Haley Williams

Assessment Project

4 step process:
1. Collect Data
All data that was collected is provided at the beginning of this folder for viewing.
Context:
o 2nd grade student
o Instructional Reading Level: M
o Independent Reading Level: L

2. Analysis of the Data through the lenses:

Readingo Reading engagement

o Reading Fluency
o Print work/decoding
o Reading comprehension
o Conversation

Writingo Writing engagement

o Qualities of good writing

Spelling
Analyzing Reading

Reading engagement:
In the first piece of the assessment project, my student was given an elementary reading
attitude survey. Looking at this survey, my student has an overall positive attitude about reading.
She enjoys reading for pleasure and finds reading in class enjoyable, unless she is presented with
non-authentic experiences; for example, doing a reading test, or having to read workbook pages
and work sheets. It was clear in my first running record with this child that she was more
enthusiastic about the reading because it was an excerpt from her favorite book series; Junie B.

Jones. It is clear that this childs level of reading engagement could increase even further if she
was in a setting implementing constructivism and the Engagement Theory. In a setting like this,
the student would be able to choose books that reflected her interests, intrinsically motivating her
to want to do more reading and reach higher levels of achievement. It would also benefit this
child to be more actively involved in authentic literacy experiences to increase her engagement
and willingness to read and write. Overall, this child was an engaged reader, but showed her
greatest interest at points in the assessment in which she was reading about things that interested
her.
Reading Fluency:
Looking back on the data I collected, I want to first examine the students accuracy rate;
her ability to identify words correctly. Looking at the running records that I did with my student,
it is clear to see that her accuracy rates were high (96%) when she was reading in her
independent reading level. She could very easily read through the words that she knew and most
often successfully identify the words that she was not as familiar with. It is also clear that when
being given a running record in reading that was at her instructional level, this students accuracy
rate dropped and her automaticity also lagged behind, causing her reading to be a little more
belabored and choppy-things that are expected when a child is reading at their instructional level.
When considering parsing, this student seemed to have the slightest struggle in
successfully breaking up the text into meaningful phrases. I would often listen to her read
through a comma, and then find that when her reading lacked that necessary pause, she herself
would pause for a moment, self-questioning as to why what she just read did not sound
completely correct. These are some places where I would find my students rereading.
One thing that my child was continually successful at was her prosody, in terms of her
ability to use the right amount of stress, emphasis, and intonation so that her reading sounded
like how a person would speak. I think that doing this then helps my student to be able to
comprehend the emotions of the characters in the story more successfully, and furthers her
enjoyment of reading.
As a part of reading fluency I would also like to reflect upon the fluency tests that I
administered to my student. I provided my student with two fluency tests that were at her reading
level (L). In the first fluency test I noticed that my student was not meeting the target goal of

80 words per minute. However, I had given this first fluency test to her as a cold read, so it took
her a little bit longer to successfully get through the passage. The next fluency test that I gave her
was also at her reading level, but this time I let her read the passage (The Sun) once, before I
timed her next reading. This had helped her be familiar with what the topic was about, what
words she would be encountering, increasing her reading rate above her target to 86 words per
minute. Overall, in both fluency tests the childs automaticity was strong and her accuracy was
about 97%. The only thing that I noted was that the child would substitute certain words if she
did not know them, or even omit simple high frequency words because she was reading quickly,
not returning back to correct herself or reread for meaningful understanding.
Print Work/Decoding:
For this part of the analysis it is especially important to focus on my students running
records. There are both strengths and weaknesses that I have observed after reviewing the
various running records that I gave my student for the three parts of this assessment project. In
all four of the running records that I gave to my student her common strength is being able to
successfully read through any and all high frequency words. There was no pausing or time taken
to remember those specific words. Due to the lack of overabundant pausing, my student was also
able to read more fluently. Along with those strengths there were also some apparent weaknesses
that my student exhibited. First, by examining the running records from Part Two and Part Three
of the assessment, I can see that my student struggled to decode multi-syllable words. When she
arrived at these longer and more complex words she lacked a consistent way to segment these
words to successfully say them. Instead, she often referred to pausing or asking me what the
words were. This can be seen in the words, programmed, competition, received, etc. Another
apparent weakness of my students I noticed were that in some points in the running record my
student would substitute a certain word that could have looked visually correct (graphophonic
skill), however, the mistake could have hindered her ability in understanding the meaning of the
story (semantics); for example, when she said senses instead of sensors, bags instead of
balls, decide instead of detect, etc. The true underlying issue in this problem is that my
student would make these mistakes and then even after hearing herself say those words, not selfcorrect based on the meaning and context of the sentence.

Reading Comprehension and Conversation:

Although the assessment parts that we completed with our students did not specifically
require any certain pieces about the students reading comprehension or conversation about the
reading after they read for us, I did try to incorporate some of that into my own assessment. In
data parts two and three I asked my student some questions after we read the passage Planning
and Mural and The Rainbow Fence. Even though the passages were short I was able to get
some understanding about my students reading comprehension. After she read the passage
Planning a Mural, (which was about students in an art club trying to decide what mural would
be best to paint on their towns recycling center) I asked my student why the students in the
passage had been arguing. This type of question would demonstrate if my student had literal
comprehension of the text. She answered, that they argued because each student wanted their
idea painted. I also asked my student a question about why they finally chose to paint a recycling
mural on a recycling center. Even though the text did not say this explicitly, my student answered
that it only made sense to have a recycling mural at a recycling center to teach people about
recycling. This type of question showed me that my student also has the capability of inferential
comprehension in reading. Some of the conversation that we had after we read these passages
also came back to the child relating what she had just read to something that had happened in her
life. When we read about painting murals the student explained to me that her parents wanted to
paint a mural in her baby brothers nursery. I made a point to tell my student that she was making
a text-to-self connection when she took something from the text and related it back to herself.
Overall, her reading comprehension skills seem strong.
Writing:
Engagement:
o My student seemed to be a little less interested in writing versus reading. She
found it hard to come up with topics or something that she wanted to write about.
This tells me that in her classroom the teacher must be doing a lot of the
prompting for writing, instead of just introducing a form of writing and then
letting the students choose and brainstorm their own topics. The first time I
wanted a writing sample I allowed my student to choose a topic to write about,
which seemed to frustrate her. For that reason, the next time I had her write I

supplied her with a couple of prompts so she could choose which ever one had the
most interest to her. Once again I think that my student would benefit from having
more authentic writing experiences and time to be allowed to go through that
process of brainstorming to come up with her own ideas to write about. I think
that this would motivate her to want to write more.
Qualities of good writing:
o I received two writing samples from my student. One sample is in part two of the
assessment and the other is located in part three of the assessment. In order to
assess both of these pieces of writing I used a chart that I found online which
exhibits the 6 traits of writing and what aspects of those traits should be seen in
second grade writing. Overall, I believe that my student is successful in the
qualities and traits of good writing. She does have some room for growth, but I
also only received two small samples, so more in-depth analysis would be
necessary to make a stronger decision on her needs. I am going to break down
each of those traits individually:
1. Ideas: In both samples my student was able to zoom in on one single topic
(being a monkey/sleepovers) and write out a small sample that included clear
details and support for her topic. In the sample about a sleepover she wrote why
she likes sleepovers, what she does at them, who they are with, etc. In the piece
about what animal she would want to be she supports her answer of a monkey,
with why she would want to be a monkey and what she could do if she was one.
2. Organization: In both samples my student starts with a topic sentence that
alerts readers of what she is writing about. The middle of the pieces is strong, but
they lack a bit in the concluding statements and transitions.
3. Voice: It is easy to see that in both pieces the child understands that her writing
will be read and that the purpose of her writing is to inform a reader about what
she likes about sleepovers and why she would want to be a monkey.
4. Word Choice: In both sample writing pieces my student uses simple and clear
word choice. Her second piece used some interesting verbs like, climb and swing.

There is not a strong use of adjectives, but once again these samples were
extremely short.
5. Sentence Fluency: One thing to notice about both writing samples is my
students lack of variation in sentence beginnings. However, she does vary the
length of the sentences and some of them are complex.
6. Conventions: My students use of conventions in her writing is successful. She
uses punctuation in the correct places as well as capital letters.
Spelling:
Because we did some analysis of spelling in this assessment project, I wanted to
specifically look at the results that I received from my students Elementary Spelling Inventory. I
noticed that my student was strong in identifying initial and final consonants, short vowels,
blends, and common long vowels. However, where I started to notice weakness in my students
spelling patterns were in her ability to know other vowels as well as syllable junctures. This
showed when she spelled words like serving as srving and shopping as shoping. These
errors are similar the ones seen in my students writing samples. Through this spelling inventory
I was able to place my student in the Middle stage of the Within Word Pattern stage. This shows
that my student is moving into the transitional period of literacy development. It also signals that
she knows her basic letter-sound correspondences of written English, but is still working on
silent letters and more uncommon vowel patterns.
3. Interpreting Data and Establishing a Goal:
Through my entire analysis of my students data, there are two important goals that I
would set for her:
1. I think that this student would benefit from learning word-identification strategies
in relation to multisyllabic words because in her running records I observed that she
had a difficult time reading and analyzing those words successfully, often asking what
the word was.
2. I think that this student could learn from monitor for meaning when reading and
fixing her mistakes closer to the point of error because after reviewing her running

records I saw that she would often say a word incorrectly because it may have looked
visually correct, however, she did not use context clues or self-monitoring to check for
correct meaning (semantics) even after she read the entire sentence through with the
error.

4. Creating an Action Plan:

1. My student needs to become more successful in decoding multisyllabic words in order to read
fluently and possibly rise to a new independent reading level. This would also help her in writing
in order to successfully spell multisyllabic words. To help her with this weakness I would focus
on specific word-identification strategies if I was working with her individually or in a small
group:

Decoding by analogy:
o I would show my student how to use her knowledge of phonograms to deduce the
pronunciation or spelling of an unfamiliar word. For example, I could show her
simple ways in which she knows words like think because of the word pink,
and relate that to more complex words that she does not know, like applying her

knowledge of senses to the word sensors.

Syllabic analysis:
o I would also show my student how she could work to break down a multisyllabic
word into its individual syllables and then apply her knowledge of phonics to
decode the word, syllable by syllable. For example, looking at the word volcano
and breaking it down to vol-ca-no. I think if she could successfully use this
strategy it would help her to not become as frustrated or reluctant to keep reading
when she arrives at a complex word. After practice with this my hope would be
that this becomes a skill for this child and she does it automatically to successfully
read multisyllabic (complex) words.

2. My student needs to also become more successful in using the comprehension skill of selfmonitoring for meaning. I think that this is a skill that is apparent in for both successful reading

and writing and that is why I have chosen to focus on it. There are several strategies that I will
use in order to accomplish my students use of this skill:

When conferring with the student independently, in guided reading, or in another form
of reading where I am able to listen to her I would tell her that good readers always
reread to make sure that what they read makes sense. I think that teaching my student
this strategy would allow her to take the time to slow down in her reading and realize
that sometimes things do not sound right in the context of a sentence, so one of the

words read must not have been said correctly.

I would also prompt my student and invite her to work on prompting herself by saying,
Did that make sense, sound right, or look right? In working with this student to
self-question I could help to prompt her as she is reading to me when she says
something incorrectly, tell her what she has actually said, and then ask her if that sounds
right. This may allow her to begin to do that same prompting as she reads independently.
This would again emphasize the idea that if something does not sound right or make

sense then she needs to go back, reread, and fix it.

I also think that another great way to help my student to become more successful in selfmonitoring for meaning is to explicitly teach/demonstrate/model how to use this
strategy. This skill benefits an entire group of readers. I could interject the use of selfmonitoring for meaning any time during a mini lesson when I am reading a book. I
could purposefully say a word incorrectly, notice and self-question that something did
not sound right, reread the phrase, and come to the conclusion that I said a word
incorrectly. My thinking aloud would enforce the use of self-prompting/questioning and
rereading for meaning.