Maria Sideri
EDU 341 Assessing Young Children With and Without Special Needs
Fall 2011
Assessment Plan & Report
Assessment Plan & Report through Analysis of a First Grader
Assessment is a crucial part of teaching. It is essentially incorporated into everything that is taught, every lesson plan that is created, and evidence of improvement. Assessments are necessary in order to determine where a child stands in all curriculum areas. Without assessment, it would be impossible to thoroughly interpret what a child’s status is, and how the child can further progress. Through my experience of student teaching in my practicum, I have found my lessons to be meaningful and further knowledge when I write my lessons in light of the backward design concept. Through this concept, the main goal of the lesson is stated first, immediately followed by prior knowledge needed as well as the assessment that will be provided in order to understand that the students achieved the learning goal. Therefore, without assessment, no meaningful lesson plans would ever be created! Seeing as though my practicum and professional major is elementary education, assessments that are appropriate for the elementary age I am more familiar with. One type of assessment that I use frequently in the area of literacy is running records. I believe this type of assessment is very accurate in terms of reading level, and provides a good sense of where the student is currently standing as a reader. Examples of this type of assessment being used are provided in the following below.
Initial Information of Child Selected for Assessing:
Name: Anna
Age: 6 years old
Grade: First (1)
Language Background: English
Anna is a bright, happy, hard working, first grade girl who is proud to be a first grader. Anna attends the Graham and Parks Alternative Public School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Anna is currently in a classroom with a total of 20 children, and is 1 of 9 first grade students. Anna’s classroom has both first and second graders. Anna gets along very well with her classmates, and seems to have an overall positive disposition in school. My reason for choosing Anna as the child selected for assessing is because while Anna generally seems to be a typically developing first grader in all curriculum areas, I believe she has a talent for writing and reading, and it should not go overlooked. Therefore, I wanted to observe Anna in the area of literacy to see where to go with her in the future to enhance her literacy skills. I have observed Anna in two focused observations which are shown through the attached observations (observation 1 & observation 2).
In order to assess where Anna’s current status was in literacy, I conducted two running records with her. I decided to do running records because Anna is comfortable in reading when she gets to choose a book on her own, rather than me given something formal like a Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA). Having Anna feel comfortable during the assessment was important to me because I felt as though she’d show her true reading potential if she was relaxed. At the beginning of the year, Anna fell into the reading level category, C. This proved to be her independent reading level. Therefore, I suggested that Anna choose two short books to read either from the C or D level, and those would be the books I would conducted the assessment, or running records, with. These assessments are shown through the attached tools (tool 1 & tool 2). In these assessments, I recorded Anna’s results from her running records, as well as the photocopies of the book she choose.
According to tool 1, Anna scored 35 correct words out of 36. This running record was recorded through the book, “The Great, Enormous Hamburger” by Jillian Cutting. This was a level D book that included 8 pages with drawings. The only word she omitted was “onion”, she added an “es” to “tomatoes” and corrected herself twice on two different words. It is clear that Anna did very well with the reading of this book, and therefore scored an almost perfect running record. To further assess Anna, I chose to do another running record. This second running record is shown through tool 2. In tool 2, Anna scored 24 words correct out of 24 words, a perfect score. This running record was recorded through the book, “My Family” by Jillian Cutting. This book was a level C categorized book, and had 8 pages. Anna read this book in less than one minute. The results from this second running record suggested that Anna may need to be challenged more, maybe through reading a higher level book. These books are very appropriate for Anna to read during her independent reading time, but may not be appropriate for a guided reading lesson. By being provided with a higher leveled book, Anna might fall out of the independent reading zone and be provided with more challenges and less sight words.
Along with the tools I used to assess Anna with, I conducted two focused observations of Anna on the topic of literacy. In the first observation (attached as observation 1), I observed Anna at 10:00am to 10:30am during a reading response during reading workshop. During this observation, Anna was sitting with a table of four, and was responding to the story “Adelita” by Tomie dePaola that was read aloud during morning meeting. This assignment required Anna to write three sentences about the story starting with the beginning, middle, and end. The areas that apply to this observation are vocabulary/concepts (concept development) and concepts of print. The context of this observation includes a teacher-initiated activity, familiar task for the child, done independently and time spent was about 30 minutes. The following observation illustrates 3 parts of the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework in English Language Arts for first grade which is, “1. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text. 2 Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text. 3. Describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text” (MA, 1-3, pg. 18).
Throughout this activity, Anna made many comments and did many actions that allowed me to analyze her strength and weaknesses in the area of literacy. At first, Anna was focused on drawing a picture of Adelita and she did not seem to care about writing a response to the reading because she kept avoiding the teacher as she checked on her table. After 15 minutes passed, I asked Anna to start thinking about what happened in the story. Anna kept saying, “I don’t know”. It wasn’t until I asked her what Adelita looked like or how her step sisters treated her that he began talking. Anna responded by saying, “they’re not very nice to her and make her do things for them.” I asked Anna if she could write this and she said, “I don’t know how” with a whining tone to her voice. After about another 10 minutes of prompting, Anna still refused to write and never completed the writing assignment during the time allowed. This observation was particularly interesting to me because Anna knows how to write, but she may have difficult translating her thoughts to writing and especially sequencing her thoughts. This has been a common behavior of Anna (she has done this twice before) so I know this is something that can be monitored through assessment in order for her to progress in reading responses.
Another observation that I conducted (attached as observation 2), involved another aspect of literacy that Anna exhibited. In this second observation, I observed Anna at 9:00am to 9:30am during writing workshop. During this observation, Anna was sitting with a table of five and was working independently on her writing journal that she completes daily. The reading journal is a place where the students have a chance to write something that is true about themselves or something that they did or experienced. The guidelines of this reading journal are to write at least 2 sentences. The first sentence should be what happened, and the second sentence should be a supporting sentence to the previous sentence. The areas that apply to this observation in terms of language and literacy include oral language, vocabulary, phonological awareness, concepts of print, and alphabet knowledge (in spelling). The context of this observation includes a teacher-initiated activity, familiar task, independent work, and lasted for about 20 minutes. The following observation illustrates one part of the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework in English Language Arts for first grade which is,” Writes narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order and provide some sense of closure” (MA, 3, p. 25).
During the beginning of the observation, I observed Anna being very quiet and slumped over in her chair. She seemed to be tired through her body language. After about 10 minutes, Anna decides to start drawing a picture in her writing journal of what she will eventually write about. This picture is very detailed in comparison to her other drawings, especially because it includes color. Anna seemed to be hesitant about writing. By this time, 15 minutes went by and Anna started to write. She wrote her sentence very quickly and then announced “I’m done!” Anna’s sentence is short, and is provided through the attached page of observation 2. This observation was very interesting to me because it seemed as though Anna needs assistance or prompting in organizing her thoughts so that she can easily write them down on paper. Also, it made me start thinking about how Anna may need a reminder of concepts of print and the sequencing of stories, as well as new vocabulary words to help support this new information.
Through my use of tools and recordings of observations, I came to the conclusion that Anna may need help in sequencing her thoughts of stories that were read to her (comprehension) and narratives that she writes about herself (in her writing journal). She seems to be thinking and sitting quietly a lot before writing, which allows me to believe that she may be overwhelmed by what she wants to write, and therefore when it comes down to writing, she either dismisses it and does not complete the lesson, or she quickly writes a sentence while rushing. I believe that Anna will benefit for some kind of plan that organizes her thoughts as well as parts or concepts of a text because as proven through her assessment tool (through running records) it is clear that she enjoys reading and has good comprehension skills. Therefore, it is not so much the reading that she struggles with, but the actual process of writing down and organizes her ideas. The two instructional plans that I would create for Anna is a checklist that includes pictures where she can draw and check off the parts of a story (shown through attached instructional plan 1). This idea was constructed through analyzing observation 1 and the fact that Anna felt that she could not sequence the events of “Adelita”. This checklist would allow her to self-assess that she included a beginning, middle, and end of the story to her reading response. And the boxes of these three parts would be so that Anna could draw a picture first to get her to brainstorm ideas of what to write for each of the three parts. She seems to take an interest in drawing so this could help her with her sequencing if she includes a picture with each part. Then as a final self –assessment, Anna will be able to go back and check off if she included each part after re-reading her reading response. Again, this is explained through instructional plan 1.
Anna also appears to have difficulty in writing supportive sentences to her narratives. She seems to be stuck with just writing what happened, but not describing what her experience was like or how she felt about it or provide details of the experience. Therefore, it would make sense to maybe create a brainstorming spider web for Anna to use. This web would include the main idea in the middle of the spider, and supporting details on its legs. If Anna completes this web, it will be clear that she is making progress in organizing her thoughts, and be able to translate these thoughts to print in her journal entry. This instructional plan was inspired through observation 2 when Anna was writing a narrative story in her writing journal. This instructional plan is shown through the attachment “instructional plan 2”.
In relation to these two instructional plans that will help Anna to make progress in her literacy and language skills, there are also plans that relate to these plans that can be conducted at home to best meet Anna’s literacy development. For example, a worksheet could be created to help Anna remember to bring in her homework at the end of the week. This worksheet could be made in the form of a checklist, because then Anna would have practice with self-assessing her own work, and it is also something that a parent can easily help with. This checklist would include having Anna check off her having done her reading journal, math homework, and question of the week. If Anna completes this worksheet/homework checklist, it will be clear that she is getting practice in self-assessment, which will make brainstorming activities more comfortable for her, which will eventually help her to sequence her own narratives as well as her responses to stories.
Overall, I have learned a tremendous amount about Anna and her literacy and language development. As a first grader, I believe that Anna is doing very well. She has many strengths in reading a comprehension. Her vocabulary is typical of a first grader (mainly recognizes sight words and has great decoding skills) and her oral language is advanced. The only area where Anna could benefit from in order to progress her learning is the area of concepts of print. Anna is ready for sequencing shown through her advancement in reading and comprehension, so encouraging her and providing her with a way to organize her thoughts and sequences of a story will only benefit in. I believe that in order to fully assess a child, many, many tools and assessments need to be conducted with the child in order to get a sense of where the child is in all areas, but I do believe that through the tools I used and the observations I conducted, the instructional plans I created for Anna were appropriate and will further her development and learning.
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