number will be decide Nick’s fluency rate (words correct per minute.) Once he
is done reading the passage, I will ask him a question regarding the story,
which will show how well Nick understood the story (comprehension.) The ORF
test is an excellent way to see Nick’s reading fluency rate, as well as
monitoring Nick’s comprehension of what he reads. The next test I will give
Nick is called the Names Test. This test checks Nick’s phonemic awareness, and
gauges how well Nick can segment Names, and blends them together. I will be
able to see Nick’s strengths and weaknesses with phonemic awareness, and begin
to create an intervention plan. The third test is the San Diego Quick reading
Assessment, which will identify Nick’s independent, instructional and
frustration reading levels, and will also let me know if Nick recognizes any
sight words, or grade level vocabulary. I will also be able to see the
strengths and weaknesses in Nick’s decoding strategies. This test will be
helpful in determining if Nick is below or above the 2nd grade
reading level, and will also help me to see where Nick is struggling with
decoding. The fourth test I will be giving is the Student Reading/Writing
interview. This interview will ask Nick questions about his knowledge of what
reading/writing is, and if he enjoys reading/writing. Nick will be answering
these questions himself, by writing the answers to the questions. This assessment will be beneficial, because I
will be able to see Nick’s attitude towards reading/writing, and how well he
understands what a good reader/writer consist of. I will have a better
understanding of whom nick considers to be a good reader/writer, and if he
believes he falls into either category. Lastly, I will be able to see how well
Nick is able to writing complete sentences, his knowledge of punctuation, and
if he is able to communicate through written word. The fifth assessment is the Elementary Reading
Attitude Survey, which asks 20 different questions regarding Nick’s attitude
towards reading at home and at school. This is the perfect tool for seeing how
Nick feels about reading at home or at school. If he is uninterested in
reading, I can ask follow up questions to see why, and if he is interested in
reading, and I can get to know more about why he enjoys reading, and what type
of books he likes to read. This is a great way to see Nick’s true attitude
towards reading, and gives me a chance to create an intervention plan if
necessary. The sixth assessment I will be giving is called the Yopp-Singer Test
of Phonemic Segmentation. This test will look at how well Nick is able to
segment and blend individual sounds into words. This assessment will show me
where Nick is have difficulty with segmenting and blending, as well as being
able to decode unfamiliar words. I will also be able to see if Nick recognizes
grade level vocabulary, along with sight words. From the information I gather,
I can create a plan of action to help Nick will areas in which he struggles, and
improve his overall ability to segment and blend sounds into words. The final
test I will give Nick is called the Elementary Spelling Inventory. I will be
giving Nick a spelling test of 25 words, which incrementally increase in
difficulty. When/if Nick misspells a word, I will be able to analyze the
mistake and create an area of focus. The Spelling Inventory categorizes the
sounds, patterns, affixes, and derivational relations found in the word, and
each area has it’s own score. The lowest scores that Nick receives will be
where focus is needed most; in order to increase Nick’s overall spelling
ability. These seven assessments will help me understand the strengths and
weaknesses in Nick’s fluency, decoding skills, spelling, and comprehension, and
I will be able to create an intervention plan tailored to Nick’s most necessary
needs.
ASSESSMENT RESULTS
Overall,
Nick did fairly well on the 7 assessments that were given to him. In order to
maintain Nick’s focus, the assessments were broken into segments, in which a
total of 3 videos were recorded. For the Student Reading/Writing Interview, I
wrote the answers that Nick gave me, after I read the questions out loud. For
this assessment, Nick did not answer in complete sentences, and stated that he
felt “mad” about reading. The results from this assessment show that Nick
understands why people read, and what makes a good reader, however, this
supports his lack of motivation to read. For Nick’s Elementary Reading Attitude
Survey, Nick scored 17 in recreational reading and 23 in academic reading. He
most answers, he either answered with a mildly upset Garfield, or a very upset
Garfield. In questions 13-20, Nick began answering questions with multiple
feelings, which shows when Nick became uninterested in the assessment. For
these questions, I used the emotion that Nick originally circled. These results
show Nick’s lack of motivation to read, and lack of love of reading. Nick does
not enjoy reading at home, but enjoys reading at school. He would rather play
video games or with his friends, than spending time reading a book. In the
Spelling Inventory, Nick missed 13 of 15 words that were given to him. Nick
correctly spelled “bed” and “when.” Nick
had trouble with multisyllable words, long vowels, and word endings (-en
instead of –ing.) Nick also struggled with diagraphs, confusing “ch” with “sh”
and “ch” with “th.” In the San Diego Quick Reading Assessment, results show
that Nick’s independent level was grade 1, his instructional level was grade 2,
and his frustration level was grade 3. These results show that Nick is slightly
behind grade level in decoding skills needed for vocabulary recognition and
phonic skills. In the Names Test, Nick paused while pronouncing most of the
first names, and did not attempt to pronounce the last names. He was unable to
pronounce a good majority of the first names, and quickly read through the
names, skipping the ones he did not know. These results show that Nick does not
have strong decoding skills, and that he is reading too quickly, and not taking
his time with words he is unfamiliar with. In the Oral Reading Fluency test,
Nick attempted to read 58 words, with 4 errors, totally 58 wcpm. The
recommended wcpm by the end of 3rd grade is 114, showing that Nick
is far behind the average 3rd grade reader. In this assessment, Nick
skipped over words he was unsure of, and did not attempt to sound out or
decode. Nick read speedily through the passage, with little comprehension of
what he had just read. Lastly, in the Yopp-Singer assessment, Nick 20/22 words
correct. These results show that when Nick is cued to break down words and
segment, he is able to identify individual sounds in the words. He was also
able to piece the sounds together and say the word. This shows that Nick has a
strong grasp of phonemic awareness, but does not apply this knowledge in words
he does not understand. From these assessments, I’ve gathered that Nick
struggles with reading, and reads quickly through material, skipping over words
he is unaware of. This is affecting his reading fluency, writing, vocabulary,
and spelling skills. It has also impacted his comprehension of material, as he
is spending more time decoding, instead of understanding what he is reading.
Nick will continue to fall further behind grade level if an intervention plan
is not created to aid Nick’s areas of weakness.
ASSESSMENT ANALYSIS
After
reviewing these assessments, there are several strengths and weaknesses that
can be seen in Nick’s test results. First, one of Nick’s strengths came from
the Yopp-Singer Assessment; Nick was able to segment 20/22 words correctly.
Nick was also able to blend the sounds together to pronounce the word. Nick was
also able to identify what he should do if he sees a word is does not know
while reading, as shown in the Student Reading/Writing Interview. Nick has
several weaknesses in his reading, after reviewing his assessment scores. In
the Oral Reading Fluency assessment, Nick scored 54 wcpm, which shows he is
below grade level in fluency, and was also unable to recall information from
the passage. His inability to read fluency stems from being unable to
automatically recognize words. In his Spelling Inventory, Nick struggled with
long vowels, mulitsyllable words, and diagraphs. Lastly, in Nick’s San Diego
Quick Reading Assessment, his independent reading level was grade 2, with grade
3 being his instructional level, which shows he is slightly below grade level
reading.
PROPOSED GOALS
In
order to improve Nick’s areas of weaknesses, there are several goals that Nick
should work toward achieving. Nick’s comprehension level will improve when he
is able to focus on understanding the material, instead of decoding words. I
would have Nick practice segmenting and blending multisyllable words one
spelling list at a time. Nick will become more familiar with words, and become
a more fluent reader, as well. To motivate Nick to read in and out of the
classroom, I would find books that he enjoys reading, that way reading is less
of a “chore” and more of a reward. To improve Nick’s spelling, I would create
word sorts for Nick to complete, focusing on diagraphs, long vowels, and
multisyllable words. I believe with these teaching strategies, Nick will be
able to meet the goals listed above.
REFLECTION
After
reflecting upon the assessments given, as well as the video recoding of myself,
I can see there are multiple areas in which I can improve on. This was my first
experience testing a student and administering assessments. In the future, I
need to take more time to review the material before giving the assessments, so
I am more aware of how the process works. I also need to take more time to
explain the assessment to the student, so they are aware of how to complete the
test, and can perform comfortably. I believe I did a good job of reading
questions to Nick, and felt that he understood what was being asked. After
coaching Nick on the Student Reading/Writing Assessment, he knew how to answer
the questions, so I believe that is a strength I had, as well. The analysis portion
was difficult, in the sense that I had to create a plan of action to improve
Nick’s weaknesses, as well as identify what Nick’s weaknesses were. In the
future, I would like to observe/watch assessments being given, so I can see how
to properly administer assessments, as well as analyze the results. This is a
skill that I know I will continue to improve upon with the more practice I
have. For my first time administering assessments, I am impressed with the
results I was able to identify, analyze, and plan for improvement.
